I have recently written about pain. Pain in the context of being a single man dating in his early 50s. This time, I think, something a wee bit more subjective. Something that as a man swimming in the online dating pool I don’t have much experience with on a personal level. But I have seen it happen over and over.
It usually manifests itself more as a lack of something in particular. That something would be communication. Women who after corresponding with someone for a few days or weeks just drop off the face of the planet. Ignoring all emails wondering what is going on.
Hi Jane,
I haven’t heard back from you for a while so I thought I would check in and see how things are going? If you have met someone or had a change of heart that is fine, I’m not one to hold grudges.
Maybe you have just been busy, thats cool, and I look forward to hearing from you when you have a little time.
Steve
So why wouldn’t you get a response to something like that? Simple, she is too damn busy to bother with some random guy on the internet that she doesn’t really know. Or she remembers the last time she said “thanks but no thanks.” Some guy she really didn’t know ripped her a new asshole. Said some hurtful and unnecessary things, called her a few nasty names and made her feel worthless.
Who really needs that from a total stranger? Personally it doesn’t bother me in the least. I don’t care what random strangers on the internet think about me. I have a thick skin, how else would I put myself out here on the internet for all to see?
But sometimes fear takes a more subtle approach. Case in point, a lady I had been corresponding with on match.com. During the correspondence she sends me her real email address so we can skip the the moderately unreliable match.com email servers.
At the bottom of all my emails I have a brief signature line:
Steve Chambers
Macs & PCs Tamed | Freelance Troublemaker
www.stevec.us | thrint%qmzl.jp | skype steve.c.atx
Jane obviously noticed that and had a look here at my website. A whole week later this lands in my inbox.
Hi Steve,
Just some friendly advice…. you probably shouldn’t blog about your online dating experiences. Especially if they date back to 2006.
Regards.
Jane
When the email arrived I was in the middle of recovering my MacPro from a bonehead move that I won’t delve into here. But I was immersed in the recovery process and only half paying attention to email. I manage to respond anyway, if briefly.
Jane,
I don’t understand
Steve
In my distracted frame of mind I didn’t even know who this was. And since asking is easier than looking I respond generically in the hopes that further elucidation is afoot. Unfortunately I am not rewarded and get another cryptic email.
That URL points to what you get when you click on the “dating” link under “Categories” in right sidebar of this (or any) page of this blog.
So now I have gotten two terse emails from a woman I don’t really even know. The internet equivalent of, “Lucy, you got some esplainin’ to do!”
OK so the only thing I can figure now is she thought she had been corresponding with a nice guy. And lookie here she uncovered my deep dark secret. AH HA! I caught you now mister!
Not being one to unnecessarily turn the other cheek I attempt to gently call her on her bullshit.
nice of you to judge me without actually knowing anything about me.
I have made a lot of friends online. And I have zero interest in dating except that I meet someone who will make the online dating thing moot through doing so.
In the mean time I have met a lot of wonderful, fascinating terribly interesting women. That alone is worth it.
I’m sorry that you somehow find this somehow wrong.
I would love the opportunity possibly change your mind
Seconds after sending that email I get this from her.
I have made it a clickable link. Have a look, I’ll wait.
What you have here is the original inspiration for the bulk of my profile on match.com. Something I blogged about years ago and always mention should anyone ask me where I came up with the idea. I fiddle with it constantly and have written and rewritten it a dozen times over in the intervening years. But I am sure there are whole swaths of my profile that distinctly resemble the original. So what?
Steve Jobs has been known to famously quote something usually attributed to Pablo Picasso when talking about the creative process, “Bad artists copy. Great artists steal.”
I am by no means a great artist nor a great writer, the quote is merely instructive to the creative process.
Besides, think of the source material, Craigslist, a great repository of random thoughts and crap for sale. As disposable and forgettable as your daily paper which it has largely supplanted in many areas is hardly the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art. And an online dating site is hardly a bastion of creative and thoughtful prose. Equally disposable the profiles flutter by like Autumn leaves in a Vermont wind storm.
In other words, so what!?
I respond a bit more tersely but with similar meaning.
your point?
The URL I sent was the one I linked to above where I blogged about the source of my match.com profile. You know, where I point out where I stole it from? In public (literally) for the whole world to see? Yeah that one.
By now it is late so I turn of the, now partially recovered, MacPro. Close the lid on my MacBook and go to bed.
In the morning I have one more email waiting for me.
After reading much of your blog, I do feel I know you. If you are still looking online for someone after 4 years, I don’t think I’m interested. Good luck!!!
Yah, she knows me. After reading my blog. Sure.
Again we have that “holier than thou” attitude dripping off the screen. She has now allowed herself to feel superior to me which then makes it palatable for her to condescend this atitude to me and reject me.
But why, really? I contend it is just fear. Not “run for your life” fear. Or even a “no thank you I’m full” when presented with a plate of chocolate covered crickets kind of fear.
No I believe this is more along the lines of, “oh no not another guy who is just going to try to get into my panties on the second date and then dump me like a…” well, “Like a plate of chocolate covered crickets.”
So let me state now and for the record (and for the next woman who finds this blog) something that I have said before to friends and women I have met online, for longer than I ever wanted to have to say it.
I hate dating.
I am looking for someone and something permanent. Someone who makes me weak in the knees. A girlfriend, companion, best friend and lover. A couple of times in the past few years I have met someone that I thought qualified in all those respects. Unfortunately it was not to be. It happens. And the older you get the smaller the dating pool and the more selective you get. I’m sorry if that bothers or even upsets you but it is just a fact. A fact that I have learned to live with and embrace, if not ultimately enjoy.
So yes I hate dating and have no interest in dating strictly for the sake of dating. But as a means to establish a relationship with the last woman I ever meet online it is an acceptable and necessary compromise.
And not something that I, personally, am afraid of.