The trials and tribulations of online dating is something most single people face. I’m ok with the online thing. In some ways it’s easier to get a feel for whether you will like someone if you have had a bit of chat before meeting up. I’ve met great guys this way and some remain friends. What I’m not ok with is the men (I’m sure also women) who seem to just want to chat and never get to the actual dating.
This chatting is good
As I said, chatting is good. It allows you to figure out if you will have something to talk about. It also lets you sift out the total nutters. Yes there are plenty. The main thing here is the need to sift out people who you just won’t fundamentally click with because you just have different values and beliefs that won’t merge. A good example is the men with a chip on their shoulder about women. I have no interest in men who have chips for shoulders…much preferring a good shoulder line and cheery outlook on life.
This chatting is getting boring
There’s a point in time where you feel like “just get on with it”. I think a couple of weeks is max. At that point if you haven’t decided to meet up, why are you still chatting? What are you even chatting about? The “hi how’s your day going” starts to get boring. When this has happened to me I start to get irritated by requests to tell someone I don’t actually know yet how my day is.
The worst examples are the ones where you set a date but it gets cancelled. This recently happened to me. Once by him and then once by me. I said (by message) this is just not going to happen and by that point I didn’t see the point. But, no surprise for a serial chatter, he kept on chatting and kept on saying that we should really meet up. Which is fine. But it also isn’t fine at the same time. So in the interim, I did start dating. Just not him. Again this is fine. We are now in an age where we (I probably mean UK we) don’t see anything wrong in dating a few people at the same time. This never used to happen when I was young. It would have been frowned on but thankfully that is no longer the case. It’s all about keeping the options open as long as you can deal with closing them down when you want to give just one person a chance.
I’m done with this chatting
I really do wonder at people who use dating sites for online chat. The above example seemed to be annoyed when I told him I had been dating someone that I wanted to give a chance; and so I didn’t want to continue chatting to him. He called me superficial. This made me chuckle for the humour in irony. I don’t think he was chuckling but hey ho. I think the trick for this is to not feel emotionally connected or in some way obligated. In reality how can people feel obligated without a personal connection. You don’t get a personal connection online. I think he maybe did make that mistake though and so was upset when I dropped him. He said that my behaviour made him think he ‘dodged a bullet’. I figured if that made him feel better then keep on thinking it. It saves me having to chat to him :-). So my advice. If you think it just message and say it isn’t going to work and you don’t want to continue chatting. Then repeat this if you need to. Don’t get sucked into feeling bad about someone you don’t know.
That can be the downside with dating sites (the nutters, the online chatters) but it’s not their intention. The intention is for people to chat and hopefully meet to date, like (or dislike), continue (or not) dating and to get to know people. Actual people, not their online persona.
Dating is sometimes hard! But for single people it is just something we need to learn to navigate. The one I was ‘giving the chance to’ wasn’t the one. But at least we gave it a bit of a go before both realising we were not meant for bigger things. Now I am just wandering how quickly I go back on line and whether the ‘chatter’ will feel the need to tell me I was wrong. Thankfully that is what there are blocking buttons.
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My Forty Something Life 