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Beware The Online Dating Diarist
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As a guy, online dating offers nothing more than yet another way you need to learn to approach girls. This is supposed to be easier, in theory, because you’re not in the same place at the same time. The fact of the matter is that online dating works largely the same way that real life dating works: if you’re the guy, you need to approach her. And there’s so many possible partners on a site that you end up sending out a lot of “hi there” emails and getting very few responses. But every once in a while, you get a response, do a sanity check of their profile to refresh your memory as to whether she fell into the “super hot” or “cute” categories, and start an email conversation. You think things are going well and you actually have a chance of not just meeting this girl, but dating her. There’s only one problem. She’s an online dating diarist.
You anxiously await her next email, and it reads:
Hey Zack,
Boy did I have a busy day! Work was crazy today. When I arrived, my boss already had ten things for me to do. I really like her, but she’s so disorganized. Oh well, I suppose that’s why she needs me, right? I spent most of the morning helping her arrange everything just the way she likes it so she can look good in front of the execs. For lunch we went to California Pizza Kitchen…god I love the salads there. I know, I know, it’s a pizza place but I get a salad. I don’t care, they’re sooooooooo good!
The afternoon was really busy as well as we had clients coming in from out of town. There were meetings all afternoon to try to finalize this deal. After work, me and the girls went out for happy hour and Sarah got totally wasted. I’ve told her so many times to watch it when she’s out with colleagues, but she’s a party girl, so what can I do?
Well, that’s about it. I hope your day went well.
Upon first reading this you may be thinking, “what’s wrong with it?” What’s wrong is that this isn’t an email to me, it’s an entry in her diary. Remember those high school girls with diaries? They don’t keep diaries anymore, they write emails.
If you’re communicating with someone on an online dating site, that means you don’t know them. You must get to know them in order to decide if they are worth the time of meeting in person. Online dating diarists do everything in their power to feed you the most mundane and useless information about themselves as possible. Don’t get me wrong, they don’t know that this is what they’re doing, but it’s the fastest way in the world to ensure that nothing will ever come of the communication.
Now, I’m not a fan of online dating in general (for reasons I’ll discuss at a later point), and this type of behavior just validates my beliefs. The first few emails of an online dating discussion need to be devoted towards getting to know the other person. Ask questions, don’t tell stories unless they answer a question, and skip the day or weekend rundown of your activities.
If you’re a guy and you’re now virtually involved with an online dating diarist, you have three options. The first is to ignore everything that she says and ask interesting questions such as “What did you want to be when you were a little girl?” and “If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would that be?” Chances are she’ll answer the questions, and if you’ve snapped her from her spell, she’ll ask some in return. If she doesn’t ask any questions after answering yours, chances are she’s going to slip back into her diary mode after the next email.
This leads you to the second option: suggest meeting in person. Sometimes people just don’t know how to communicate through writing. They may have a hard time figuring out what to say because they have too much time to think about it. Suggest meeting for a coffee and see if she is any easier to communicate with in person.
Your third option is, of course, to end the communication. Online dating, ideally, is about meeting a large amount of people in a short amount of time and with minimum effort. If you’re putting effort into holding up a “relationship” with someone you haven’t met, then you’re just not doing online dating right. Politely say that you don’t believe things will work out and wish her the best. You may or may not get a response, but either way, don’t write to her again. Just move on.
If you’re a girl and you’re an online dating diarist, the easiest way to snap out of your behavior is to start asking him questions. Don’t provide a narrative, this is a two-party conversation. Give the guy something to converse with you about. Short stories are okay, but they have to have a point or lead up to a question. For example, a story about your nephew could be followed up by the question, “do you have any small children in your family?” Or, as with the guy, just say you’d like to meet for coffee and talk in person.
Online dating is really no easier than dating in real life, it’s just replacing verbal and in-person communication with visual, text communication. Text communication isn’t easy for everyone, so you’ll tend to run into the online dating diarist at least once or twice during any online dating encounters. Just beware, and good luck!