While online dating is becoming much more common, I can’t help but sense the stigma still attached to it. This is why, as a mid-twenties, motivated and very social woman, I felt absolutely ridiculous making my first profile on a free online dating site. I have lived in a college town for the last 7 years… great to meet people, but it becomes very small, very fast! So when the “people” I met were all exes or dates of friends or coworkers, I suddenly felt the need to meet other people outside of my friend-group (and the honest truth was that I needed a new dating pool in order to take my mind off of a recent breakup with someone who had been a long-time friend.)
It’s okay to be nervous about the experience or question if it’s right for you or if it really works. I still question it every day, but the only thing we can know for certain is that you are guaranteed not to succeed at something that you never try. I’d like to believe that sharing my experiences may help somebody out there, and can help chip away at that stigma a little at a time!
Growing up, my parents raised me to be paranoid about meeting people from the internet and now, even as an adult, I have that lesson emblazoned in my brain. Maybe this is why, after a month of great messaging conversations with Nick (name changed, of course) I still wouldn’t meet him in person to take me on a proper date. I didn’t intend to play games – I had been very upfront that I was skeptical about the site and not looking to jump in to a relationship and in no hurry to find a guy just to take me to dinner. We started talking on the phone for hours at a time, and after another month, I finally caved and told him when I came back from my summer vacation I would go to dinner with him.
I ended up in a relationship with Nick for about 4 months before realizing we were at such separate places in our lives that it wouldn’t work out (of course, this didn’t stop us from dating on and off for the next 2 years while we really figured that out for good.) I don’t regret waiting as long as I did to meet him in person. In my mind, if someone who you are talking to gets frustrated or impatient, they are probably not for you, anyway. And one of the biggest lessons was that just because you meet online, or have a 95% “chemistry match” or other statistic, nothing can predict how you will actually hit it off in person.
The key here is that online dating is no different then meeting in a bar. You may feel that you have “prescreened” candidates, but at the end of the day, somebody can lie online the same way they could lie on a date. Remember that red flags are red flags, even if YourSoulMate.Com (name made up) gave you an off-the-chart, never-been-heard-of 110% soul mate pair rating, so keep your senses about you and take it slow.
JUN
About the Author:
Rebecca is a late 20-something, still in the "dating as a young professional" phase of life. She enjoys soccer, travel and fitness and is currently accepting boyfriend applications, should your [brand name dating site] attempts be unsuccessful.