Online Dating: Does It Eventually Wear You Down?

In my earlier years of singledom, when I wasn’t fending off the 30’s somethings, who were clearly looking to either snag a cougar or gain a mother figure, I was trying to work out where all the 40 something’s played.  Having a major aversion to online dating (after a pathetic attempt at it in the early stages of my separation), I finally mustered the courage to rejoin the ranks this year, starting with eHarmony then the ever so popular Tinder App.

Now to my surprise there were many other 40 something males playing in the same playground, especially on Tinder. In fact, eHarmony was so scant of any good quality anything, that I gave up on it after only 6 weeks … what a total waste of time and money that was!

So Tinder it was, however, after over 3 months of Tinderversing, I finally got to break point, where I desperately needed a rest from the Dog and Pony show of online dating. In the article I posted by Susan Winters last week, she talks about “Dating 98 men in 9 months”, and concludes it’s just not for her. Well I guess I have now come to that same conclusion.

When I first joined Tinder, a few of my male friends had warned me that this would happen. They said “you get sick of it after a while”.

When I asked why, they said “well you often don’t get to meet “The One”, more just the “The One – for Fun”; or if you’re lucky, you might even make a good friend out of it, but don’t expect to meet Mr Right here”.

So after a few months of starting, stopping and swapping conversations, I realised they were right.  Whilst the numbers were there in droves, the quality of the people I found on Tinder, were … let’s just say, less than appealing as time wore on.

It was now an effort to look, swipe and type, even with red wine and jammies for comfort. The fickle attitudes of most of the daters on this site, and their little white lies about their age or dating agenda, just became too hard to stomach.

Is this what they have warned me about, when you reach Online Dating Fatigue?

Don’t get me wrong, I met some really lovely people on Tinder, and even managed to have a 6 week affair with one, who was living and working here on a temporary visa.  However soon after that ended, due to a conflict in our dating agenda’s, I realised I didn’t have the gumption to continue the charade of looking for someone online anymore.

My experience however wasn’t fruitless, as I got to see how one of the worlds fastest growing online dating sites actually worked, and whilst it was fun for a while, the less than authentic daters wore me down.

So where too now, you might ask?

Well that’s anyone’s guess, but maybe I should take on the advice of the beautiful Stephanie Simons, who only recently launched her book, “All’s Fair In Love and Wardrobe”.  Here she provides us with the rules on Fashion and Dating; and even includes some interesting ideas, such as that of Rule 35:

Whilst this certainly made me LMAO, as I could just imagine a bunch of yummy mummies, still looking fab with their yoga trim bodies, trying to give away their used & crusty ex husbands, but I think for my age group, that’s a “No, thank you”!

I guess that means, it’s back to the drawing board for me then, and whilst I have yet to try some of the other, non online forms of dating, such a speed dating and latin dance dating, then I think I might take a break from the online dating world; just for a while anyway.

Always keen to hear your experiences as always; particularly if you have been worn down by the initial allure of online dating?

Yours Truly

A.R.T

Profiling Your Potential Match Online: Easy As Pie!

As you may have noticed by now, I enjoy sharing all my online dating wisdom with my sense of humour in check, so I feel there is no better way to start this story, than with this little drawing by endless origami …

Did you hear that Stalking is now Socially Acceptable?

This particular cartoon made me laugh, but it also prompted me to share my own experience in stupidity, in what I would call my more exuberant days using online dating sites.

As I have always been an over sharer, I took no real precautions to protect my relatively quiet and somewhat average day life as a single mother, apart from the more obvious privacy settings on my medium of choice at the time, which happened to be Facebook.  What I didn’t get – until it happened to me – was just how easy it is to profile someone from their online presence or timeline as we all know it, particularly after you give someone the Right to be your “friend”.

It’s bad enough that Facebook studied our emotional status updates recently, which showed us just how exposed we are, however you don’t think about your FB friends analysing you in that way!  So here we are – or there I was – willy nilly posting stuff about my and my kids life on my timeline, but not for one moment considering what that exposes about me to others!

Now maybe it’s just all the single peeps out there, like me, constantly sharing our day to day activities, although I do notice a large share of married folk on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook now joining in the ranks. FB however was my only online Social Media crime of choice.

It was here that I told the story of my life, either through a simple status update or via photo bombardments: which came as either singular mobile uploads or as wad of photos added to a new album.  What this told everyone was:

• my financial position (with pictures of my holidays, new car or house), 
• my preferences for where and what I liked to eat,
• what I liked to wear (my style),
• and even who I would typically socialise with.

Other photo posting mediums do the same, maybe not to the same degree, but they still tell a story. Twitter too tells a story, as even though it is mainly for thought based over-sharers, the anecdotal references made here and there, as well as the satire comedy, often gives away their emotional state: because if you read between the lines of these tweeters, it’s often a disparaging remark about someone or something, unless they are just pedalling their wares

So as an amateur online dating Tinderella, I made two fundamental mistakes;

1. Not using the security feature on Facebook to lock down my contact number so that only I could see it. That meant that any general public member could search my number, via their own Facebook account, and would find what was public on my profile (meaning anything I hadn’t already locked down, such as my profile pics and cover photos).  
2. The other was just how much of my life I exposed to my so called friends, each time I posted something on my timeline.

The first mistake, I put down to New to Online dating – Rookie Error, as hardly anyone I knew actually knows about this search functionality.  The second however, was just one of pure naivety, on my part.

So why the lesson in our social media privacy?

Well within 48 hours of matching and talking to this online dater, I stupidly gave him my FB details thinking “what harm could it do?”  After all he gave me his business website and FB account first, so I knew who he was at least. Plus, I had previously become instant friends with people that I would meet at a party or bar, only 2 hours prior.  Therefore I had no real qualms in sharing my online profile, particularly if they shared their details first!

BUT IT IS NOT THE SAME!

Talking to someone for copious hours on the phone vs meeting someone in real life, removes many important elements in being able to assess someone’s emotional state.  Apart from the most obvious eye to eye contact, you can miss important physical sensory queues, such as their smell, posture, choice in clothing, shoes etc. Online pictures and words only really tell half a story, after-all a short guy can make himself really tall if the photo is taken from below the belt … get my drift!

So when this online dater saw pictures of my children, the car I drove, the house I live in, the clothes I wear etc … etc: he made an executive decision there and then – and all by himself, that he was going to marry me and ward off any potential suitors for my daughter who – using his words “is unbelievably beautiful, just like her mother. So I can already see myself taking to any boy that wants to date her with a baseball bat when she turns 16”.

Not only did my heart start beating faster than Hussein Bolt’s would have, waiting at the starting line for his 100m race, but I realised just how emotionally needy and desperate this poor man really was, just to be with someone.

Was it his fault that he was getting ahead of himself – imagining what a life could be like with me – no not really!  After-all I was the one that handed him the keys to view my life didn’t I. Yes, I thought what harm could be done, afterall it was mostly in picture format with a few anecdotal remarks here and there, but when I had a good look through my timeline, I could see how clearly my life was mapped like a kids treasure map.

That little experience of course, had me to locking down my Facebook account faster than Hussein Bolt could run his 100m … but “WOW’ aren’t I the Tom Fool for not seeing this coming!

Whilst my lax attitude towards online security taught me a huge lesson, the biggest lesson by far was just how much we tell our “friends and acquaintances” about ourselves in our seemingly everyday posts, and exactly how much of our lives do we really want to share!

Anyway, as always that’s my story so I would be happy to hear from anyone (guys and girls) this has happened to, and what you did to protect yourself from over-exposure!

Yours Truly

A Real Tinderella

The perception of online dating is still: ‘It’s only if your desperate!’

The perception of online dating is still: ‘It’s only if your desperate!’

 

Clem Bastow from our very own SMH has written a great little piece on the perception of online dating titled: Caroline Wozniaki and online dating: ‘I’m not that desperate’.

This is a must read for anyone in doubt about the modern dating and how online is the only way to meet someone in todays world.

 

Excerpt from article

But in a reality lost on many, celebrities are also just people, and like Julia Roberts’ movie star who is just a girl standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her, there are famous people who find it just as hard to get a date as Dave from accounts. And when you can’t even go to the supermarket without someone sticking a camera in your face, the relative anonymity of online dating must be seductive.

Click here to read more on this story: 

 

Yours Truly

 

A.R.T

Some wise words to remind us each day