Online dating problems dating tips
Online Dating Problems
The danger of a 21st century epistolary romance is that, no matter how much information you share with the person on the other end of the line, there will be huge gaps in your knowledge. After two months of hot keyboard action, you feel like you know Mr. Perfect Match well, because he's told you his favourite ice cream flavor and prefered shampoo brand. But there are major gaps in your knowledge.Online Dating Problems
Online Dating Can Be Close To Impossible - Here's A Little Advice To Help You Out
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I matched with this guy on Tinder a few months back, and we began texting right away. I felt a strong attraction coming from his end, and I too was very attracted to him (or at least what I saw in the pictures). He is a few years older than me and said that "just sex" gets boring (which meant to me he was looking for something a little bit more than a hookup) but I didn't want to assume anything so I played it cool.
He also expressed numerous times that he wanted to meet. I had a lot going on and was unable to meet, which I think made him only want to meet more, so he was very patient. We got to know one another via text and he would say things like "You seem kind. I like that." And he would tell me how beautiful I am.
Before we could arrange a meeting, I ended up having to leave town for a month on business. He said he understood and we both agreed to try and meet up when I got back. While I was travelling, we kept in touch. I told him about all the places I visited, even sending pictures.
Our texts got more and more intense. At this point we had been talking for two months, and from our detailed and long conversations, we each knew a lot about the other, though we had never met. Which is weird. I know. But we each had no doubt that, when I returned, we would have drinks and probably hook up. I got the sense that he was looking forward to it as much as I was.
When I got back, we set a date. And as the date approached, I got nervous and started asking a lot of questions. At this point I felt like I knew him so well, but I wanted to be sure. He started taking longer to respond, and eventually stopped responding to my texts altogether. The day came for our date. I didn't text him, and he didn't text me.
After more than two months of talking about it, we never ended up going out. It really messes me up because I felt like we had a good connection. What the hell happened here?
The danger of a 21st century epistolary romance is that, no matter how much information you share with the person on the other end of the line, there will be huge gaps in your knowledge. After two months of hot keyboard action, you feel like you know Mr. Perfect Match well, because he's told you his favourite ice cream flavor and prefered shampoo brand. But there are major gaps in your knowledge.
For instance, how frequently does he scratch his nose? Does he pronounce “basil” with a long A? When he's nervous, does he yawn, or laugh, or fiddle with his watch? These are the juicy details that help you really know someone. You may be hoarding his personal data like your last name is Zuckerberg, but you still don't know the man on a bump-into-him-at-the-grocery-store level.
It can feel good to put off an in-the-flesh meeting, and not just for the sake of delayed gratification. So long as you guys are text buddies, you can keep your defenses down. No need to worry whether you scratch your nose too much or laugh when you're nervous. You can just be yourself, while keeping a big part of your self -- the messy, meat-space part -- hidden behind a screen.
This is a fine way to get the ball rolling when you're just meeting someone through Tinder. But you've let the ball roll too long and it's picked up momentum. This turned into a purely textual relationship.
Yeah, there was the opportunity to take it into three dimensions. But the longer you two were messaging, the bigger a deal that final meeting became, until the person on the other phone became monumental, unknowable, scary. You said yourself that you felt nervous leading up to the meeting. I'm sure he was, too.
Mr. Perfect Match chickened out. He said some really nice stuff before because for some people, with the physical world out of the way, it's a lot easier to open up to strangers. And once he'd spilled his guts, making the leap to a real date was just too much. Especially after you'd already told each other so much one another.
Cut your losses, Julia. There are plenty more potential soul mates out there just waiting for you to right swipe them. A tip for the future, though. If you're talking to someone online and you decide to meet in person, keep online communication to a minimum up until the big day. It's more fun learning about someone in person, and you won't run the risk of inflating your date into something bigger than it is.