Still get match.com and eharmony.com spam and happily delete it.  Kinda miss the funny stories, though….

At the moment, I’m feeling vindicated for my “ruthless” edating style of last fall.  :-) Still dating the guy I met in November.  Impossible to know what the future holds, but I’m still having a ball.  And I still think he’s fabulous.  And it’s easy.  Even the hard stuff is easy so far.  Just in case you were wondering.

Ok Cool but u can always come back to me if u get dumped

I hate self-help books.  I do my best to avoid reading them.  But I was weak.  I got sucked into one not too long ago, and darned if it isn’t making me second guess myself way too much as my latest e-dating relationship progresses.  Self-help books, all too often, seem to make people crazy.  This one is having a bit of that effect on me.  So my latest advice to all my fellow edaters out there is: DON’T READ THEM!  :-)

Just got an email from an ex.  (We’re still good friends.)  Seems he just joined one of the dating sites I’m on, and it suggested me as a highly compatible match.  Not super surprising, given the sort of matching system the site uses, but entertaining just the same.  Not sure whether this should give me more or less faith in the site’s matching algorithm.  :-)

The last month has been a blur. I’ve been working a lot, and haven’t had the time or energy to blog – or to do much edating. But a lot has been happening in edater-land in spite of that.

The short version:  

After a brief bout of being down about the online dating universe, I took my own advice on rejection flooding and sent out a bunch of emails on a couple of sites. Two looked very promising. And one continues to look that way. In fact, we’re getting ready for date #4. (I *very* rarely get to date #4.) He’s a nice reminder that dating should be fun!

More to come….

Got this from a 21-year-old. A little young for me, but so very sweet!

Anyone ever tell you that you’re completely adorable? I’m sure you get it all the time, but I just thought I’d let you know.

A message I sent a while back in response to a profile.  Couldn’t resist.

hey, i read your profile with interest, and was thinking that you sound like a great guy, and then i saw that you’d selected a few, very specific, racial/ethnic preferences in your ideal date. is there a particular reason you don’t want to date a black woman? i’m not black, but i do eliminate people who appear racist on their profile from my dating pool. that said, you seem like such a nice guy that i kind of wondered what your rationale might be for stating your preferences in the way you did.

i’m probably poking my nose in where it doesn’t belong, and i’m sorry if this email offends, but i really am curious…

Not surprised that he never responded, but I was honestly curious to hear his reasons.

Down to one. One of the guys from the last post is out. Ah well. 

Which leads me to my latest advice file about how to keep your spirits up while e-dating. Borrow a technique from psychologists who treat phobias: flooding. Basically, flooding means exposing someone to what they fear so much that they lose their fear of it. A friend that had a dog phobia, for example, was once trapped on a couch at a friend’s house with a broken leg and a very friendly dog for company. After a couple of days of aggressively friendly slobbering (the dog’s), he no longer had that fear of dogs.

In the e-dating context, when I start to take it personally that people don’t want to meet up because “the chemistry just isn’t there” or “the physical distance is too great” or whatever reason, I send out a slew of emails to interesting looking people on one site, or “start communication” with a bunch of the ones that I’ve been matched to on a different site. (Sometimes I even join a new site!)

On eharmony, for example, one of the sites I’ve used, I try not to even look at the profiles of the guys I’ve been matched to before I start communication. This is due to two reasons: 1) I’m fairly sure that 2/3 of my “matches” aren’t actually paying members for a variety of reasons I’m too lazy to list here, and thus 2) it’s much more time efficient to just start communication without studying the profiles of those potential matches that might not even exist. What I end up with is a bunch of people who never respond, a smaller but still quite large number who “close” me, and a smaller number who respond to my “request for communication.”  By not filtering on the the first round, it depersonalizes the large number of rejections I get. It also lowers the number of little (but disheartening) disappointments that come when you read a really interesting profile but don’t get a response.

On other sites where there isn’t the same computer-run system for matching you, I do actually read profiles carefully, but I try not to overanalyze them. Are they interesting? Seem sane? Meet other basic criteria like not showing obvious evidence of racism and meeting my own highly personal standards of attractiveness? Then I initiate communication. Not only does this keep you from filtering out people who are quite lovely but don’t know how to write a good profile, but more relevant for this post, this makes you take it less personally if they ignore you or tell you they’re not interested. Only invest in a relationship if you actually start one!

By the way, it’s funny how four guys responding “yes, let’s meet” out of 40 communications initiated feels so much better than one guy saying “yes” out of four emails sent, even through the the percentage interested is lower (10% versus 25% for you who math phobes.) 

So…initiate enough online contacts and go out on enough dates that it just doesn’t hurt that much when you’re rejected. This technique works really well for me. Sure, I’m disappointed when someone with a profile I really liked or who was super fun to meet for that first or second date flakes or lets me know they’re not interested, but it’s pretty easy to bounce back.

(A nice side effect of rejection flooding is that you end up with more potential partners-in-crime in the pipeline.)

I’m not planning any more first dates for a bit. I’m a bit tired. (Both of meeting new people and from working too hard.) I am, however, waiting to see what happens with two different guys. One I saw for a second time last night. I really like him! At least, what I’ve seen so far. Seems smart, intense, kind, and is a good listener and easy to be with. He’s a little harder for me to read than most, so I’m not sure what’s up on his side. The other I’ll see for a second time tomorrow. He’s coming to a group event that two of my single female friends will be at, as well. I’m not sure whether it’s underhanded or altruistic, but I’m actually kind of excited to see how he gets along with them, as I’m not sure but that he might be a better match for one of them. Who knows, though. If I’ve learned nothing else in my decades on earth, it’s that life can evolve in unexpected ways.

Just taking it a day at a time.