Internet Dating for Women: Can It Work? Chapter 4

Here's the fourth and final installment of excerpts from Let's talk....Man to Woman:

Wounded bird syndrome

A lot of women will slip something into their profiles about having had negative experiences with men, a bad marriage, etc. Some of them will clearly lay all the blame at the feet of their ex’s. Bad move. The smart guy, a man with any intuition, will see that and think if he meets her he’s going to have to sit and listen to a tirade about her ex or men in general. No one likes a person with a victim mentality. Not to mention, he'd be next in line for the blame. Next profile!

“Are there any good men?”

Insult an entire gender and you shouldn’t expect a member of it to be very interested in having any kind of relationship with you. I’ve seen this used as a headline many times and at one time I was dumb enough to write to the woman and try to show her that there are some good men and I’m one of them. Pretty naïve of me, huh? See, she has such a negative opinion of men, she’s a lost cause. She’s gone through life blaming men for everything that’s gone wrong in her life and she’s not about to quit now! But she still thinks there might just be that one perfect man out there who will fix her problems instead of causing them like all the other guys have done. In reality, no one else caused her problems and no one else can fix them; she created them and will continue to do so.

Bad spelling!

In that Match.com survey the number two peeve was bad spelling and punctuation. Not only does it show a lack of literacy, it makes it look like she doesn’t care how she presents herself. It’s not that hard to type up what you want to say in a word processor with spell check and paste it in, or have a friend edit it.

I met a Russian-born lady (with less-than native English skills) on the Internet who lives in Alaska and she wasn’t having great luck with her profile on Yahoo. I copied it and opened it in Word, did a 5-minute edit and sent it back to her. She pasted it into her profile and her responses increased right away!

Free profiles all over the Internet

A lot of the dating sites (in fact I think all of them) offer a free profile and/or “search for free” and a lot of people sign up for a bunch of them. I don’t know what the thinking is because they’re not willing to pay for any of them and if you don’t pay you can’t contact anyone and usually, no one can contact you! So what’s the point? With some sites you get an email saying someone sent you a message but you can’t see who it was, with others you see who it was but can’t read or respond to the email.

As much as this is a waste of time, what’s worse is the impression it gives if a man checks out several of these sites and sees the same woman on all of them. He’ll think either she’s desperate or not very smart, neither of which is very attractive.

So what’s the point of using the Internet?

This whole idea of “finding a relationship” on a dating site is a bunch of hooey as far as I’m concerned. Yet that seems to be what people think they’re going to accomplish. The reality is a relationship either happens or it doesn’t, whether you think you’re compatible with the other person or not. Chemistry and instincts are what determine it. Can we narrow the field and maybe save some time we’d waste meeting people who aren’t anywhere near right for us? Absolutely! But you still have to meet someone – actually meet them.

When Internet dating first started the premise was that we could use it to meet people we otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity to meet. And it works if that’s what you try to use it for. Heck, I’ve made friends all over the country and even in other countries! I’ve flown across the country to meet someone and I’ve flown a woman here from the other side of the country. Did they work out? No, but at least we took advantage of the technology and met.
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Comments or questions? Post them here.

Owen
coach@man2woman.net