Internet Dating

Internet Dating is something that is one of the easiest ways for people who may be a little shy in a normal social encounter to in some ways get around this shyness. However at the same time Internet Dating is by no means something that is simple and straight forward. In fact I would go as far to say that it takes more effort, time and sheer willpower to keep going then any other method.

Probably the one biggest challenge on the road of internet dating is that whole waiting game. Where in a face to face situation you can have some idea what is going on pretty much straight away. You will either get flat out rejected (which can be difficult to deal with) or you will get some indication of the reaction of the other party. Where as internet dating, you can wait hours, days, weeks or even months to find out what is going on.

You join a site, you spend hours working on what you want to say that people will find out who you really are, you put a picture that you hope will have you appearing attractive to the opposite sex. Then you start searching for potential matches to what you are looking for. Unless you have a very specific list of required traits you will find that there are often more then a few matches on any site.

This is just when it begins to get to the fun part. First depending on the site you realize that this costs money. There are some sites that are free, however for the most part there is almost always a paid option which almost always promises to get you more responses. My experience here has been much different for the most part. While paying for a site often does increase the chance of a reply, that is all it does, and often this only translates to a slightly better response rate then free sites.

No matter which way that you go, the end result at the end of the day is that to get responses you need to contact tens if not hundreds of potential partners. However the number that really matters is how many people you contact to how many people you meet. For me that translates into 1 meeting out of probably 1000+ contact attempts. If I really think hard about it, then there may be a second however honestly I cannot remember there being any more then one.

There are many downfalls to internet dating though. The first and most prominent one is that it makes it to easy for guys to effectively harass girls asking for sex or the likes. what this translates into is a very big boundary to cross with most females so that they do not see you as just another guy trying to take advantage of them. Especially on free sites this is an even bigger barrier to positive interactions, as most girls tend to receive a lot of similar requests, and I can absolutely understand why they probably give up on these sites pretty quickly.

Internet dating will be something that I continue to see as a possible option, however it is also an option which needs to be looked at in way that you do not want to waste hours sitting at home looking through internet dating sites, when you could be out there meeting people in person, which should in most cases be a much more beneficial experience.

Where I begin

For the best part of the last 10 years, my efforts in seeking a female partner and actually converting this into a date, and further into a relationship have turned out fairly dismally. This by no means is a reflection on lack of trying, there have been things I have tried but all of them for the most part were far from successful and all left me with none of the power in the situation.

A key point in this issue for me is that while I have tried multiple different ways to seek out a relationship, none of the ways that I have tried are all that different, or anything much more then a passive interest. You may understand a little better when I let you in on the ways I have failed.

• There was going out and sitting in night clubs hoping that something might happen, guess what nothing did, but then again would I have really wanted what may have come from meeting a girl in a night club. This was something that should it have been successful would have actually required a little effort on my part, which was for the most part lacking.
• Then there was shopping with a female friend, well, this leads most people to one assumption, that we are not friends but, in a relationship. This made things to a degree even worse for me, because that is what it felt like even though i knew with certainty that we were not. This is where it becomes easier to pretend then to actually see reality
• Talking with girls at the checkout or such when buying things also was a failing point. It would seem that I have never really been that good at talking in a social manner, something that I really do need to work on, so how am I going to manage this short flirty conversation any better then a longer conversation.
• Finally there was the attempt at multiple different Internet Dating websites. No matter what the name or the type of site the result for the most part was always the same. Send a message, get a reply, send a message and then nothing. Although this was even a rarity in a reply, for the most part it was send a message and nothing, occasionally there was a little more then this, however it all comes down to a big old numbers game.

So as you can see fairly dismal attempt if that is what I can call it at seeking out a potential relationship. In retrospect internet dating has actually probably been the most successful out of all the options I have tried, however as I said it is one bit numbers game, at some point you have to get a positive response from someone. However what has come in this area is something for another post, don't want to give all the good stuff away all at once. 

As you can see where I am at is not the most interesting place in terms of a successful or a fulfilling relationship. Considering that I am still single and have been for the very large part of the last 10 years, I would not hesitate to say that none of this has really been that successful in anyway at all. However this is where I am at, I know there is something that needs to change in the process to change the outcome, and that is just what I am going to explore through this blog, the path that I take to change the outcome.