So you’ve posted your profile on a dating site hoping to developing a relationship with someone will add to your already thrilling life. And some unappealing people have messaged you. Now what?
WARNING: What I write here might lead to irrevocable changes in your life. I am the online dating success story, having mined and plucked the Internet dating vine of its most fantastic fruit. Soulmate type stuff. I will now share my technique.
Approach online dating like real estate investing: Have a timeline; research and explore every possibility; be the aggressor; don’t waste time on bad bones.
DATE SELECTION
Give yourself a deadline. I gave myself four months to succeed at online dating. After that point you risk becoming a creepy lurker and you need to take a break from it.
Never ever, ever date someone who messaged you first. This is non-negotiable. It gives that person the upper hand and, chances are, that person is messaging everyone randomly.
Online dating is beautiful because it allows you to do research and then act on that research. Instead of sitting in a bar and getting hit with the shrapnel of sluts who live with and for mommy. While looking for someone dateable you can eliminate the time-suck. Do an advanced search of people who meet your requirements (height/education/hobby/age/etc) and choose only from this pool. You are here to get what you want. Go to a bar if you just want to sleep with the next guy. Or use Canada’s most significant cultural production since Porky’s: Ashley Madison.
Once you have your dating pool selected, contact all of them. Yes, all of them. Do not hesitate. Send them a punchy and grammatically correct greeting. For example:
Hello. You look like you might be neat.
THE DATE
If their reply has nothing hopeless in it, immediately arrange a meeting. This is key because you are here to date—not meet new IM friends. Don’t waste time with someone you are not physically compatible with. The only way to know that is to meet in the flesh.
Now that you have their name and email address, Google them. Search for them on other dating sites. If they have been online dating solidly for over two years, proceed with caution. Ideal date material should be recently (within the past year or two) out of a relationship, new to your city and/or immersed in time-consuming work or studies. But even more importantly, Google yourself. You should realize that whatever you find online they have poured over and will be thinking about when they meet you. A good first conversation can be about any embarrassing online skeletons either of you have.
Where: My best friend, an online dating expert herself, saved my love life with this advice: Choose a new spot for each new date. I am so thankful that I followed this suggestion because now my fiancé and I have that special place we first met to visit on anniversaries, etc. The taint of other dates is not on it. I think only of him every time I drive by. This is also an excellent opportunity to become a tourist in your own city.
What: A public place, obviously. Ideally a place with something to discuss or look at like a museum or beach. Never eat a meal. There is nothing worse than being trapped for an entire meal. Walking on a date is a great way to work in some physical fitness so the date has some utility no matter what. Make it clear at the beginning of the date that you are strapped for time and can only hang out for an hour. If you end up liking him you can make him feel that much more special by casting off your other responsibilities to spend more time together.
How: Try to be the pick-upper, not the waiter. If you have a car, pick him up that way. If you are just meeting someone and he is late then never wait more than fifteen minutes. It is terrible to start off a first meeting with anxiety and apologies.
When: The best time for a date is when you are very busy—after work, or on a day with many meetings. This will allow you to focus on other things if dating makes you anxious.
DATING SIGNALS
You don’t like him: In my online dating career, each person I dated was polite, kind and I was never disgusted once. Really! I can’t say the same for my offline dating life. If you do your homework then you will probably be just as lucky. I recommend highly-educated nerds. Of course, this is my type and it took me years to narrow it down. But the most negative quality I experienced with them was extreme nervousness and long conversations about Karl Marx—something I’d gladly take over boob-talkers and patronizing yet horribly incorrect explanations of Plato and Confucian philosophies. (With Marx, I felt flattered and enlightened instead of dirty and essentialized.)
If the date is polite and not creepy and yet after an hour you are thinking more about MaryKate being on this month’s cover of Elle, it is time to end it forever:
It has been lovely meeting you. I think we’ll make great friends.
And then give him a polite hug. Both send clear signals to your date. You are not compatible and so neither of you has to waste your time. Don’t actually become his great friend. If he wants to continue dating you that would be mean. If you run into him in the future, online or elsewhere, be polite but distant.
You do like him: When this happens, embrace and celebrate it! Walk and talk for as long as you both can stand up. Drop him off at his home and then grab him and kiss him just before you leave. Ideally, you will bring up a time for the next date to avoid needless wondering and waiting.
Even if you follow these rules, I cannot guarantee the success I have had. Feel free to comment with your horror stories because I adore romantic gore. But I can guarantee online dating will be a more productive process that, at least, will teach you a great deal about yourself and what you are looking for in a partner.
Sky Goodden: This is startling, refreshing, overdue, and damn good. Thank you, Shary.
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