So my friend Suzan and I have decided that Fridays are going to be about our online dating communications. Be prepared for a little snark, a lot of sarcasm and no exposing of identities. I haven’t been posting many of these love-fests lately with all the book news and stuff going on, but today I have an interesting share. The name has been obscured for privacy.
Online dating forces you to put a good bit of your personality out there if you want to stand out from the crowd. Some people have felt I’m one of the masses anyways. Regardless, I might share too much or whatever. I’ve often said that I want more information, more connection or just plain more in my messages with people. However, there is such a thing as over sharing.
At first this email does several things right. It’s conversational, there’s something said about the person, but that doesn’t last. While there’s a lot of complimentary things said about myself, this message has a manipulative bent to it. There’s a lot of pressure put on the recipient to be his everything. He admits to having a lot of issues, which we all do.
Ultimately I decided to not respond to this message because I cannot discerne if this person is being genuine, manipluative or just has too many issues going on. It’s one of the hardships of looking for someone online, you cannot gauge their personality or character based on some black and white text. Maybe I’m being too cautious, or not open minded enough, but if I don’t feel safe about communicating with someone, I won’t do it.
I don’t think that women guard themselves enough during dating. We want to be loved and have love so badly that we ignore the warning signals. I think we need to be more aware of the risks we take. No, not everyone is a serial killer or criminal, but there are many men out there who don’t have the best interest of their significant other in mind when they step out on a date.
And now that soap box is done with! Have a lovely Friday peeps.
