Tips for Online Dating Success, Part IV

Today, Singletude concludes the "Tips for Online Dating Success" series. Now that you're armed with all the tricks in the book, get thee to eHarmony and put them to the test. ;)



10. WHEN THE BALL'S IN YOUR COURT, PLAY PING-PONG.

Okay! You've sent a message, and a prospective date has responded to you! You've reached level one! Give yourself a pat on the back for getting this far and take a minute to rest on your laurels. :)

Now I want to return to what I said in 8. about forcing respondents to pursue you. While Singletude doesn't advocate game playing in the sense of manipulating others toward ends that are beneficial to you and harmful to them, it's helpful in online dating to have an understanding of human nature. And one of the well-researched facts of human nature is that we value things we have to work for.

This is why I suggested in 8. that you hold off on barraging your potential date with compliments, contact info, and requests to meet up. Not only will that put an unbearable amount of pressure on him or her, but it also establishes a pattern in which you're doing all the work. And if you're doing all the work, what incentive does he or she have to meet you halfway?

That is not to say that you should kick back and twiddle your thumbs while your soon-to-be significant other tries desperately to flag your attention. Singletude doesn't support The Rules or similar systems designed to drive your date crazy with angst, jealousy, self-doubt, and confusion. However, if you think of your budding relationship as a game of ping-pong, you'll soon realize that you can't play it if one person isn't returning the ball. When you "ping," your romantic interest has to "pong" and vice versa.

To that end, you've set the pace with the first message, and your prospective date should respond in kind. From this point on, you will probably engage in a series of emails leading up to a phone call or two, and if the phone contact is smooth, you'll most likely arrange a date. (Of course some encounters will depart from this pattern, but at least in my experience and that of others I know, this seems to be the general structure of online dating relationships.) The emails you exchange should parallel each other in response time, rate of self-disclosure, overall enthusiasm, and progression toward the next level.

If you write to a member every day, but he or she only writes back once a week, that's not a good sign. Similarly, if after several weeks of communicating your potential date knows all about your family, friends, job, star sign, and favorite color, and you know...his or her first name, something's amiss. Did you give out your number but wait in vain for your phone to ring? Have you scheduled dates that the member keeps canceling? These are all situations in which you're pinging but not receiving a pong.

If you're not getting consistent pongs, examine your emails for the following problems:


A. Are they too long? When people want to read novels, they go to a bookstore, not an inbox. Run-on emails can make the reader feel overwhelmed or intimidated. The exception to this rule, of course, would be if both parties like to write and send lengthy emails every time.

B. Are they too short? Emails of just a sentence or two may communicate a lack of interest, especially if the other person tends to write fuller replies.

C. Are you responding promptly? If you wait too long to respond, your potential date may lose interest. A good rule of thumb is to reply within two days of receipt of the last message, more often if he or she replies more quickly.

D. Are you balancing your messages between information about yourself and questions addressed to the other member and/or responses to what he or she has written? If you don't seem interested in what the other person has to say, you risk coming across as a self-centered bore.

E. Are you revealing so much of yourself that there's no mystery left? Don't be "easy." Try to save something for the phone call and first date! ;)


Regardless of how closely you adhere to the above guidelines, some members will cut you off during the email stage. This can happen because a member has met someone else with whom he or she has a better connection, detected some incompatibilities after reading your last message, or had a bad experience that suddenly turned him or her off to online dating. Sometimes it may happen when the member is a flake, commitmentphobe, or cheater playing around. For whatever reason it happens, it signals that this person is not a good catch. You may want resolution, and of course you can ask for an explanation, but if you don't get one, don't waste your time. Look elsewhere.

On the other hand, perhaps your pings are getting ponged, and your game is seeming more and more like a love match. Great! Now comes the real hurdle, taking the ping-pong table out of cyberspace and plunking it down in the midst of the real world without losing your stride. How and when do you move your interaction to level two?

There are as many different preferences concerning the pace of online dating as there are singles. Generally, women are more cautious than men, so if you're a guy, don't be fazed if she's not ready for dinner and a movie as soon as you get her personal email. On average, users exchange two to three emails over three to four days, but it's not uncommon for communications by email, IM, or phone to continue much longer before a first meeting. While there is some evidence that these virtual interactions can strengthen the foundation of a relationship, few would deny that chemistry is best judged in person. Accordingly, if you postpone your first date for months on end, you're liable to form expectations based in fantasyland that are particularly suscpetible to disappointment when you finally do meet.

A lot of singles recommend setting a date to meet after a few weeks or a month if possible, and that is Singletude's recommendation as well. If the frequency of communication is quite intense, with emails flying back and forth every day and nightly phone conversations, it may be appropriate to meet even sooner. The point is to make sure that the missing puzzle piece, physical attraction, is present before emotional bonds become so deep that an in-person mismatch is devastating.

Online daters typically spend some time agonizing over where to meet, what to do, and how long to do it for. Obviously, safety is paramount, especially for women. For your first date, you should arrange to meet in a public place and have your own transportation so you don't need to get in a car with your date. It's not a bad idea to leave your date's name and contact info with a friend or family member and promise to call him or her when you get home. Resist the urge to go back to your date's place, no matter how the sparks fly and sizzle. After all, moving slowly never hurt anyone, and it just might save your life. (For more online dating safety tips, see OnlineDatingSafetyTips.com, Safer Online Dating Alliance (SODA), and Online Dating Magazine.)

Even if your date isn't Ted Bundy, keeping your time together short and sweet will build anticipation for date two...or give you a convenient escape route if you're already regretting date one. A lunch break or cocktail hour, after which you have other places to go and people to see, can be the perfect setting. Some singles even go so far as to specify a time limit for the rendezvous, although it may take some finesse to walk out when your date's 30 minutes are up and he or she is only halfway through the story of Uncle Billy Bob's first time on Jerry Springer.

You can maximize your opportunity for interaction by picking a quiet location and an activity conducive to conversation (think coffee at Starbucks, a picnic in the park, or, yes, a walk on the beach). Resist the impulse to avoid the getting-to-know-you dance through a movie, at which words are forbidden, a concert, at which you can't hear them, or some athletic endeavor that will leave you breathing so hard you can't form them. Those are great ideas for later dates, but the first meeting should be about assessing your connection.

Above all, the first date should be casual. Caviar and Cristal at this stage will likely seem pretentious, disingenuous, or even desperate and add an unnecessary weight to what should be a lighthearted encounter. Furthermore, if you're meeting a lot of site members, your wallet will empty quickly unless you budget your dates.

Speaking of wallets, as the evening draws to a close, the inevitable question of who's paying for what will arise. Dates with those you've met online generally follow the same etiquette that you're accustomed to with everyone else--in other words, none, so expect the same confusion over who's supposed to pick up the tab. Many women these days offer to split the bill but hope the men refuse as a sign of courtesy, while others genuinely want to pay their own way as a matter of principle or a concession to fairness.

Personally, I like to go dutch at least until there's an established relationship so that there's no chance my date will feel I owe him something, and I recommend the same policy to other women. The more expensive the date, the more essential this is. Furthermore, the meal ticket attitude that some women have toward men with whom they have no intention of developing a relationship makes me uneasy. Girls, if you know as soon as you lay eyes on the guy that you'd rather kiss an orc, don't smirk behind your forkful of filet mignon while he forks over the cash. Unless he's Mark Zuckerberg and earns money just by breathing, help the guy out!

By the time your date has wrapped, you'll probably know whether your ping-pong tournament has resulted in a match or a zero score. From here on, if both of you want to play, the game of love proceeds the same as it would if you'd met at work, through friends, or in line at the grocery store. Whether or not you reach level three, an ongoing relationship, isn't dependent on how you met but on where you go from here, and you have the same odds of staying together as any other couple. That's why you should consider yourself a successful online dater even when you don't progress beyond level two.

However, if your date isn't so keen on a rematch, be prepared for him or her to disappear. Although this isn't the most polite way of communicating disenchantment, online daters seem prone to fall into the black holes of cyberspace when no longer interested, perhaps encouraged by the anonymity of the medium. If two follow-up calls and/or emails from you are met with silence, accept the member's decision to forfeit the game and move on. Repeatedly contacting someone who has made it clear, in word or in action, that he or she doesn't want further contact, can be perceived as harassment and could get you banned from the site.

But if you and your date don't hit it off, don't worry. If you've made it to level two once, you've acquired the skills to make it there again...and beyond! Internet matchmaking sites are not the holy grail of the dating world, and they hold no magic potion for singles seeking mates. As in the "real world," you'll go on a lot of dates, and most of them won't be with someone you could fall for. But dating sites do provide a venue to meet a lot of singles in a short span of time, and those sheer numbers dramatically increase your chances of finding someone sooner rather than later. So check out the newbies, serve up your best introductory emails...and wait for the volley!



Have you ever gone out with someone you met on an Internet dating site? If so, what advice can you give to other singles about that crucial first meeting? Do you have any success stories or--God forbid--horror stories to relate about people you met through online dating sites?


Fun Link of the Day


(Although I'm no fan of The Rules, if you have the urge to find out why, read it for yourself.)


Clever Elsie is a freelance writer and a successful online dater. If you need help making your online dating profile the best it can be, finding matches, or polishing your emails to potential dates, please contact her for rates and more information.

Do you have a question for Clever Elsie about online dating or some other aspect of the single life? Write in, and you just might see your question posted in a Singletude Q&A!

Friends Don't Let Friends Kiss and Tell

As I've noted before, one of the tenets of Singletude is that mutual respect is an integral part of any relationship, short-term or long-term, romantic or otherwise. A pet peeve of mine is the crass talk that some singles engage in when discussing their dates with friends.

I'm sure you've heard it, too. Guys get a lot of flak for it from women, and it's probably true that they tend to be cruder and more explicit. But the ladies are just as guilty of mean-spirited gossip after a date. While men may bare the details--no pun intended--of their sexual encounters, some women boast about how readily they can get a smitten guy to ask how high when they say jump. And both sexes can be equally malicious, judging their dates for every awkward stutter or popped pimple with a jury of their best buddies or BFFs urging them on.

At least once, it's probably gotten back to you that someone you went out with was not only "just not that into you" but had some choice words to share about the "laugh like Flipper on helium" or the "shag carpets for eyebrows" that he or she wasn't into. Even worse, maybe their derision extended from a genuinely embarrassing first date moment like an unintended display of your Scooby-Doo undies or your Pepsi's quick detour through your nose, and now, instead of cutting your losses and putting the humiliation behind you, you're forced to relive it at intimate gatherings of your close friends and family...and at office parties...and with that old woman on your block who catches you walking your dog and asks again if you aren't the one her grand-something took to that wedding who threw up on the bride's dress 'cause those stains are hard to get out and that must've really been something.

It hurts, doesn't it? And you feel ashamed and betrayed and disillusioned.

But I'll bet, at least once, you've also listened to a friend talk about one of his or her dates in similar fashion. Maybe you've even talked about it yourself. Either way, you laughed and joked about it, just like everybody else.

Wouldn't the dating scene be less intimidating if we didn't talk about each other that way? If you could trust that, no matter what your crush's unflattering opinion of you, the secrets of your first date faux pas would be safe with them?

Ever think that your actions could help keep those secrets safe?

Bragging about conquests and demeaning former dates is primarily a method of distinguishing oneself among peers. It's a way of saying, "Look how awesome I am! I'm too cool for this schmuck!" And, in the case of sexcapades, "I'm too cool for this schmuck, and they still come crawling back to get a piece of me!" If our culture didn't support this behavior, we wouldn't have such an incentive to engage in it.

As with all culturally driven behaviors, you have a hand in how such posing is received in your circle of friends. The next time one of your crowd shreds an innocent former lover, don't endorse it with laughter or agreement. If you wouldn't like a date to talk about you that way, show the same courtesy to the victim of your friend's ugly commentary. You don't have to pull out your handy pocket bible and teach them a moral lesson, but you don't have to encourage their callousness, either.

Don't respond, change the subject, or, if you've met the brunt of your friend's jokes and feel comfortable doing so, try defending him or her. You don't have to lecture. It's enough to answer your friend's suggestion that his ex had a nose to put Ronald McDonald to shame with a short, sweet "I never noticed anything wrong with her nose." Or, if your friend is one of those who thinks it's the height of chic to use someone, try a simple "I feel bad for him; that must've hurt."

If you remove the carrot your friend is aiming for--the respect of your social circle--he won't be so eager to jump. Maybe she'll even pause to think about what she said and be struck by a pang of remorse...Well, okay, the remorse might be stretching it.

The point is our social behavior is driven by rewards and benefits. Maybe, in some 22nd-century utopia, dishing about your date will be as cool as dishing about your parents' sex life. Until then, if we can't appeal to the better side of human nature, we can at least remove the reward for stooping to its basest depravities.

Remember, once upon a time in the 20th century, it was cool to beat up gay teens and make African-Americans sit at the back of the bus.

Attitudes change because someone changed them.

Have you either spilled too much about a date or had this happen to you? How did you feel about it afterward? How do you respond when your friends trash their former flames? Tell us about it!


Fun Link of the Day