The Guide to Getting It On (76 page)

CHAPTER

35

Better Mating Through Internet Dating?

I
nternet dating can make good sense for some people. It provides access to others who are hopefully like-minded without requiring you to ever visit a singles’ bar or speed date. It can also give you a much needed assist if you are painfully shy or having trouble walking up to someone and starting a conversation.

Is Internet dating a better way to meet people than at work or through friends? Contrary to the ads on TV, there is absolutely no magic to Internet-dating services. Researchers have tried and tried to come up with ways of matching singles. Their results have been dismal failures. Internet dating services cannot match you any better than you can match yourself. They simply allow you to sort through a large pool of single people—some of whom may be telling the truth about themselves. Those with better writing skills will appear to be a better match, until they get into an actual relationship.

What You Want and Where You Want It

You will be amazed at how many different types of Internet-dating services there are. You will probably want to join a couple. But before you decide which ones to join, you’ll need to decide what it is you are looking for. Are you looking for a buddy to have fun with on the occasional weekend date, or are you looking for someone to settle down with? Are you in a “screw the ring, I just want sex” mode (aka “NSA” which means “no strings attached.”) Find out what people use the online dating services in your area.

After you decide what type of relationship you want, check out a number of Internet-dating services that fit the bill. There are services that match people based on religion; others try to match people who are into similar kinds of kink. See if there are plenty of members in your age group and in your geographic area. Just because a service says it has more members than the population of China doesn’t mean there are any members this side of Beijing.

You will also want to compare and contrast the features that the different services offer. It’s not uncommon for someone who successfully hitches up to forget to remove his or her profile. So a feature you might want is one that lists the last time the person visited the site. That way you won’t waste your time responding to a cutie who has moved across the country or a death-row inmate whose final appeal was denied months ago.

Your Profile

Most services will ask you to fill out a profile that shoppers—uh, members—get to read. It’s how you present who you are. A lot of people don’t take profile-writing seriously enough. If the males who have taken our online sex survey are typical of how the average straight guy writes, some of you might consider having a more expressive friend help you write your profile.

For How Long and How Much?

Some services say they are for free. You usually get what you pay for. Many of the better services charge between $20 and $30 a month, but they offer discounted three-month and six-month plans. Consider going for a longer plan. Give yourself time for the process to work. If you find the partner of your dreams in the first week, consider the extra money a tip for a service that was well provided.

Time For a Reality Check

Internet dating isn’t going to make the competition disappear. Internet dating isn’t going to keep you from feeling bad when someone says no. It’s not going to make you seem any more appealing if you are short on social graces or high on the kind of behaviors that result in a psychiatric diagnosis.

What will be different is that the process is going to be more private and it may help you to have a more focused approach. It might give you more choices. If you don’t do well with romantic cold calling, being able to e-mail back and forth and then talk on the phone might be a great help. But just because you find someone whose profile looks good doesn’t mean they will answer back, and it doesn’t mean you would want to go out with them if they did. Assume that you will need several months of solid effort to make the process work for you. Things might start clicking right away, but that would make you the exception rather than the rule.

From Email to Sexts to Pressing Flesh

Let’s say you find someone with an interesting profile and he or she thinks the same about yours. Where to go from there? While it might be more desirable to e-mail each other several times and then spend a few weeks trying each other out on the phone, someone might come along who moves quickly and next thing you know, the person you’ve been having the conversations with is already hitched. When it comes to timing, making the move from online to in-person is a totally subjective call, with risks each way. Learn how to protect yourself.

The Possibility of Being Overwhelmed

It doesn’t matter if you are 20 or 50, hopefully you will write a great profile and be overwhelmed with responses. But don’t feel like you have to respond in detail to everyone. As you start to see the type of people who are responding, you might want to establish criteria that helps you make a quick first cut. This way you can form a short list of who you’ll want to spend more time responding to. Even then, you might not have the time to respond to everyone individually. Don’t be afraid to tell people when you’ve been overwhelmed. Say that you won’t be getting back to them for awhile.

Don’t Be the Litter on the Side of the Information Superhighway

It’s only the Internet. What’s so wrong with stretching the truth a little, like when you say you’ve got a D-cup or eight inches when it’s a B or six? What’s wrong with saying you are well-read and sensitive when the only thing you’ve read this year is the handout at your anger-management class?

Why should honesty be any less important online than face to face? Think seriously about telling the truth, even if it’s the Internet.

Next to telling lies about yourself, another form of dishonesty in Internet dating is to leave people hanging. If you aren’t interested in going further with someone, have the decency to say so. Don’t just disappear, and don’t keep something going because you feel too guilty to say “no more.” Have the courtesy to say “so long” or “it’s been swell.”

And Then What?

Whether we want to admit it or not, dating is a significant part of a single person’s life. When a date truly clicks it can make you feel on top of the world, and when a date misfires it can make you feel deflated.

Internet dating is like arranging your own blind date. It is an attempt to meld technology with Cupid’s bow. It changes the dating process, but it doesn’t change the feelings that are involved in that process.

Resources:
check out the blogs at some of the online dating services for helpful suggestions. For instance, the blog at OKCupid sometimes has interesting tips and analysis. Thanks to Evan Marc Katz, author of
I Can’t Believe I’m Buying This Book—A Commonsense Guide To Successful Internet Dating
.

CHAPTER

36

I Knew the Bride

T
his chapter is about marriage and long-term relationships. It doesn’t pretend to be comprehensive, but it does speak about weddings, tradition, sex in marriage, fights, make-up sex, kids and divorce.

I Knew the Bride

One of the fun things about weddings is watching the white-laced bride taking her vows of marital bliss and wondering if she has ever handcuffed the groom and done some of the outrageously nasty things to him that she once did to you. The memory puts a smile on your face and maybe even makes you blush. But it’s not the kind of question you ask as you are working your way through the reception line—not with everyone’s parents standing there with an array of cold, clammy hands hanging out of pastel gowns and rented tuxedos.

Weddings — What’s Love Got to Do with Them?

You don’t have to go much farther than the average magazine rack to realize that weddings are big business. Plump, glossy zines with names like
Modern Bride
nearly bite your arm off as you walk by. The ads in these magazines reflect the many segments of our society that thrive on marriage-related businesses — bridal-wear shops, tuxedo rental centers, wedding gift registries, boutiques, kitchen appliance stores, caterers, florists, bakers, wedding coordinators, ministers, priests, rabbis, justices of the peace, churches, synagogues, reception halls, hotels, resorts, diet plans, etc.

In our society, traditions like marriage (and Christmas) have become an economic spectacle rather than a symbol of love and commitment. Today’s marriages are so choreographed that you seldom get a feeling that two people are making a promise to be there for each other no matter what, and to be inseparable partners on the great climb through life. Instead, what you often get is the familiar bride-to-be psychosis, where the future bride and her mother become so savagely obsessed about things like table centerpieces and bridal gowns that any sense of love is pretty much out the window.

What if couples put as much effort into improving the level of intimacy and fun in their relationship as they do selecting wedding invitations? And what about those bizarre, adolescent feeding frenzies known as bachelor parties? If guys need to see high-priced women getting naked or want to lick whipping cream off silicone-filled breasts, why not just do it? Why use weddings as the excuse?

Marriage is a big step, an important step. Hopefully you won’t get caught up in our culture’s expectation of marriage as a generator of crippling debt, and will instead work to make your union a safe haven in a world that is sometimes anything but.

And what if couples took the money they spent on weddings and set it aside for one long weekend each and every month, just to be with each other and have fun? No cell phones, no work, just a three-day weekend each and every month where your only laptop is each other?

Styles of Problem-Solving

Besides feeling love and friendship, an important ingredient in keeping a relationship happy is a couple’s ability to solve conflicts. Couples with a knack for problem-solving tend to have happier marriages. (Duh!)

Researchers tell us that such couples approach conflicts with a willingness to talk things over and work them out, and we are sure that such couples exist somewhere. The rest of us occasionally resort to sarcasm, name-calling, stubbornness, making threats, automatically giving in, taking blame needlessly, becoming silent or pretending that there is no conflict when all hell is about to break loose.