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Dating: Matchmakers, dealbreakers and affairs, oh my!


MinDonner

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When people marry, we are marrying not just one person, but their extended family, too. Even if the family is absent, distant, or non-communicative, it's always a part of the relationship. Some boundaries need to be drawn on issues of social interactions, and that will be up to each group to wrestle with it.

My mother-in-law is anti-gay. As in, conservative U.S. fringe evangelical type. She has always been polite to me and friendly to me, and that's because in her view, she's against homosexuality and gay marriage but she loves her son. Whatever mental gymnastics she does to reconcile things, that's her ordeal or overcome. My husband has been very clear since he came out that his family will treat his bfs/SOs with respect, or they will not see him again. And he held to his words and refused to talk to his dad for a couple of years after an incident. Thankfully, his dad came around and is now super supportive.

So, the bottom line is that people can, and do, learn to change their behavior. The key is for the couple to stand as a unit and to support each other. You can't let your gf/wife out to fend for herself, if it ever gets to that stage, because then it sets up the situation as her against your family. It has to be you two together against unreasonable social interactions. You will need to be able to commit to not seeing your family on certain occasions if they fail to respect your girlfriend in the way that the two of you deem reasonable.

These types of family dynamics extend, though, to all manners of things. Children of Asian immigrants in America know well the pressure of dating other Asians, for instance. My adviser's grandparents didn't go to his non-Catholic wedding because his wife was Methodist and they couldn't marry in a Catholic church. In most cases, these conflicts resolve themselves over time. In other cases, these superficial conflicts become the lead lines for other family issues and blow up the entire extended family.

In a general sense, whether you're dating a Jewish woman or not, anti-semitism, like racism, is just not cool. People may think they have reasons for their biases, and those who hold those biases always feel justified in some ways, but it's all about misconceptions. It's hard to change our parents' views, but I think it probably will help you if you speak up in the future, politely, and point out the unsavory nature of the name-calling.

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So, I finally jumped through the hoops (mostly getting pictures uploaded to my dead facebook account) to get a Tinder set up, and have been messing around with it for the past couple days, and realize I have no idea what I'm doing.

 

My pictures are all of the silly variety (I'm not big on photos, so basically anything I have where I"m just doing something normal and smiling involve me with a girl, which I gather is a no go for Tinder pics). I've had 5 matches out of probably 80 or so right swipes?  Again, not sure how long you should expect it to take to get matched, nor what a good ratio is (i.e. do I need to mess around with my profile).

 

Also, most of my matches and I have been having perfectly pleasant, not particularly interesting conversations through the messenger. Can't tell how much is me being boring, them being boring, or the app just not being particularly conducive to interesting conversations.

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Your Tinder experience sounds exactly like mine: relatively few matches and then inoffensive conversations that didn't go too far. So I can confirm that you are definitely not failing at Tinder in some unprecedented way, though as I never had much success with the thing I am probably not the person to tell you how to improve matters past there. 

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I had a rough week datewise, so I need to vent a bit about this whole online dating thing. Feel free to ignore or comment as you please. Better yet, grab a craft beer and have a drink with me!

So I just had another date flake on me last night, a few hours before we were scheduled to meet up. Though she said she was interested in rescheduling (they always are…) and asked on which days I was available this week, I haven’t heard back from her, so I predict a 90% chance of another fade. This comes on top of another cancellation last Thursday (no reason given and followed by a rapid fade) and a date on Sunday, duly followed by a “You’re sweet guy and I had a great time, but…” text on Monday.  So instead I spend my evening reflecting on my OkCupid/Tinder experiences, while sipping a few Belgian Trappist beers (nectar of the gods, my friends!) and playing War Thunder, driving my T-34/85 whilst casually firing high explosive shells into the flanks of German Tiger H1 tanks (a highly cathartic experience to be honest, I can recommend it to anyone).

I have to say…. I’m tired of it all. The flakes, the one-sided conversations in which you get nothing but monosyllabic grunts in return, the last-minute cancellations... Truth be told, occasionally I think to myself: “Wouldn’t it be nice to talk to someone who is as invested in the conversation as I am? To have a genuine conversation, and not feel like every word you write is weighed on a scale and judged?” But then you remember you’re a dude on OkCupid and Tinder and that there are bits of lemon peel floating down the Thames that have more value than you, so you try to keep the conversation alive and you try to be as witty and interesting as possible, because God help you should you ever fail to entertain. Occasionally I feel like a circus dog performing parlor tricks in front of a mildly bemused but disinterested audience and I want to ask them: "Are you not entertained? ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?"

Then, of course, you eventually have to bite the bullet and ask her out (because, you know,  gender roles…). I’ve had a lot of (apparently good, but hey…) conversations in which merely suggesting a meet-up made the girl fade quicker than Jeb Bush’s presidential prospects. Even worse are the oblique non-rejection rejections. Case in point: I’ve been chatting with a woman for the past few days and I decided to ask her out. Instead of giving a clear yes or no (you know, as one might expect from an adult 30-year old woman), she instead proceeded to ignore it and continued the conversation as if I hadn’t asked her out at all. I can handle a normal “No, thanks” or a “I’d like to chat a bit more for a while” without problem, but this is the kind of oblique, wishy-washy, “If I ignore it, maybe it’ll go away!” pre-school level rejection that makes online dating so tiresome for me.

And even if you should succeed in getting a phone number and you think “Yes! Let’s plan a date! Woohoo!”, you find out that trying to plan a date can be even more difficult than trying to get her phone number in the first place. Of course, people have lives, so it may take some puzzling to find a date, but if you don’t have two hours of spare time within the next two or three weeks, how on Earth do you expect to sustain a relationship, especially a new one? “Bye sweetie, see you next month! Maybe.”.

So, you finally settle on a date, 7-10 days in the future ( I mean, really?) and then you’re faced with your next challenge: Maintaining the woman’s interest for over a week without appearing clingy or too distant. Going silent until the date is a fast way to get a “A herd of Burmese mountain goats suddenly invaded my apartment, I have to cancel!” message on the date day, and sending her a “Good morning! How are you today? :-D, :-) :-P *ß insert as many emojis as necessary *” message every day is way too clingy, so you try to find a happy medium and hope that you don’t get a last minute cancellation anyway.

I now have two dates coming up. One on Saturday afternoon, one on Sunday evening, and truth be told, I expect I’ll receive last-minute cancellations for those two as well, probably because their cat’s anus suddenly prolapsed or their grandmother spontaneously self-immolated.

I suspect it’s probably time for me to take a break...

 

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I had a rough week datewise, so I need to vent a bit about this whole online dating thing. Feel free to ignore or comment as you please. Better yet, grab a craft beer and have a drink with me!

 

Stuff like this keeps my (shortish term) resolve just to avoid it and get my own life straightened out seem genius.  

They need a dating service for introverts.  They just schedule them for you, and randomly generate texts that are automatically sent.

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I now have two dates coming up. One on Saturday afternoon, one on Sunday evening, and truth be told, I expect I’ll receive last-minute cancellations for those two as well, probably because their cat’s anus suddenly prolapsed or their grandmother spontaneously self-immolated.

I suspect it’s probably time for me to take a break...

 

:rofl:  Oh my GOD!  Are you trying to date my students?  They tell me this is why they missed their tests!

Hang in there.  When I was doing online dating I wanted a date immediately.  Within a few days of a positive message exchange.  My advice to you is to have a pal with good taste, preferably female, vet your profile.  There's lots and lots of online dating success stories on here.  KEEP AT IT.  

Ini, where are you?  Come give this man a pep talk.

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Warlock of Qarth:

Online dating is full of flakes and fakes. I'd say in my experience of finding dates/hookups, over 90% of the contacts that started fizzled to nothing. It's just the way things are in this medium.

At the same time, I'd say to also relax a bit on trying to second guess what it is that they want (this is true for all dating, not just online). By this, I mean try not to worry if sending a second text message within 2 hours may come across as "too clingy," etc. Every person is different. What works for potential date 1 may not work for potential date 2. So just be yourself*. Text her if you feel like sharing something worthwhile, or if you really just miss talking to her and want to say hi. If she thinks that's "too clingy," then you'd know and it won't waste your time to go on yet-another-date-with-no-sparks. If, on the other hand, she finds it really endearing that you'd want to share these things with her, then hey, your date is so much more likely to happen.

 

Tangent:

In dating, people are going to like you, dislike you, or be indifferent to you. To me, I'd rather they come to those conclusions based on who I am as a person than based on the projection I created to fit what I think they want to see. Sure, we all present our strongest points in the initial stages, and that's the right thing to do. But at the same time, balance it against just doing what feels good to you. If you think you like someone and they list classical opera as their interest, don't try to go enjoy an opera with them if you don't really like opera. However, if you do have some interest in it and just never had a chance to try it, that'd be a fantastic thing to tell them - if they love opera they'd be happy to introduce you to it. But don't do it just because you think they'd like you for it.

 

*Unless you're just a genuine raging asswipe. In which case, fake it, and pretend to be nice.

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I had a rough week datewise, so I need to vent a bit about this whole online dating thing. Feel free to ignore or comment as you please. Better yet, grab a craft beer and have a drink with me!

So I just had another date flake on me last night, a few hours before we were scheduled to meet up. Though she said she was interested in rescheduling (they always are…) and asked on which days I was available this week, I haven’t heard back from her, so I predict a 90% chance of another fade. This comes on top of another cancellation last Thursday (no reason given and followed by a rapid fade) and a date on Sunday, duly followed by a “You’re sweet guy and I had a great time, but…” text on Monday.  So instead I spend my evening reflecting on my OkCupid/Tinder experiences, while sipping a few Belgian Trappist beers (nectar of the gods, my friends!) and playing War Thunder, driving my T-34/85 whilst casually firing high explosive shells into the flanks of German Tiger H1 tanks (a highly cathartic experience to be honest, I can recommend it to anyone).

I have to say…. I’m tired of it all. The flakes, the one-sided conversations in which you get nothing but monosyllabic grunts in return, the last-minute cancellations... Truth be told, occasionally I think to myself: “Wouldn’t it be nice to talk to someone who is as invested in the conversation as I am? To have a genuine conversation, and not feel like every word you write is weighed on a scale and judged?” But then you remember you’re a dude on OkCupid and Tinder and that there are bits of lemon peel floating down the Thames that have more value than you, so you try to keep the conversation alive and you try to be as witty and interesting as possible, because God help you should you ever fail to entertain. Occasionally I feel like a circus dog performing parlor tricks in front of a mildly bemused but disinterested audience and I want to ask them: "Are you not entertained? ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?"

Then, of course, you eventually have to bite the bullet and ask her out (because, you know,  gender roles…). I’ve had a lot of (apparently good, but hey…) conversations in which merely suggesting a meet-up made the girl fade quicker than Jeb Bush’s presidential prospects. Even worse are the oblique non-rejection rejections. Case in point: I’ve been chatting with a woman for the past few days and I decided to ask her out. Instead of giving a clear yes or no (you know, as one might expect from an adult 30-year old woman), she instead proceeded to ignore it and continued the conversation as if I hadn’t asked her out at all. I can handle a normal “No, thanks” or a “I’d like to chat a bit more for a while” without problem, but this is the kind of oblique, wishy-washy, “If I ignore it, maybe it’ll go away!” pre-school level rejection that makes online dating so tiresome for me.

And even if you should succeed in getting a phone number and you think “Yes! Let’s plan a date! Woohoo!”, you find out that trying to plan a date can be even more difficult than trying to get her phone number in the first place. Of course, people have lives, so it may take some puzzling to find a date, but if you don’t have two hours of spare time within the next two or three weeks, how on Earth do you expect to sustain a relationship, especially a new one? “Bye sweetie, see you next month! Maybe.”.

So, you finally settle on a date, 7-10 days in the future ( I mean, really?) and then you’re faced with your next challenge: Maintaining the woman’s interest for over a week without appearing clingy or too distant. Going silent until the date is a fast way to get a “A herd of Burmese mountain goats suddenly invaded my apartment, I have to cancel!” message on the date day, and sending her a “Good morning! How are you today? :-D, :-) :-P *ß insert as many emojis as necessary *” message every day is way too clingy, so you try to find a happy medium and hope that you don’t get a last minute cancellation anyway.

I now have two dates coming up. One on Saturday afternoon, one on Sunday evening, and truth be told, I expect I’ll receive last-minute cancellations for those two as well, probably because their cat’s anus suddenly prolapsed or their grandmother spontaneously self-immolated.

I suspect it’s probably time for me to take a break...

 

 

I think the thing you have to remember is that online dating is a fundamentally different experience for women and men. For guys, they often approach it like the online version of approaching someone in a bar, which is why you get so many 'hey', 'what's up', 'how was your weekend'-ses. They're trying to have a conversation.

For women, it's like walking through a crowd in which every person is shouting at them for their attention, and is usually about as pleasant as that sounds. Just since doing a clean out and deleting everything a couple of weeks ago, I have well over a hundred messages in my Filtered box (the ones which are automatically filtered out so I never even look at them) and I don't even know how many in my actual inbox, and I've replied to maybe ten of them, met up with two (and with those two I approached THEM because I liked their profiles and really, fuck gender roles :p). I say this not to suggest that I'm some special snowflake, but because this is the NORMAL experience for women on dating sites and it is far less the power trip you seem to be suggesting, and far more often an unnerving and uncomfortable experience.  

So I get why it bothers you, but it's a shitty situation for the women as well.

In terms of actual advice though, always go for quality over quantity. You had dates booked on Thursday, on Tuesday, on Saturday, on Sunday - were/are these women you actually had anything in common with, or are you kind of scatter-gunning?

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Yeah, WTF is this idea that arranging dates 7-10 days in advance is somehow a bad thing? Isn't that... how normal people do it? Not everyone is so eager to go hang out with a stranger that they can drop everything at such short notice - especially at this time of year when everyone tends to get really booked up with various pre-Christmas shenanigans.

Frankly dude, you sound unpleasantly desperate, and if any of that attitude is coming across in your dates then I'm not surprised they're not going well. Take a step back (or several) from this MUST GET GIRLFRIEND NOW!! mindset; filter more carefully for people you have more in common with, stop stressing over the "right way" to communicate, and don't take "not compatible" as a personal slight. If someone wants to see you and continue seeing you, they will make the effort, and if they don't make the effort, it wasn't gonna work anyway.

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Yeah, WTF is this idea that arranging dates 7-10 days in advance is somehow a bad thing? Isn't that... how normal people do it? Not everyone is so eager to go hang out with a stranger that they can drop everything at such short notice - especially at this time of year when everyone tends to get really booked up with various pre-Christmas shenanigans.

Frankly dude, you sound unpleasantly desperate, and if any of that attitude is coming across in your dates then I'm not surprised they're not going well. Take a step back (or several) from this MUST GET GIRLFRIEND NOW!! mindset; filter more carefully for people you have more in common with, stop stressing over the "right way" to communicate, and don't take "not compatible" as a personal slight. If someone wants to see you and continue seeing you, they will make the effort, and if they don't make the effort, it wasn't gonna work anyway.

I always err on the side of caution and take the exact opposite approach. Granted they think I'm not interested when I do that but I prefer that to having them think I'm clingy.

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Thanks for all the responses everyone, both the supportive as well as the 'kick-under-the-arse' ones! Sometimes some perspective helps a lot. I'm feeling much better now, though that may have something to do with those Belgian Trappist beers! ;)

I think the thing you have to remember is that online dating is a fundamentally different experience for women and men.

Oh, I’ve seen the crap women have to deal with online. Some the things previous dates have shown me….Well, occasionally it was…truly dire. Online dating sucks for both men and women, just in different ways.

In terms of actual advice though, always go for quality over quantity. You had dates booked on Thursday, on Tuesday, on Saturday, on Sunday - were/are these women you actually had anything in common with, or are you kind of scatter-gunning?

Hah, I can see how my current agenda may give that impression! My last date before the current slew of dates was in May actually, so I’m certainly not a proponent of the carpet bombing  “Bombs Away!” school of dating. On OkCupid I only message high percentage matches with filled out profiles who I believe I’d mesh well with personality wise, but sadly, OkCupid is pretty dead in the Benelux and I have to extend my match range to around 100 miles, so it covers Amsterdam and the other western Dutch cities if I want a decent number of matches. Clearly not an ideal situation, but one born out of necessity, since most Dutch dating sites are….well, they’re pretty bad, sadly. I actually signed up for Tinder only two weeks ago because of that (much more popular than OkCupid over here), and I have to admit I was at a bit of a loss on how to deal with the sudden influx of matches, though I’m a fairly picky swiper myself, (maybe 1 out of 9 on average?). I’d say I had a conversation with about half my matches and I only proposed a date to those who I had a good, multiple day conversation with. I dropped several matches after it became clear they were only halfheartedly invested in the conversation (that’s something I became much better at over the past year of online dating). Since I’m used to two dates per month at most, I probably have to learn to handle Tinder differently, since 4-5 dates a week is clearly unsustainable.

Yeah, WTF is this idea that arranging dates 7-10 days in advance is somehow a bad thing? Isn't that... how normal people do it? Not everyone is so eager to go hang out with a stranger that they can drop everything at such short notice - especially at this time of year when everyone tends to get really booked up with various pre-Christmas shenanigans.

I guess it’s different strokes for different people? The overwhelming general consensus amongst my friends, both men and women, is that 7-10 days is way too long and that someone who would actually be interested in meeting up with me would be able to find a few free hours much earlier. Your point about the pre-Christmas season already starting has been duly noted though!

Frankly dude, you sound unpleasantly desperate, and if any of that attitude is coming across in your dates then I'm not surprised they're not going well. Take a step back (or several) from this MUST GET GIRLFRIEND NOW!! mindset; filter more carefully for people you have more in common with, stop stressing over the "right way" to communicate, and don't take "not compatible" as a personal slight. If someone wants to see you and continue seeing you, they will make the effort, and if they don't make the effort, it wasn't gonna work anyway

Oh man, and I was going for extremely witty and incredibly good looking instead! ;)

In in all seriousness though, I can understand the 'desperation vibe' after reading my rant. I was, after all, venting at length about my dating woes, but like I mentioned at the start, this week was particularly rough date wise. Normally speaking I’m much more stoic about these kind of things, but receiving a sudden rush of implicit and explicit rejections, cancellations and flakes can ruffle even the most stoic duck’s feathers. ;) Ironically I strongly suspect my problem, rather than clinginess and desperation, may in fact be the opposite, namely that I’m too stoic and rational while dating, so my dates feel a lack of an emotional/romantic connection.

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I guess it’s different strokes for different people? The overwhelming general consensus amongst my friends, both men and women, is that 7-10 days is way too long and that someone who would actually be interested in meeting up with me would be able to find a few free hours much earlier. Your point about the pre-Christmas season already starting has been duly noted though!

 

I'm not dating now, but I've had to not meet up with friends for over a month because of a busy month at work, and a busy several weekends travelling out of town to see family events or other friends.  7 days is only one week.  If the girl I'm crushing on hard right now asked me out today, would be 9 days at the earliest unless I just decided I didn't want to sleep one week night.

People are busy and have busy lives.  

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I think Mr Oilrigger may be a washout. He should be back onshore by now; I sent a quick “hey how’s things?” message a couple of days ago and no response; he’s definitely been on FB a few times since. Well, fuck it, his loss.

Hot Work Dude, meanwhile, is on holiday with his gf (hissss!) and sending me occasional selfies of him posing by the pool. This whole thing is too hilarious to put a stop to, and he really is amiable (and hot) despite being sketchy as fuck. Here’s a recent selection from the ever-growing Compulsive Lies collection:

 “I’m an expert on mushrooms!” (wtf?)

Me: “check out this article about this Brazilian island full of snakes!”
He: “I’ve been there!”
Me: “No you haven’t.”

“I was a holiday rep in Magaluf” (no, he really wasn’t)

(we’d been talking about watercolours the night before)
He: “This pic was painted by my aunt”
Me: “Cool, show me one you painted”
(2 weeks later, he sends the same pic)
He: “I painted this, my grandma framed it!”
Me: “Nice – but isn’t that the one your aunt did?”
He: “Nope, I did this, my aunt only paints seascapes”

The whole thing is too random to be annoyed by...

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I'm not dating now, but I've had to not meet up with friends for over a month because of a busy month at work, and a busy several weekends travelling out of town to see family events or other friends.  7 days is only one week.  If the girl I'm crushing on hard right now asked me out today, would be 9 days at the earliest unless I just decided I didn't want to sleep one week night.

People are busy and have busy lives.  

Everyone is busy.  If someone pushed me out 9 days I'd take that as a sign that they weren't interested and/or their lives are too busy for me to start any kind of meaningful relationship.  An hour or two for drinks or dinner is not that much.... 

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I find I kind of appreciate touching in a dating circumstance, as it helps tip it over from kinda interesting work talk, which is how my dates (uh, all five of them. Woah, five of them!) tend to go. On that note, met a cute cholera-eradicating guy with a devastating Italian accent who seemed fond of touching my arm. Or he could just be Italian?. Should I ask him for coffee? He's got my number, I don't have his. Would need to ask around. We kinda said we'd meet to pirate GIS software sometime, but he hasn't called. The answer is always to stop overthinking, isn't it?

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I find I kind of appreciate touching in a dating circumstance, as it helps tip it over from kinda interesting work talk, which is how my dates (uh, all five of them. Woah, five of them!) tend to go. On that note, met a cute cholera-eradicating guy with a devastating Italian accent who seemed fond of touching my arm. Or he could just be Italian?. Should I ask him for coffee? He's got my number, I don't have his. Would need to ask around. We kinda said we'd meet to pirate GIS software sometime, but he hasn't called. The answer is always to stop overthinking, isn't it?

I need to stop overthinking as well , it's easier said than done though. 

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Does anyone know how Tinder does it's location stuff?  I'm getting a lot of people from two major metropolitan areas that are nowhere near me.  One of them I visit fairly regularly so maybe there is some kind of legacy gps data there. The other one I have no clue on.

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