Should I inititate the 2nd date?

[Eternal Sunshine]

Unfortunately, even decent men tend to view dating apps as an easy way to get casual sex. They do behave differently if they meet a woman in real life vs on a dating app. This is why online dating is the absolute bottom of the barrel.

[Alpacalia]

43 minutes ago, Eternal Sunshine said:

This is why online dating is the absolute bottom of the barrel.

I don't know.

I can't really speak from experience but a family member, US air force, great guy met his wife on an online dating app and they seem pretty happy.

 

[Shining One]

1 hour ago, Eternal Sunshine said:

Unfortunately, even decent men tend to view dating apps as an easy way to get casual sex. They do behave differently if they meet a woman in real life vs on a dating app. This is why online dating is the absolute bottom of the barrel.

How I behave towards a woman depends on the potential I see in her, now how we meet. I've met casual sex-only women in real life and relationship-potential women on OLD.

[Wiseman2]

5 hours ago, Gaeta said:

I blocked him. 

Good call.

Try not to get too lonely and this bored so that you're just killing time with nutjobs.

[chillii]

5 hours ago, Gaeta said:

I don't want to set the house on fire but after l asked him about the 2nd date he later asked me if there was a problem. I said no just curiosity. He then asked:  do you love me? And something about my energy and he's completely submitted to me.

I blocked him. I'm not giving him any courtesy warning or good bye!!

The guys a fkg moron. Sorry Gaeta.

[lana-banana]

6 hours ago, Shining One said:

How I behave towards a woman depends on the potential I see in her, now how we meet. I've met casual sex-only women in real life and relationship-potential women on OLD.

I sincerely don't understand the idea that only weirdos and freaks meet people online. The percent of people who meet their long-term partner online is anywhere between 30 and 45% and the number keeps climbing. All of these weirdos exist in the real world, too! You are not any more likely to meet a healthy relationship-minded person "in person" than online.

It seems to me like Gaeta is doing just fine.

[Gaeta]

19 minutes ago, lana-banana said:

It seems to me like Gaeta is doing just fine.

People everywhere around me met their SO online including my brother and my daughter. 

I gave poet man a pass on the poems and his insecurities as it never turned sexual and  it came across to me as harmless. 

I read an article advising women to pick men to go on dates amoung those actively pursuing her. These men i'm meeting were showing a lot of interest from the get go. Now, l have plenty of messages stiiting in my dating app from men that replied 2 words after 2 days. I could test one of those.

[introverted1]

 

9 hours ago, Happy Lemming said:

I'm both a reasonable & intelligent person and I didn't see this "love" stuff coming.

I thought the poetry was weird, but I didn't expect this "love" talk after a second date.

I also didn't expect a guy to reach under her dress (on the second date) or triple text her (after the first date), if she didn't respond within 30 seconds.

This is completely foreign to me.  I really don't understand what has happened to men and their ability to date/form relationships.

Guys being way over-invested too early in the game seems to be a recurring pattern in OLD.  Maybe it's the age group.  I've encountered quite a bit of it.

[cleverusername]

Societal norms in "pursuing" are a lot to blame for the dilemma's. Men get to choose who they want, women have to pick from those options.....

 

[CaliforniaGirl]

2 hours ago, cleverusername said:

Societal norms in "pursuing" are a lot to blame for the dilemma's. Men get to choose who they want, women have to pick from those options.....

 

Well, this means we're both choosing, really. What you describe here ^ has been going on for thousands of years, and in fact we have more options to choose today than ever before, at least in some cultures/countries. That includes both women and men. We're not as bound by certain defined restrictions as we once were.

IMO, OLD can yield lots of weirdos simply because it can yield lots of people. I started dating in the late 80s and last dated in 2000. In that time OLD was really just becoming a thing and it was often still an "in-whispers" sort of thing; you did try to hide it. (At least from what I saw. I didn't do a lot of OLD...just a few dates.) But cold approaches, meeting people at parties, through work, through friends, however it happened...still yielded A TON of horror stories.  Seriously. Everybody had at least a handful of "and then she..." or "and then he..." crying-over-ice-cream-or-pizza-with-friends tales.

People are all different and yes, there are and always have been some very damaged people out there, PLUS some people we simply won't be on the same page with...at all. OLD increases the throw of how many people you can "view" and "choose from"...more people = more possibilities for happiness but also more inevitable dating stumbles or even disasters. And the smorgasbord/candy store effect means we may sometimes reach out to people who seem to "check off all the boxes," without really thinking things through. But discretion will always be on us, not the other party. That person needs to choose us with equal care. If we decide not to do that, because somebody's pics look great and s/he says the right things for 50 words' length, then...well, it can easily result in a disaster, just as it could if we didn't bother to vet a person we met organically.

Now there's no debating that socially we've become a little...weird as a society due to constantly being online for this and that; we aren't speaking "to" one another, there is definitely a different mechanism, different feel, etc. to waiting to respond to someone until you're ready and then typing in something that sounds good. So there is that factor. 

ETA: Oh, I forgot. And yes, OLD, or keeping people at a distance in general (being online IS distancing yourself by a step-back or two), has made it easier for people who are not socially skilled to feel confident enough to ask others out whereas they might have been hesitant to do it in person. So you're getting this faction too.

But aside from that, people are just people, we are all VERY unique and therefore MANY people will not be our cup of tea. That's just inevitable.

As far as OLD being this shameful thing to hide...not in my experience, at least not in the past 15 years (easily) or so. Tons of people meet this way and it's not a shocking secret or anything. I mean it's been decades since this started.

JMO!

Edited July 8, 2021 by CaliforniaGirl

[CaliforniaGirl]

5 hours ago, introverted1 said:

 

Guys being way over-invested too early in the game seems to be a recurring pattern in OLD.  Maybe it's the age group.  I've encountered quite a bit of it.

Being in this age group myself, I can say, this could easily be it. Obviously this isn't true for everyone, but I see men in my age group who are divorced and are VERY anxious/eager to hook up and even put a ring on it. I recall some studies that actually backed this up (I was curious and I investigated) and men who are divorced tend to remarry much faster, and as a larger percentage, than women. That was a few years ago so it may have changed, but not from what I'm seeing.

[Gaeta]

I've read a similar study. Men remarry within 3 years, women 8 years. 

[glows]

2 minutes ago, CaliforniaGirl said:

I see men in my age group who are divorced and are VERY anxious/eager to hook up and even put a ring on it. I recall some studies that actually backed this up (I was curious and I investigated) and men who are divorced tend to remarry much faster, and as a larger percentage, than women. That was a few years ago so it may have changed, but not from what I'm seeing.

I can't really understand this myself. I stopped seeing someone recently because he was interested in getting married and having kids and it's not something I'm interested in. He was also previously divorced. As far as I understand from past conversations during the divorce process, my ex-husband was also very much interested in remarrying again. This was when we were separated and he was telling me he was still in love with me. 

Best to take your time dating, OLD or otherwise. 

[Miss Spider]

Many men can’t be alone lol

Edited July 8, 2021 by Cookiesandough

[Ami1uwant]

5 hours ago, Gaeta said:

People everywhere around me met their SO online including my brother and my daughter. 

I gave poet man a pass on the poems and his insecurities as it never turned sexual and  it came across to me as harmless. 

I read an article advising women to pick men to go on dates amoung those actively pursuing her. These men i'm meeting were showing a lot of interest from the get go. Now, l have plenty of messages stiiting in my dating app from men that replied 2 words after 2 days. I could test one of those.

How does it fee that the time of this thread makes the top 10 on your list of longest relationship ?😁

[Ami1uwant]

17 minutes ago, CaliforniaGirl said:

Being in this age group myself, I can say, this could easily be it. Obviously this isn't true for everyone, but I see men in my age group who are divorced and are VERY anxious/eager to hook up and even put a ring on it. I recall some studies that actually backed this up (I was curious and I investigated) and men who are divorced tend to remarry much faster, and as a larger percentage, than women. That was a few years ago so it may have changed, but not from what I'm seeing.

As a man…..

 

if Thry didn’t have kids to care for likely us a big factor in moving on.

 

relationships can be fast past divorce if they already started it before the divorce ( I’m not saying cheating but like dating a coworker or someone you knew already.

[CaliforniaGirl]

6 minutes ago, Cookiesandough said:

Many men can’t be alone lol

My FIL has been married four times. His first marriage ended in divorce way back in the 70s, but the next two wives sadly passed away; the relationships had been happy ones, he's stable, easygoing, self-supporting, etc. He's now married again.

He told us, "I know as soon as I meet a woman that I'm going to marry her." At first I thought that was sweet, but my husband pointed out to me later that my FIL seemed like he was closing a business deal when he said that. As if he met the woman, didn't see any obvious flaws sticking out and decided, "Good. I'm done dating." And...he's right...

 

[AnnieB]

I am sorry about this development, Gaeta. I was really hoping we would all be proven wrong and this would be a great blossoming love story. But alas, on to the next. I've personally shied away from online dating since my last relationship from online dating was the worst one yet. People I've met through real life events or at least something like networking (so the first convos were online) have been better people by a mile. 

[CaliforniaGirl]

3 minutes ago, Ami1uwant said:

 

 

relationships can be fast past divorce if they already started it before the divorce ( I’m not saying cheating but like dating a coworker or someone you knew already.

Here's the thing, though...this could be equally true of women, and women cheat more or less equally (numerically) to men, AFAIK (haven't made a huge study of that, LOL). So the women should also be jumping for the ring, but divorced women are significantly less likely to want to marry or set up a permanent live-in sort of thing, regardless.

Either way I do think it bears saying to Gaeta that she should look out for love bombing in the future. Whatever motivates it, it is definitely a thing. And it seems to have been a thing in this particular case. This guy was grabbing to lock that ish down immediately. And there were signs. After the first date he was sending poems about the goddess of love and divinity and just...bombing her with "romance-type" stuff, not even always listening to what she actually replied, just bulldozing over that to send another hot-and-heavy poem. And then lo and behold, he jumped to wanting to "submit" entirely to her and blah blah...Classic love-bombing. There were signs. This is a good lesson in looking out for those, IMO. 

Edited July 8, 2021 by CaliforniaGirl
"cheat," not "treat," LOL! yikes...

[cleverusername]

37 minutes ago, CaliforniaGirl said:

Well, this means we're both choosing, really. What you describe here ^ has been going on for thousands of years, and in fact we have more options to choose today than ever before, at least in some cultures/countries. That includes both women and men. We're not as bound by certain defined restrictions as we once were.

 

Yes, but still think about it. How often do women make the first move and ask out men? Social norms say the woman has to choose from the best potential man that asked her out, even if he may not be the one she is most attracted to....

If men and women equally put in effort, marriages would improve. Social norms and ego protection have ruined and tainted dating. 

[CaliforniaGirl]

6 minutes ago, cleverusername said:

Yes, but still think about it. How often do women make the first move and ask out men? Social norms say the woman has to choose from the best potential man that asked her out, even if he may not be the one she is most attracted to....

If men and women equally put in effort, marriages would improve. Social norms and ego protection have ruined and tainted dating. 

Yes, I agree with you! What I was saying was, this has always been the case. Or at least for thousands of years in a huge number of cultures. So it's not a recent symptom or anything and it's not specifically a symptom of OLD.

As for women having to choose from men who approach...errrrrrrrummmmmmmmmm hmmm. Not exactly...we women have ALWAYS found ways to show attraction and to boost attraction in the men who 'did it' for us, even in cultures and time periods when women were presumably helpless as to whom they chose.  Even in the (outwardly - this is actually a fascinating field of study) staid, proper Victorian era where, in emulation of the Queen - even in the Americas we did this, and across Europe - young girls were not to give gentlemen "any encouragement" lest they be seen as too forward. They weren't even supposed to accept gifts lest they be seen as aggressive somehow.  If they did accept a gift they were NEVER to wear it or show it in public...there are books about this written at the time...

...anyway...even in that period when it would outwardly seem women were to make NO advances and literally choose from the most likely prospect who bothered with her, there were many, many, many ways women and teen girls managed to be in the right place at the right time, figured out ways to strike up the conversation that were "acceptable," to dress to attract, and so on, and so on. 

Women have never been entirely helpless in who WE wanted except for a handful of times in history when either just women, or both men and women were bound by societal norms to, for example, only marry into a certain class or even a certain exact family...and even then there was *some* degree of choice as often as not.

Edited July 8, 2021 by CaliforniaGirl

[Happy Lemming]

5 hours ago, introverted1 said:

Guys being way over-invested too early in the game seems to be a recurring pattern in OLD. 

Here is a working theory...

Without OLD these guys wouldn't (and probably do not) have the courage to talk to a woman in "real life", but with OLD they can hide behind a keyboard/phone until they know they won't be rejected (initially).  And the moment a woman agrees to a date, they want to be in a relationship; so they won't have to ever work up the courage to ask a woman out in a "real life" or public venues.  They can be done with dating and possible rejection.

Moreover, if it weren't for OLD a lot of these "weirdos" would stay in their Mom's basement (become incels) and not date at all, thus a woman's chances of meeting them would be zero.

 

[introverted1]

6 minutes ago, Happy Lemming said:

Here is a working theory...

Without OLD these guys wouldn't (and probably do not) have the courage to talk to a woman in "real life", but with OLD they can hide behind a keyboard/phone until they know they won't be rejected (initially).  And the moment a woman agrees to a date, they want to be in a relationship; so they won't have to ever work up the courage to ask a woman out in a "real life" or public venues.  They can be done with dating and possible rejection.

Moreover, if it weren't for OLD a lot of these "weirdos" would stay in their Mom's basement (become incels) and not date at all, thus a woman's chances of meeting them would be zero.

 

I'm not sure about this.  A lot of the guys I meet seem to have it together -- own their home, have a good job and/or ample retirement income, kids grown, etc.  Definitely no one living in mom's basement.  There just seems to be a big hurry to lock it down. 

Sorry @Gaeta for the TJ. 

Edited July 8, 2021 by introverted1

[Miss Spider]

That’s possible for some. I think it’s also just the nature of the thing. It’s people shopping. It’s supposed to be fast.  People go on there with a general objective in their mind and it’s usually been one they’ve had for awhile that they haven’t found or haven’t found enough in the wild which led them there  —bf/gf , husband/wife, fwb/fb, more Instagram followers, etc. so when they find a marginally good candidate they tend to go in all guns blazing. 

Edited July 8, 2021 by Cookiesandough

[SumGuy]

19 minutes ago, CaliforniaGirl said:

Yes, I agree with you! What I was saying was, this has always been the case. Or at least for thousands of years in a huge number of cultures. So it's not a recent symptom or anything and it's not specifically a symptom of OLD....

Agree in part.  At least prior to Christianity in Northern/Western Europe it was not such a cultural norm from what can discern.  The men pursue, women choose...more a Roman thing; a long way of saying 1500 years ago not a cultural thing in the benighted, barbaric, pagan northern Europe  .  Of course I suspect since most lived in small villages you grew up knowing everyone and what "choice" you had was pretty constrained, and social status meaning as much as gender.  For example, look into the types of marriage that existed in ancient/Celtic Ireland.