Thick skin needed for online dating.

mrmanmeat

Full disclosure: I don't use online dating sites. But I do have recent experience with dating someone I met on MFP.

I think most of the Single Peeps crowd knows I am dating Eric (formerly mackeric, now goes by "mrmanmeat"). We were not MFP friends when he first messaged me. I was vaguely familiar with his posts on this board, but that's pretty much it. The first message he sent me was short and sweet: "I'm just curious. How/why are you single? You seem pretty level-headed." That was it. It caught my attention because he did something most guys who message me on here do not do: he complimented me without saying anything at all about my appearance (although he did tell me later that he had been captivated by my smile for weeks before he messaged me). That made me feel like he genuinely wanted to get to know me, so I didn't just blow him off or give him short, indifferent responses to his questions. We messaged back and forth for a while, just learning things about each other, commiserating about dating, being single, etc.

Then one day he made what I thought was a joke about taking me out on a date. He lives in North Carolina, I live in Texas, so I didn't think he was serious. But he was. He asked if I would go out with him if he came to Austin, and I didn't have any reason not to say yes. We spent a weekend together and had a great time. At the end of our first date, I was sitting on his lap outside an ice cream shop where we were having dessert. He looked at me and said "This has been the most normal first date I've ever been on." I felt the same way, and I knew it was because of the level of our conversations with each other. We weren't trying to "hook" each other, play games with each other, or avoid revealing our real thoughts and feelings. Our intent from the beginning was to talk, to listen, to learn. We sometimes had four or five conversations going in each message about random things, but, if you'll pardon the cheese factor, it was all painting a big picture of who each of us is. The minute I saw him at the airport, I felt completely at ease because I had been real with him, and he had been real with me, and we knew what we were dealing with.

So my advice ... stand out from the crowd of perverts and creeps who send messages that say little else but "You're hot.". Ask her a unique question about herself that most guys probably wouldn't think to ask (an example ... What's the hardest thing you've ever done, and what did you learn about yourself as a result? ... that has much more potential to start a real, human conversation about your life experiences and who you are than "So what do you do for fun?"). When she communicates back, be genuinely interested in learning who she is, and be open to showing her who YOU are.

Yup, it was no joke