any updates?
ive been on more first dates
second dates are becoming a rarity I must be doing something or saying something that leads to no second dates
i have had perhaps 3 actual rounds of online dating so far. the first two led to boyfriends. the first time was when i started trying it out, towards the tail end of grad school and ended up dating a guy the november after i graduated. the 2nd experience was subsequent to that breakup - we broke up the following september and i had met the guy who was going to be boyfriend #2 the next month, in november. i was still dating other guys up until around march. broke up with the 2nd bf the following october (see a pattern?) and have been single ever since, which is going on 2 years.
the third round of online dating has been the one after the second break up and it is by far the longest... i'm not going to call it unsuccessful, even though it's not yet resulted in a boyfriend. it's not unsuccessful for 2 reasons:
1. this time i am consistently going out with much higher quality guys. guys i'm going out with now i don't think would have been interested in me three or four years ago, and i don't really think they should have been. i did a lot of growing and have really raised my standards generally. not just with men but with myself.
2. now that i know why the previous relationships failed, i am less likely to repeat those mistakes and unfortunately, those mistakes are generally the flaws we have that make it easy for us to get into soon-to-be-failed relationships. which is to say if i were willing to accept or overlook the things i had before, i would have found a new bf by now.
3. i don't want another meandering ambivalent relationship, and it's obviously a much smaller pool of guys who aren't full of ****.
4. i do consistently have longer relationships with the guys i meet now, i.e. more second dates.
the first round, i only met a handful of guys, but none of them panned out until the guy i ended up dating. he was probably the only, or the only other, guy i met online that i ended up going out with more than once.
the second round was a lot of me having fun with the entire thing and just wanting to experience being taken out on the town and getting to wear dresses and all of that, and i met a lot more men. some i definitely did want to continue to date, and none of them panned out, that i was really interested in. i can remember offhand 2 guys that i was very interested in initially, and neither of them went anywhere after the first date. to be honest when i did have second dates, looking back i would say it was because i put in a LOT more effort to nudge it along than i ever would now - if i had to do that kind of work now i would assume he was not interested and move on. there were guys who were interested in more that i was not interested in them, so they don't count. even though i wasn't getting a lot of second dates, i was getting high quality dates to all kinds of nice restaurants, sporting events, ice skating, all that stuff. so it's a process.
the third round (which i'm taking a break from) i can think of several guys i met from online that i had long term "things" with. everything was just less about ********. the only way i can explain it is just that i got better with each successive year. lets see, there was 1 that i hang out with off and on, going on 3 years now... 2 that i met in 2013 and we only recently blew that scenario up... 3 that has been chasing me down for about a year and a half that im not interested in... 4 with the brand new acura that i went out with three times and the door is still open there if i wanted... 5 who looked like a soccer player that i honestly wasnt sure why he wanted to hang out because the dates were boring and he was way too attractive for me... we went out twice which was good enough for me
... im mentioning him because in the past i think he was a guy i would have gone out with once and never heard from again so even a second date was an improvement. and that's separate from about 4 or 5 guys that i have met IRL in the last year or so that are currently floating romantic options. i did of course still have the one-off dates, but now i am better able to recognize that sometimes when i would be upset about them, it was more that i wanted to prove a point by succeeding past the first date and not that i really wanted to. like they probably weren't interested in a second date because they didn't feel any sparks. i didn't feel those sparks either, but i still wanted them to like me more so i would "win" the date. and that's like a waste of time... i wouldnt want to go out with them again because i really wanted to it would be more "well MAYBE there is some potential here and MAYBE he or MAYBE i or MAYBE MAYBE MAYBE..." and like, i am not so sure that that is really sincere or actually worth the effort... i try not to live by maybe logic, especially since i don't think men do.
so for me it's just a combination of learning from and improving on things in the past as i move into the future, and wanting something more specific/less common and resulting in a narrower pool of real options. but i have definitely seen an improvement beyond the random one off dates, because i am only putting effort now into guys where it would be worth, for one reason or another, hanging out again. i have some that even if we wouldnt be a match for a relationship, we get along and enjoy spending time together, and it is comforting to make that match in a connection that goes both ways (even if it's not relationship material per se). it might be the case that you aren't connecting with those guys in a way that matters, even though you want to explore a potential relationship (without quite having anything legitimate to back up why, other than because it would mean you aren't quite so single).
really important that cannot be understated: i also became gradually better dressed with noticeably good make up skills. im sure that has played a big role, too because it isn't something that can be conflated with my body/"he doesnt like me because i'm too fat" because i was probably thinner at various points in the past.
I am thoroughly amused.
