sex – Page 4 – Cubicgarden.com…

Avoiding a Tantrum over online dating

Everyone does it, yes even you and me!

You send off a message to someone of interest be that person a potential date, partner or even spouse. Then before they can respond you are cursing the air and everything. Why have they not responded, surely they must have seen the message? Maybe they are ignoring you or too busy doing what? Suddenly the mind starts to wonder…

In online dating this can be pretty bad as Dating site reviews points out in Avoiding an Inner Tantrum

a man looked at his phone, then sighed loudly. “I can’t believe I haven’t gotten a response yet,” he complained to his companion. “I texted her ten minutes ago.”
“Maybe she’s in another room and hasn’t read it yet,” offered the companion.

The man scoffed. “What is this, the eighteenth century? But no, she’s read it, the phone tells me that it was seen. The question wasn’t that difficult. I can’t believe she’d just ignore me. She does this all the time, too. In fact, last time -” He cut off in mid-sentence as his phone chimed. “There!” he exclaimed. “She says she was in her car and couldn’t text while driving.” He and his companion were silent. Finally, the man spoke. “At least she had a good reason,” he said.

If you think the man was being bratty and boorish, you’re not alone. However, we’re all guilty of a little of that behavior, especially when it comes to waiting for responses to first-contact emails. When we send off a message – particularly to someone we’re interested in – it’s not uncommon to sit there, drumming our metaphorical (or literal) fingers, hoping we’ll get an answer immediately.

I have witnessed this behavior in myself in the past and many times in other people including ex-girlfriends (no names).

When Northern Lass 32, wrote the piece which first got me writing, I could hear frustration but also a bit of inner tantrum forming (hey we’ve all been there). Even if you read some of the data about the differences in replies women and men get on online dating you can sense a little bit of inner tension. Everyone is different and this seems like a good use of gossip or anonymous blogging (if there is such a thing now?) Let off a little bit of steam.

As I started out saying, everyone gets them and but its really good to take note of when your starting to boil inside and ask almost unreasonable requests of someone else.

I generally think everyone is super busy, too busy to reply to my message, email or tweet. Actually one of the beautiful things about twitter at the start was the ability to reply to a tweet at your own leisure rather than a instant message on someone elses clock. Now if you reply to a tweet days later, people wonder what the hell your doing or even what you’ve been doing in the meanwhile? (oh how the mind wonders…)

With online dating, your contacting someone who might not be interested, just got into another relationship, just went on holiday, going on holiday, just had someone in their family die, just been admitted into hospital, moved country, lost there phone, had a broken internet router or any number of other things. Some of these might sound silly, but I can tell you for a fact they have all been used as excuses for why women haven’t got back to me.

The science behind love?

We all know there is a geeky side to love. Being a tiny bit datasexual (although I can’t imagine LGBTQAI+D ever happening) I can’t help but read about things like Chris and Amy’s exploits and think there is some science behind a part of love, even if its not all explainable in an algorithm. Another story which I believe came from Tim Dobson again, comes via Lifehacker, why Love makes you feel loopy is also talked about.

…being attracted to a person is a lot like being on drugs. The release of chemicals into our brain and body creates an altered mental state in which we both perceive and behave differently than we normally would. While no individual substance can single-handedly control your brain, here are just a few of the different chemicals swimming through your brain when you see a pretty person, and how they affect you.

Like the chemistry of love talk by Helen Fisher , The main factors are…

Adrenaline: When you see someone you’re attracted to, your body releases adrenaline into your system. Adrenaline is what’s responsible for causing your heart to race or your hands to sweat. Adrenaline puts your body on high alert, sending oxygen-enriched blood throughout your body, and prepares you for immediate action

Dopamine: When you feel elated, giddy, or pleasure, dopamine is the culprit. This is a double-edged sword, though. Dopamine is responsible for rewarding stimuli, which nurtures habit-forming behaviors.

Serotonin: When you can’t seem to get someone out of your head, serotonin is usually to blame. Or, more accurately, a lack of serotonin. This same drop in serotonin creation is present in people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

Testosterone: The levels of testosterone (which fluctuate regularly) affect attraction in both genders.

Estrogen: A multitude of studies have shown that female attraction is affected in a variety of ways by the estrogen and the ovulation cycle.

I’d really like to see a TV or Radio documentary with this level of depth. The piece is worth reading as theres a lot more to the quotes I’ve grabbed.

The quality of OkCupid has gone down for me?

I love OkCupid, its been consistently good for me and for me been streets ahead of the other dating sites. But things are starting to change (as you’d expect). Besides Okcupid being bought by Match.com a while ago its been ticking on, however the industry and environment changed.

Little things changed like the end of journals have happen but the big fear was to switch to a paid subscription model, which hasn’t happened (yet).

So its largely stayed the same…?

However, not so fast… OkCupid lives on its matching algorithm and although you can debate how effective this is compared to other ways to match people… OkCupid stands out for its algorithm, as even Chris (found via Tim who also recommended I read reddit too), the man who hacked OkCupid points out.

OkCupid was founded by Harvard math majors in 2004, and it first caught daters’ attention because of its computational approach to matchmaking. Members answer droves of multiple-choice survey questions on everything from politics, religion, and family to love, sex, and smartphones.

On average, respondents select 350 questions from a pool of thousands—“Which of the following is most likely to draw you to a movie?” or “How important is religion/God in your life?” For each, the user records an answer, specifies which responses they’d find acceptable in a mate, and rates how important the question is to them on a five-point scale from “irrelevant” to “mandatory.” OkCupid’s matching engine uses that data to calculate a couple’s compatibility. The closer to 100 percent—mathematical soul mate—the better.

Hacking online dating is nothing new, we’ve all heard about Amy, the woman who hacked online dating?

Chris’s story is something special and quite elegent…

Chris McKinlay used Python scripts to riffle through hundreds of OkCupid survey questions. He then sorted female daters into seven clusters, like “Diverse” and “Mindful,” each with distinct characteristics.

First he’d need data. While his dissertation work continued to run on the side, he set up 12 fake OkCupid accounts and wrote a Python script to manage them. The script would search his target demographic (heterosexual and bisexual women between the ages of 25 and 45), visit their pages, and scrape their profiles for every scrap of available information: ethnicity, height, smoker or nonsmoker, astrological sign—“all that crap,” he says.

To find the survey answers, he had to do a bit of extra sleuthing. OkCupid lets users see the responses of others, but only to questions they’ve answered themselves. McKinlay set up his bots to simply answer each question randomly—he wasn’t using the dummy profiles to attract any of the women, so the answers didn’t matter—then scooped the women’s answers into a database.

And thats the nub or pressure point.

For any of this to work you need people filling out the surveys… I for example have answered over 700 questions. The problem is I’ve seen a dramatic drop in the number of answered questions and more people with zero questions answered.

OkCupid works best on those answers rather than scraping the profile for data. Chris’s hack wouldn’t work without the data. I’d be very interested to see what kind of results you would get now compared to then…

Anyhow Chris’s story is fascinating, specially when you consider the method and drive. Don’t think I’ll be buying the book yet but if your a maths wiz go for it.

I don’t really know what to do about the data problem for myself. I’m tempted to try Plenty of Fish again, see how much its changed (or not). Frankly I have had little to no interest from Tinder, so maybe time to remove it from my androids. Hacking Okcupid isn’t a bad idea but maybe in a way to remove the time wasters.Heck I even had my first speed dating recently where I wasn’t matched with anyone. Luckily one woman was interested in seeing me, so it wasn’t all bad. I’ll save what happened with another one for my book.

I do keep reminding myself it might just be the season or time of year too. These things seem to cycle.

One of the many worst profiles on OKCupid

I think this came from Tdobson or Technicalfault. (Really need to start using Diigo’s annotation feature)

First thing… Good on Cracked for doing this.

I figured any profile with photos of a beautiful woman would get a few messages from men whose boners were willing to overlook her personality. The captions on her photos were just as draped in red flags as her profile was, so there’s no way they were totally clueless as to how awful she is, but sure, I figured, maybe she’d get a couple of messages a day from people with especially low reading comprehension.

She got 150 messages in 24 hours.

With my social scientist hat on (not really, but I wish I did have one) this shows what a large portion of the online dating market is like. Think i’m joking? Look at the popularity of Tinder and the recently redesign of the local feature in Okcupid’s own app.

All of the messages she gets is seriously screwed up. They are well worth reading for entertainment value alone. But every time I read them I can’t help but hold my head in my hands!

Seriously men of Okcupid.com grow some balls, what the hell are you doing messaging this woman!!!!! She sounds like a bunny boiler… And even worst how can you contact someone so awful after she makes it so clear shes not interested. Worst still wants to do damage to you!

My faith in man kind is on the ropes (of course I’m only joking)

Radio Merseyside: the height debate

I’m on BBC Merseyside radio again with Jody and Ngunan tonight (Sunday 17th November). This time its the height debate…

To be very clear this is the debate.

How many women would go out with someone shorter than themselves?

How many men would go out with someone taller than themselves?

Why in 2013 is this still a issue beyond seeking perfection?

I wrote about this before, but it was mixed up in a number of other issues. Of course I’m taking the modern/progressive view that it shouldn’t really matter but I do get that its a real issue for many people. I’m lucky being almost 6ft tall, so I generally tower over most women even with heels on. Some would suggest this is all frankly stupid but you can’t avoid the fact society, the media and our social circles all point to a man should be taller than a woman.

This therefore means there is a raft of tall women who are imminently discriminated against. And of course a ton of men who are also discriminated against, simply because they don’t match the stereotypical height. This is a crying shame… And what for? The search for perfection?

Interestingly from the rules revisited…

The perfect height for a woman is somewhere between 5′ 2″ and 5′ 6″. Most women think this is too short, but this is only because they misunderstand what men like about women. In this range, a woman can be sexy in heels without being too tall and cute without them. Men love women with the ability to be both.

Disclaimer: I am 6′ 2″ and this is only my opinion. The important part is the last sentence.

Even I have to admit although I love tall women, my longer relationships have been with shorter women usually between 5ft 1 and 5ft 5. Its certainly not like I seek them out, it just has been in the past. I would prefer a women about my height, so I don’t have to bend down all the time. (actually have a funny or somewhat funny story about this when I was at school). Heels I have to admit are nice, so if she was taller in heels or even without it wouldn’t be a problem for me. But I would expect some comments from people about the fact she was taller. Why is that?

You can listen live online or with the BBC iplayer app and of course it will be on BBC iplayer catch up for a week afterwards. I’m hoping we can take some calls too, as there usually lots of fun. I’ll also make a archive of it again as usual.

Who pays? Let’s see what the Japanese do

After my blog when I mentioned the programme where the Japanese were not having babies. Pete Aka @binaryape wrote a tweet to me a while back related to who pays on the first date…. Which you can see is related to the Japanese crisis in the lack of babies.

@cubicgarden You might be interested in this (Japanese perspectives on first date meal costs) http://www.tofugu.com/2013/10/25/should-men-or-women-be-paying-for-a-date/

Thanks Pete the reading was very educational.

In Japan, many people still believe that men paying for women is point of good manners and Koichi talked about this in What It’s Like A Dating a Japanese Guy as well. In fact, some guys even feel insulted, or that their pride was just given a ‘low-blow’, if a woman insists that she should pay for herself. This is standard dating-conduct for men in Japan. So, if you are a non-Japanese girl out on your first date with a Japanese guy, insisting to pay your half may be more hurtful than helpful to his pride.

But wait a minute! This has been changing quite a lot actually, especially amongst the newer generation of couples. Nowadays, many men wish more women would help pay for the date tab. It’s also more common for men to ask women to contribute somewhere between 20-30%. If at no point does the woman offer to pay for something, then the man may actually be lead to believe that she is not a generous or thoughtful person!

The whole thing is well worth reading as it goes back and forth with many examples from different cultures including the UK and China. I especially like the writers way of settling the bill with a game…

I had an ex-boyfriend who suggested that we decide who pays the bill by playing rock-paper-scissors. I accepted and from there on out we always decided that way. I found it pretty fair and kind of fun, too

Coffee and Bagel, future of online dating?

I heard about coffee meet bagel a while ago while researching online dating. The concept is simple and quite effortless. Less of a dating site and more of a way of dating in the modern world.

Coffee Meets Bagel launched in New York City in 2012, when three sisters decided there must be a better way to date in the Big Apple. They created CMB based on three guiding principles:

Unless you want to tell others, your dating life should remain private.

Your friends are the best conduits for your dates.

Meeting quality people doesn’t have to be so awkward or complicated.

Users sign up through Facebook and receive one match – a.k.a. a ‘Bagel’ – every day at noon that is somehow connected to them. Members then have a time limit in which to respond with a simple LIKE or PASS. If all goes well, Coffee and Bagel are put in touch via a private company texting line and magical breakfast-y sparks will fly.

Reason why I would put bets on this could be the future of online dating is because it seems to hit most of the sticking points right now.

Friends of friends. Leveraging what already exists and what people are doing today anyway. Using the network for the right reasons.
Facebook. How many users does your biggest online dating site have? I bet its a drop in the ocean compared to Facebook.
It could be free, low risk and low effort. No need to create a new profile, lie about your past, its all there in Facebook. And catfishing will drop as your friends really know who you are. And what kind of a person would you be if you recommended a catfish? Your reputation would be crap.

At the moment its not free but it would be simple to bypass the company. This would remove the pressure to squeeze every penny out of the opportunities.

This is what my single friend should have been… (Imho)

First dates hacked

The man who usually trolls me Josh sent me a link to the lifehacker article about first dates.

First dates are tough. You’re trying to make a good impression on someone, but you’re also trying to read the person you’re with and see if they’re worth your time. Dating may not be an exact science, but that doesn’t mean we can’t use a little science to our advantage during that first interaction.

Once again, anyone who says its no big deal obviously has no idea what there on about, or hasn’t been dating in the last decade. Lifehacker has your back…

Here’s what you need to know.

A perfect first date is different for everyone, but you can guess that anyone will want solid conversation skills and a good first impression. Beyond that, though, things start to get complicated. Statistics help, but to really craft that perfect first date you need to know exactly how to handle yourself. This is where that science comes in. A lot of the relationship research out there is pretty useless (with riveting studies about how an unpopular name affects your dating success or women find men more attractive when another woman smiles at them), but we went out to find some of the more useful studies to help us craft that perfect first date. Here are the more useful tips we found.

Without ruining the article it boils down to…

Keep the Conversation Interesting (and Risky)
Absolutely…! This is the part of the date I kinda of enjoy somewhat. Maybe another reason why I quite like speed dating? You start with the basic stuff and before long your in risky territory pouring over past experiences. Its slightly cathartic in nature.
Use the “Right” Amount of Eye Contact
The right amount? Well I tend to look at people mouths because I’m 25% lip reading and 75% listening. But I do tend to look around the face. I agree the right amount of eye contact is important, no one wants to be eyeballed for long periods of time, specially on a date.
Watch for Mimicry (But Don’t Go Overboard)
Ok this is something talked to death about in certain books. Its also called mirroring and its go to hear the downsides to mirroring as well as the good. I know certain people who mirror too much and it comes across as weird. No generally I don’t mirror much but I’m conscious of mirroring.
Mind Your Body Language
Another key one. I don’t generally make a lot of fast or close moves because I don’t want them to feel uncomfortable around me. I’m also not the kind of guy who gets super close at the very start. I know some people will sit side by side instead of ahead from the other. It seems cute but I think its too much.
Be direct with plans
Although I like the idea of this one, I’m not so certain its a good idea. That extra pressure at the end of a date seems like a bad idea, I mean who wants to go home thinking about how they were pressured into a 2nd date?

Generally the advice is good and the links are excellent…. Good work Lifehacker

When to take a break from online dating

Northen Lass 32 spilled the beans and part of her heart out in her latest article.

A few months down the line, it hasn’t worked out with Mr Facestalk and I. Sadly it seems our paths are not aligned and our future selves wanted different stuff. Rather than crying onto my laptop, which I’ve done in the past – straight onto the trackpad, sending the mouse on an independent clicking frenzy powered by nothing but my salty misery. No, I can’t afford to replace that again. So I’ll simply turn to the wise words uttered by the oracles that are Orbital in their 1990s dance classic Satan: “It’s better to regret something you have done, than something you haven’t” How deep is that for a 90s rave tune?!

Deep enough I would say. The problem Northen Lass has besides the wicked tunes (don’t ever knock rave) is this…

Dating becomes less about getting to know one person properly, and more about dating the shit out of a 40-mile radius of your postcode, resulting in serial daters, on sites for years in a continuous state of “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE NEXT ONE?!”. It may not have been why they initially signed up, but the overwhelming urge to act like a kid in a sweetshop prevails and the paradox of choice sets in.

And just how do you choose who to date? How do you filter out those not suitable, ending up with your dream human? You know the one, the one that farts butterflies and rides a unicorn to work? With help from the website’s compatibility robot, it could be easy to discount someone you could really get on with based on some fairly superficial filtering options – and start to develop expectations of the perfect match a little outside the bounds of reality and good old chemistry.

We all go through it, start dating someone who really care for and invest heavily in. Maybe even introduce them to friends and family, you meet there friends and family. Its all looking good. Then… it all goes to pot, something happens and before you know whats hit you, its that awkward conversation about breaking up, and as I once said breaking up is hard to do.

Some think you got to jump back on the horse… I think not, grief comes in 5 stages. Each can blind you from what your trying to do. Aka find a partner who you will love and they will love you.

The moment you see the whole thing as a sweetshop, your not thinking correctly about this. Heck even if you do pick someone, you may end up picking that person for the wrong reasons. There’s been a lot said about rebounding and a lot of it is true.

Like I said the first time I saw her post…

Chill and take your time, stop rushing and just let things wash over you as interesting experiences…

Another reason for non-subscription online dating, but more to the point. When your ready, go for it.

I do wonder if online dating does contribute to that paradox of choice and illusion of the greener field beyond the gate. Wait didn’t I write a blog post about this? Oh yes…

On the side, I’ll be on BBC Merseyside again with Northern Lass talking about the issue of how much you share with someone your dating at what stage. This may become part of a single black male piece soon.

The twisted route down the rabbit hole

Herb pointed me to a piece about Redditredpill.

The man who uses the Internet handle “Redditredpill” is having difficulty understanding women after going to a nightclub with some friends. As he tells it, “girls threw themselves at us for a sip of our vodka, to sit with us, to feel wanted.” These girls had “no intent on actually getting with [him]”:

Imagine the reverse. I tried it. A table of girls, I went over to the girls on other side of club, and said ‘Hi, can I get a sip of your champagne? Can I join you?’

What was the response? ‘F— off, go away, who are you, why should we let you sit with us?’

Said exactly the same to the [women] that came up to us […] So a group of single girls on a table allowed some [women] to sit with them, rather then an attractive male, who they didn’t know, [who] actually had a table himself […]

Point is, they tried […] and failed. And I tried to go to a group of girls and that failed too, as they thought they were superior.

This may sound like the instigatory words of someone looking for a fight, sarcasm gone too far at best. But Redditredpill shared his story in earnest with a very specific community that empathizes with his perspective.

It’s more than a perspective, in fact: It’s a philosophy.

The basis of this philosophy, which underpins almost all conversations in his community, is that females get away with things by virtue of being female.

And there is a community of men who really buy in to the ideaology, that men have had it harder that women.

Yes the same women who couldn’t vote in the last 50 years for example, yes those women.

The Red Pill is a collection of ideas encompassed by what its subscribers refer to as the “manosphere,” a number of loosely-associated blogs that focus on masculinity and personal philosophy for men. At the surface level there’s nothing terribly contentious about this, but if you click around one or two layers deeper, you’ll find plenty of examples why chatter from this gallery regularly turns heads. Like this:

“You are hating women because you have the wrong expectations for them. Don’t hate someone for something they CANNOT be. Women are, by nature, manipulative, attention-seeking, inconsistent, emotional, and hypergamous. Accept this truth. Once you do, you can game women for what they are … not what you want them to be.”

The community’s name is a tip of the hat to the truth-seeking attitude in The Matrix – Keanu Reeves pops a red pill to unplug his mind from a simulated world, freeing him to explore genuine reality.

For Red Pillers, genuine reality goes something like this: Female oppression is a myth and men are the ones holding the short end of the stick. That said, men and women are inherently different due to evolution, so each gender should carry out its designated role in society. For example, females should raise children at home and men should work and have sex with women.

Like all ideologies, there are those who stand on the sidelines and those who buy into it hook line sinker. As the blog post points out, most are just interested in getting one up on women in “the game” department.

This all really troubles me because what the red pill community have done is reduced the whole of female kind down to one stereotype. Maybe there mothers were not as kind and caring as my own but surely someone along there time on this earth was, and shock horror they were female! Its far too easy and convenient to just remember the bad experiences.

If you change women/female for black you get a different take on the whole debate.

You are hating blacks because you have the wrong expectations for them. Don’t hate someone for something they CANNOT be. Blacks are, by nature, manipulative, attention-seeking, inconsistent, emotional, and hypergamous. Accept this truth. Once you do, you can game blacks for what they are … not what you want them to be.

Ok it doesn’t quite work, but you can see it working with a few tweaks?

And I’m sure there are communities somewhere online who believe similar stuff about blacks and many other races (most noticeable are the holocaust deniers). Its far too easy to blog about how the whole community are wrong, misguided, dangerous, blah blah.

What I wonder is about the self-help nature of the community. Simon already mentioned years ago how the game is really self-help for men. Self help in the context of women?

I don’t see this as a problem, IF you don’t then turn against the thing your maybe working towards?

The problem is self confidence, fear of rejection and other deep rooted things. This raises the never-ending question of nature-versus-nurture, or genes versus environment I guess. But to be honest I wonder if most of this is a crisis of masculinity? Instead of embracing, they reject and hate because its easier to hate than embrace. Once the hate starts, everything re-enforces this (or at least it seems that way).

These guys shouldn’t be hated rather shown female kind is as wildly diverse as male kind or any ecosystem. There will be some bad eggs but you shouldn’t write off that kind…

We are all different and thats what makes us human. Embrace…

Should have gone dutch when I bounced

I’m cursing myself for falling for the stupid mistake of paying for the bill in one of my previous dates in the last few months.

My mistake was paying for the bill in total, something which I don’t usually do.

So what happened?

Well we were having a good time, chatting away and I suggested how about having some food? (because we were in a place where we could switch from drinks to food without moving) she agreed, time had flown by and she was also hungry.

After eating and deciding yes its about time we actually went home, we asked for the bill. Bill comes and I can’t remember exactly what happened but I’m pretty sure I said “Hey no worries I got this one…”

Of course I never really heard from her again. Except shes actually a friend of friends (trying not to give away who it was)

Anyhow months later we bump into each other and I ask her what happened?

The crux seemed to be she wasn’t comfortable with being paid for… Something I can relate to, and something which I usually go out of my way to avoid. What had happened is I thought I’d try paying and seeing what happens, maybe things will turn out different if I listened to thoughts of Ngunan Adamu and others over time.

Well I was right! Her original thoughts of a modern gentleman, was dashed when I picked up the whole bill. And the only person to blame is myself… Yes it was a bit of an experiment on my part but it felt weird for me and I assume felt even weirder for her. Its a shame because although not my usual type of woman, I was certainly interested and would have liked to have gone on a second date…

Moral of this little tale… Should have gone Dutch…!

Will it be fluff or be actually interesting? Dating on BBC Radio

The BBC hasn’t got the best track record of covering issues like dating… Who could forget (I certainly won’t) the terrible year of making love? But to be fair they did good job covering the problems with online dating in Panaroma recently. However compare it to Channel4’s recent mating/dating. 2 run away hits… Dates and First Dates plus all the other back up programmes put Channel4’s mating coverage well above the BBC’s to date.

However, BBC’s radio coverage is getting better. I’ve heard recently Miss London’s 28 dates later which had me in stitches…

In her first Radio 4 series, London Hughes aka Miss London writes and stars in a sitcom about the tricky world of romance and dating in the capital – does it ever live up to the romantic dreams pedalled by Rom Coms? Shona, played by London works in a cinema with best friend Kristen and is desperately searching for someone to make her life complete but still doesn’t get the compromises needed to make love work.

Of course follow my brief time on BBC Merseyside, it will be interesting to hear what happens when BBC Radio 4’s Womens hour and Men’s hour get together to discuss online dating (thanks Tony for the tweet).

If this list is anything to go by, I’m already worried…

Cough up: the bill is a gender politics minefield. To grab the bill and offer to pay looks like retro male-dominant chauvinism – to sit back and leave the bill in no-man’s land looks a bit cheap and not manly enough. So, politely ask if you can pay the bill. However, if she has shown a total disinterest in you during the date – and not asked any questions about you – then suggest you split the bill. That’ll teach her (nothing) but make you feel you’ve escaped with some dignity (miniscule)

Don’t get me started! *smile*

Come on BBC, I know your better than this… lets hear something worth while, new and actually interesting. Please no stereotypes… Online dating is interesting and has changed/warpped culture. Theres plenty to explore… otherwise expect another round of relationships 2.0!

Inspiring friends and people

When I wrote the blog post about me not being a player, it was following a heated debate at a party.

Chris has been a friend for a short time and after splitting up from a long term relationship 2 years ago has been single and looking like myself.As a response to my blog post, he wrote this…

Now, one of my good friends Ian, who’s been described as a Wikipedia of dating, has helped me with this process, and although the purpose of my retrospection wasn’t really around dating (although that was a part of it – I wanted to figure out exactly what I wanted), a lot of advice around dating is actually just self-help, particularly around self-confidence. A lot of the things that are covered in dating advice books and those communities, is around an area called “inner game” – that basically boils down to self-confidence. A lot of the other bits of advice from those kind of communities are to be taken which a pinch of salt (to say the least, it can be full-on misogyny at times), but GirlOnTheNet says it better than I ever could, in that a lot of the advice from the pick up community is basically just self-confidence, and then going and talking to women).

Ian and I have different views on some aspects of dating, and although his advice has forced me to push boundaries, I’m not trying to emulate his approach exactly, as we’ve got different personalities and experiences (which is fine – there’s not one single approach to dating which works for everyone), but I have been on more dates, of which the majority have been good dates, and I’ve managed to figure out what I’m looking for as well – which is definitely something that I struggled with a year ago, and not knowing that left me paralysed at times.

He’s right, for the short while I’ve known Chris, he’s really come out of his shell and heck I’m totally touched to think I had anything to do with his genuine confidence increase.

There is also something I missed out on with my me the player post, something related to Chris’s post (didn’t even know Chris had a blog).

Most of the dates I go on, involves some kind of insightful chat (dare I say it… knowledge transfer). I bet most of the woman I date walk away with a smile on their face. I guess what I’m saying is, my intentions are noble and if I can inspire someone, increase there self confidence then great. Does this sound like a player? I certainly don’t think so…

Moi? The player? Not likely

I gather some people easily equate serial dater with player.

From Urban dictionary – Serial Dater

One who engages in the process of systematically dating an obscene amount people in short span of time. This definition encompasses but is not limited to internet dating, bar dating, long distance flirtations, phone service dating, blind dating, expiration dating, match making, one night stands, friends with benefits, and personal ad surfing. Can be considered a politically correct alternative to word “player” both with and without a negative connotation.

From Urban dictionary – Player

A male who is skilled at manipulating (“playing”) others, and especially at seducing women by pretending to care about them, when in reality they are only interested in sex. Possibly derived from the phrases “play him for a fool”, or “play him like a violin”. The term was popularized by hip-hop culture, but was commonly recognized among urban American blacks by the 1970s.

I am simply not a player… I don’t systematically date an obscene amount of people… Ok I have dated quite a lot of woman in the last 5 years since my divorce from my wife 6 years ago. I will admit I was in a low place (I’m sure we both were) but rather than wallow in the pain, I picked myself up and went dating.

When I first started, I have to admit I may not have been ready for what was to happen. I was seeking company and it was obvious to most woman I dated. Some of the early dates were poor, but some were good and I’m still friends with a few of the women.

About this time I moved to Manchester and kept dating but this time I used going out on dates to meet new people and go to new places. Without dating, I wouldn’t have learned about a whole range of places. Yes I owe Kate a lot for showing me around but nothing like walking around with someone your romantically interested in.

I admit you could call me a serial dater in the fact I’ve dated a lot of women via internet dating and speed dating. But I reject the notion that I have systematically done this in the past, now or the future. Also it comes and goes in time. So there are months when I have one date and there are months when its sometimes 6-8. There’s also something underhanded going on when people talk about Player.

I’m dating everyone with the thought of getting to know them for romantic means. Aka I won’t date for the sake of dating. There’s got to be some chemistry there. First dates are my way of understanding if I want to take it further or not. I do not pin my hopes and dreams on the first date. Which means I’m very honest when I say I have other dates lined up.
I am not sleeping around. Its easy to imagine the life of a serial dater sleeping with lot of women and not giving a toss. And to be fair the media doesn’t help break this stereotype sometimes. Yes I admit I have ended up with a few women in bed but nothing like you would imagine.
I am not scared of commitment. Being married for 4.5 years and a divorce tends to make you a little more cautious I will admit that much. But if someone special came around and sparks started to settle, I would of course stop dating and commit. The discussion over going exclusive is a discussion which is different in each case.

This is kind of why I want to write my own accounts and down. Put some light on what’s really going on and my own experiences, even if they are fictionalised.

I loosely call it (working title)

The life and times of a modern geeky gentleman… The confessions and mishaps of an ethical serial dater…

As I have already said to many, its certainly not 50 shades or anywhere close to the sex blogs all over the internet. No I’m imagining something like Adrian Mole’s diary but it depends on how fictional I want it to be. Right now I have written about 3 chapters, but its going to be a slow burner.

My friends from Bristol and maybe some from London would laugh at the suggestion that I’m a player. Heck my cousins would scoff at the notion. Yes I have changed a bit by being more confident and sure of myself. But I’m still the same person underneath it all and my values and thoughts for the opposite sex have not changed.

I am a single sexual liberated geek and I can see how frank and open talking style can cause people to think player. But thats their problem and not really mine. For everyone who has said something derogatory to me about my dating, I’ve had at least one person say how great it is to hear. I’ve helped quite a few women (men tend to ignore my advice) and I’m obviously doing something right…?

POF cleans up and advertises in unique locations

Well I’m hearing Plenty of Fun, I mean Fish is cleaning up its hookup image…

POF is blocking hookups based on age difference and message wording, resulting in immediate bans, Intimate Encounters going away, 17% of the time we can pick the exact person you will end up dating, 70% of POF use is via a mobile phone.

Markus says, “Unfortunately about 2% of men started to use POF as more of a hookup site mostly due the the casual nature of cell phone use.”

POF have made systematic changes too… Directly from Markus the founder

1. Any first contact between users that contains sexual references will not be sent. Anyone who tries to get around this rule will be deleted without warning. This rule has actually been in effect since last month and it’s made the site so much better.

2. You can only contact people +/- 14 years of your age. There is no reason for a 50 year old man to contact a 18 year old women. The majority of messages sent outside those age ranges are all about hookups. Anyone who tries to get around this rule will get deleted.

3. Intimate Encounters will go away in the next few months. There are 3.3 Million people who use the site every day, of those there are only 6,041 single women looking for Intimate Encounters. Of those 6,041 women, the ones with hot pictures are mostly men pretending to be women. Intimate Encounters on POF can be summed up as a bunch of horny men talking to a bunch of horny men pretending to be women.

In short the vast majority of people will not be impacted. This is because the vast majority of people are not going around spamming women saying “let’s have sex tonight”. I can’t change POF alone, I need your help to get the word out there that POF is all about relationships!

So I assume with the clean up, POF needs to shout about the change… Shout about it they do, so much than you can see the advert on OKCupid.com, another free online dating site. Weird but I guess it makes sense, OKC is a dating site with a lot of daters on board.