Just when you thought it was safe - OK CUPID PART 3: The Return of the WOO!

That involves being at the coffee shop, pub, concert, party... (getting in saying this before sic or S- do)

PS dont mind me I'm just being self-deprecating as usual ;)

It's my job to deprecate other people!

FTR, I've met several dates online, but not on dating-specific sites. Some were from reading blogs, and thinking, "wow, this person seems interesting", then messaging her that I'd like to meet her in real life. (downside to this approach: I've had way too many long-distance relationships). I met one woman on forums discussing psychological maladies we were both inflicted with, divorce law (I love irony), and appliance repair. It can happen anywhere.

Oh dont get me wrong thats how Ive met most of my partners actually! But that comes from being heavily online since BBS days in my mid 20s.

oh i'm not.... (should've italicized "my" - it's so easy to be misconstrued if you leave out the emphasis in online discourse; I was being facetious, or at least somewhat so...)

Lee, you do realise that your experience is not universal, nor is it necessarily the ideal? It might be how it works for you, but believe me, it is not how it works for everybody (unless you want to turn around and tell me that I'm not really in love because my partner is too similar in attitudes and interests, in which case, uh, fuck off).

Lee, FTR: 95% of my social life revolves around people whose internet presence consists of updating Facebook every other week. And while I was still in school/living in my college town, 95% of my dating pool was just people I'd met IRL under a variety of circumstances. However, in a twist of fate that I know is not in any way unique to me, once I was living in a new city and spending a large chunk of my time in a relatively asocial environment (i.e. working an office job vs. bumming around campus and running into familiar people all the time) and had to find a whole new series of activities and routines and hangouts independent of the huge network of people I'd grown accustomed to, it suddenly became much harder to meet new people. Not to mention that I suffer from mild social anxiety that really only affects me wrt meeting new people (specifically when I'm doing it on my own, without having the comfort of people I know around me). So once it became clear that I wasn't meeting many people with whom dating was an option (lots of platonic-type people, though), I warily turned to online dating. Which I've admittedly had limited success with (to the extent that I've dated and been in LTRs with a number of those people but clearly none of those things have lasted).

BUT (and here's the part you maybe wanna pay real close attention to) I have continued to date (and make attempts at dating) people I've met IRL, with the same degree of limited success. Which, yeah, might seem to suggest that the problem lies with me or my choice of dating partner...but that's all beside the point. When you go into a thread where people are talking about listening to music and suggest that people might be more fulfilled if they actually played music, you run the risk of offending by just assuming that there aren't some people in the thread who do play music and some others who are perfectly happy just listening. Now think about how suggestions like that are likely to go over in a thread about how people are managing their romantic life. I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say I'm very happy to hear that everything is going swimmingly in your IRL dating life, but an important thing to realize as you walk through this world is that your life experiences are not universal, and you will go a long way with other people by not expressing incredulity towards the fact that their experiences are different.

There's something intrinsically unromantic about meeting someone you already know has the same interests, likes the same music, and is as close as possible to your imaginary man or woman of your dreams. ]

What?! Fuck that, no way. Please weed out people who like the Red Hot Chili Peppers and long walks in the park as quickly as possible, that's the ticket. In person, people's clothes and speech modes and stuff can tell you a lot about them and how they identify. You don't get those cues online, necessarily, but you get other stuff instead, and I like getting that stuff. I think that's valuable.

What is wrong with walking in the park, Laurel? I thought I knew you ;_;

You clearly never read all my question answers while my profile was up, because I hate walking so much. Will do almost anything not to walk a few extra blocks.

Just pretend you are doing a really boring dance through the park that mostly involves one foot in front of the other. Or go skipping, that'd be fun.

o i c how u roll

http://i45.tinypic.com/izaihx.jpg

You are not kidding, I will get my bike down from the 2nd floor to go three blocks. Lee may have been right in this one respect: my now-bf doesn't bike at all. It's awfully inconvenient, but still worth it for the time being. That's a day-by-day arithmetic, though. Which I guess everything is, really.

If he just didn't like bikes I would bully him mercilessly into it anyway, but he's actually epileptic, so his safety is more important. Still, I has sad, whiny face.

One of the people I know who seems to be most enthusiastic about biking now is epileptic! I think she has it well under control and hasn't had issues for years, though.

emil.y otm. some similar interests gives you a nice starting point. also this notion that chatting girls up at bar is a more natural and holy experience is straight bullshit.

I can offer many anecdotes of that working horribly, too

emil.y, yes i realize my experience isn't universal. No experience is; indeed, whenever I hear someone say "everyone likes ......" or "nobody wants ......" I'm quite to point out that somewhere, someone does like and doesn't want. I was expressing an <i>opinion</i>, just one, what I've observed looking at myself and several others, but certainly not everybody's. If you find something else works better, go for it. Please do whatever works best for you; I was not trying to veto your way of thinking and my apologize if if came out that way.

Deric, I am very aware that everyone's experiences are different, and sometimes very different than mine (I know, I've been dinged for suggesting others' supposedly universal experiences didn't apply to me given my upbringing and experiences). As it turns out, my own dating life has mostly hit the skids of late, so maybe I should try other avenues.

Laurel and others, it wasn't my intent to blast people who like online dating. I was just posting my own opinion and experiences, and those of my friends (one who met her husband on a dating service). But <i>amongst my friends</i>, amongst my friends there have been more online-dating disaster stories than successes. But my tiny sample isn't even close to scientifically valid given the millions involved.

I'm not set in my ways, and if most of you think I should give online dating another chance, I'll reconsider. I just find it a difficult adjustment, and quite disconcerting, when I meet someone interesting and they refuse to want anything to do with me until they stalk me on Google and FB. What happened to discovering new people in real time and in real life? I know I'm old fashioned about this, but "social networking" for me is shooting the breeze with real, 3-dimensional people, not sitting in your bedroom behind a computer screen updating profiles and posting status updates. The latter is becoming more amenable to me thanks to mobile phones though.

Hope I'm explaining myself adequately...

Well, I'm glad you didn't intend to, and it's cool that you have the good grace to explain yourself (and well), but there were definitely a good number of sentences where what you wrote was very much universalising your specific experience. This, in particular, struck me as kind of rude: Show me two people who are madly in love, and I'll show you two people who aren't each other's type. It basically says 'people who are each others' type can't be madly in love'. Maybe you didn't mean it that way, maybe you just meant to refer to the trope, but that's what it logically means. As someone who is madly in love with their partner who DOES share interests and attitudes that I'd naturally look for, maybe I'm just taking it too personally.

And yeah, some people just aren't socially confident enough to approach others in bars or coffee shops or whatever, which you seem to take for granted as an ability. To say nothing of such approaches often being unwanted, particularly by women who are far too often seen to be fair game for street hassle.

But again, thanks for explaining yourself. I'll leave it up to the guys who are actually OKC users to defend that aspect...

And yeah, some people just aren't socially confident enough to approach others in bars or coffee shops or whatever, which you seem to take for granted as an ability. To say nothing of such approaches often being unwanted, particularly by women who are far too often seen to be fair game for street hassle.

This x 1,000,000. So much of my social anxiety can be chalked up to my hyperawareness of just this sort of thing. A lot of guys are real effing creeps anymore, and although I'd like to think I don't fall on the wrong side of that line, I know that most women have had to deal with a lot creepers, and, with people I don't know in general, I tend to overcorrect in an attempt to be respectful of peoples' space and boundaries in relation to their degree of trust towards me and my motives. That's led to a lot of people I later became friends with telling me that I seemed standoffish before they knew me. Which, in my head, doesn't really jibe with who I am and is something that I'm trying to work on but I'll take that over being thought of as actively creepy, I guess.

Lee, I understand and sympathize with your concerns that people are becoming too walled-off and reliant on technology as a buffer for having IRL interactions with one another, but this isn't really a black and white 'luddite vs. technophile' argument at the end of the day. There are shades of grey, and sometimes you have to make due with less-than-ideal circumstances (i.e. just dealing with this increasingly-wired world).

As I've said elsewhere in this thread, I haven't had the greatest luck with OKC, and I'm currently at the one year mark of refraining from dating altogether (after the devastating end of my last OKC-derived LTR), so I'm certainly not the person to ask about whether online dating is worth your time.

But amongst my friends, amongst my friends there have been more online-dating disaster stories than successes.

It's probably more common now, but there was once a sort of stigma attached to admitting you met on a dating site so it's completely possible you know people who did but don't talk about it.

like your parents

lol

there you have it

(first sentence from last post got lost) (here is how it should have started):

let's try this again - first sentence got lost somehow - this is what it should have said at the beginning of previous post:

emil.y - That was a generalization, at least one that applies more often than not IME and that of my friends. But not everybody's, and clearly not yours. Didn't mean to imply that my personal findings are the inextricable truth, and again thanks for calling me out on that.

someone not unattractive just tried to chat me up at the deli (asking about the kombucha i was buying, of all things) and it occurred to me how rare of an occurrence this is, even living in a huge city.

Yep - right now I'm sitting in a very 'social' coffee place that I've been going to once every couple of weeks for 3 years, and I've been chatted up twice. Still kicking myself for not being nicer to the first guy, who seemed very sweet (I'd jut been dumped).

Nobody chats me up unless I am at a club or a bar and said dude is obviously just trying to get laid.

the dc area is a place where people seem to chat people up a lot iirc. i guess i was also 22 when i lived there, so maybe that's part of it--people aren't jaded and bitter yet--but i was sort of amazed by how friendly/outgoing everyone was.

but wait, ljub, you're in the dc area, aren't you? maybe it's just that transient, first-job-out-of-college population that works that way in dc.

i'm in the dc area, and get chatted up from time to time, but usually in an off-putting way. Where are all those friendly, outgoing ppl hanging out?

Yeah, I'm in the DC area, and 40, and it does seem like a friendly but also a very young town.

i had a great time visiting dc this summer - the younger population seems a lot more, uhm, male than female and while it felt a bit like a sausage party everywhere i went it was kind of nice getting hit on by multiple attractive guys. new york is pretty much the opposite in terms of gender distribution, and men so rarely make an effort to hit on me (also ny dudes seem to have huge egos and i'm probably not hot enough to get them to make an effort).

er, last summer not this summer. though i am planning to go back to visit!

Hope you make it before Sept. when I move up North - would hang out with you and bat eyelids at innocent coffee drinkers trying to concentrate on their law assignments

yes! definitely, planning on coming down for a long weekend sometime this summer!

according to latest Census, DC gender breakdown is 53%/47% female/male.

according to wiki, 48% of Washingtonians live alone.

hmm i'm surprised by that but then again i was only there for a couple of days.

we need a DC FAP

Yes - there is a small fap core but it doesn't get together than often and a wider fap would be great. Two - one just because, and one for b-g's visit.

your letter to GoodKYGirl has been sent:

Hi There,
I don't mean to presume anything but I'm guessing you're from Kentucky? For the average guy your username will likely bring to mind KY lubricant, which based on your profile, I feel fairly certain that's not your intent. I don't mean to be vulgar here and really don't want to offend you; just thought it was something no one else is likely to point out to you and that it runs counter to your stated intent of finding a life partner.
Unless I'm being a dope and you're a more snarky type than you seem.
Either way, best of luck on your hunt.

lol, she wrote back immediately and now we're having a conversation. Different end goals so I'm not angling for a date but who would've thought that would be a good icebreaker.

it was pretty slick.

you dog

What if she had replied "actually I am a lube fetishist".

kiddie pool of petroleum jelly in the basement

someone sent me a message today going through all my pictures and critiquing how i look in them :(