Dating Fears: Giving in and Loving it
Lame, lame lame. Totally lame. About this time last year I was 100% certain that anyone and everyone who signed up for online dating sites was L-a-m-e. And to tell you the truth, I had no good reason to think that at all. I had close girlfriends meet their husbands online – I had family members singing up too! Online dating success was all around me, and yet it seemed, well, you know. Lame.
I guess I have to chock-it up to the fact that I was in a relationship. I mean, this was when I had been dating someone steadily for nearly two years. We’d moved in together and shared the same group of friends – and the whole online dating thing seemed like a joke.
Until… I got dumped.
In hindsight, I guess we just weren’t meant to be. It came down to our view of the future: he wanted to settle down and start a family, and I didn’t even want to think about getting preggers. So, we split up, moved out of our apartment, and I found myself in my late 20-s living alone in the city.
My apartment soon became a black hole of loneliness. I don’t know much about black holes, but I can tell you that this one had super-suction. After falling through what felt like light-years of gloom, I’d had enough. It was time to face my dating fears – face the fact that I was scared (yes scared!) of online dating sites.
I decided to attack the problem head on. I interviewed friends and family, read reviews, scoured the internet for info. Yes, I did my homework. And then I took the plunge and signed up for 3 different sites to get a good feel for each.
I asked friends to help me take a good profile picture; I answered personality questionnaires, character tests and compatibility evaluations thoroughly, honestly and brutally; I threw myself into these online dating sites and found that I actually was starting to enjoy myself. It came more naturally to me than I’d thought. It was like facebook – for singles! (And I’m, like, a facebook addict. Seriously.)
Each part of building my profile was like building up my self-esteem from square one. It gave me the chance to stop and think about me. About what I wanted and what I was really looking for. And it also gave me the opportunity to open my horizons, meet new people and get back in the dating game with a fun, helpful tool that I found was easy to use.
No, I’m not engaged to someone I met online just yet, (I’m not that easy) and yes, I did end up going on some pretty awful dates and expect to go on more, but I also went on some great dates, met some great people, started dating some pretty good looking guys… and in the end, proved myself wrong about myself!
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I think the hardest part about online dating is the initial fear of it all. It's daunting to put yourself out there and have to face rejection head-on. Like anything else, sometimes it's just a matter of being in the right place at the right time and at least you have opened yourself to the possibility.
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Nice post Rebecca. Online dating has changed the scope of offline dating and it has become a great industry now a days.
First off i want to say great post Rebecca and congratulations on being able to gain the courage to put yourself out there. I love that you brought up how it boosted your self-esteem. I am currently doing a research paper on online dating and I noted how big a role an individual’s self-esteem plays when it comes to online dating. One particular quote from an article I read, really stood out for me.The authors wrote, “Similar to the advertising of consumer products, internet dating service users promote themselves by emphasizing their positive qualities… which is attributed not merely to a particularly engaging personality but also to different levels of self-esteem”. If individuals have a higher level of self-esteem you’ll find them to be more honest and open about themselves whereas individuals with low self-esteem will be more reclusive and could even create lies to better self-promote themselves. Self-esteem has helped trigger people to fear the world of online dating whether they fear to be rejected or they fear to fall for someone who is only telling lies.