The Thing and the Stuff About Dating

When you meet someone who is cool online, or IRL (in real life, folks, get it together on the acronym front!!) there's an urge to want to message that person. Sometimes the right call is to go with your gut and just blitz the object of your desire with a ton of messages. The other side of that is to err on the side of caution and avoid sending out so many messages. Now, I'm not going to tell you what is right and what works because I honestly haven't the fucking foggiest of what does and doesn't work in that situation. I've failed in all sorts of exciting and interesting ways, but I've also done rather well in that respect, too. So, I'm not sure there's a magical formulae.

These days I tend to keep it calm and let things happen. That is, I shoot a text to a dame and if she feels like it, she'll get back to me; if she doesn't then she just weeded my garden for me. Have a nice life.

I mean, if I want to make sure, I may send a follow-up message. If the gal messages me back I check for how she replies. If she is interested in chatting me up she'll engage me; ask me a question. If she's not interested, it will be a close-ended response, or she just won't send one. Again, if that's the case, have a nice life.

Now that I've been at this while, seen the ins and outs of the online dating dynamic I can tell you these little things:

1. We're not spoilt for choice.

Duh, right? At least in Los Angeles, there are no shortage of singles. If one of them looks odd in their photo, I can move on and go for the next ‘normal' looking dame. But, am I really hurting myself? Yeah. I think this perception or, rather, reality of online dating is that we'll be presented with endless choices and, thus, reasons to keep moving through the profiles until we find someone suitable… It's a luxury and, I feel now, is a bit of a curse, too. There are a lot of awesome folks that I know I've passed over because I knew that I could just move on and find someone “better.” That's not good, but I'm not alone (not that that's an excuse) but it's important to look around you and see what's there, or WHO is there, more appropriately.

I know a lot of awesome women. They're friends and I may not necessarily regard them as dating material, but the fact remains that they, in fact, could be someone to get to know better. This week I took a moment to think on that for a bit. Instead of discarding people who don't look or seem “right” (like what Tinder seems to promote) perhaps it's time to really take an inventory and give people a chance you wouldn't ordinarily give a chance to.

2. Get in there and get out

Okay, I'm not talking sex here, folks, for once. I think you need to get offline as quickly as possible. I mentioned some tips for doing just that recently, and I think it's critical to get out there, meet face to face, have a real conversation and figure out if you can handle each other's shit. Is your date religious? Do they want kids? Better to figure that type of stuff out as soon as possible. Seriously. Otherwise what are you doing? You're carrying around a stick of dynamite with a lit fuse. It's going to blow up on you and your sweetie. Get it out-of-the-way. Quickly.

3. What are we after?

Why are we here? That's a big deep, deep question. The stuff books are written about; religions built upon and a bunch of other shit. I don't expect you to have this answer or even know that this is a question you should ponder. But it is. And I think if you can answer that, the answer you come up with may guide you in your dating journey, if not your life journey. Are you here to do the best damn job you can do doing whatever it is you do? Are you here to help people? Are you hear to leave your mark and bring children into the world? You may not know the answer and that's okay. You don't have to and you're not alone if you don't have that answer. But it might not be a bad idea to revisit or visit that question. What is it you want from this thing called life? Take your time but hurry up. You're awesome, but not an immortal, we leave that shit for Christopher Lambert, y'all.