Why do we do online dating?
By switzerblog. Filed in Bein' single, Dating, Online dating |
Damn, I need to post more often! Okay, before I get into this, a quick update – the dentist says I need more work than he can do. Teeth are in great shape, just crooked, but my gums need surgery before we can do braces. So, a year from braces and another year or so from a smile I can love. Or at least tolerate! One step at a time, baby…
Okay, so online dating. Why do so many people do it, when so many people still bitch mightily about it? In the olden days ten years ago, there was a serious stigma attached to placing personal ads (kids, this is what they were called when you did your dating profile in the newspaper)(newspapers are like blogs, but printed – they’re the things your grandparents read in the morning). The stigma is gone now, and thanks to the internet, being single has become big business. But it’s annoying – profiles to fill out, endless emails to write or check, photos to take and crop and post, IM sessions with strangers, and let’s face it…a high failure rate. Even the successful online daters will have to go through their fair share of bad dates and dry spells. It happens offline, too, but it feels so much more quantifiable online, for some reason. So why are there millions of single people out there doing the online dating thing?
We’re lonely. I’ll call it ironic at risk of misusing irony, but we’re spending so much time online now, that we have even less time for real human interaction. When you’re single, this is just magnified. So, despite the frequent claims by online singles that “I don’t want a relationship right now”, we still want to find someone to fill the few hours we have available for real contact with another person. We long for each other. It’s the human condition – and I don’t mean that we’re all pining away crying into our pillows – but that we desire the presence of other humans. We’re social creatures.
We’re vulnerable and afraid. Let’s face it, meeting new people, especially in an “I’m looking for a relationship” setting or mindset, is nerve-wracking. It’s scary! We fear rejection, laughter, loss, hurt. We fear being embarrassed. Conversations with strangers, for all but the lucky few who possess social ease, can be fraught with perilous interchanges and opportunities to let someone bring you down. So we retreat behind our LCD panel. Surely the computer won’t hurt my feelings! Surely I’ll be shielded from embarrassment or loss here! No way I can say something stupid in an email – I have time to correct it before I send it out!
We want a shortcut. When things are hard, we look for an easier way. And we’ve trained ourselves to have a pavlovian response to the internet – it’s easier! Dating is hard! Let’s do it online! Even when we’ve been on three different sites and shelled out money and given over hours of our time to finding and posting good photos, writing and re-writing profiles, getting input from friends, and sent or replied to emails, we still convince ourselves that it must be easier online.
Well, it’s not. It’s not easier. It’s just a different kind of hard. Of course dating is hard, no matter how you do it! But you have to find a way that is fun for you. Some people do enjoy online dating. I don’t; so I’m finding other ways…some have sucked, some are fun. But meeting new people can and should be fun, even if it will always be work, of a kind. And there are no shortcuts – when meeting new people, you will have to risk hurt and loss and rejection. But you’re also gambling on friendship and love and happiness and laughter. It’s worth the tradeoff.
You have to focus on the good you get from this process, or you’ll only keep hurting yourself. I’m learning this, ever so slowly. But embracing and prioritizing the fun aspects and positive outcomes of dating allows you to overcome those fears, accept the hurts and rejections as the learning experiences they are, and we begin to see that shortcuts aren’t always the right direction.
And once we get this under our belt? Well, I think the lonely part will have already taken care of itself. Healthy, happy people aren’t lonely people. That’s my goal. That’s what I’m working for.
I think I’m supposed to ask a question here so I’ll get some comments that do not come from Russian spam-bot factories…so why do you do online dating? Where do you do it? What’s worked and not worked? Or why did you stop and go to IRL dating, like me? Feedback, people, feedback!