Since last December, I decided to give a new chance to online dating. Not that in the last months I was not active searching from one of the ones and onlies - online - but my motivation was anyway quite low, the time for such entertainment limited and I still had - or thought so - a potential relationship in mind that happily didn't work at all in the end.
With a lot of positive energy and an open mindset, I not only intensively searched on one online dating site, but even open up a new one, on a very popular website. Breath deep, start swip left and left and left, and once in a while to the right. My friend with a couple of years of online dating apps experiences, told me that many men just swip right in the chance that at least once in a while they will get a match. Me, I swipped left: men with animals, or without pictures or with weird descriptions, or together with a child, or...or...or... (also the one who posted a picture of a bag of gummi bears as his profile suffered of the same fate).
Couple of them were matched. Some were actually not even based in my city, although it showed so. I don't want to enter into the reasons they did so, but were far beyond my dating interests.
Apparently, while I was offline dating uniteresting and uninterested men, a new online dating trend was launched: Netflix dates. It's like men and women cannot bound over a cup of coffee or tea or whatever beverage, unless there is a movie to watch in the background. No better words that the movie's can describe a connection between people. First date by Netflix? Second date by Netflix? Thank you so much, but maybe you keep searching the right movie lover match.
There are also the very direct people - I love being direct myself as well - who are openly asking you for an intimate relationship and even miss you so much although they never saw you - and there is a 100% probability will never see you. Maybe, after all, we are just a slightly advanced version of bonobos, who knows.
In between, there are people who are intensively writing for a couple of hours or days and then they disappear, the ones you meet and feel that it is nice to meet again, but actually they have some issues they don't want to share (and personally I am not interested to find out more about), those who are interested to built up only a little harem or to enrich their exotic experiences.
However, there are also nice 'matches', with a relatively interesting and lively conversation, that do not make grammar mistakes and even can talk about more than some mediocre film series - which mean a book they've read or some interesting academic discussion.
At least once a week I am longing to give up this experience, block and delete most of the people I've meet through my online dating apps and...And what? That's the question that actually keeps me involved as I don't find a clear answer to it. After all, I am back fighting since three months only and as in the case of job searching, the more you are searching and have a mindset open to finding work projects the higher the chances to find what you are looking for. As far as I know I am ready to any kind of business presentation and professional discussion, any time of the day or regardless how tired I am, but when it comes to dating, I can be pretty awkward and bored and lacking any motivation to sound and look interested and interesting at the same time. Therefore, I got the chance to learn something about relationships and how to win -or loose - some of them.
When I feel down and disappointed, I just breath deep, do some exercise and think that, after all, 'that's all for good'.
Maybe it is about time to take things slowly, allow myself a bit of fun and keep searching. To be continued...