Tell me everything I need to know about online dating

[Privatelyliving]

For an absolute complete novice. Last time I was dating you wrote your number on their hand and hoped they'd call the phone in the hall when your parents were engrossed in Coronation St.

I'm now very middle aged and single for the first time in over 3 decades 😱

I don't want "a man". I'm really enjoying my single life and have a wide circle of friends and multiple interests. I'm certain I'll never share a home or finances with a man again.

That said I do enjoy a bit of male company/attention and I'm finding I miss sex a lot.

There are men in my circle who may make suitable "targets" but getting it wrong could also ruin everything and if it's someone you like and respect what happens if it's all going well but you don't want it to progress?

Anyway I thought strangers might be a better place to start.

Apart from the whole process, of which I know nothing, how likely is it that people I know will see my profile?

My one piece of advice is only contact ppl you can meet up with relatively easily for a short time in the first contact. Do not get tempted into long involved email and phone relationships as when you actually meet up you can decide in 5 seconds that they are not for you (or vice Versa) but then you have wasted a lot of time and energy.

What made it good for me was having an appropriate profile, so I had a selection of photos which represented my life, realistic ones so no filters etc!

I would chat to pretty much anyone who messaged me but I didn’t invest any real time where it was clear from the off that we weren’t on a similar wave length. If there was no (hate this word!), banter then I just moved on.
Also if someone doesn’t commit to chatting on the phone or meeting for a coffee quite quickly then I would also move on. You are after a date not a pen pal, if a man isn’t suggesting you meet or isn’t opening to meeting within a few days of chatting then bin and move on!

also don’t take it personally, it’s a numbers game and you may speak to 50 men before you feel a bit of chemistry or get anything decent back. That doesn’t define your worth, if someone doesn’t message you back don’t read into it or see it as rejection, it really isn’t. Just block and move on!

it can be really fun but be selective and don’t hang around if he’s dithering about meeting. we want action not endless messages!

So what is the actual process and how do I choose a platform?

I used match.com in the very early days of its existence but have to say I would not use them again after I and another woman had a safety scare with the same man who we both met up with. We tried to alert match.com about him but they didn’t even reply. I know some young couples who met on Tinder.

You post a profile of yourself ( be very honest and use realistic up to date pics to cut out the time wasters). From there the process differs between different platforms.

My advice is this.

Read their profile VERY carefully.

You've the right idea with yours. You want to be genuine.

But expand that to their profile. I dated a man recently, well last year, and I'm back on the same platform and saw his profile again.

The signs were all there.

'A chapter', meaning, we will only date for a while.

'Playful' meaning I'll take the piss out of you and then says its banter.

Read between the lines!!

I also specify no NSA and no married people.

OK, so I'm a runner, it's the thing I love most. There are lots of professionally taken photos of me running, not especially flattering, hair a mess and make up non existent, but they do show a fit, very good for age body and what I look like most of the time.

The best head shots would be cropped from a picture taken when having fun out with friends.

Are these the sort of things you mean? When I "pose" for a photo they are universally dreadful 😆

@something2say

What's NSA?

No Strings Attached. (meaningless sex)

your Pics sound great OP. But basically I meant best avoid filters and photoshopped images as you defo don’t want to see their ‘face fall’ when they meet the real you after only seeing a ludicrously flattering pic (as happened to me when I finally met a bloke who had used a 20 year old profile pic of himself when he was a lot fitter!). If we had really got on it maybe would not have mattered but the dishonest use of pics sort of set the tone for our meeting and it did not get better.

So, it seems it's much cheaper per month to go for 6 months, but even so I'm inclined to have a play with it just for 1 month and go from there?

I've said this on other threads but I think one really important aspect is to understand how a nice man, as you would want to attract, uses the platform. How would a reasonable friend behave online? How would he reply, joke, how often would he message? behaviour online has its own codes. So I would also be using fb and insta and twitter/x or whatever to see how your friends and people you might socialise with "show up" online. You may be a super online literate person, or not- but just don't interpret online behaviour exactly the same as offline.

Like if someone just sends you a message as a first contact "Hi how's your weekend?" To me, I wouldn't like that as I look for evidence they have read my profile, want to share something about themselves, are able to express themselves well. For someone else, that might be fine. Great! That message to me in the online context says boring, cutting and pasting to 100 women, not for me. A man IRL saying the same thing wouldn't put me off because if it's said in a bar or at work you have a different context. So work out what behaviours you like, think about how they tend to be signalled online, and look for them.

Don’t do it

Well I thought I'd have a play with it and set up.a profile last night. Quite late admittedly so maybe it's only the drunks so far.

I've had a few messages. One was fairly interesting and referenced my profile, but used the word bantz and quite aggressively, in his 2nd message 😆

The others are all just hiya or how ru. Give me something to work with!

My tip : Just don't.

Regarding advice not to do online dating, I understand that sentiment but having met several happy couples who met via online dating services, I wouldn't advise anyone not to try, if they had the impulse to do so.