Picked up the Jan/Feb issue of The Atlantic before taking off (my traditional flying magazine) to LAX. This article caught my eye and was the first one I read... Ahh, online dating...
The thesis summed up in this one sentence, "Online dating is, at its core, a litany of alternatives."
An excerpt:
The positive aspects of online dating are clear: the Internet makes it easier for single people to meet other single people with whom they might be compatible, raising the bar for what they consider a good relationship. But what if online dating makes it too easy to meet someone new? What if it raises the bar for a good relationship too high? What if the prospect of finding an ever-more-compatible mate with the click of a mouse means a future of relationship instability, in which we keep chasing the elusive rabbit around the dating track?
Also, this guy Jacob is great. An inspirational figure.
Since Rachel left him, Jacob has met lots of women online. Some like going to basketball games and concerts with him. Others enjoy barhopping. Jacob’s favorite football team is the Green Bay Packers, and when I last spoke to him, he told me he’d had success using Packers fandom as a search criterion on OkCupid, another (free) dating site he’s been trying out.
Many of Jacob’s relationships become physical very early. At one point he’s seeing a paralegal and a lawyer who work at the same law firm, a naturopath, a pharmacist, and a chef. He slept with three of them on the first or second date. His relationships with the other two are headed toward physical intimacy.
He likes the pharmacist most. She’s a girlfriend prospect. The problem is that she wants to take things slow on the physical side. He worries that, with so many alternatives available, he won’t be willing to wait.
One night the paralegal confides in him: her prior relationships haven’t gone well, but Jacob gives her hope; all she needs in a relationship is honesty. And he thinks, Oh my God. He wants to be a nice guy, but he knows that sooner or later he’s going to start coming across as a serious asshole. While out with one woman, he has to silence text messages coming in from others. He needs to start paring down the number of women he’s seeing.
Jacob sounds like a master of charm and charisma, but he's coupled it with being an ***hole!
ReplyDeleteGuys think rules go out of the window when you're dating online, they think that there's somehow a loophole which allows this multi-girlfriend logic. I was seriously lovestruck with this one guy and he wasn't so good at silencing those texts! I wouldn't say it broke my heart, but when you hold out for so long and start to finally give in to somebody, it hurts when they don't return the feeling.