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Originally Posted by Mota
Maybe I was in the top 20%. I dunno. I feel like I was an okay catch at the time. Good education, decent shape, decent job (for my age). 5'9", not tall but not short. Apparently from what I've heard, height is VERY important. Wish I knew why that was such a high priority. Kinda ridick. Imagine a guy stating that he'll only date women with DD.
For me it was 100 messages, 10 responses, 3 dates, 1 relationship. Things seemed to fit into those ratios. Sometimes it felt like it took forever between responses, and sometimes I had multiple communications going at once.
I'd put a mostly generic post that I'd reuse, but would add in specific lines related to their profile, to show I actually read it and cared. But I wouldn't craft a 2 page masterpiece individually, ain't got time for that.
Also did anybody think about TCY recruiting when they read Jim's post? LOL. Oh, 10 calls left this week. What's her education aptitude? Hopefully she's in the same state. Is she visiting any other prospects this week?
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I thought divorce was an excellent opportunity to reinvent myself. It's not like my day job was working out, either. But one of my skills is the ability to work out ways to analyze data using nontraditional methods.
From a more philosophical perspective, what happens if you try and replace environment in the whole nature/nurture paradigm? Will you end up with essentially the same person? Or will you come to different conclusions?
I used the dating process as a catalyst for that change. I tried to remove as much bias from the process as possible. Though I had to rely on basics that would have felt wrong - it's not like I felt I needed to try hard drugs, rob banks at gunpoint or date someone whose profile was unpleasant.
I would say that less changed about me than I had hoped. But I think I'm a much more empathetic person, calmer, able to shrug off much more of what I can't control. If only I could stop reading the news entirely and just focus on family, work and health (the body sure does break down after decades in front of a computer). My politics ended up a little less libertarian, but still in that quadrant, and still, I hope, evolving.
In dating, I can't emphasize attraction enough, which I would have called a shallow approach when I was younger. An intellectual and value-based connection (I am not religious) is still more important, but you have to get on the same playing field first.
As for those first messages, no, you can't write two-page essays. Two, three sentences at most. Intro, idea, action. Action being something along the lines of welcoming a return message. I cringe when I remember my first attempt at online dating - I found the "perfect" profile and composed this long, perfect message... waited... and nothing. She must have thought I was absolutely insane.
Percentages - about one message a week sent, about 50% response, met maybe 20% of those who responded, probably 50% of those were one or two dates and no more. Of those who messaged me, I almost never responded (there are plenty of women who send out 100 generic messages a week, too). Met a couple of them in the end, one just because she was so much younger - and taller than me (I'm 6-0/6-1). She was quite interesting, but boy does the generation gap become obvious when you're 10-15 years apart.
Another rule that worked well for me was limiting the back-and-forth messaging or any kind of dating to one person at a time. Not because of commitment or for that person's benefit at all, but for my own benefit. This was a process and I needed to learn as much as I could from it. It was more than three years into this that I met my wife, but by then I had learned enough that I knew by the end of our second date that this was someone I could have a real relationship with.
Going back to the topic of co-workers... I think it's a terrible idea in general. There's always the excuse of "how else am I..." but that's where online dating comes in, or bars if you can navigate that scene, or meetup groups, anything else. We can talk about how politics is changing and how Me Too changed some dynamics.
One thing to be aware of is that women have long had to deal with a measure of sexual harassment in the workplace. A man has a relationship with a cute co-worker and he gets fist-bumps in the hallway. A woman has a relationship with a cute co-worker and she's sleeping her way to the top. Is that equal opportunity? That has finally changed now, and the answer is, I think, to treat the workplace as a zero-attraction environment, no matter how strongly you feel it's OK. There's a lot of truth to Zelda's theory of "propinquity" in the Dobie Gillis world. But that leads to poor decisions. You must fight against propinquity.