And That's Why You're Single

Posted: 31 Mar 2014 06:05 AM PDT

As someone who has been writing about dating for almost a decade, I've witnessed how intensified the process of meeting and bioclock mating has become. Things are changing at a rapid fire pace.

What has stayed the same, unfortunately, are a series of misnomers and untruths that impede a person's ability to find what they're looking for.

Let's start with the tried and true…

"If he's the right guy, he'll wait" myth. This, of course, refers to the ongoing debate over how long someone should wait before sleeping with someone they're dating.

Read the rest of the article here.

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Stop Drawing Your Own Conclusions

Posted: 31 Mar 2014 05:59 AM PDT

Alias (DO NOT USE A REAL NAME!!): Lala
Comment: So, I am new to this online dating world. I recently have been communicate with someone who I really seem to hit it off with. Well, right after the man I am interested in sent me an email telling me he liked me and my last message, etc, I sent a message telling him that he may be receiving automated flirts from the site from me at ungodly hours and I apologize if I looked like a stalker. I said that he intrigued me, I wouldn’t be sending so many flirts at those hours. I honestly believed that the site sent those on my behalf because that same day, someone contacted me saying that it was Time to meet him because I had looked at his profile at least 20 times.. Which I had not even seen once. All this to say, I think I came off as weird and perhaps a liar for not owning up to my online flirts. I have not heard from him in 3 days after his very enthusiastic email which I believe he sent before Seeing my aforementioned message. So- I am tempted to email him explaining my awkward behavior and that I did not in fact make it up to cover my flirts at all hours of the day. What should I do?
Age: 35
City: Kaneohe h
State: Hi

In the absence of facts, you have to create your conclusion– which is what Alicia does. #TheGoodWife

— Good Wife Writers (@GoodWifeWriters) March 31, 2014

So, many of you know I’m a huge fan of “The Good Wife.” In last night’s episode, Alicia receives a voice mail from someone just minutes before he’s murdered. All he says is, “Alicia” and then the judge interrupts him in the background and he has to get off the phone. He closes the message by saying, “I’ll call you back.” That’s it. “Alicia..I’ll call you back.”

The rest of the episode involves Alicia re-tracing the guy’s steps up to the point where he makes that call. She’s desperate to make sense of his message so that she can understand it. She’s also distracting herself from dealing with the reality that this man that she had loved is gone forever. In the end, she learns that just before he made the call, he and another lawyer were talking that that lawyer showed him pictures of his wife. A few minutes later, the guy makes the call to Alicia. Alicia then decides that, because he had just been looking at the photos of the other attorney’s wife, that he must have been in a certain frame of mind and left her a message declaring his love.

That’s what your letter reminds me of, Lala. You’re drawing a conclusion that may or may not be accurate without any actual facts. All you know is that he emailed you once, then didn’t reply to your response. You also seem to believe that you and this man “hit it off” after exchanging all of a couple of emails.

My point is that sometimes it’s easier for us to devise a conclusion of any kind rather than face the most likely scenario. Alicia didn’t want to confront the fact that the man she had loved for so long was dead. That voice mail message was a perfect opportunity to avoid facing one of the few solid and lone facts in the whole story, which was that that man was dead and he was never coming back.

Lala, you’re trying to connect dots to make sense of why the guy didn’t respond. You’re trying to figure out why he dropped out of the conversation. You’re probably never going to know why he did that, much like Alicia will never know what Will, the guy who left the voice mail, was going to say. That not knowing is what eats away at us. So, since you don’t have any concrete evidence of anything, you’re coming up with a conclusion It’s a coping mechanism many people employ because the over-analyzing has the ability to drive us insane. We need an answer other than the one staring us in the face. You’re agonizing over each step in this because that’s easier than to accept that maybe this guy was never all that interested and just moved on. You’re clinging to this guy because you finally felt you clicked with someone. I get that. But you can’t become that invested in someone you meet online. You’ll end up crashing and burning more times than you can count until you become completely jaded. All this guy is is a one-dimensional representation at this point.

You can reach out to him again, but I wouldn’t mention the winks and flirts. That will make you sound a little bananas and like you care too much. If you do message him, make it simple and brief. Just say you were checking in to say hello.

Personally, if it were me, I wouldn’t bother. His lack of response would be enough for me. But then, I’m someone who accepts the realities of online dating. No response = little to no interest.