Contributed by: Jet on Saturday, March 27 2010 @ 09:24 am
Last modified on
As you might have heard, there's a whole lot of basketball going on right now – the NCAA Championships, to be exact. Everywhere I went last weekend, people were cheering at TV screens, discussing schools.
The fun thing about it is that everyone has their hopes for who will win, but they all know that it could go to anyone – probably some school that nobody expected. A game is capable of going any way, at any time. I find this refreshing; compare this to the Superbowl, where the outcome of just one game was tied to the hopes and dreams of New Orleans, the validation of the career of Archie Manning... It was a little ridiculous, really.
I find online dating – and maybe all dating – is the same way. When you look at an online dating site, there's a vast pool of prospects. Sending emails and going on dates is a way of narrowing the brackets of potential matches; sometimes it goes your way, sometimes it doesn't. Eventually it will get narrowed down, but you're meeting people who are really strangers. There aren't really any winners or losers when you're simply incompatible.
The problem comes when you look at dating – at meeting, really – as a Superbowl situation. When you place tons of meaning on one email or one first date, you'll be crushed if it doesn't work out, plain and simple. Sure, you don't want to consider dating a complete lark – you want to recognize something good when it comes along, and be ready to act accordingly – but if one email is not returned, it will not be the end of the world.
The best way to combat the Superbowl mentality is to send more than one email a week. You don't need to send out 32 copy-and-paste emails, but several short, personalized emails per week are usually more than enough to keep anyone from dwelling too much on any single email. And remember: an email, a first date, is just a meeting! Unlike sports, it's not a competition. It's just a search for the best person for YOU. There's no losing in dating.