Hurry Up to Wait
- Thursday, April 25 2013 @ 09:52 am
- Contributed by: Jet
- Views: 988
Imagine you’re finally ready to come back to the dating scene. You wake up one morning and decide, “This is it.” You take extra care with your clothing and hair, you decide to focus on looking friendly and approachable, and you step out into the world, waiting for the interested to strike up conversations.
...But nothing happens. In fact, not only does no one approach you, you don’t really even see anyone you’re particularly interested in yourself. Nothing happens the next day, either. But two weeks later, you strike up a conversation with an attractive person you see in a bookstore. You don’t have a date yet, but you were invited to a book club being hosted the next day. It’s looking promising.
Online dating tries to take most of that waiting around out of the equation; while you may not see anyone single and attractive on your walk to work each morning, you can pull up reams of them with a click of a button. Instead of silently checking them out, you can email them whenever you work up the nerve. And you’re more likely to jump right into talking about dating than getting invitations to ambiguous group events.
And yet, there’s still an element of waiting around in online dating, one felt all the more keenly because, unlike your walk to work, when you check in with your online dating site you have only one thing on your mind. After spending all that time writing and proofreading your profile, you want that immediate gratification the minute it goes up. You want to send out those first-contact emails and get responses immediately.
But just like any other method of dating, sometimes people are busy, or maybe there’s just not anyone looking at your profile with whom you’d really share a connection. Online dating is more efficient, to be sure, but it still involves a search. And like anything that deals with real, other people and not merely machines, it can be confusing, frustrating and not on schedule.
So if you’re feeling impatient and frustrated, know that it’s normal. Know that nearly everyone else is probably feeling the same way. And know that it’s as much a part of the process of finding love as first-date nerves. So think of that walk to work, and focus on admiring the flowers in the meantime.
...But nothing happens. In fact, not only does no one approach you, you don’t really even see anyone you’re particularly interested in yourself. Nothing happens the next day, either. But two weeks later, you strike up a conversation with an attractive person you see in a bookstore. You don’t have a date yet, but you were invited to a book club being hosted the next day. It’s looking promising.
Online dating tries to take most of that waiting around out of the equation; while you may not see anyone single and attractive on your walk to work each morning, you can pull up reams of them with a click of a button. Instead of silently checking them out, you can email them whenever you work up the nerve. And you’re more likely to jump right into talking about dating than getting invitations to ambiguous group events.
And yet, there’s still an element of waiting around in online dating, one felt all the more keenly because, unlike your walk to work, when you check in with your online dating site you have only one thing on your mind. After spending all that time writing and proofreading your profile, you want that immediate gratification the minute it goes up. You want to send out those first-contact emails and get responses immediately.
But just like any other method of dating, sometimes people are busy, or maybe there’s just not anyone looking at your profile with whom you’d really share a connection. Online dating is more efficient, to be sure, but it still involves a search. And like anything that deals with real, other people and not merely machines, it can be confusing, frustrating and not on schedule.
So if you’re feeling impatient and frustrated, know that it’s normal. Know that nearly everyone else is probably feeling the same way. And know that it’s as much a part of the process of finding love as first-date nerves. So think of that walk to work, and focus on admiring the flowers in the meantime.
Subscribe
