Comments on: The Importance Of Taking Initiative: Avoiding Becoming A Serial Dater

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 02:31:37 +0000

Dave,

I have decided I am going to be answering your question in an upcoming article in full detail! These are great questions that I would like to take the time to really put a lot of thought into.

Until then, feel free to check out some of my profile writing tips on my new site http://getrealdates.com/online-dating-profile-tips

These articles may steer you in the right path for now, or check some of my previous JDate articles for assistance.

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 16:35:26 +0000

Dating for many of us older folks is a necessary means to an end (long-term relationship or marriage). I’m in my late 50′s, the last thing I wanted to do at this stage of my life was starting to date again. It **IS** exhausting…going through the same conversations over and over with new people.

When I was in my early 20′s, “serial dating” was fun. In my mid to late 20s I had enough and was seriously looking for someone to settle down with. In my early 30′s I was sick of dating. Finally at 35 I got married. 23 years later and I’m back to square 1.

The frustrating thing about looking for someone Jewish (at least through jdate) is that within a 50 mile radius of where I live there’s only about 4 Jewish women in my age range (50-59)…actually, one of them isn’t even Jewish. Jdate’s answer to me (and advice I received on their message boards) was to expand my search radius and ease up on my criteria. My only criteria is that the person be 50-59 (maybe it’s 49-60, I can’t remember exactly) and that they be a non-smoker. Expanding search radius is kind of ridiculous. It’s tough to meet in person if there’s more than an hour drive…and even that is exhausting!

So, Joshua, when someone is in their late 50′s, what’s the key to writing a profile that will attract women to make the first contact? I surely haven’t had the ‘problem’ you have had of “ignoring one beautiful girl after the next.”

By: Joshua Pompey

Joshua Pompey — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 13:58:46 +0000

Sceptic,

While I understand where you are coming from, everyone has a different definition of success.

Some men I work with want to be happily married and that is an amazing goal. Others just want a busier dating life. And others just want to know what its like to date and have women physically attracted to them.

I’m not sure that a lack of defining success as marriage defines me as lacking in credibility. I believe that a man can be online dating for years and years and be highly successful at online dating.

Success to me is fulfilling your goals, and most importantly, not struggling to achieve those goals.

By: Sceptic

Sceptic — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 13:56:10 +0000

What does it mean to “successful at online dating”?

To me, success would have to mean that you are no longer dating. If would have said “happily married” that would have established some crdilbility.

By: mastershake

mastershake — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 16:52:13 +0000

Really good advice, thank you.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 16:10:27 +0000

Great article Joshua. I’m going to take that advice myself. I think its about time I took a week off to just refresh my mind!

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 23:03:16 +0000

Julia,

I agree with a lot of what you are saying and what Joshua says as well. There really is no match for meeting in person you really just never know the chemistry until it is there. But I may disagree with you a slight bit about accidentally passing over the right person. I’ll give you an example. I am often too tough, being the guy I am, on first dates with women. I tend to look for reasons not to date them as opposed to reasons I should. Terrible quality I know! This for me gets worse when I am fatigued from online dating. I only judge more and truly would let the right person slip through my fingers. I too met someone online that I wound up dating for three years. The funny thing is, she practically forced the second date upon me. If it weren’t for that, I was so not in the mood to date at the time that I would have missed out on a great three years!

By: Julia

Julia — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 22:09:01 +0000

The problem is that you can only get the vaguest guess about compatibility based on the online profile, it’s the cliche about judging the book by its cover, your connection with that person may seem guaranteed based on the profile but when you meet – nothing. On the other hand, there may seem to be very little potential at all, but when you meet – the bells start ringing. This happened to me when I met my first husband – he was in a “plan B” category, I wasn’t planning on meeting him unless I had absolutely nothing better to do, and I put him off for a long time. Finally the day came, I had nothing else to do, and we met. From the first second it was magic. In retrospect, he was a great guy, but there ended up being some irreconcilable differences and after a 10 year marriage we had to go our separate ways, but that does not nullify my point, which is there is really no substitute for the in-person experience, and I’ve learned to form only the loosest of judgments and expectations from the profile – you really don’t know until you DO meet.
The other point you make, that you could be exhausted and tired of the whole thing and not be at your best and thus the date who could have been the “one” will be wasted. On the contrary, I was in a TERRIBLE mood the day I reluctantly met him, as I walked to our meeting I literally thought “I feel sorry for this guy I’m going to really bring him down”. But when we met it was just magic, all preconceptions went out the window, what I thought of his profile was moot, my former mood was moot.
When you meet someone you really click with it will happen and you can’t accidentally mess that up by being exhausted from serial dating or any other reason. Chemistry and real compatibility cut through all that.