Dear Wendy is a relationship advice blog. You can read about me , peruse the archives and read popular posts. You can also follow along on and. This poll is inspired by a recent message board thread about online dating and how long people wait to schedule dates with people they click with. Back when I did a little online dating always locally , I liked to exchange emails for about a week or two before meeting in person. Except for the girl with whom I made plans, but who somehow got herself a girlfriend in the week between the plan being made and the date? So then we just met in a friendly way. But that was also a bad thing that happened from waiting too long. I did a fair bit of online dating, and let me tell you, the real world worked much better for my awkward self. Although I never asked anyone out, I aimed for having a date set by the third email or sooner. I wanted to get the meeting over with so I could see if there was any connection. When I first started, I ended up wasting a lot of time with guys who, although in my zip code, just wanted a pen pal. Seriously, WHY do online dating if you end up stretching out email correspondence for a month? Online dating is nothing but options. When I did it, I saw plenty of profiles disappear for a week or two and then come back online. Then, disappear for another week, then come back online. I will say this wholeheartedly, I think online dating is one of the worse things for dating. It absolutely ruins chemistry and destroys your self esteem. Meeting someone in real life has still given me much greater results than meeting someone online. I met my husband online and we emailed back and forth for about a week and a half before we met. When I met him on our first date, he had a very unpleasant to me, but probably not to hipster girls thick handlebar mustache and he was very soft-spoken, making it hard for me to hear a lot of what he said. That would have been a tragedy. I dated a few other people I met online before I met my husband, and while there were plenty of jerks, there were also people I may have accepted a date from if I had met them in person first, but I quickly found out they were not for me when we messaged back and forth on the dating site. I imagine you have to do a lot of weeding out in online dating, and to me, that seems like a waste of time. I think many people see online dating as a last resort, and may end up trying to rush or force a connection with someone online first because it takes less time , instead of trying to meet up in person right away to see if there is a real-life connection. Almost every single guy and girl that i know over 30 has an online profile, and for good reason. You can see upfront if you have things in common or if there are major deal breakers that you might otherwise overlook religion, kids, education, etc. And it can be a lot of fun! You get to be proactive in the dating process and get to meet interesting new people. And I met my husband in person less than a week after the first email, and I was the one to suggest it. It turned out we lived in the same town but would never have met otherwise in all likelihood. So thanks, online dating!! Plus, I like to see if they can keep my interest past a couple of emails. Also, all those important questions that you are dying to ask to vet the prospective person with can just as easily be asked over a mid morning coffee. For example, my best friend was going to meet a guy until she found out that he was fired from his last job for throwing things at another employee out of anger. At the start, it could take up to several months before I met someone in real life — that was a bad idea. I had my last date three years ago, when I met my fiancé. We exchanged e-mails for about three weeks before meeting up.
