My Typical First Date

I used this format for close to two years and it’s very effective. It’s flexible and you can work towards any goal: a second date, makeout, or same-night-lay.

I set the first date location at a cool but chill place, a bar that I’m very familiar with. Someplace not too busy. I look for a place with a patio or high-tops. We sit and talk, get to know each other. I tell a lot of interesting and funny stories, and if she’s a good conversationalist she does the same. I establish my foundation here and also start connecting a bit more deeply. In pickup parlance, I can do comfort building and some rapport at this point.

Next, I’ll suggest going to another bar or club to listen to a music. Think Irish bar with a band, although a DJ is good depending on what I glean about her musical taste. I usually have 2-3 options in mind prior to arriving. I try to keep it within walking distance. So, during the convo at the first place, I’ll say that I know where a cool band is playing, let’s check it out. She agrees. We go.

At the second place, the real fun begins. I use a lot of incidental touching to continue to build comfort and I escalate the mental and emotional attraction. I always steer the conversation towards riskier subjects, like sex, if I haven’t already done so at the first bar. I have several conversational ladders that I use to get a conversation to steer towards those subjects and make it seem completely natural. Usually we’ll exchange funny stories about getting busted for having sex here and there, past relationships, that type of thing. If I’m at this point, it’s usually on, and I know I can get a makeout at the end of the night if I want it.

After a stretch, I’ll bounce us to location #3, which is another bar or club, someplace crowded, where you have to be close to each other in order to talk. Think party bar or dance club. A house party works too, but it’s a riskier play to drive to a house. Sometimes they flake on a drive. Here it’s all physical, lots of touching, lots of closeness. We’ll make-out. At this point I’ll decide if I want to stop here or push for a lay. I’ll talk about what goes into making that decision in a minute.

With this structure, I’ve basically created three mini-dates in one night, via the bounces and time dilation effect. What do a lot of daters do on the third date? They sleep with each other. This is super effective and every PUA has done this type of date at some point.

Positives:

1. Fun.
2. Lots of chances to get it right.
3. Flexible.

Drawbacks:

1. It’s expensive. You’re paying for drinks, cover charges, and maybe food all night long.
2. You might get wasted.
3. Lots of opportunities to screw things up.

Why I Decide What I Decide On The Date

Going into these dates I always have a goal of getting to know her and setting things up for a future meetup. I usually have a goal of a make-out. I never have an end goal to get laid before the date starts. Never. I think that’s too outcome dependent and a little sleazy. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done it, but I genuinely start with a “getting to know you attitude” because I love meeting new people and I love connecting with women.

At some point, though, if things are going awesomely and it looks like she wants to have sex, I’ll make the moves that lead to that. This doesn’t happen often because I don’t push it. The reason being is if we have sex on the first date, I’ll give off player vibe and she’ll have buyer’s remorse the next day. Sometimes not, but a lot of times that happens. There are tactics for negating the player vibe and buyer’s remorse effects, but that’s outside the scope of this post. For me, first date sex is not what I’m about right now.

The Key to Going Further

The key to establishing an awesome connection is by connecting on a mental and emotional level. This is required if you want to dramatically increase your chances of getting future dates with her. Emotional is typically the most important, but I’ve noticed with some women the mental stimulation is nearly as effective (Virgos, this means you). With the emotional, you’re saying and doing things that create a little emotional spike. This can be as simple as a tease (her laughing) or a visualization that makes her feel intensely happy. I’ll try for multiple emotional spikes throughout an evening, like between 10 -20. It’s worth noting, having negative emotions are better than no emotions, and it’s possible to create intense attraction off of a negative emotion like anger.

Here’s an example of spiking: We’re at bar #3 and we’ve been touching each other all night long. I’ll bring her in close and say, “You’re my girlfriend for the next 5 minutes. What makes you such a great girlfriend?” I’ll usually put an arm or both arms around her and look directly at her. Credit Natural Tim.

This routine can be a very intense, fun moment. It causes my heart rate to increase. It causes her to imagine us being together in a positive way, and it makes her think about her own qualities as a partner. This is a moment of intense reflection. At this point we might be holding hands and I might end the moment with a kiss. Sounds a little retarded on paper, but it’s wonderful when done in person. I always learn a lot about the girl at this point. And it’s fun.

I can’t over-emphasize how important the mental and emotional connections are for getting past the first date. If you only have conversation and no spikes, you’ve really got nothing, just a foundation and some basic attraction. Which means you need a second or a third date to establish the emotional connection. Guess what the problem is here? She’s dating other guys and disappears. This is what women are referring to when they say you didn’t have “chemistry” or that “spark.” There’s no emotional spiking going on. The conversation could have been great, but in the end great conversation is ephemeral. This is why I say the concept of chemistry is bullshit. There’s only skill and having the balls to take emotional risks on first dates.

I said this is my previous post, in a competitive market you must do more than get to know the other person on the first date, you must get intimate at least in a small way. If not, she will disappear. Attractive women my age have lots of options, and a solid first impression and good conversation is not enough.

My latest date with the hot girl I met on Match was a great date by most standards. There was attraction and we had amazing conversation. Amazing. But, because I was in a weird place that night, I didn’t do any emotional spiking. I have yet to get another date with her. Why? She checks her Match.com account and reads another two dozen emails and goes on another handful of dates. She ends up with the dude who had better game and got the makeout on the first date. Or she ends up with the dude who is 2 inches taller or has the higher salary. I’m forgotten and it was like our meeting didn’t happen. My game simply wasn’t good enough that night. From her perspective, she says that we didn’t have chemistry and she moves forward. I feel bad because I was trying to be cool, authentic, and non-player-y and it didn’t work at all.

Final Thoughts

All of that stuff I described above is a ton of work (albeit fun), often times expensive, and a royal pain in the ass. I don’t particularly like having to use tactics to meet, attract, and relate to a great gal. Don’t get me wrong, I love having fun and I don’t mind working for something, but when it comes to my intimate relationships, I want it to happen naturally, too. I want her to meet me halfway with the workload, I want her to take an emotional risk, I want her to flirt with me and make me feel cool emotions, and I want her to share in the mutual seduction, because that’s what chemistry is. We want the same things, really. I mean, that great guy she’s looking for? I was right there, sitting in front of her.

© Copyright 2009, Reckless Abandon, LLC. All rights reserved.

Will a girl come over to my house for dinner on a first date? Versus meeting for drinks? I’m trying to keep it real and skip the BS.

What I thought was basically an innocuous question (okay, a little provocative…hey, it’s me) got me massacred on the forum and again on comments in Honey’s post How Safe is Too Safe? Which was totally fine because it got everyone thinking.

A little background. I communicated with this girl on Match.com, we emailed back and forth, and it turned out she worked at the same firm as one of my best friends. Her and my friend went out to lunch for work (which they do occasionally), and at one point during the meal they talked about me. I was vetted. Not only that, but she and I were already Facebook friends so she had a wealth of information. I figured at that point it was pretty safe to skip the “normal” first date of drinks/coffee and just go for a dinner at my place. We lived within walking distance of each other, so in my mind it made a lot of sense. I was thinking: grill-out, bottle of wine, hang out on my porch, talk about literature, movies, travel, etc.

This is my idea of a perfect date. I like this because it’s comfortable, it encourages fantastic convo, there’s no wrangling over checks, she can see how I live, and it’s a kickass meal. Time flows easily. It’s even a little romantic. AND, if things are going well, we can always play tonsil hockey on the couch. Yeah, I said it.

This isn’t me trying to seduce a woman and get her into my bed as quickly as possible. This isn’t me using my house as a weapon. This is me honestly trying to have intelligent conversation and breaking bread with another human being and making a no bullshit connection, something that I really want to do and is a little harder to do over expressos at Barnies. Am I being too idealistic here?

Almost everyone threw safety and the specter of date-rape in my face. I got called insensitive, callous, a douchebag, and it was even suggested that making dinner might make me a psycho. People, please. I get the safety issue. I’m not a fucking idiot. I’ve had one girlfriend who was sexually assault at gun point while on a late night run (sisters, don’t ever do this), and another girlfriend who worked at a women’s advocacy center. I listened to horror stories about domestic violence and rape every night for a year. I respect this issue and understand the seriousness of it.

Here is the frustration I want to express. The market for 20-something, attractive, high value women is highly highly competitive here (and most other places). If you don’t hit it out of the park right away, you will not get a second date. If she’s online, she is talking to 10 other dudes and has dates lined up from here to Thanksgiving. Remember, on Match.com, 41% of users are female…but a far smaller percentage are attractive, high-value women. Think something closer to 10%. (And no, I’m not talking about perfect 10’s here, I’m talking about run-of-the-mill cute, smart girls.) If she doesn’t have dates stacked up, she’s probably sleeping with somebody: an ex-bf, a fuck buddy, a rich guy, her attractive bartender friend, whatever, which further muddies the picture. If you’re short and fat, you’re not getting the date. If you’re broke, you’re not getting the date. If you’re ugly…you’ve got problems. That’s the no-bullshit reality of dating for someone at my age. It’s crazy competitive. Coffee dates and sipping Bud Lights simply will not do. You must hook and make an intellectual and emotional connection immediately.

I think all the women who flamed me on Penelope’s forum are women who don’t have dating problems. They’ve got boyfriends or husbands and they don’t get what a jungle it is, just like Honey doesn’t get it any more. They advise to meet for coffee, when the reality is coffee dates are boring as hell, it’s hard to make any kind of headway, and you’re probably going to get dropped because she met someone with a) better game or b) higher up the social ladder.

What I would like to see are solutions for men and women to get to know each other and make real, deep connections. Dating should not have to be a callous, war-like activity where the first things we think about are rejection, violence, and fear. It should be safe. It should be heart-centered, focused on relationship building, about exploring ourselves and making deep connections with another person. It isn’t, but it should be. That’s what we all want at some point, I think.

If that doesn’t work, I’m going back to using game, wielding attraction, and making out scoring same-night-lays with girls in bars within the first hour of meeting them. I’ve done that plenty of times before and I know it works just fine.

More Goodness:

• One Super Important Thing I Learned From Dating Three Chicks At Once
• Dating Beautiful
• Honey’s Perfect First Date
• My Perfect First Date

State Fair Fun

Saturday we decided to go to the Arizona State Fair.  This was, I think, the third year in a row that we’ve gone, and as usual we had a great time!  We did some of the rides and games, Jake bought me a new semiprecious stone for a metal torque/choker that he’d bought me at the same booth last year (I’m liking this tradition), and – the theme of this year’s fair visit – ate everything in sight.  Yum, food.

In addition to $8 drafts of Bud Light (!) we had strawberry margaritas, corn on the cob, Indian fry bread with refried beans (my absolute favorite), the brick of curly fries drenched in melted cheese, a deep-fried Snickers, a deep-fried pickle (I don’t recommend this), and Indian fry bread with honey and powdered sugar.  Can you say absolutely fantastic?!

Rollin’ in Dough

Sunday we did some grocery shopping but were otherwise lazy.  Then on Monday when I stopped by the mailboxes, I finally got my freelance check.  WOO-HOO!  Honey’s $2500 richer, thank you very much.  I’m not ending up on the wild spending spree that I had hoped – the final breakdown ends up like this:

• $1000 monster credit card payment
• $600 Christmas shopping money
• $400 repay my savings account for my dentist’s co-pay/deductible
• $250 new sweaters for work (it’s starting to get cold and my other ones were worn out)
• $250 the remainder of my repayment to Jake for our New Year’s trip to Vegas

It looks like the bike may have to wait, and the trip to Illinois to see Jake’s grandparents for Thanksgiving will have to come out of regular spending money.  Which is actually fine – we fly into Chicago, but then we drive three hours to where his grandparents live – and there is nothing to do there and they are not very mobile (~90 y.o.) so I doubt we’ll be doing anything tremendously exciting.  Instead, we’re saving that for…

…Vegas!

That’s right, we’re heading back – this time for New Year’s.  The same couple we went with in May is coming again, as well as another friend of hers from high school/college.  Lance, you should come, too.  You’ve been in a funk.  Vegas will do you good.

We used a package deal that we got from Vegas.com – for $420 apiece (all taxes and other dastardly fees included) we got our plane tickets, reservations at the Luxor and tickets to see Ka.  I also bought a $50 gift certificate to Aureole at the Mandalay Bay – for $4 from Restaurant.com.  They have a 10,000 foot wine tower with “wine angels” who use a sort of auto-belay system to scale the tower and bring you your wine (we saw it on the Travel Channel).

We’re also going to go to the shooting range at the Gun Store and to the CSI Experience, and there are some rides within walking distance – The Roller Coaster at NY, NY, the In Search of the Obelisk ride at the Luxor, and the Motion Rides at Excalibur.  Jake is also interested in Bodies, the Exhibition.  Sounds like fun to me, and Jake and I have only stayed on the strip one other time (the first time we ever went, when we’d been together less than 2 months and drove the whole way!) so this is very different from how we normally do it.

I’m timing my $1000 credit card payment so that it’s my payment for the month…then I can take what would have been my credit card payment ($400 or so) and put it in my savings account for the trip.  I’ll probably make the minimum payment or close to it on my credit card in December, as well, which’ll give me a good chunk of change to play and have fun with.  Hooray!

If you enjoyed this post about how much Honey’s enjoying herself, you might also like:

• Confession: I Can Only Get Off With My Vibrator!
• Accomplish Something to Become More Attractive
• Weekend Beach Sextacular
• Travelogue: San Francisco

© Copyright 2009, Reckless Abandon, LLC. All rights reserved.

Similar to dadshouse’s entry on how a woman he met online didn’t want to meet up for a hike on a first date, Lance’s date refused to come over and let him cook dinner for her at his house.  Like DM, Lance is frustrated by the fact that women feel unsafe in their initial encounters, largely because it either leads to “sipping Bud Lights while we stare at each other across tabletops and play word games and play dress up” (Lance) or “coffee dates, those fact-finding information exchanges that modern singles embrace as necessities like college-bound kids taking the SAT” (DM).

Where do you, the readers, draw the line?

As I said in the comments to the Brazen Careerist convo, when I had my first date with Jake, he didn’t know my last name, phone number, e-mail addy, or physical addy.  We had first names and met at the bar (well, actually I think I might’ve known his last name because it was part of his MySpace URL, which is a mistake I don’t think a woman would ever make).  Although I did end up going to a party with him and then we had rockin’ sex back at my place, I had set things up so that if he gave off a creepy vibe, all I’d have to do was leave and block his profile – he wouldn’t have been able to find me again.

Now, he and I met on MySpace, but back when I was doing the Match thing I set up a new e-mail account with none of my personal information that I used when people wanted to move communication off the site.  Even though I never dealt with anyone that I thought was super creepy online (well, maybe one…or two…wait, I actually have another story that’s pretty great although I might not have the e-mails anymore – I’ll check into it for you guys), I did grow a lot more cautious as I got a little older, and especially once I was living by myself and didn’t have roommates that would worry about me if I didn’t return.

So I do also get my hackles up when guys belittle the safety concern.  I was date-raped by my first college boyfriend (the same jerk I lost my virginity to), and there were definitely times that I had sex while technically too drunk to give consent and deeply regretted it afterwards (though in those cases the solution lay as much in drinking less as it did in blaming the guy).  I understand how totally awesome, trustworthy guys would get frustrated by women’s need to protect themselves – it’s gotta be like getting searched at the airport because of your race.  But the danger is real (Well, the date-rape danger.  I don’t know anything about terrorism or criminal profiling!).  Lance says, “If you want to get to know someone, you break bread with them.”  Suppose you go to a guy’s house and he rapes you – what are you supposed to say to her afterwards – “well, now you know”?!?!

Ladies, what steps do you take to ensure your safety?  Fellas, what’s it like on the other side of those precautions?  Is there any way to feel safe and get to know someone, or is it just an inherently risky activity?

If you enjoyed this post on safety and dating, you might also enjoy:

• The Weekly: Penelope Trunk Hates Us Edition
• The Weekly: Honey Edition
• Are Stay-at-Home Moms Really Just Prostitutes?
• Honey’s Take: The Number Close Isn’t As Easy As You Think

© Copyright 2009, Reckless Abandon, LLC. All rights reserved.

“Hard” versus “Soft” Negotiating

This is one of the core principles of the well-known book Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher and William Ury.  Essentially, hard negotiation (often called competitive negotiation) is about using whatever means necessary to get whatever it is that you want.  Soft negotiation (often called integrative or cooperative negotiation) is about maximizing both parties’ returns – even if it means giving up something that you really want. 

Getting to Yes argues in favor of what they call “principled negotiation,” which is a combination of the two – you fight really hard for the things that are the most important to you, but then become not only willing, but proactive about giving up other things in order to get what you really want and, significantly, provide the other party with what they really want.  However, other communications scholars think of this as the definition of soft negotiation, so there’s some wiggle room there.

Negotiating and Gender

As you might imagine, hard negotiation is generally perceived as masculine and soft negotiation is generally perceived as feminine.  In actuality, they’re both just strategies that anyone can choose to employ at any time.  However, what is worth noting is that when women use hard negotiation strategies (regardless of the gender of the person(s) they are negotiating with) they are almost always perceived of as unlikeable.  The same is not true for men, who can employ either strategy with much less worry about whether people will like them less – at least in workplace interactions.  But what about personal relationships?

Negotiating and Relationships

There’s a passionate exchange going on over at EMK’s latest blog entry, Dating Advice that Might Make You Mad.  Evan, whose blog mainly caters to a female audience, essentially advocates soft negotiation strategies (although he doesn’t call it this) when dealing with romantic relationships:

• Be flexible in your dating criteria
• Be what the other person is looking for
• Make the other person feel good

Many folks have a strong negative reaction to this – essentially, I want what I want, and am willing to get it at any cost.  However, because hard negotiation tactics create a “winner” and a “loser,” they tend to breed resentment that lasts long after whatever the issue was has been “concluded.”  This is one reason why anytime you are going to have to have dealings with the person after the issue has been settled (so, if you’re being hired into a new position or if you’re dating someone hoping for a LTR) then soft negotiation is the better bet.  Hard negotiation should then be reserved for interactions where you will not be interacting with the other party after the negotiation is complete (say, buying a car).

Downsides to Soft Negotiation

Note that soft negotiation does not require that you give up the things that are most important to you.  Instead, it is about looking at the whole picture and trying to identify creative ways for all parties to get the things that are the most important to them.

However, in order for a system like that to work, both parties must be aware that the negotiation is a soft one and be forthcoming about the things they are willing to sacrifice in order to reach a successful conclusion.  It also means that, regardless of what your non-negotiable criteria are, the tone of the exchange should be polite, respectful, and optimistic that a mutually agreeable result is possible. 

If one party in the exchange is using soft tactics and the other is using hard  tactics, all too often what happens is that the soft negotiator ends up ceding everything that they’re willing to cede and not getting anything in return.  I think this is one of the reasons that lots of Evan’s female readers are taking the hard tack with him right now – many of them spent years as soft negotiators getting taken advantage of by hard negotiators, and the solution that they’ve chosen is to become hard negotiators themselves.  While an understandable reaction, this is not going to get them the best returns, as he points out.

Be In Control – Graciously, Gratefully, and and Gracefully

It seems to me that a better solution is to make the guidelines of such negotiations clear – set parameters for the exchange in advance that both parties agree to abide by, and also set a walk-away point.  This means deciding in advance at what point it will be obvious that you will never get what you want/need from the exchange, and leaving once that point is reached. 

A huge mistake that tons of people make is not deciding what that point is in advance – this leads to us staying in negative situations far longer than is good for us, which can have lots of negative effects, including complete unraveling of the civility of that particular negotiation (in the short term) and bitterness/apathy about ever engaging in the negotiation process again (in the long term). 

If you’ve determined in advance what your walking-away point is, then you’re less likely to have to make that determination when negative emotions are clouding your judgment – you can keep the tone of the exchange positive right up until the moment that you say, “you know, I don’t think there’s a way for us to both get what we need out of this,” and end the exchange gracefully.

Thoughts?

If you enjoyed this soft negotiations post, you might also enjoy:

• Creative Strategies for Getting your GF/BF to Change
• One Super Important Thing I Learned From Dating Three Chicks At Once
• Honey’s Take: The Key to Successful Relationships
• Revelations Part III: What’s Your Fighting Style?

© Copyright 2009, Reckless Abandon, LLC. All rights reserved.

© Copyright 2009, Reckless Abandon, LLC. All rights reserved.

Since then, I’ve had two interesting intimate moments with other chicks and I thought they were worth sharing. Oddly, these circumstances have made me feel worse and not better. These are not necessarily SFW:

1. During a recent night out, I made out with a female co-worker. She asked me to go outside to smoke a cigarette. Once outside, she made the move and the next thing I knew we were against the wall around the corner from the bar playing some serious tonsil hockey. This might sound like a pretty normal bar makeup to some of you, but for me it was the HOTTEST KISS OF MY LIFE. It was overwhelmingly intense. I think there were a lot of pent-up emotions from both sides being released and we were basically devouring each other. I pinned her hands together just above her head with one of my hands, then held her head and hair firmly with the other, and we kissed very deeply for several minutes. I pressed into her firmly and and the kissing was rough and passionate. After the kiss, she admitted to being highly attracted to me and I did the same. Then we went back inside the bar and continued partying. There were no further fireworks and we’ve acted completely normal around each other at subsequent outings.

2. The second moment happened with Teri, the cool chick I met on the 4th of July. I dated Teri for about two months and we had some great times. She wasn’t ready for anything beyond a casual relationship and we got to a point where I had to move on because her behavior during social outings was driving me nuts. I alluded to this behavior in this post here. The whole time we were sleeping with each other.

I’ll go ahead and preface this by saying that sex with Teri was the best sex of my life, hands down. We even coined a term for the sex and that term was “porntastic.” At one point we got in trouble with the neighbors because of the noise and they complained to the condo association. On a scale of 1 to 10, the sex was clearly a 10. Think multi-hour, 20+ orgasm showstopping spectaculars with flying midgets, dancing elephants, and cannons.

Well, during one of our crazy sessions, we were both seconds away from having simultaneous orgasms. Right before that happened, she asked me to kiss her hard, as hard as I could, during the orgasm. Which is exactly what I did. It was an absolutely incredible moment. Has anyone ever done this? Don’t most people not kiss during an orgasm? I felt this intense connection with her during that moment, a deep, sharp connection I’ve never felt with anyone before. Like souls intermingling type stuff. This lasted for a moment and I told her it was absolutely incredible, and she agreed. It slowly faded away as we came back to Earth. For me this was a real revelation about how intimate I could get with someone.

What Kills Me About These Two Kisses

What kills me about these two kisses is how deeply, powerfully, and singularly explosive those moments were and how quickly they disappeared. It’s like those connections never happened, really. We went back to our lives and forget or ignored that they took place. I don’t talk to Teri any more and it’s like we never had that amazing sex or any relationship at all. And I see my co-worker every day and we purposefully forget that the moment happened (although we’re still perfectly good friends). These connections, and to a larger extent my relationships, seem way too ephemeral and fluid for my taste, and I often wonder if it’s even worth it. Definitely I’m learning a lot, and I’m glad I make connections like that (because some people don’t), but I would prefer to have these moments with someone I gave a shit about and have it mean something beyond just a single moment.

If you’ve ever had the best kiss of your life, you might like these posts:

• The Dirtiest Filthiest Sex Ever
• Filthy Anal Sex on New Years Eve
• Morning Sex (And Other Sex)
• We’re taking Pictures Of Ourselves Having Sex!

© Copyright 2009, Reckless Abandon, LLC. All rights reserved.

3. What exactly are the fake profiles and scams for? Are these guys trying to wrangle money out of people or just get emails in order to spam them?

There are so many different flavors of bogus profiles. I perceive them in two categories:  1) written by native English speakers, and 2) obviously NOT.

Among those who exhibit good grammar, diction, and spelling:  if they ask for your e-mail address IN their profile, they’ll send you spam.  Always useless; mostly porn.  NEVER offer your e-mail address in your first message unless you want more spam.   Also, if a profile is really short, don’t offer any information to them.  Same problem, these are  likely address collectors.

If someone asks for your e-mail address in their first message, that’s likely a marketing ploy.  That’s how MatchMaker International got my personal e-mail address — it exists nowhere else but in dating profiles and messages.  They set up a profile, had “her” gather addresses, and then followed up with a sales pitch.  Uncool.  I learned my lesson there.

In a far more nuanced way, I’ve heard from several courtesans — long term intimate partners for hire — who write very cordial and intelligent messages to attractive, successful men.  After two or three subtle but enticing exchanges, they offer a link to a web site, and you realize you’ve been finessed toward a cold call.  A bit unsettling… but flattering!

A couple of Doms have taken a similar approach:  from a “typical” profile, they talk up how great the personal connection feels from a distance — then reveal they’re available for one-on-one “sessions.”  No, those did NOT come from adult hookup sites — they were hidden in plain sight at searchable dating services.  It’s cheaper (and probably much safer for them) than the Yellow Pages.

I saw the same from a masseuse who needed to pay her son’s tuition, and was selling happy endings.  (If you’re nice, you can ask all sorts of questions, and women tend to answer them.)  She used a fairly mainstream site, ignored incoming messages, and simply sought out guys she felt she would be comfortable… ummm… helping.  Hehe… she was very sweet; I have NO idea how much help she was!

Profiles in the second category — with astonishingly poor English — you have to see to believe.  You needn’t know much about grammar to discern these. The words are out of alignment from repeated cutting and pasting; they have many extra blanks, or strings of words separated by irregularly spaced commas; entire sentences are repeated, or never finished.  They come from lazy people (note, I didn’t say “women”) whom you do NOT want to meet.

A few are webcam girls looking for guys to invite for private sessions.  Those are easy to spot:  the photos are raunchy, and the messages usually are, too.

I suspect most of the atrocious-English profiles fall into two camps.  Allow me to grossly generalize for ease of reference:  1) classic Nigerian 419 scams, and 2) Ukraninan brides.  If you really want to learn, go read Wikipedia, or any of a thousand websites dedicated to exposing them.  I’ll report what I’ve come to believe, which is built only partially on myth and superstition.

We recognize Nigerian 419 schemes from our e-mail,  “I am Prince Nazabouli TanJankir, prelate of the Bank of Zanzik,” or, “Am sorry to break to your news day, but forgive it me that I beseech helping.”  They either have money they’ll share with you, or want your help to escape from something.  Don’t be stupid.

I suspect a lot of Match activity comes from Ukrainian brides.  Whether there are real women behind it, or not, the intent may be much like 419:  to get you hooked on relationship potential (rather than cash proceeds) then ask for help to make it happen.

I may have saved one woman from this scam!  When we met, she warned me she was becoming close to a nice guy already — but I realized immediately she was relating a 419 storyline.  I began predicting what her guy would say next — and damn if he didn’t do everything I said!  (It still took her several days of listening to his escalating lies to grasp that she had been fooled.)  So, at least TRY not to be stupid.

One part of that scheme sounds particularly scary.  I dated one woman who described a male friend’s legal trouble after sponsoring a “fiancee” from overseas.  I Am Not A Lawyer (and glad of it , but once a foreign national has used your name as a reference, to gain permission to step onto US soil, you’d better hope they really love you, and have no criminals for friends.

Geez… it’s NOT similar in any procedural way — but some of the human traits and behavioral hurdles are the same, translated into virtual venues.

You need to pay close attention to what women say and what they do — those frequently differ, even when all they’re doing is typing. Be as courteous as you can, without being stiff (so you’d better do it naturally).

You need to enjoy yourself regardless of whether a woman is doing the same.  I do not mean ignore what she would enjoy — quite the opposite.  Have fun!  But, if she isn’t comfortable yet — with sharing information, or certain methods of communication, or any level of physical connection — just chill the hell out. Don’t make a big deal of it. Take a break, whether in time or topic, and check back later at the same level as before.  Don’t give up, but don’t escalate.

As to improving the services, I’ve talked about this with most of the women I met online. I believe all the existing services are fundamentally flawed, and always were.  And now, for my next act — if I haven’t done so already — I’ll eliminate any hope of seeming humble

My impression is that these sites rarely have had someone with my skill set involved in their conception and design.  (Or, if such a person was involved, they were not given the respect or resources they deserved.)  For years, my job title has been “Technical Compass.”  I explain what everyone says, to everyone else, because people typically can’t cross disciplines in essential ways.

I can sit in a room filled with marketblather — “How will we leverage this lead to monetize eyeballs?” — and walk away knowing what it actually MEANT.  I can sit in a room filled with geekspeak — “If we normalize the template, can we trade more indexing for less swapping?” — and leave with a full understanding.  Those two crowds should NEVER be permitted in the same space.  Once they mingle, unmoderated, a project is screwed.  They NEED a translator!  That’s my role.

Now, add to THAT mess the troubles contributed by a third crowd — Psych majors!  Holy Mazola!  That project will fall FAR short of expectations.  Tag on some interface designers — who can barely relate to any of the first three crowds, and who always come late to the party — and the result WILL be a disaster.  And thus online dating usually is, for all of us, as users.

I see no site that has solved that problem well.   So, they haven’t solved the online dating problem, either.  I believe NO site that “finds compatible people” accomplishes much beyond random chance.  I believe none of them “find” ANYTHING.

Imagine this experiment:  select groups A and B, each containing 1,000 male members of Match.com.  (Yeah, I know, “Hehe… I said “male members… hehe…”)
ANYWAY… send Group A the profiles of five women who match them best — using Match.com’s algorithms — every day for six months.  At the same time, send Group B the profiles of five women chosen RANDOMLY from the same database, with utter disregard for whether they match in ANY way!  After six months, I believe  ”success” (as measured by the number of initial messages, responses, contacts, calls, dates, and relationships) would be NEARLY the same for both groups!

If you were to make one TINY adjustment for Group B — send profiles of women within ten years of age, and of the same race — I predict the degree of “success” across the two groups would be statistically identical.

OF COURSE, no site would ever do that experiment with real users!  They’d learn how trivial all their theories and efforts have been — and WOW, would they get their asses sued!  ROFL!!  But, until someone does that, we won’t know.  The matches I see are SO incredibly weak… I’m sticking by my story!

Face it, the services all know their weaknesses.  They’ve made business or market decisions (not always wise ones) to preserve those weaknesses!  For example, I would be all OVER e-Harmony if they made it searchable; they won’t; they can’t.  Doing so would defy their “security by obscurity” sales pitch.

Very safety-conscious women will cling to e-Harmony and Chemistry until the day the sites become searchable… then run away in droves.  Why would e-Harmony risk that, simply to make more love connections between people?  Why would Chemistry let me FIND the woman I want — in a few clicks, or a few days — when they could charge me for MONTHS before revealing her?   Duh!?!  They don’t profit by FINDING me someone, they profit by making me WAIT!

Not that searchability is the purpose of life.  I have a personal rule that I will NEVER search (in public engines like Google) for a woman whose profile I see online.  I MUST not do that.  I’m simply too good at searching and finding data online.  I’d show up at our first date knowing how much her mortgage is, who her family supported in recent elections, which friends of hers are under indictment — I mean, this is NOT stuff you want to mistakenly let drop when you meet someone!  Haha…  No, I’m telling you:  don’t do it!  You’ve been warned!!

If I could wave a magic wand ONCE, and make all sites do ONE thing, they would REQUIRE users to reveal their height and weight!  What a relief that would be!

The next best thing — for sites that use these — PLEASE provide DEFINITIONS for “Body Type”!  Lord a’mighty!  ”Average” is being used for “30 pounds above normal.”  ”Curvy” can imply either “well-built” or “obese.”  ”Athletic” often means, “I wish I weren’t so flabby.”  Perhaps only a quarter of the women on some sites use the words to mean what they ACTUALLY mean.  I must imagine the misuse is as bad among men — or worse.

An alternative, to avoid that ugly intersection of meaning and intent:  require at least THREE photographs that would be recognizable as the SAME person.  (And NOT three nearly identical FACE shots!  Duh!)

Also, require at least TWO MORE full-length photographs, with no obscuring furniture, no outdoor apparel, and no other people.  I’m not asking for swimsuit shots or cheesecake, ya know — I only want to believe I MIGHT be able to recognize this person from across the room!

A VP of Global Customer Care had e-mailed me, and offered her direct number, so  I phoned.  (A woman sends you her number, you call!  She seemed genuinely interested in my observations, and said others had discussed them at meetings.  She did seem to appreciate the details of my experience.

She asked for suggestions I might have, so I provided a few, derived from the de-duplication work I’ve done in monitoring news articles.  For example, I want my clients to see only the “original” version of an article — not copies from every front page in the world.  In a similar way, Match wants their clients to see only the “legitimate” version of a profile — not copies of it made by every scammer in the world.  Such problems have been solved in other arenas, for other datasets.  But, I don’t see the solutions being applied in online dating.

What will come of it?  Specifically at Match:  unknown.  It’s notoriously difficult to “redesign” an existing system with a large user base.  If their design internals are excellent, they may be able to add strong protocols for reducing spam.  But, many signs I see at Match are not of excellent internals, so they have their work cut out for them.

When I spoke with their VP, I did mention other, less technical approaches — but the goal online always is to scale quickly and uniformly — to automate every process.  That requires code — and yes, there ARE people who could write it.   But, whether Match has them, or will get them… again, unknown.

More generally, in a few years, sites that achieve bogus profile removal through good design and technology will still be around.  Sites that don’t, won’t.  As my article asks, if you can’t identify spammers when they’re still stupidly obvious, how will you even HOPE to see them after they get GOOD?

Now you want me to give away secrets?  LOL… OK.  Well, I can describe what I look for in a profile.  As I said, I have rather high standards — but women who adhere to higher standards should have their pick of guys. Post recent, clear, candid photos of yourself in different attitudes, settings, and dress.  I’m visual.  Most guys are — it’s factory equipment!  This is important.  It needn’t be stunning or sexy… just show how you look!

Be forthright and clear about yourself and your desires.   I LOVE seeing an intelligent woman play that up, rather than down.  I’m attracted to a woman who admits she likes to flirt.  All that tells me she’s aware of who she really is — that she’s alert to the effects she may have on ME.  That’s rare, and cool.

Reveal your best features — intelligence, height, creativity, figure, passion, strength, sophistication, sarcasm. Whatever you feel good about, or others compliment you on or remember you for, get it in the profile. That’s HUGE!

Must I say, “Be funny”?  If you don’t do it already, you won’t know how.

Not sure why I’d help my competition, but… guys, seriously.  You gotta STOP with the shirtless shots, the cars, the boats, the dead animals.  Most women think you’re complete idiots.

And, guys:  if you EVER send a one-liner that says, “You are SOOO hot!” or suggest a sex act in the first three message exchanges, you deserve to be alone.

© Copyright 2009, Reckless Abandon, LLC. All rights reserved.

Concerned?

Lucky for you tomorrow is the International Day of Climate Action!  For more information on tomorrow’s events (of which there are over 4500 taking place in 181 countries), visit http://www.350.org.  Get involved, especially if you have (or plan on having) kids – it’s not just your world, it’s theirs, and we’ve gotta clean it up.

If you liked this activist post, you might also enjoy:

• National Justice for Animals Week
• This Blog Post is Fairly Traded
• Defining Poverty
• People are Inherently Lazy: Or, Why We Over-Rank Ourselves

© Copyright 2009, Reckless Abandon, LLC. All rights reserved.

However, the “Recession-Proofing Your Personal Relationships” and the “Women Don’t Negotiate, But They Should” presentations were pretty rockin’.  So, here I am, passing all my rockin’ new knowledge on to you!  This entry is inspired by the value I got out of the “Recession-Proofing” presentation, and I’ll do one on negotiations next week.

Money Matters

I don’t think that this comes as much of a shocker, but the three things that cause the most fights in relationships are (more or less in order): 1) money, 2) childrearing, and 3) sex.  With the Great Recession kicking everyone’s ass, money is becoming ever more of an issue, largely because differences in how people handle money tend to surface even more when people are stressed and/or in financial trouble.  Jake and I aren’t going to have children, and our sex life is great (though we are always working on that one, too, just for fun), but we definitely struggle with #1, just like everyone else.

We have a significant amount of debt as a result of grad school, and continue to have trouble with our grocery budget (Jake says that the fact that we consistently overspend in this category means we should allocate more money to it.  Sadly, my grocery budget consists of every penny I make beyond paying the bills, with the exception of $40 in spending money every month.  That’s right, month.)  Although once I’ve paid off my debt I’ll be able to increase this slightly, we’ve yet to come up with an interim resolution.

Then there’s the fact that he absolutely refuses to create or use a budget.  I even made one for him so that all he had to do was plug in his actual numbers, and he just won’t.  This depsite the fact that he finds himself unable to save.  Every time he sets money aside in his savings account, he has to pull it back out before his next paycheck because of some expense – often one he should have been able to anticipate.  He knows (because I’ve told him) that this means that when we get married, this means that all the bills and all of the budgeting, everything, is going to have to be under my control.  Clarification - anytime he decides that he’ll actually use a budget then he can share responsibilities or even actually be in charge.  But as long as his strategy is “don’t track anything and assume you’re making enough money to cover whatever you want,” Honey’s going to be the CFO of our union

I’ve discussed with him my concern that our financial values are extremely unsynchronized, and that I’m very afraid that as soon as he pays off his debt and can spend his money however he likes, that we’ll be totally incompatible.  I’m perfectly fine never having a standard of living higher than what we have now, and in fact plan on socking the difference from any raises I get in the future to retirement accounts and/or emergency savings (aside from that bump to our grocery budget ).  OTOH, he is constantly frustrated by his financial constraints despite making way more money than me, and has lots and lots of expensive things that he believes his life won’t be complete without.  So we’re still in discussions about how that’s going to play out.

Practically Speaking…

In the meantime, he’s once again bored and convinced that all we do is the same thing, week in and week out, despite the fact that is demonstrably not the case.  He has said that he’s going to join a social sports league in December, so maybe that’ll help things some, and we’re both trying to come up with plans for some out-of-the-ordinary activities.  We’re going to try to work in Fear Farms’ corn maze, the State Fair, an upcoming trip to Illinois, and (we’ll be deciding this weekend) possibly Christmas in Vegas (I got notified of a screaming deal from Vegas.com for a 4-day, 3-night trip that includes a USAir flight, hotel stay at Treasure Island, and 2 tickets to see Mystere for ~$300 per person – only so cheap because we’re so close). 

Fortunately for the money side of it all, there are also lots of free or lower-cost things to do, like an impromptu visit to Gordon Biersch for a couple of beers this Tuesday, a potluck this Saturday hosted by our condo association, tossing the football around in the park across the street from our house last weekend, window-shopping and/or Christmas shopping at the next iteration of Tempe Festival of the Arts, and visiting the weekly Market on Mill, which has lots of free samples and live music.  At home, it’s nice enough now to sit on our back porch and just hang out (and I just got a tomato plant, which I’m hoping will survive to make some fruit now that it’s cooled off a bit) and although I’ve been cooking for a hobby for some months now, he’s lately been helping me with some of the more complicated recipes – especially desserts.

The woman who gave the recession-proofing seminar is a professional counselor and she recommended each partner coming up with a list (say, 15-20) free or low-cost activities, then meeting as a couple to make sure that each activity is something the other person is physically and mentally capable of doing, and then switching off each week to draw out of a hat and surprise the other partner by planning an entire outing.  Like lots of things (budgeting, weight loss) the benefits are obvious, but people tend to drop out of the program after a couple of weeks even if it’s working and both partners are having fun.  So you actually have to do it.

What’s your favorite activity or way of busting out of a relationship rut?  Leave your suggestion below, and then check out these fine posts:

• How to Make Your Goals Achievable
• Vague Dissatisfactions
• Creative Strategies for Getting your BF/GF to Change
• Top 10 Signs You’ve Become an Adult

© Copyright 2009, Reckless Abandon, LLC. All rights reserved.