Desperation on Line: For Women Only!

Regarding my  last post-- It took another few mistakes and some time alone for my dear friend to settle down that desperation cue.  Unless you are in an exclusive relationship avoid these cues men can easily pick up on.  These go for online  dating- before you meet. The first vibe a men and women center on is the picture. That's a fact. Neither of you would be in any contact unless you found each other attractive-based on that picture. Now begins that dance, the one of emails, texts or phone chat- before the meeting.  It's ass backwards.  The meeting can throw it all off.  But that's another story.  You see, when we get that ping, the email, the message it charges up the reward centers of our cortex like a pin-ball machine. All the "what-if's" rage.  Anticipation can lead to desperation. Here are the signs: 

·        Calling, emailing, or texting way too much, always answering their texts or responses quickly.  Your words should equal his minus a few.  In other words answer his texts with the same amount of words no more.   You should NEVER initiate any texts or communication unless it is to cancel a date.  Don't play the "I accidentally texted you." ploy.   Men like what they can't have and what is unavailable.  I've seen this undermine many women. Men have lay-dar, the ability to sniff out a desperate woman who'll have sex with them- no strings attached.  By the way 57% of men have sex on the first date. It better not be you! I swear I'll crawl through the Internet to slap you with the stupid stick.   

·         Speaking about texts, or phone calls, limit them to a time length-as in a few weeks. . Catfishing and pretext relationships are accomplished through hooking the other person and leading them on.  It's also a method that is left for losers- what I mean by that is once someone is wooing their first choice, they like to keep other fish hanging on their lines. A back up plan.  My cousin THE DON of DATING does this. He racks them up like beer in the cooler. Don't be the back-up.  Refuse the role.  You need to meet as soon as possible.  Meeting changes the dynamic- dramatically.  Give it no more than two weeks.  "What?" you are saying.  Yes- two weeks.  If he can't meet you face to face you simply ask when he will be available and suggest that he contact you then.  If you are afraid you'll lose him by having a boundary, question your desperation. By the way there are a hundred reasons why you should not enter a pretext relationhip.  That's another blog.

·         When he calls you don't answer so quickly.     

·         Unless you have met do not sit on the phone for a long period of time.  Your mind will tend to weave itself a fantasy that might not be as good as the real thing.

·         Never ever allow any sexual conversation to occur. That will get the stupid stick too.  You can make money for doing that shit- tell him to go go call 1800jerkoff.  Hang up if he begins any sex dialogue.  By the way here's the line (from THE DON)...So what are you doing now? He'll ask this at night when you're laying in bed.  "I'm sitting next to my brother, the cop, watching TV.  Don't fall for the "What are you wearing?" either. 

·         Never reveal any personal dilemma's nor allow him to.  Catfishing requires that the hook reveal some common dilemma they both face.  Anyway, it's not a good sign if he or you complain about facets of your life before you even met.

·         Never ever say that you'll cancel plans so you can meet him.  "Oh, I have a wedding to go to but I think I'll just cancel that so we can meet!"  Are you crazy? Only desperate women will cancel an event to meet a man. 

·         Desperate women give him every contact bit of information, the home phone, emails, work number.  Nix that.

·         Do not go over your dating history with him.  It's none of his business and if he asks, having never met you, he is a control freak or he's fishing to see what a desperate bottom sucker you are.

·         NEVER berate your ex.  Women who are still frothing over a past love signal desperate.  They are basically saying they need to be preoccupied by a new man.

·         Never tell him when your last relationship ended.  "Oh, I broke up with my boyfriend last week."  You are telling him that you cannot stand to be be alone for seven f---king days.  Now that is desperate. 

·         Keep you tone of voice light and happy.  Please don't make sexy talk or cutesy talk.  

·         Never ever tell a man you feel connected to them unless you have been seeing them for some time.  Yes, there are women who begin the phone and texting relationship and actually tell men that they feel a connection. To what? You only have some pictures and some words- incidentally words that are designed to entice you. That's what we do, we put our best foot forward and seldom tell people about the job we just were fired form,  our debts. . you get it.  You can't connect to someone you don't know- if you think you can, get some help. 

·       Never discuss the future with a man you have not met!  I had a friend who asked a man to consider going on a trip with her, a trip I was going on—and they had never met! 

This is important.  Many men derive a satisfaction from just the phone connection- and I'm not talking about sex.  Instead of having a real relationship they think they can connect to others and form a false belief that they are having dating and having a connection when they twiddle their fingers on a keyboard, or on that other thing, the one between their legs.  That might be all they need to be satisfied for a few hours.

In addition I will share with you one other point.  For many men the texting allows some comfort with the initial period of 'getting to know someone'.  There are great men out there but there are a lot of pussy hounds too.  men know that women are ultimately the choosers.  In other words you are the gatekeeper of your vagina.  The pressure to woo and win is daunting for most men.  I tell you to keep is short, friendly and sweet for another reason--don't lead him on. If you met before you construct some crazy fantasy (which happens) the less chance you'll bruise an ego. In the real dating world we first meet and then find common ground.  That is the way nature intended. That's why you need to know my rules- they are based on our nature- and science.  

Dr. Dawn: On line dating rules and Boundaries

Boundaries.

Rule number one.  The most sacred rule of all: boundaries.  You need boundaries.  Without them you compromise yourself, values and worse you send out the signal of DESPERATION.

Women appear to have much more desperation when looking for love than men.  If there is any cue that can bite you, it's being desperate.  Nothing men like more than a desperate woman and a woman with low self-esteem.  It attracts the worst. There are blog sites that train men how to find a desperate woman out there. 

Desperation can bring out the worst.  It leads us to wear the too tight dress, revealing too much cleavage, coming off to sexual and nixing the chance to find that commitment switch.  Being the girl next-door is probably the most powerful tactic you can take in finding Mr. Right.  One of the biggest mistakes women make is in amping up their sexuability too soon.  Good men want wholesome women who will be fabulously sexual with them and only them. If you don't agree go into therapy or become an escort.   

Let me tell you about what my friend Tara did.  She is probably one of the most beautiful women I know.  She had one goal: to find love. For the next year I watched her fumble and bumble her quest with at least twenty different guys.  For the sake of parsimony I'll narrow them down—I want you to see how attachment style feeds off of desperation.  It you looked up that word in the dictionary her face would have been plastered to it. 

            At the time of her divorce I was a teaching at a small college and I introduced her to Rob, a clam handsome divorced father of two.  I knew him well, he came from a wonderful family and had strong values and was looking for exactly what she was; a loving partner to spend the rest of his life with.  He was secure, came from a close knit family and they hit it off.  She'd call me each day and tell me of their wonderful conversations and how quickly they found shared interests and that connection.  But a months into their connection I sensed something was wrong.  

            Driving some 60 miles each way to his house, she was there every day and had practically moved in. "Don't you think you're moving too fast," I asked her.  She thought nothing of it and waylaid my fears.  But soon after he called me to tell me that he had to cool it all off.  "She's a great woman, but she is too over powering.  I think she needs time to figure out what she wants," he said to me.   The next weeks were spent weeping into my pillows and accidentally texting him.

            Her next plan was on-line dating.  After hundreds of profiles she found Barry, he looked good, had a great job and relayed that he was seeking a long-term relationship.  Barry however was our dismissive type; he was already forty and had never been married. All his vibes told me he lived to fly solo and had little need for a real relationhip—one that required real interaction—because for the next weeks they texted compulsively, chatted on the phone all night and there was still no meeting.  I had no doubt he was a pretexter- my term for those people who form on-line attachments and never move beyond the surreal world of texting and sexting because it satisfies them.  Finally she wrangled a meeting out of him.  When she stopped over before her date I was shocked.  She stood in a revealing dress, too blond, too overdone and raged desperateness. So can you guess what happened?  His picture didn't say that his head was far too puny for his body, that he had a weak chin and small female-like hands.  Nor did it say I hate desperate women.  Before they even ordered the entrée he fled the scene.  We had another week of crying and self-loathing. 

            Even approaching that desperation thing was impossible.  Next was Mr. Preoccupied—Nate. The desperate meets the desperate.  Nate was handsome and giving and soon I named him Mr. Velcro.  That name—preoccupied—it means they are preoccupied with getting dumped. When you are afraid to lose in the game of love, you tend to do one thing; wind your way into that target's  life.  He whined and wined her—practically moving into her house. He had no career to speak of other than worshiping the various women he had loved, or professed to have love.  I listened to his syrupy sweet anthems each night, and watched her walks around my house like a deranged Fellini character, in a bra and thong. I wanted to vomit.  

       Way too fast is how these relationships work because desperation feeds off other desperation.  It took some shocking realities to lift the veil; he was an alcoholic, had a criminal record, was living off his mother's credit card, had no real job aspirations and the house he supposedly lived in?  At forty, he had 8 college aged roommates.  Her puppy dog turned into a monster. 

            Now that we've described it, my next blog will detail the signs.

In the meantime tell yourself you are worthy, he needs to prove himself- not the other way around.  Men need to compete, to woo and to work for our love.  THAT IS SCIENCE my dears.

Anything worth having is worth working for- the principle of effort justification.  Google that !     

ONLINE DATING: Ok cupid, make me a match with those plenty of fish over fifty or Christian Mingle me with eharmony for a Jdate with chemistry. Yahoo!

ONLINE DATING: Ok cupid, make me a match with those plenty of fish over fifty or Christian Mingle me with eharmony for a Jdate with chemistry. Yahoo! 

So confusing!  The scientific truth is that there is little reliable research.  I just read a book review where some woman conducted her own experiment and delivers her say on the matter, without any  scientific reasoning behind her common sense rules. What she did was to dupe 90 women into thinking they were dating a man, profiles she created.  She catfished them all and her lack of ethics in doing this makes me question anything she might say. 

"I also wanted to learn everything I could about my competition. So I created profiles of 10 male archetypes and spent a month as these men, interacting with 96 women, researching their methods and scraping data from their profiles."  From http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/22/living/online-dating-amy-webb/index.html "Data, A Love Story: How I Gamed Online Dating To Meet My Match," By Amy Webb, to be published January 31 by Dutton.

OMG, are you kidding?  I've got a lot to say about algorithms used by dating sites.  Unfortunately dating-sites are not keen on giving anyone access to what they know.  But there are scientists in Universities, real ones, who number crunch and pick through the BS.  In the next series of articles I'm going to tell you the truth. I only hope those women she catfished come forward and those sites investigate. Anyone could be out therecould be pulling an "Amy."  

I'll give you the second rule: Identify the person. Try to date people in your area.  Google their names.  If you don't see their names anywhere, be suspicious.  If you find a job listing, call, ask for them and listen to their voice- just to make sure of their gender.  Speaking about gender try Gender Genie on Google, you paste some interaction in and they spit out the gender of the writer.  

If you cannot dig up this person on the internet - don't go on.  More about this later but this leads to the best way to identify--meet as soon as possible.   

The first rule?  Have boundaries.  That means getting rid of desperation, that is your worst enemy and perhaps the most difficult to tackle. Keep on dating!  Dr. Dawn Hopper