Posted inAssessing your assets Dating after 40 From fear to frolic: sex

He wants to get sexual — online!

A DG reader writes:

This has happened a few times so am wondering if it is just me, or is common with midlife guys — or just midlife guys on online dating sites. We begin a fun banter via email or IM. I don’t get dirty with them, just playful. Some time passes — anywhere from an hour to a few weeks. We haven’t met. Their IMs go from playful and flirty to dirty, telling me what they want to do to me, or what they imagine us doing naked, etc., often graphically.

I say I don’t want to go there. They persist. I sign off. They apologize. Then they start again.

If I don’t care about the guy, I block his IMs. But if I liked him before he went porno on me, I think I ought to give him a second chance. Should I just put my foot down and say I’m uncomfortable going there? Or should I play along, knowing I’ll never meet some of them anyway? If I play along and then we agree to meet, I’m afraid he’ll jump me as soon as we say hello.

Posted inDating after 40 Winning at the online dating game

Too-intimate first contact

DG reader Toni asks:

What is your sense about men who react to your online profile with a gushing email about how you are probably ‘the one’ for them, etc. and also who make several references to making love, the afterglow, etc. I feel uncomfortable when if a man seems to idealize me without ever meeting me…and also with references to sex, though I certainly like sex…but somehow it seems a bit out-of-form to bring it up in an introductory email. What is your take on all this?

Posted inDating after 40 Dating chemistry First-rate first dates

Clothes make the man

Nearly eighteen months ago a man sent me an email on a dating site where I wasn’t a member. Although he was in the right geographic, age and height range, his pictures showed an unsmiling, sunglasses-wearing, goatee-sporting man in a sports-team T-shirt holding up a newspaper with an unreadable headline. Huh? This is the best picture the man thought represented him to his future match?

Since I wasn’t a member of the site, I couldn’t read his email, but was allowed to send a site-generated “No thank you” response.

A year later he showed up on another site where I could see he’d looked at my profile several times. After several months of seeing his picture appear in my “who’s seen you list” I became curious. He’d posted a few more pictures on this site and he looked less off-putting than he did in the one pic on the previous site.

Posted inCheck him out before going out Dating after 40 Winning at the online dating game

Getting to know a man through Google

A new man contacted me who held some allure so I promptly did a Google search, armed only with his profile’s unusual alias and his city. A wealth of information was divulged.

I read the posting he’d made in public forums so could see his comments were thoughtful, articulate, and had correct spelling and punctuation. I agreed with many of his views. Most of us aren’t particularly guarded when we post something to a forum, especially if using an alias. So the fact that he didn’t curse or call other postors idiots — as others in the forums did — showed me he had a sense of appropriateness and decorum.

Posted inDating after 40 Dating chemistry Multidating responsibly

My boyfriend, whom I haven’t met

fog manA man has been wooing me the last 6 weeks, first via email while I was abroad, then during daily phone calls, emails and/or text messages.

We haven’t met, however, because 3 days after I returned home, he was called to his dying mother’s side 2000 miles away. While the doctors told him she only had a few days to live, she lived two weeks, only passing the other day. This week he’s finishing her burial plans and awaiting the rest of the family’s arrival for her funeral next weekend.

Posted inDating after 40 From fear to frolic: sex Winning at the online dating game

“I’m not just some girl you met on the Internet”

[googmonify]8790107066:right:120:600[/googmonify]Private PracticeA few weeks ago on “Private Practice” two colleagues decided to take their sexual chemistry to the “friends with benefits” level. However, when in the bedroom ready to commence, she couldn’t go through with it, claiming that sex together would cheapen their relationship.

She exclaims, “I’m not just some girl you met on the Internet.”

In other words, she’s saying that Internet dating sites are the equivalent to hookup sites — prostitution without payment. Easy sex. Women who list themselves on the sites must be loose.

Hmmm.

Posted inDating after 40 Dating chemistry First-rate first dates

“I’m a nerd!”

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So said the professor with a Ph.D. and several masters degrees. My Google search revealed a page (not written by him) that called him “a famed professor” in his area of study. Other sites also lauded him. So I thought perhaps he was being modest when saying he was a nerd as he pursued me by sweet, thoughtful emails and phone calls.

His initial email said he was from out of state — 2000 miles away — but was planning to relocate to my area. I am a sucker for a man with good writing skills, so I responded and soon a vigorous email and phone conversation was launched.

UrkelWhen I met him a week after his first email, I saw that he was telling the truth. Can you imagine a 56-year-old Steve Urkel? I’m afraid the similarities were scary. Instead of hiked-up pants, he wore an ill-fitting patterned jacket with clashing shirt. His hunched shoulders suggested a form of osteoporosis or some other back malady. But as I stood straighter, so did he, so it seemed more habit than affliction.

He had braces, which seemed to be helping pull in his buck teeth and closing the gap of several missing ones. This also explained, in part, his lisp. His amblyopia, or lazy eye, kept me guessing which eye to address.