online dating advice

DG reader Mike asks:

How long into a relationship is it healthy to say I love you?  Is it 2, 3, 6 months? I’m always told I’m doing it to early. I say it when I feel it.  However when the relationship ends my women friends tell me I’ve said it too early. I’ve also had women tell me they love me before I feel it’s appropriate. Is there a time frame I don’t know about?

Both parties in a budding relationship can sabotage it without knowing it. Whether it’s myriad small things or one deal breaker, these acts can make the other disengage and we may not even know what happened.

A pal shared an example of how a woman with whom he was beginning to have a relationship sabotaged his connection to her.

Dating Goddess reader Steve asks:

What is the best approach when you begin emailing someone from an online dating site, get interested, then exchange photos and lose most of your interest because the person is unattractive to you? Is this something worth pursuing? Sometimes people look better than their photos. Sometimes as we get to know someone better we become more attracted to that person. However, if there is no or very little attraction based on the photo despite the interesting email exchanges, is it worth pursuing the relationship?

There’s something backwards about online dating. You get to know the person before you ever find out if there’s a physical spark.

My pal shared his counter-stereotypical challenge: Women tried to seduce him before he felt the relationship merited it. Most of my dating men friends have stated they were ready for sex much sooner than the women they dated. Therefore I knew this pal was a rarity worth studying.

So I probed.

What is your preference for connection frequency once you begin to date a man regularly? Some people like daily chats, some think that is onerous. And when you do connect, what do you both want to hear and share?

I’ve been surprised when this issue is a bone of contention. I think most of us have the self-centric assumption that we’d share similar preferences with someone to whom we’re attracted. We may unfortunately eventually learn that attraction doesn’t necessarily mean similar values, preferences, or perspectives.

Dating Goddess reader Mark asks:

How do you know if it’s time to move on when you are enamored of the other person, but that person doesn’t return those same feelings yet is still willing to stay in the relationship?

My situation is that I really, really like this woman. She seems right for me. I’m very attracted to her, think about her all the time, gush to her in emails, and so on. I’ve been seeing her for nearly eight months, too, so it’s not like these feelings are the initial rush of romance.

She has feelings for me too and is attracted to me as well. However, she says she doesn’t have the kind of feelings she would expect to have after this much time, and the thought of meeting someone else doesn’t bother her, though she isn’t interested in looking right now.  She wonders if it’s something about where she is in her life right now rather than me, but she doesn’t know. We are both in our late 40’s and divorced.

I enjoy being with her and I really don’t want to date anyone else, and the idea of going through the whole discovery process with someone new makes me feel tired rather than excited, so I feel like I’d like to ride things out with her. I also think that we could be happy together, though for her she might be settling if she decided to stay with me.

I really like her, though, so I feel like holding on as long as she lets me hold on. No relationship will ever be perfect, and it’s entirely possible that she and I will never be in a better relationship than what we have right now.

There are a lot of bad dates out there waiting to happen. It’s the imperfect bird in the hand versus who knows what is in the bush? two birds? no birds? lots of birds that are a waste of time?

Traditional advice tells you to steer clear of these three topics early in a dating relationship. But after a man asked me on a first date to briefly describe my attitude about each of these issues, I saw the wisdom of broaching them right away.

When we are fond of a man, we look for signs of his endearment toward us. We seek affirmation that he thinks as dearly about us as we do about him. Sometimes we mistake his natural habits for signs that he is going out of his way to show his affection toward us.

For example, you are on your third date and he:

The Psychology of Romantic Love: Romantic Love in an Anti-Romantic Age by Nathaniel Branden

A friend recommended I read The Psychology of Romantic Love to help refine my perspective on relationship dynamics. The beginning section on the history of marriage is interesting, if only to understand that it’s a recent concept in human history that we marry someone with whom we are in love. Additionally, two parts stood out for me.

After my latest breakup, I decided to get to the bottom of why I would stay in a relationship that wasn’t meeting my needs and put up with behaviors I wouldn’t accept from a friend, let alone a beau. I’ve engaged the help of a psychologist friend, Ben, to help me root out the cause and heal whatever allowed me to stay in a relationship that a part of me knew was not good for me.

I’m becoming pickier as I date longer. In the beginning I’d have coffee with nearly anyone who asked, as long as he was polite, could spell reasonably well in his profile and emails, and didn’t curse or get sexual.

However, now that the thrill has worn off of meeting an avalanche of new men, I’m more discerning about to whom I’ll give my time. I encourage you to find a balance between meeting interesting new people and weeding out those who clearly aren’t a fit before committing to even coffee.