OK, I’ve never used Reddit before so forgive me if I’m doing something wrong in here and feel free to ask me any questions you might have I suppose, but I feel like I need a bit of reassurance that I am not the crazy one here.
So I will start out by saying that I (39F) have basically no experience dating. I know it’s unusual but here’s my thoughts on why.
When I was in my teens and it was normal to be very green in the dating field, I had a few platonic male friends and felt I was better served focussing on my studies. I was shy and nervous, and no guy ever tried to court me anyhow.
When I went into university, I had the perspective of I’m a little bit older and wiser, and school is a bit easier, so if something happens it happens. While I made a whole bunch of life long friends in university; every one of them was female. I have never been one for drinking and bars so when I was uni age, most of my peers were meeting partners that way, it did not appeal to me.
Then you get out into the working world where the people you see every day are a broad range of ages and marital status so it becomes really hard to meet people. While I have made a few friends at work once again they’re all female.
I have never once been approached by a man in like a casual every day situation like at the grocery store or the library or something like you see on TV and movies. I’m not delusional enough to think that many people get that lucky so please don’t come at me but it begins to make you feel invisible to the opposite gender. I know that it is possible for a female to ask a guy out but see above. I’m still pretty shy until I get to know you.
So I want to say in my 20s I did go on a few of the dating apps and none of them actually led to a date. I don’t even remember even really having much of conversation with any of the guys in these Apps. I found it very superficial because it’s All based on pictures and like practically no information about this person. So again, I kind of took the if it’s meant to happen it’ll happen and stopped using them.
Recently, I decided I would try a new dating app not being sure of anything else to try. Heck maybe this is where you guys can give me some feedback. There might be some magical option I’m missing. But here’s the major issue I have been finding with the guys I’ve spoken to so far on dating apps.
The major concern I have is most of them become very pushy to want to meet in person when we’ve spoken for only a few hours not even a full day yet in chat. I appreciate that as many men put it, they’re not looking for a penpal, this concerns me. They’re always polite and decently friendly but then after some extremely minimal small talk, they start pushing for going for a walk or going for coffee like literally the next day.
Here are my thoughts on this:
At this point, I have spoken to you for at MOST a few hours. I believe if I asked any of these guys why they chose, for example, to not include a picture of themselves on their profile or not to answer some of the questions the dating app asks or even answer some of my questions their answer to me would be we don’t know each other or I don’t want that much personal information out there about me something along those lines. But they get upset with me when I basically say I don’t feel safe meeting up with you in real life YET. I don’t know you and we’ve only been talking for a few hours. What I’m getting down to here is they might not realize it, It may be subconscious to them, but even they would have to agree with my point there that we don’t know each other and it’s for that reason they don’t want to share and be we will call it “information Vulnerable” with me.
The other aspect that I suppose is a little different for me than others, but I am also fairly petite… just under 5 foot and about 140 pounds. So while we would both be “information vulnerable” I personally feel physically vulnerable and like I would be ignoring a lot of Internet, safety rules I have been taught and teach to be meeting random strangers on the Internet after only a few hours chatting online.
So I guess what I would like is a sanity check here…. These men get upset when I say I don’t feel safe meeting you in person yet, but I would like to keep chatting here for a while and then maybe progress to a video chat. Now I am not saying that process needs to take years but a few weeks at least 🤷♀️. Honestly, I’ve never had one guy willing to tough it out and keep chatting and wait till I initiate meeting up or even try again themselves a week or two later. So I honestly don’t have a timeline expectation all of these conversations end pretty much as soon as they turn this direction. I also kind of feel like it would be different for every guy so I would never wanna put a specific timeline of. We must be chatting for at least two weeks before I will do a video call or something like that.
To be clear, this has happened three or four times now and has me questioning my sanity.
So should I start meeting these guys? taking the majority of the normal safety tips recommended ie always in a public place and drive yourself all of those things. Or am I right to stand my ground and wait for a guy who is willing to have some friendly conversation for a few weeks before taking it to real life meetings? Am I just destined to be alone? I feel like by having these expectations guys are missing out on sweet caring people who might just take a bit of extra time to warm up to them.