{"id":333,"date":"2009-07-19T21:51:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-19T21:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading2\/?p=333"},"modified":"2009-07-19T21:51:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-19T21:51:00","slug":"i-love-you-lets-meet-by-virginia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/2009\/07\/i-love-you-lets-meet-by-virginia.html","title":{"rendered":"I Love You, Let’s Meet by Virginia Vitzthum"},"content":{"rendered":"

I went through a bout of online dating between Todd and Steve. If I’d been tempted to do it again post-Steve (and I wasn’t), I Love You, Let’s Meet<\/a> reminded me why I vowed “never again” the last time. It’s not that you can’t meet nice people online. They are, after all, the same people you’d meet anywhere. It’s that nice people become not-nice online. The longer I trolled the internet for dates, the less sympathetic, tolerant, and open I became. The more I was treated like a commodity, the more I learned to treat other people the same way. Callous blow-offs became second nature, both to give and to receive. People-shopping was the name of the game. This one’s not perfect? Back to the pool. It’s a deep pool but soon it’s filled with sharks and you’re one of them.<\/p>\n

The other trouble with online dating is that you can’t tell the nice people from the not-nice. Anyone can fake it for a while. And the incentive to behave well with someone you’ll never see again just isn’t the same as with a person inside your own social circle. It pays to know something about the someone you’re about to dive into.<\/p>\n

I Love You, Let’s Meet does a good job illustrating these pitfalls. It also relates some success stories. And I did have a success story. But here’s the key: he was one of the first guys I met (before I got jaded and degraded) and the relationship was ultimately eroded by suspicion. We never knew each other well enough to know if we were right to trust each other.<\/p>\n

So if you’re going to date online, do it fast. Start with an open mind and get to know the people you meet. Don’t think, “there are a million more like this one.” Think, “I only have a few chances.” Be true to yourself and them and get out before being cruel feels commonplace. Better yet, get some hobbies–a new one if need be–and meet some real people. The real world is full of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I went through a bout of online dating between Todd and Steve. If I’d been tempted to do it again post-Steve (and I wasn’t), I Love You, Let’s Meet reminded me why I vowed “never again” the last time. It’s not that you can’t meet nice people online. They are, after all, the same people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}