I have been somewhat successful.
I have gone on actual dates.
I have yet to secure a date out in the wild, I’ve only gone on them from the apps.
Which still provides good practice. But dating apps are a very limited resource.
It’d be much preferable to meet people out in real life from real activities.
But that is hard to do. It requires a skill of flirting and trying a lot of activities.
I haven’t even figured out what those activities should be yet.
But for now here is what I’ve learned from dating on dating apps.
I find going on dates with strangers to be very hard because what is essentially happening is we’re trying to cram two or three interactions into one interaction.
By that I mean in the real world I’d already know I was at least somewhat interested in a person before I went out with them. We’d have exchanged some body language between us. We’d have spent some time trying to decipher each other before putting ourselves in a one on one situation with each other.
That’s pretty brutal.
I thinks it’s incredibly unnatural and probably very hard to develop anything from. (Of course a lot of people have found relationships from it.)
I’ve noticed that my sense of self gets a bit uprooted on these ‘stranger dates’ and it’s left just sort of floating around.
Any confidence I have is up in the air any insecurities I have are up in the air.
But people are usually very nice. We do attempt to make each other feel more comfortable.
When my ego starts floating about on a stranger date that is what I return to to help ground myself. That my job on the date is very simply to make the other person feel very comfortable to either like me or dislike me.
So if I am interested in a second date with a man my job is to show enough interest to make him comfortable to ask for a second date. AS WELL AS give him the out to not ask for a second date. I need to give him a comfortable exit as well.
If I go on a date and I’m not interested well that’s much harder. Now I need to make the man feel as comfortable as possible with my disinterest.
Part of that comfort comes also from politely showing my disinterest in some way so the man sees it coming.
Most men are actually very gracious with being rejected. They handle it very well.
That is the nice advantage I suppose to using the dating apps. People are gracious and open to rejection and they do not have an entitled attitude.
They’re just trying. They’re giving it all an honest effort without expecting a reward for their effort.
There’s a lot of people out in the dating world being very human with it and just doing the very best they can with whatever they have and seeing what happens.
Jess lanai 