So you’ve met someone great and you’re gearing up for that first date. You’ve picked out the perfect outfit, know where you’re going and are in the process of figuring out what to do with your hair.
But something that can kill the connection even after all those crucial steps are met?
Terrible conversation.
Nothing is worse than sitting across from someone who you realize checks out perfectly via text messages and phone conversations, but is a complete dud in person as far as conversation is concerned.
So, here’s some advice to get them, or you, talking.
First, don’t try too hard. Don’t push conversation. You want to be natural and it’s natural in any conversation to have a silence or two.
If I’ve learned anything through my journalism background, it’s that people love to talk about themselves. Be prepared to ask your date questions about their hobbies, their job or anything else that is a somewhat light topic that can’t be answered with a ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Where did they grow up? Do they have any brothers or sisters? Play off questions like this. It will keep the conversation interesting for both of you.
However, don’t take this as an open opportunity to ask about ex-boyfriends or ex-girlfriends. In fact, don’t take any opportunity on this first date to open up the ex-files. Believe me, you don’t want it and neither do they.
Also, unless you are as open-minded as God himself, do not bring up topics revolving around politics or religion. How about we don’t shoot ourselves in the foot before we’ve even digested our dinner, okay?
Last, don’t be afraid to joke about an awkward or embarrassing moment during the date. It’ll show that you don’t take yourself too seriously and you have a sense of humor, which can be hard to find in people sometimes.
Last year, Atlanta took it all, but apparently it wasn’t hot enough to keep the flames going. That’s when the Big Apple stepped in.
So, how does a city get these rankings? Well, you have to look at a few different factors including the nightlife and the cost of living alone.
But, what gave New York the edge over, say, Los Angeles or Miami? The fact that it had the highest number of singles using online dating sites.
While the economy has been tanking and many are worried about the uncertainty of where their next paycheck is coming from, New York seems to have set its priorities from financials to finding love, Forbes.com reports.
Boston, Chicago, Seattle and Washington, D.C. came close to New York, but no cigar.
Many have said that New York is the perfect place to fall in love — whether it be just with the city or that someone special. But this is the first year that Forbes.com has confirmed that with their annual report.
Here is a list of eight great places throughout Connecticut to take that special someone out on a date. I’ve given you the place, which is half the battle, so please, for the love of God, don’t blow it.
This little coffee joint is a cool, relaxed place to take someone you want to get to know. The atmosphere is different and well-decorated and the service is great. The coffee and drink menu is decent, including smoothies and blended drinks if you’re not feeling like something straight-up espresso.
There’s also a breakfast and lunch menu if you get hungry.
If you’re looking for a place with a little edge to it, Black Eyed Sally’s is your match. It’s got burger sliders, pulled pork sliders, wings — and it’s all delicious.
They even have Fat Tuesdays at Sally’s with live acoustic rock and $5 pitchers and plates.
Do you or your date have a little Michael Jackson obsession? Well, who doesn’t now that he’s dead, right? Anyways, MJ’s family has a little obsession with the ricotta donuts served up at Market Restaurant. So much so, that they ordered them so they could be served at his funeral.
This new comedy club is great if you’re ready for a laugh. It targets the 30+ age range, claiming that its comedians are “a bit spicy, but never gross.” The comedians come from all over the nation, so you never know who might just pop in for a bit.
This place always has a few events to choose from every month. From the Bridgeport Sound Tigers, to national bands to American Idol tours to circus acts, you really can’t go wrong. But be sure to plan ahead, as many of the events are sporadic.
Looking for something a little more romantic? Then this is your place. Bella Fiore Restaurant has a relaxed, candle-lit atmosphere with a wonderful Italian menu.
They have private corner booths for you and your honey to relax in while enjoying excellent service and decent wine.
This lounge is the perfect place to cozy up to your date. With chairs, loveseats and couches with privacy drapes throughout the place, you can’t help but want to get a bottle and get comfy.
Is your date a little punk? Well, this punk rocker bar will be right up their alley. Just one catch according to them: “Cool cats, hipsters, hot broads and greasers are welcome; hotheads, bad attitudes, people with barbed wire tattoos and obnoxious drunk girls: please stay home!”
The bar even has a reputation for being haunted – if that’s what you’re into. Guests say that they’ve seen shadows in their pictures and have an eerie feeling at times.
Something I’ve noticed about us women: We are persistent.
Whether it comes to our career, our family or our friends, we will stop at nothing to get what we want.
While I find this an amazing trait and probably the backbone for many of our successes, I also think this may be the great demise to some of us as well.
I was talking to one of my good guy friends yesterday. The conversation flowed to our recent dating stories. The central theme in his? That after a while, he would lose interest unless he was friends with the girl first.
Being me, I asked him about 40 roundabout questions regarding this. Why? Do they all have the same personality? What’s going on?
My conclusion? They all saw my friend as a personal challenge.
He even explicitly told one girl that if he were to start a physical relationship with her without being friends first, he would eventually not care.
What happened that night? They had a full-on make-out session.
Next day? He ignored her.
To take from “He’s Just Not That Into You,” she thought she could be the exception, not the rule.
This problem of persistence and continuously believing you’re the exception can give a girl a bad reputation.
But, as the movie states, most women are the rule, not the exception. And once we realize this, the game for guys becomes a little tougher, and in return, a little easier for us.
Don’t expect to change a guy’s ways right off the bat. If he tells you that he’ll lose interest, he probably will. If he tells you that he’s not really looking for anything right now, he probably isn’t. If he tells you he doesn’t want to commit, he probably won’t.
And no matter how awesome you are, it most likely won’t change his mind right away. Or at least not fast enough where it will be satisfying for you.
So stop chasing, wasting your time or doing anything else crazy to get him to notice you.
There’s so many other guys out there who are ready for casual dating, a relationship, or whatever else your little heart desires.
Last week, I turned 23. It was kind of a big deal.
A big deal in the sense that most of my friends who are 23 or older are in serious, happy, marriage-bound relationships and I am not.
Shocker, I’ve just finally realized this.
I don’t necessarily feel the need to rush to find someone, more or less believing I’ll find the right person when the timing is right.
However, I’ve noticed that the questions have become a little more prevalent in conversations with friends and family as to if I’m “seeing anyone” or if I’ve “found anyone,” always asked with caring, slightly-sad, yet-possibly-optimistic-depending-on-my-response eyes.
I once joked with a friend that I’d get serious about finding someone once I turned 25, a search which he dubbed “husband hunting.”
But, jokes aside, what happened to the fairy-tale romances that you hear about where you meet someone and fall for them, no hunt involved. Do they even exist in a world as fast-paced as ours?
With our new crazy schedules that rarely involve 9 to 5, lifestyles that barely resemble those of our parents and social lives that revolve around cell phones, social media sites and e-mail, I don’t know if it does.
Or at least it doesn’t in the context Disney portrays and 1950′s romance soirees.
And if it’s out there for me, it’s yet to sweep me off my feet. And I refuse to settle until it does.
I also refuse to make up scenarios where I construe feelings I don’t have into feelings I do, or worse yet construe events that have happened into a better situation with more favorable outcomes.
With a divorce rate of nearly 60 percent in our country, I believe it’s okay to fess up to what you’re feeling and what has actually happened before becoming a statistic.
And until I do get swept off my feet, I’m content working on my career, being with my friends and family and just having fun being me.
This is Part III of my dive into understand the phenomenon of online dating, if you haven’t read Part I or Part II, you probably should.
So where were we?
Dating sites commonly provide a broad outline or example of what users should do to be successful on them. Match.com offers tips before the user is able to write about themselves. This helps to make up the definition of “quality singles,” as Match.com names them. These people are described by Match.com as someone who approaches new people themselves, moves throughout a room mingling with ease and is open to new experiences while being witty and articulate. With these guidelines fed to the users of their site, many Match.com profiles seem to be similar in responses – all with a coherent format and use of words.
This may be helpful, as during every login that the user does, a dating site gives between 300-500 matches. With the ability to scan matches due to the ease of knowing what is where and a coherent format of each profile, it helps the user to be more productive with the time that they use to find a suitable mate.
With the use of words, comes the ability to put up a picture. Match.com also has suggestions for this process of the profile making:
If you are not extra lean, keep your shirt on
Don’t stand in front of a yacht if it’s not yours (my personal favorite)
Need to drop ten pounds? Be prepared to date someone who needs to do so as well
While this may seem like a pivotal part of the profile, some people do not want to put themselves so far out in the public sphere by having a picture attached to their dating advertisement.
When author Hardey met with Marlene, a 45-year-old single female, she stated that she would “not put a picture up because that’s too public and I want to get to know a man first.”
This phenomenon of knowing someone emotionally first before knowing their appearance is relatively new. Meeting someone out or through a friend would have to include both one’s personality and physical’s attractiveness as well.
After the profiles have been made and searched, individuals contact each other to begin their own type of self-disclosure. Users behind a computer screen report revealing much more quickly because they know they can cut off communication without ever having the repercussion of having to meet the person or share a public space with them for long. Many let go of their anxieties and apprehensions that one would normally have if s/he were to meet initially face-to-face for the first time, and instead become more intimate with a flurry of e-mails spanning over a few days or weeks. Offline dating tends to move slower – generally with one to two dates a week for a few months before progressing into a more intimate knowledge of each other. Online dating has the potential to be the catalyst of emotional intimacy, displacing time compared to offline dating by allowing for more contact in a shorter time frame, according to Hardey.
Most Internet users foster an environment where honestly and authenticity is valued and ultimately the key to success. A 2006 Internet dating poll conducted by Match.com concluded that 86 percent of individuals who go onto online dating sites are there to seek long-term mates, while 14 percent say they are looking to see what’s out there, though they are not ruling out beginning a long-term, monogamous relationship.
Once the information about each other is gathered and individuals decide to move to the next level of knowing one another, then para-social interaction can be taken to the face-to-face level, or, it can stay as it is. Many enjoy the distance relationship that a computer-to-computer interaction can bring. In this detached attachment, many have relationships that are spontaneous and casual – shunning intensive personal involvement by having the face-to-face meeting, which may or may not begin a serious commitment to another individual started by a virtual space.
Many do not believe in stopping at the point of para-social, or computer-to-computer communication. Most who find a suitable mate after numerous e-mail and messaging exchanges do in fact take it to a face-to-face level.
However, this doesn’t always go as planned.
Daniel, a 28-year-old dental hygienist, described one of his many meetings offline as follows:
“We arranged to meet up in a pub in London and I was a bit put off by the way her stomach seemed out of proportion for her frame. The other thing was that she kept on touching – just sort of reaching out all the time which I found a bit odd for a first meeting. It was not that she had lied about herself but just what she was like and how she acted with me when we met. It was hard to realize that she was the same person.”
According to Match.com and E-Harmony.com success rates – this is not usually the norm. Individuals become so involved in the relationship before this stage that it is hard to turn back once they actually meet face-to-face.
Arvidsson describes the interaction on Match.com, “evolves on the basis of the assumption that true love is contingent on a true and authentic experience of selfhood, and revealing inner self and its true desires.”
With this being said, offline and online dating all try to reach one common goal – to find a mate suitable enough to spend a long duration of time with. The goal is the same, but possibly more focused through online dating since offline dating has many more casual encounters. Overall, online dating allows for honed-in productivity to find a mate, leaving chance out of it and getting directly into the person of interest at hand. This displaces place by shortening the time frame that was once used to get to know someone before taking the plunge into a monogamous relationship, and instead allows for a deeper, personal connection before initial face-to-face confrontation.
This is Part II of my little investigation into the phenomenon that is online dating. If you haven’t read Part I, I suggest you do before you dive into this puppy.
Let’s pick up where we left off, shall we?
Many Web sites begin with straightforward questions such as height, weight, age, religious views, etc. Then, more esoteric questions are asked such as what the user enjoys doing on weekends, what makes them most happy, etc. Finally, the user is given the opportunity to describe their ideal match – right down to the shade of brown hair, if they so choose brown hair to begin with.
Next, the user is given the opportunity to put themselves into written word. While some do not feel at ease doing such a thing, as one 31-year-old male on E-Harmony.com wrote, “I don’t feel comfortable having to describe myself, but I understand it has to be done, so here we go…” as an opening line, others flourish. Take for example Jane, a 35-year-old woman with two children:
“I am what you might call a ‘modern independent woman.’ I have a good career and stand firmly on my own feet. I do not like to depend on anybody and therefore look for someone I can have an equal relationship with. I will not allow you to dominate me and will lost interest instantly if I can dominate you. I have two children, though they live with their father three days a week. If you are not sure about children, do not bother me. I am not looking for a casual relationship; I simply do not have time for it. I have done two degrees and speak three languages and have my own company. And, in case you are wondering, I am very attractive, dark hair, blue eyes. Ideally, I would like to meet someone between thirty-thirty-five years old, tall and dark hair. If you are a businessman – great – we’ll have something to talk about. You need to be a graduate and have a good career. If this sounds like you it would be nice if you send me a note and tell me about yourself. I’ll reply and we can see if we get along.”
An introduction such as this would never be done during an in person meeting. In fact, this much information, including the domination and accepting of children might not be done until a month into seeing each other. Online dating is definitive in that it allows for people to actively seek ideal matches from the comfort of their own home, and learn about them before they ever know the user had the slightest bit of interest.
Hardey states that the “about me” section of the online dating profile is to “provide an important point of contact information from which others decide whether to enter to communicate”. Therefore, the advertisement that users place allow for others to instantly accept or reject them – displacing the need to go out and meet someone to “get to know them,” then cutting off the individual if they did not suit your needs.
I find the idea of online dating extremely intriguing, like a dog that walks on its hind legs while dressed. I’ve also noticed that it seems to be blowing up lately. So, I decided to do a little research and investigate the phenomenon. It ended up being a little more than I expected, so I’ve broken my findings down into three parts.
Without further ado, this, my friends, is what I have found:
Within the past five years, the social world of dating has undergone extreme changes. No longer does it resemble that of meeting someone through a friend or at a public location after work. Now, meeting your partner is potentially a click away.
Internet dating sites are a “comparatively efficient venue for finding a partner” according to Adam Arvidsson, author of “‘Quality singles’: internet dating ad the work of fantasy.” With so many Web sites that are tailored to this specific want, over 1,000 with a 48 percent” growth rate since 2005 and 74 percent of all single Internet users having tried at least one, it is hard to see how there could be so much growth within a high success rate – which they do have. In 2008, 72 percent of all matches online which became successful offline, face-to-face relationships married within one year. Couples who met offline were almost half as likely to be married in one year, with only 36 percent marrying in that time span.
Online dating gives users something offline can’t always accomplish – compatibility testing. This feature isn’t new, as computer matching has been around since 1960 with the IBM 1404 computer matching questionnaire. However, the approach is now much more different and evolved.
Two of the largest online matchmaking sites are Match.com and E-Harmony.com. Match.com is owned by Ticketmaster, which gives it solid backing. E-Harmony is said to be a more niche oriented dating site for a “higher class level the average Internet date seeker.” Both of these sites offer the ability to describe yourself in an unlimited fashion, surveying of numerous issues and circumstances within your life, photo uploading capabilities and also compatibility testing – all for a small fee.
E-Harmony has had numerous complains about the selectivity of their site. Many are not accepted due to their interest in men or women, or even other factors, such as class status. Furthermore, numerous complaints have been filed stating that “fake” profiles have been set up in order to keep consumers interested and paying the six month fee. Therefore, with all of the controversy surrounding this Web site, this paper will focus largely around Match.com, which is also the number one dating site to date in the United States.
Simply put, online dating sites allow people to place advertisements of themselves for other to see. They also have the ability to actively search out partners, all included in their membership fee. These sites’ mimic the idea of advertisements in a newspaper, however, they carry more freedom. Michael Hardey states within his article “Mediated relationships: authenticity and the possibility of romance,” that “internet dating parallels newspaper ads – only online ads are unlimited.”
By giving people the ability to write more about themselves, they are able to explain themselves in a way that may be more enticing. Within a newspaper, usually the character limit is so small that it can at times encourage a draw on culturally stereotypical descriptions of masculinity or femininity, meaning that in order to attract the opposite sex, the posters believe their advertisement must be flashy and straightforward with no mystery. Online dating has the ability to erase this stigma along with give people more of an opportunity to learn more about their potential mate before meeting face-to-face.
The phenomenon of Internet dating can be characterized as a cycle of reading descriptions, writing responses and exchanging messages. This can be a contrast to that of offline dating as the user doesn’t necessarily have to deal with the face-to-face awkwardness and potential embarrassments of meeting someone, as writing and exchanging messages allows for the ability to edit an unlimited amount of times until the message is perfectly crafted – in their eyes at least.
However, before that message has even begun to be crafted, the user must first set up an account on the Web site of their choice. The ability to describe yourself limitlessly through the Internet potentially allows for a great ability to use the mechanism of imagination and empowerment. It allows users “to construct mutual symbolic meanings, shared experiences and affective bonds is to put us to work to generate content that is commercially successful,” according to Arvidsson. Basically, the user is creating an advertisement that will attract a quality partner.
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So you’ve met someone great and you’re gearing up for that first date. You’ve picked out the perfect outfit, know where you’re going and are in the process of figuring out what to do with your hair.
Get your train bags ready my beautiful Connecticut ladies, love is just a Grand Central ticket away.
Here is a list of eight great places throughout Connecticut to take that special someone out on a date. I’ve given you the place, which is half the battle, so please, for the love of God, don’t blow it.
Something I’ve noticed about us women: We are persistent.
