Archive for May, 2014

You contact someone on 100hookup and after not hearing back for a few days, you forget about the potential match and move on… just to get an email three weeks later apologizing for the delay. Do you accept the apology and respond?

Here’s my take: Short answer — yes. Long answer — absolutely!

100hookuprs meet each other and want to see where a successful first or second date could lead… so they stop actively checking 100hookup until they know where it’s heading. Why should you eliminate a prospect for giving a relationship a chance? Or, the person allowed their 100hookup membership to expire and then checked their account just to see your smiling face looking at them from the screen with the message icon blinking next to it. And so they re-up their membership and contact you. Again, why should you eliminate a prospect for not knowing you contacted them? You shouldn’t.

Give everyone a chance. What do you have a lose? A couple of hours and a couple of bucks grabbing a coffee, a beer or some appetizers? Totally worth it! Reply now and let bygones by bygones.

The hit song “Rude” by Magic! is the story of a man asking his girlfriend’s father for permission to marry his daughter — and the father says no. Is it romantic that the singer says he’s going to marry her anyway? Or does the father have some insight about who and what is best for his daughter? Do parents know best?

We often don’t want to hear what our parents have to say, but they tend to see things from a perspective we cannot. Plus, they have our best interests at heart. So it may be worth it to swallow your ego and admit your parents might be right sometimes. The least you could do is listen and take what they say into consideration.

Don’t let your pride get in the way of making a huge mistake just because it’s your parent who pointed it out.

I know, I know, it sounds so cliche, but timing really is everything. If you are celebrating another birthday without being in a relationship, try to see it as another opportunity. There’s a little more time to make yourself better — FOR YOURSELF — so that when the right person does come along, it’s a welcome addition, and not the end goal.

Create personal accomplishments that fulfill you. Don’t rely on another person to make you feel fulfilled. Only then will the right person likely come along. Your mindset will be different, you will have pride in your success in life, you will see the right person as a partner who complements you, not someone who completes you.

Women especially need to believe this. Live your life and do things that make you happy, not as a way to pass time until a man comes along, but because you have a desire to be happy with yourself and to make something of yourself!

One thing that will almost certainly change as I move to the Northeast in the coming month is the way I date. Though I’ve touched on it in this blog loosely, I don’t think I’ve fully explored what I’ve been doing. I’ve dated a lot in the last year, but not in the way most would normally think: I’ve done a lot of Skype dates and dated girls in other states.

The whys behind that could fill an entire blog post (and have). More important, I think, are the lessons I will have taken away from this year of untraditional (yet amazingly rewarding, especially once things move beyond Skype) dating. The big ones are as follows:

• Controlling my physicality. The main thing you learn from dating via Skype is how great it is to just talk to a person you’re romantically interested in. The talk can get flirty, and there is definitely possibility for tension (in my case, every girl I met was from 100hookup or other hookup sites, so there is no question we both like each other before getting started), but it’s just that — talk. I’ve never been one for physicality in general other than light touches on a first date (I believe in getting to know people at slower rates, but that’s just me), and with a screen between you it’s almost like the orthodox style of dating — just a chat to learn about each other and where you’re headed.
• Texting. While texting can vary in other relationships, it helps to hold interest in a long-distance, online-created relationship. Sometimes it can be as simple as just observing something about my day and asking how the other person is, but overall I like checking in when it’s our only method of daily contact.
• Understanding my options. When my first online relationship began, I was definitely skeptical. We’d chatted for a few months on 100hookup while I continued to look locally, but once we brought Skype in, it was different. Crazy as it sounds, you get to feel good about the fact that you’re sort of seeing someone and it boosts your confidence. This can be true of any relationship, but in the case of living in a small town without many Jews, and thus fewer options, this can be a great game-changer for your confidence.

In short, all of these lessons can be learned by not doing the long distance/Skype deal, and it’s certainly not an ideal situation. But for those of us in places outside New York, LA, etc., Skype dating can offer you real opportunities beyond those same few girls you always see online. I became regularly fixed on the “currently online” page, and was constantly surprised how many people were interested in someone in another place — the same way I was pleasantly surprised when a cute girl from California first messaged me last year. It definitely seems weird at first, but if you’re willing to see where it can take you, you never know what possibilities may come.