I answered the IM but was in the midst of talking to another girl with whom I really felt a connection. Without realizing what I was doing, I think I set a date and time for a meetup with some girl I didn’t even realize I was talking to. When you subconsciously set up an entire evening with someone, and you just think you’re watching TV, it’s time to reevaluate your life. I did not evaluate anything, except for the fact that I knew that the man on the television could in no way eat a three pound cheeseburger.

The date that I planned thankfully didn’t materialize. I was still completely in love with the other girl I was talking to. When the girl I was ignoring texted me asking if I wanted to catch a movie, I accepted because I didn’t want to spend another Friday night watching TV in bed. We decided to meet at the movie theater lobby. I got there a little early, but surprisingly was not nervous at all. I really didn’t give much, if any, thought to this girl who was currently secondary to that other girl. Oh the other girl, I’m glad I eventually never met you.

The theater lobby was crowded. I suddenly looked to my left. She was standing right in front of me. All of my anxiousness and insecurities came flooding back in an instant when I saw her. I didn’t know what to say, and I had no idea why. Usually when I get nervous on a date, I start talking loud and fast. She was not what I had expected at all, and we were both yet still to speak.

I really did not expect to see what I saw. She was beautiful. Not in the sense that her prettiness made me feel giddy or even that I was sexually attracted to her. It was more in the sense that I just felt comfortable and safe. She ultimately didn’t want to go out on another date. That is probably good, because I probably would have eventually ruined something great and obsessed about it for the next ten years.

Wow, that story is extremely sad. It’s probably best to bury the experience into the back of my mind. That, global warming, and my parents’ divorce will all get resolved sometime in the distant future. That is, if there is a future.

All my life I have been told the same thing over and over.  Stop slouching.  Sit up straight.  Blah blah blah.

As an adult this constant nagging of my mother still scars me.

But one thing is for sure, body language does play a critical role when dating.  And as someone who has suffered from fidgeting and self-diagnosed ADD his whole life, it was an even bigger adjustment for me.  But make no mistake.  Body language is important and will send signals to the opposite sex.

If there is one thing I have learned in life it is that women notice everything.

Here are a few reminders for your first date…

• Stand tall and walk with your shoulders straight like an alpha male would.
• Don’t slouch at the dinner table as it will make you appear childish.
• Make sure you don’t fidget with whatever is in front of you.  This will unintentionally mark you as nervous.
• Be confident with how you touch your date.  A confident arm around the shoulder or slight touches on the arm, hand, and appropriate areas of the leg will go a long way.
• Make eye contact.  Eye contact is key to showing you are a confident guy that has no fear of any woman no matter how beautiful.

Seem obvious?  Some of them are.  That doesn’t mean we don’t frequently make these mistakes regardless.  So get into good habits and watch your dating life improve.

Normally I just provide online dating advice to men, but this blog entry goes out to the men and women out there.

For women who are online dating, life can start to feel extremely overwhelming, very quickly.  Within days of signing up, most women are likely to have dozens and dozens of messages.  For some, dozens is a grotesque understatement.

And for men who are more advanced at online dating and have thoroughly learned the secrets to attraction, receiving tons of emails will become frequent as well.

The problem lies in the fact that it is extremely tough to keep up.  In fact, you will find yourself talking to so many people at times that it almost feels as if you are not talking to anyone.  All the different faces just become one big blur.

My advice?

Pick one day where you are going to send out all your first emails for the week.  I personally prefer Sunday.  Choose 10 to 12 people.  Out of those, if you are following my advice properly, you should receive between 7 and 10 responses.

Out of those seven, narrow it down to three by the end of the week.

We can’t make time for everyone out there.  Our goal with online dating should NOT be to date as many people as possible, ladies, or hook up with every girl you meet, guys.  Our goal should be to be selective.  And by setting up the right online dating profile, putting up the right pictures, and writing the perfect emails, being selective will be an option for us all.

So don’t overwhelm yourself.  Just narrow it down and stop talking to so many people!

Those that are familiar with my work are well aware that I frequently write on the subject of “looks” in regards to online dating.  I frequently am found making the argument that how good looking we are really doesn’t matter when it comes to building attraction with women online.

The other day I received a letter asking for online dating help.  In this letter I was asked the question, “Do looks really not matter?”

This question is not black and white.

Looks do matter.  However, how good looking we are doesn’t matter.

What this means is, women care what we look like, but this does not mean we have to be extremely good looking.  Women care more about our overall appearance, not how aesthetically pleasing our natural looks are.

The truth is, any man can become attractive to a woman with a simple makeover.  The right haircut, the right style, and carrying yourself the right way will boost your looks dramatically.

However, this makes us attractive to women for the opposite reasons than you might expect.  Improving yourself in these ways sends signals that we know how to take care of ourselves, can be taken around her friends, and are socially acceptable.

These qualities are qualities that do build attraction in the female mind and consequently, make them think you are better looking.

Learning the female mind is the key to being successful with online dating.  Lucky for us, there are 10 different ways to attract a woman, all providing evidence that the looks we are born with are not that important.  This makes our lives much easier!

Many people that struggle with online dating continue to struggle for long periods of time. 

They mainly struggle for one of two reasons.  Either they continue to make the same mistakes over and over again and refuse to seek help, or they are seeking online dating help from the wrong people.

The only way to improve something that is broken is to fix it by learning the correct way to fix the problem.   If you don’t take the time to learn, things will not change. 

However, some people attempt to learn online dating advice, only to find themselves struggling the same as they were before, if not more.

This is because most people who provide online dating advice are writing things that sound good in theory, but either have little real world value, or they are only writing articles because it is their job and they need to fill a deadline.

My recommendation is to learn from the best.  Find people you know that have been highly successful.  Research people who are acclaimed with positive feedback from people whom have used their systems and ideas.

 Learning from the best is the only way to get better.  So weed out all that online dating advice and start making some genuine progress.

So many men seeking online dating advice come to me with the same story…

They go out on a first date…

Everything seems to go absolutely perfect.

They have fun, enjoy good conversation, there is heavy flirting, some casual kisses, and even planning for a second first date that takes place..

And then NOTHING.

The girl disappears, never to be seen again.

So what on earth happened?

1.  We may not be being honest with ourselves.  But if the date resulted in kisses (Pending they weren’t over the top sexual) and plans for a second date were made, odds are that it probably is not that and the date did actually go well.

2.  The female is just flaky, plain and simple.  One of the problems that is inherit with online dating is that it creates a strive to find absolute perfection.  Women just never ever stop getting new messages.  They may have even received 20 new messages since the time your date ended, to when your first phone call was made.  Some of these women just keep dating new people no matter how good their first date was because they are always looking for something better that may not be out there.

My advice, just go with the flow and don’t start building houses with white picket fences until you are sure you found one that is ready to commit!  It may just not always be your fault!

Would we still need online dating if people actually talked to each other still?

Let’s face it. These days nobody talks to each other.  We are truly living in a Farenheight 451 world. 

Why don’t we talk to each other?  One word.  Technology.

These days everyone is constantly connected, hooked up, and wired in.  In fact, the other day a friend of mine, who teaches, took his class on a school trip.  He said it was the first time he ever heard his class silent.  This is because they were allowed to bring phones and whatnot in that day, so everyone was locked in on the bus ride.

This makes me kind of sad.  Technology is great, but sometimes we are just too connected.  Where there is progress, there is always a price.

With the invention of planes the birds lose their wonder.  With the invention of online dating, we no longer have to talk to people in real life anymore..

Well, maybe that is a good thing, I take it all back!

Online dating works. It really does. Every site loves to advertise the success rate its “clients” have, not only meeting people and going out on dates, but also how many of them end up getting married. Of course I knew these testimonials I was seeing on television and reading online weren’t fabricated. Yet, they really didn’t hit home with me until someone close to me met a woman on 100hookup he eventually married.

Many of my friends have used online dating as a tool to meet people for far longer then I have. But this was the first time that I knew well got married to a person they had met online. To be honest this struck me in a slightly different way than when my friends have married their college sweethearts or gotten married to people they met at work or through friends. I don’t mean to imply that that difference is negative, but rather just that it’s new.

Over the past several years online dating has become mainstream and forever influenced and changed the way that people meet, interact and date, which is something many of us are currently benefiting from. In the end I don’t know if I will find my future wife on 100hookup, through a friend or at a coffee shop. But I do find it comforting to actually know someone who is a true online dating success story.

I think the unwritten rule that once you leave college you can’t make a new friend of the opposite sex is complete bollix. I understand that, as a single male, I am much more apt to view every woman I meet in terms of her romantic potential but I am very sick of viewing woman, and our interactions, this way. Case in point, as I’ve mentioned numerous times in past blogs, I haven’t gone out on what I would consider to be a bad date in over a year. That being said, however, I haven’t been interested in going out on many second dates, which has left me in a bit of conundrum.

You see, I’ve gone out on a bunch of dates with women that I didn’t feel a romantic attraction or connection with, though I would have loved to continue hanging out with them as friends. I know that this would be a much more reasonable request if I hadn’t met the women in question on a dating site, since then we wouldn’t have met under the sole pretense of seeing if we were romantically compatible. Yet, I still wish there was some wiggle room within this construct that would allow us the opportunity to become friends.

Recently I was on 100hookup scanning the list of women who were online and I noticed a woman that I had dated last year for about two months was logged on. Our relationship ended amicably with both of us agreeing that our schedules were too conflicting and that we just couldn’t make things work. However, I’ve always felt that, had we met under different circumstances, without the burden of expectations which dating someone brings, we could have become really good friends. Of course, when we decided to stop dating we both wished each other well. Still, I am someone who believes you can never have too many good people in your life, which is why I was tempted when I saw her online recently to say hello and ask how she was doing.

Of course I know that this is a big online dating no-no since, once you cease dating someone you’ve met online, you are supposed to cut ties and go back to the proverbial dating grind. Yet, I don’t like underlying reality to online dating. Having that been said I don’t know how I plan on changing it since I might be leading the way in this revolution without anyone marching behind me. I did want to get these feelings off of my chest. In the end there are many aspects of online dating that I enjoy and am thankful that it is a resource for meeting people which is available to me. Ultimately I know you can’t always have things just the way you want them when it comes to dealing with the uncertainty and unpredictability of dating. On this one subject, however, I do wish things were different even if I’m being way too idealistic in my outlook.

I know the feeling believe me.  Getting over an ex, especially a long term relationship is tough.  And I have been there.

While there is no easy solution to getting over this, one thing is for sure: Online dating is a savior for modern times that makes the process a thousand times easier than it once was.

Think about all the benefits that online dating provides.

For starters, the best way to move on is to meet someone new.  With online dating we can begin the process as soon as we are emotionally ready.

Which brings us to my second point.  In the past it was so much tougher getting out of a relationship because you never knew the next time you were going to meet someone again.  There was just no way of knowing when the next opportunity would arrive.

With online dating opportunity is there whenever we turn on the computer.

But perhaps most importantly, online dating will keep us busy and our minds off self-sorrow.

For all these reasons, use online dating when going through this pain.  The benefits are outstanding.