Dear Desolate:

I read your latest post and re-read part of your original post.

You wrote regarding the online dating experience you had: ” I just can’t emotionally handle it anymore…(‘it’ being:) repeatedly opening myself up when getting to know someone and constantly being let down, lied to, taken advantage of, etc.”

This is my input about your online dating experience and how a different attitude and MO may work for you, if you try it again:

Do not open yourself up like you did before, not on first, second or third dates. That didn’t work and so, abandon it.

Instead, observe, learn and evaluate. Use Online Dating as a school you are attending. Keep your focus on learning who this woman is and who that other woman is. Pay attention. Ask questions (gently, not in an interrogative way). If she asks you a question, keep your answer short, or tell her you are not ready to answer this one yet.

Meet the women in a coffee shop settings during the day, if possible, or otherwise in early evenings. No big-dates production of dinner-and-a-movie. You are doing this to LEARN, not to date.

If a woman survives the first two casual meetings and conversations, if you and her are interested, meet in a park – again, during the day if possible. Continue to learn.

Slowly, gradually, it may happen that a particular woman, maybe one out of a hundred, makes a very different experience for you, and it being a Win-Win experience. Then you start dating her.

Until then, this is not dating, it is learning. Exclusiveness is for dating, not for learning. Be open with your objective, to learn as it is a good policy for the woman as well: learn who the person is before you get emotionally invested.

anita