Online Dating
Part Three
Welcome to the world of online dating, from the ladies’ perspective. The research to be able to write this has involved chatting to more than fifteen ladies, both online and in person.
In her own words…
‘We are sick to death of guys mistaking dating sites for pornhub. Asking for naked selfies, video sex and all the other disgusting requests just makes us want to stay right away from men. Completely! It shows that these guys have zero respect for women at all. Absolute filth! Hiding behind their keyboard personas and making snide or filthy remarks. Gutless and nasty. You block and report them, and in a week or two they are back, with a new profile and name.
And don’t get me started on those pseudo-religious assholes living overseas that are constantly trying to scam you with requests to get them a flight to Australia because they want to marry you. What a piece of crap that is. Do they even read the news about borders being closed? Stupid shitheads, just wasting our time.’
The reality is, ladies do not want to be sent penis photos, or dick pics as they are commonly called. One lady I spoke to had given up trying to block all the men who sent her dick pics. Instead, she decided to rate them from 1 to 10, often giving a low rating of about 2.5. Then, using her nursing skills she has written to the men suggesting what kind of malady they may have or other socially transmitted disease. She gets quite a joy out of that, apparently.
She even remarked that the photos she gets remind her of her father’s comments to her brother when he was an angry teenager. Her Dad used to say ‘Get a grip on yourself!’ She thinks a lot of men are doing just that. Chiromaniacs, she calls them – suffering from satyromania.
One friend of mine keeps her hair reasonably short. It’s really obvious in all her photos, yet one date walked into a cafĂ© to meet her, holding his phone, checking the screen and looking around. He walked up to her and around behind her, said ‘short hair, stuff that’ and walked away. She told me she was quite glad she had not wasted much time in trying to involve herself in a relationship with such a person.
Another lady I know in Sydney said she was once meeting a man for a walk in one of the city parks. She sat and waited more than an hour and was ‘ghosted’, because the man never turned up. It seems that these actions by men are quite common – possibly the men do turn up and decide, based on looks, not to meet the waiting lady.
Other women I have chatted with are very scared to even meet in real life, partly due to global virus concerns, and partly because of an innate fear for their safety, and sometimes even out of fear of rejection.
Yet almost all women I spoke seek a man with a bio in his profile, photos without sunglasses, and for men to respond to messages. They want real men, with Dad bods, beards, and hair on their chests, though preferably wearing a shirt in their profile photos. And, as one woman commented, is it too much to ask for recent photos? One wonders if the masculine gender is up for the calling?
They get the fact that men have hobbies such as drinking, fishing, off-roading (be it dirt bikes or 4WDs), camping and footy, yet they want to see a natural photo of the guy. Pictures of him without the support of his favourite toy, or his latest fishing or hunting catch, are preferred. They are not expecting a man to be out there daily, hunting food for the table to feed his next partner.
A friend of mine met a guy online who messages her with all kinds of innuendo. She sort of laughs about it, and says they haven’t even been on a real date yet. He is a chef, and drops off some lovely traditional cakes and pies reminiscent of his former Eastern Block homeland. She agrees it’s all a bit bizarre, and wonders if perhaps that’s that how they date women there?
Ladies do not want to start chatting online with a guy and then have him ghost her, to simply disappear. A typical comment is that they ‘want to meet someone real and honest. Surely that cannot be too much to ask?’ However, it seems that it is simply too much to expect from users of dating sites, where men are abusing those sites for sexual predation.
Sadly, for the real men who are genuine, online trust is difficult to gain, because many ladies have been burnt by depraved guys.
More than a few ladies have this to say – ‘Yes, we know you are proud of your muscles and your tattoos, but we think you will look so much better wearing a shirt instead of a singlet. We call them wife–beaters for a reason, and it’s not a great look for your profile image. We accept that you like a beer or two with your mates, though it would be cool to see some photos of you without a beer in your hand, and not with your mates. We are looking for a single man, not a men’s club. We also would like to see that you know how to brush your teeth and your hair, that you understand basic hygiene. It’s not every woman’s dream to have a caveman’.