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Wellness Wednesday for September 18, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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> Requests for advice

What's a reasonable "ghosting" protocol when it comes to online dating, assuming that I do want to rescue the conversation if-and-only-if the counterparty dropped the convo accidentally due to Universal Zoomer ADHD?

Trying out OLD recently, finally found what seemed to be a great match locally last weekend, but she went radio silence about 24h before a nearly-scheduled date. Not blocked, still "matched" on the site, and she shows up as "online" occasionally.

Current plan — asking in part for a sanity check on this — is to wait just under a week, maybe till Friday morning to allow for scheduling, then ask something upbeat and understanding like “hey, did you survive this week?” as the last outbound contact before writing it off as an intentional ghost.


Friday Evening

Me: … Well, let me know if the [local rock] concert next week sounds interesting or if you'd rather just grab coffee — or even lunch at a Chinese buffet? 😋
(I like rock music a bit, but not enough to bother going to a concert alone, so let me know either way!)

Her: Coffee would be amazing too I love iced coffee and I’m sorry but I can’t eat in front of someone new for awhile I’m very self conscious about that😂
I like to try new places that aren’t popular there’s this [very interesting cafe about an hour's drive away] I wanna visit but I can’t this Saturday however I can Sunday! I work a 9-5 Monday-Friday so I have money while I’m getting my business off the ground

Me: hmm, a drive up to [other state] this Sunday? 🤔Could be fun! I'm always down for obscure and interesting places.
What's the address, and have you got a specific timeslot in mind?
I was looking at checking out a church this Sunday (11am service), but could push that ahead a week

Her: Ooo which church I would love to go if that’s okay?

Me: Sure, I was looking at [nearby church] — it's a bit nontraditional (rather, they say they follow a non-mainstream tradition, Theosophy)
of course, as I said, I haven't actually been there yet so don't judge me if they turn out to be 100% crazy 🙈

Saturday morning

Her: I’ll look into! It might be interesting

Me: OK, I guess I'll see you tomorrow at 11am at [nearby church] and then maybe visit the obscure [other state] restaurant after?
*or 10:45 more like, so we can say "hi" beforehand

Sunday Morning

Me: OK, I'm heading out now to check out the church.
I don't have [dating site] on my phone, so if you want to tag up today — [cell#]

Me: (few hours later) Are you still interested in going to [that obscure cafe you mentioned] today?
It's an hour's drive there and an hour's drive back; if we leave around now, that would give us enough time for about a half-hour to eat and chat before I need to be back in [our town] by 4pm.

I agree with the other posters here suggesting shorter texts (even one sentence or less) are far better at maintaining a degree of mystery (and thus: interest). While laying all your cards face-up on the baize may seem straightforward, honest, reasonable, and even the Behavior That Was Asked For, that's only ever a strategy when teaching someone a new game--and usually what not to do.

Reworking the above:

Friday Evening

Me: … [local rock] concert. Let's do it.

Her: Ok!

or: .....

Either response is fine. As it is it took you several texts and a lot of hope to get to .....

Shorter sentences. Online dating isn't Motte effortposting. No emojis ever, for any reason. No exclamation marks. Suggest something fun. If she doesn't want to do that thing, be polite and move on. She will never refuse your advances directly, it's hard enough to do that in person--online she can just ghost you. Then if she gets bored or lonely she can reinitiate the interaction (Your self-respect should not allow that to occur.)

But again, always be courteous. Be courteous to a fault. Becoming the angry FuckYou guy just reinforces all popular modern stereotypes re: men. Not that you need to give a shit, but courtesy is a good thing.

People are saying church is lame. Why? It was her idea, though you brought it up. I agree church-as-date seems very unromantic and unexciting. It reminds me of that Life in Hell cartoon of biggest turnoffs before intimacy ("Dear father please forgive us for this vile sin we are about to commit.")

Anyway that's a You thing. We don't all run in the fast lane. I guess. The fact that she was responding with such relative vigor suggests she is either keen or mildly neurotic. Safe money on door #2 (see: I can't eat food around humans.)

Cut your loss, which is minimal. Next adventure begins any day now.