Pray for me in online dating

[lukegabello]

Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Amen.

 

[edCiv]

I’m sorry he faded away, but when you’re online (not in real life), it’s too easy to just disappear. For your next relationship, look for someone close enough to actually meet, and make sure you really do meet them. You don’t want someone who is juggling 3 or 4 or 10 different online relationships and holding out hope for the girl who is cutest, biggest-chested, most naive or richest, to want to take it to real life. He’ll keep stringing all the girls on the hook out until they start fading out on him, and he won’t even think of it as cheating because after all, none of the online things are REAL yet, right?

If it’s impossible to find time to meet you now, how do you think it will change? Understand, if he was too busy, not available, etc., and suddenly BECOMES available for long evenings every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night, afternoon hikes on Saturdays… meeting you for lunch during work on some weekday… how do you think that happened? It’s highly likely that he had some OTHER commitment (a girlfriend? Maybe he was having issues with her and trying to decide if they would work out)… that suddenly went away. So what happens when you and he are dating and have issues of your own? Will he go back online to start flirting but not meeting anyone else, until you and he call it quits?

Please understand, I’m not discussing a specific situation, just a TYPE of situation that is possible because of the internet. Years ago, before the internet, when a person wanted to “play the field”… keep several romantic relationships on the hook and juggle dates with all… their intentions were well-known in their communities, so pretty much everyone knew that was the rule, if you date this person, it’s not serious! Online, it’s easy to keep your intentions and activities more private, more separated from your life, your neighbors, and everyone else. So if you want to play the field… if you want to flirt with one girl while seriously dating another… if you want to line up your next relationship before the last one is really over… it’s possible.

So EVEN IF he EVENTUALLY has time for you, this is not necessarily a good sign.

The only way to control for this is not to date someone … not to THINK you’re dating someone… if it’s entirely online. Just don’t let a romance blossom for you if it’s entirely online.

Let yourself get to the point where you understand this down to your CORE… so much that you understand that you can’t even FEEL the romantic part of a relationship until after you’ve met in real life. You’ve got to feel how he holds hands before you can imagine how nice it would be for him to hold your hands. I mean… what happens with a great guy that you’ve imagined would have strong, warm hands, and when you finally meet and he reaches to touch you, his fingers are cold and bony? Or soft and pudgy? You’ve got to FEEL how it feels to stand next to him, before you start fantasizing about how great it feels to b with him. The REAL person is not the same as the fantasy, so there’s no point to creating a fantasy about a guy who is warm, kind, available…

And if he has anger at you over things like that you really need to MEET him, understand that this anger is not justified… it’s part of what a fraudulent person will do to try to keep you on the hook, but it’s not real.

Dear God, Thank you for everything you have given us. Thank you for scientists and engineers who have created this wonderful new “information age”, where we get to have the internet and meet people this way. Please help this woman find the right way to use this wonderful tool, and help her meet Mr. Right. Please let that person be a good guy who has time in his life for her. Please take out of her heart, the possibility of having feelings for a person who has too many excuses for not making the relationship jump off the internet so that it can happen in real life.

And please help her use this experience to set some rules for herself on how to use the internet to meet people, so that she will not experience this same disappointment again.

Amen.

Thank you for your advice and prayers. I am in less pain today but still stings a bit. I feel humiliated because I shared my feelings with a stranger and told him and he ran away. I suppose that this is what it feels like for those girls who sleep with someone only for him to vanish after. I feel foolish for allowing myself to go so far. It’s a bit like I did something silly when drunk and now that I’m sobering up I want to hide in my closet and never come out!

I’m thinking about what you said in the first post. I have read this thread again. You said you recognized your husband and mr.right when he came into your life? That is what I deeply wish for myself. Do you mind sharing with me the story of how you knew your mr.right? I feel like a happy story ending gives hope to those of us who feel like we will never find him.

 

[attybarker]

I met my husband online. I had been divorced for more than a decade & dating. When I was between boyfriends, I’d go online & see if there was anything interesting. At the time I met him, I was between boyfriends.

He had been married about 19 yrs & the shock of his breakup showed in his online profile. He disclosed too much, which made him a target for gold diggers. I was a divorce attorney & suggested that he remove certain things from his profile. We found several things in common about our backgrounds & decided to meet. I said I would know right away if he was a liar, so he’d better have told the truth about everything in his profile… I’m a tall girl, & most men who claim to be 6 feet tall are really more like 5’8", and fudging. I can tell.

In my experience, a person who exaggerates about one thing will exaggerate about others. If it is important to me, I expect them to be able to prove it flat-out without having to explain an exaggerated claim. As a lawyer, I am used to men who want to relax & live off my income, so I would always verify their claim of income or financial savvy. I know from doing many divorces, that big earners are often also big spenders, so they’re not a great bet. I can forgive a man with a past, as long as he’s paying for it (and learned his lesson from it). But I cannot forgive a man who spends more than he earns and wants me to pick up the slack or ignore the issue.

So I was waiting for the meeting when I got a phone call. He had a hard time finding a parking space and it was exactly our meeting time when he made the call, to let me know he’d be late, he was walking on his way but wouldn’t be there on time (he ended up all of 3 minutes late). It was nice that he (a) had the same concern for promptness that I have & (b) called to make sure I was not worried about being alone. When he got there, I hopped off my stool to stand next to him & yep, he was NOT lying about being tall, he was even taller, but since he’s not EXACTLY 6’2", he explained he doesn’t claim that height. Second thing that impressed me… a very strict adherence to accuracy.

It had been 12 years since my first marriage, about 6 years since it had been annulled, so while I’d been having fun dating, I’d been frustrated at not finding the right guy. A friend had told me to pray for Mr. Right… to pray like this, you FIRST find something to thank God for… if the only thing to thank Him for is the feeling of breathing fresh air and beautiful blue skies… or a happy, lazy snow day like today… then THANK Him… then get specific about what you want. Having made a mistake, I made sure I was REAL specific. I wanted someone who was more than 6’ tall, who earned at least as much as I did and who managed their money well, who wanted children or (because I was already in my 40s), who had children already, and whose children were able and willing to love me as a family member, who had faith, who could accept me for who I am, who had compatible interests, some that were similar, some that were different, but none that were completely impossible to coordinate… who was healthy and capable, who wanted to share in making our household a happy one, and understood that being married to a professional woman probably would mean that he’d have to take a share in doing some of the cooking & cleaning & shopping and child-rearing.

There was a whole list… a LONG list. My friend had told me to make sure I asked for EVERYTHING I wanted… under the “be careful what you pray for, you just might get it” theory, you don’t want to pray for a guy who has kids, where the kids end up hating you, right? Or a man who pulls his own weight in earning a salary, but who can’t make ends meet because of all his obligations, spending habits, etc… Or (for me) a vegetarian who gets disgusted when I just NEED a good steak or pot roast or burger from time to time!..

But I also had to make sure I did NOT put down “must haves” that were frivolous foolishness… I mean, asking for Tall, Dark & Handsome starts becoming an issue if he starts going gray. Am I willing to accept gray? Blonde? Or someone who might not be classically “handsome”? And when it came to educational background, do I really need a man with a PhD? Or will it be OK to be with a smart guy who earns his keep and is not intimidated by my own degrees. Everyone has SOME kind of problems, so what kinds of problems could I live with? Could I be happy with an otherwise healthy man who had a handicap, or what kinds of handicaps could I live with?

So I thought through this list for weeks, and once I had it honed to what I really wanted/needed… and then I started praying for it every day. I got to where I had memorized it so I could say it when I was on my way to & from work… I could leave the radio off in the car, and spend my time there praying.

I got the habit of praying for people who were in trouble along the road, for the emergency vehicles who were passing me, for the victims of crashes and the family members of people who were obviously in need.

I got to know this list so well, that when I finally did meet my Mr. RIght, every new thing I learned about him, made it more & more clear that he was the one that God had been preparing me for. I was uniquely qualified to help him through the difficult emotional issues involved in his divorce, and then to re-hash it all so he could get an annulment when the time came.

I DID miss an issue in my carefully managed list…If I had it to do over again, I’d have asked God to please make the children’s mother capable of being a cooperative coparent so that we could peacefully raise the children without all the problems that could come from a difficult parental relationship… given my career, you’d think I would have thought of that up front. Oh well… we’re praying about issues that this problem causes.

And I REALLY believe in the power of prayer.