Spot on! People tend to come to these sites because they aren't able to find someone face-to-face. I think most of the time it's similar reasons like time, commitments, location, interests... And, as you say, talking to people online can be very difficult when trying to work out who a person is.

There's been the odd times where I've come across real gems, but it's unfortunate there's usually such a big distance, geographically speaking, to make meet ups a reality. There certainly are ups and downs to this internet lark.

I've started a few relationships over the years with people I've met online, but they were guys who were willing to give me that time to trust them and feel comfortable meeting them. The one I stuck with, and was serious about, was a man who took that time to alleviate concerns I did have, both prior to meeting him and after meeting him. It unfortunately didn't work out, but that's just the way relationships go sometimes.

I'm the same though, shellsrose. If I feel pressured, I do tend to back off as it's often indicative of what I believe that person to be like in person too.

I don't believe that I said anything about sex in my post. All I'm talking about is dating.

But alright then. If you want to make it about that then yeah, I guess that it is about standards in a way. Some people are more uptight about sex than others and they feel the need to put on their profiles that they aren't looking for "fun", or that they won't sleep with someone on a first date. Others aren't and they don't get uncomfortable just talking about it and they don't moralise.

Nobody can make you do what you don't want to do unless you put yourself in a dangerous situation. Guys in general are just on here trying to chat women up but if you see that as them trying to back you into a corner and you terminate conversations with them as soon as they start talking about actually meeting that is going to come across as being unfriendly. It's happened to me several times. I'll be chatting away with a woman and she may even have said to me that she would consider meeting up but as soon as I say anything about that they just stop replying instead of simply saying that they aren't comfortable doing that yet.

No need to thank me. That post wasn't even addressed to you.

I'm afraid that I don't even understand the rest of what you're saying here though, so please feel free to clarify if you like. I don't know what you mean by "swinging that way" and it seems to me that you're reading things into my posts that simply aren't there. Are you trying to imply that I'm a slut or what?

You're the one who made reference to something in one of my posts. The conversation continued on to talk of feeling "pressured" which, I believe, can cover many situations. Sometimes pressure to maintain contact, pressure to talk off this site before a person is ready to move, pressure to share details, pressure to meet up before a person is ready, pressure for something to develop at a pace that person is uncomfortable with... etc etc.

And I know, noone can make me do something I don't want to do. That's partly the point of this thread, is it not? That if something doesn't work for you (such as conversation) then noone can make you stick with it, and why should a person feel the have to? Part of the good of internet dating - you can back off/block a person if you're in a position you no longer feel comfortable with.

I sometimes worry about how much a person can find out about you just from being here though. Do we really want to p*ss that stranger off? What if he finds his way to my town? What if he recognises me in the street? etc.

Fortunately I don't get lost in those thoughts too often, but they're definitely there if the situation goes in a way I don't feel comfortable with, which may be why I sometimes back off.

"Swinging that way" is a reference to being a lesbian. I was basically saying I have no idea whether the same issues arise with interactions with women, though I wouldn't be surprised if they do, as I don't date them.

Where have a stated you were a slut? I don't recall a personal attack on you at all. You challenged my "personality" and how that made me "unfriendly" because I challenged your comment about "picky" women, and it went from there...

What I was highlighting was, that whilst you may feel you're able to converse with people openly about where you feel things may lead, other people aren't always open to it. If anything, they find ways of manipulating conversations to meet their own end.

Alright, thanks for clarifying.

Hard for me to say if women do what you're saying because if I'm getting on with someone and she asks me if I want to meet I'll just say yes because I'm on here to meet women. I've canceled a date once though because I wasn't comfortable about it. This was a few years ago on another site and I said to this woman that I was getting fed up with none of the women wanting to meet. She said that she would meet me and then told me that it would have to be at her house because she said that she couldn't go out because of "blackouts". I asked her what she meant by that but she didn't explain and she was really inarticulate and most of her messages were "Hi babes" one liners. She lived out in the middle of nowhere and it would have been hard for me to get there and I just didn't feel that we had even established a virtual friendship and those text speak one liners can make people seem retarded. Also, my eyesight isn't great but she wasn't pretty. I've been on a few "blind dates" before and before the internet I tried the newspaper contact ads for a while. I had a woman once that said that she just liked to meet and wouldn't chat on the phone first. I met her and it was bloody awful. She looked older than my mother and she was quite snooty and uptight. I could tell you some other stories about bad dates that I had back then but it all boiled down to us not hitting it off when we met in person, whether things had gone alright on the phone or not.

That was a long time ago and I only started dating again a year ago when I put myself back on the dating site meat market. I know that I've talked about the women that I've met through this before and maybe you find it boring but I'm just trying to let you know where I'm coming from. I didn't even expect a date with the last woman that I met and I didn't even want it because I had been chatting one up on another site for two F**king months and she kept putting up roadblocks when she was telling me that she was really keen on me and that we were going to meet. I had even knocked back a date with another woman and stopped talking to all of the other women that I had been trying to chat up for this little tease.

So anyway, I checked my mail on here and there was this girl that I had been messaging for a couple of days but I was just replying to her messages and being polite and not trying to chat her up. She was just being friendly and I'm friendly too and I reply to messages when they aren't spam. She asked me if I wanted to go for a walk and she knew that I had a dog from my profile. She asked me if I thought that she was being too forward and I said no and as far as I was concerned, we were just meeting as friends. Well, we did hit it off and maybe she did pressure me a bit and she even said that people say to her that she's a guy because of that. What can I say though? She was friendly and really seemed to like me and I thought that she was kind of alright, even if I did have some reservations about her.

I've talked about this before In a thread about love at first sight. I don't believe in it but I think that if you both go into it open to the idea of something happening between you it can work. If you're negative and put up roadblocks it won't. That's what I mean by "friendly".

That does sound pretty shady so it's certainly better not to find out. Aren't blackouts related to Bipolar sufferers?



That's basically what we're discussing in relation to the OP - that being able to converse is a big part of developing that friendship. Many of us don't feel comfortable moving from the site unless we believe it's been established.



I remember you telling me some of the details, yes. It did sound like a really weird situation in the end, but at least things seemed to worked out alright for you for the most part.



I don't believe I throw up roadblocks for the most part... traffic calming measures, certainly. I guess I'm cautiously friendly.