You couldn’t make out what the man looked like from a smiling pic?…..Really?….hhmmmh….

The man involved was the shy type – didn’t like to approach women because of fear of rejection. He was quite intelligent, but as he was new in the country (he was legal), his English was heavily accented, and he was not confident enough to approach women in the area. Adding to his fears, he was also mainly unemployed, his main source of money was from participating in odd short term jobs. He spent a lot of time online, and enjoyed corresponding. Women in the same situation as him, of his own nationality, and also new in the country, wanted a man who had a steady job and prospects, so he had no success in that area despite his intelligence and above average appearance.

After that incident, he started to check online personals from women from his home country. At first he was excited because the pictures he was viewing showed young, beautiful and slim women. Unfortunately, the eastern European women were pretty quick to make direct requests about his job, income, possessions, requests for funds to make airline trips to visit him, etc. These women soon figured out he was not wealthy, (after all, a lot of them do the online thing to find a rich Western guy) so that was that, and it came to nothing. Last I heard of him he’s still single.

As for year long correspondences, my theory is that kind of thing can happen when people are lonely. They may be otherwise attached, but longing for a romantic but safe connection. The email correspondence might provide just the level of excitement they need, and by keeping it online, they might feel they are not really betraying their spouse or partner. (There is clearly an emotional betrayal involved, but people do like to fool themselves). This works only as long as both parties involved don’t mind keeping the entire relationship online. I sat next to a co-worker that kept her profile without photo up on a dating site even though she had a boyfriend. She was always really excited about all the emails she was getting. I felt that she simply did it for the positive attention. Guys generally gave up on her when she refused to send photos, but this wasn’t a problem, as she always had new guys trying to contact her. Pretty unfair to the guys involved, as she had no intention of ever actually meeting.

I understand why the woman in your story resorted to corresponding with someone for a year (as opposed to, say, actually dating people nearby), but what was wrong with the man?

Because, the way I see it, both parties have to be somehow undesirable to waste a year on a virtual romance.

…I keep hearing the internet dating sites, are the modern town square, where people used to go, to meet…

I saw a post where someone researched this,,,..there are three dating sites that have an equal ratio, or more women…I believe it was yahoo, american singles and j-date….

You know Evan that the odds of ANY average guy being able to pull 5 coffee dates a week is slim & none especially with the women he’s REALLY interested in. Now if he emails every BBW on the site I suppose it’s possible.

Btw no one gets a Friday or Saturday night anything unless they’re “qualified” for it. If I’m not seeing someone whose worthy of those nights I’m out meeting real women instantly the “old fashioned” before the internet way and having a great time doing so. All I can say is THANK GOD every woman ISN’T online dating ….lol Sometimes though both of those worlds “collide” if you know what I mean….LOL