Thank you, again, for the invitation!

You brought up some excellent points in your comments - thank you so much for sharing and for visiting this blog.

Best wishes now and always to you and your intended.

When I turned 18, I joined a few more dating websites and put myself up for show. I got a lot of comments and it did make me feel better when I was a little down no matter how FREAKY the guys that were messaging me were. I met my first over 18 boyfriend on FacetheJury.com (big mistake…)

We were dating for awhile and I went to school an hour away and he came up maybe every week. I had taken all of my accounts down and deleted them all…we even made an FTJ account together and deleted ours. I had one left that I actually had given to a friend to use in her search for a girlfriend when she was in the closet…that was it. And let me tell you, I HAD A LOT.

Eventually, when we broke up, I was obviously not handling it well and needed a cheer me up. So I joined all of those sites again in hopes to find a guy. I didn’t, but I did find a guy through my old roommate whom I’m marrying next year.

The bad thing about deleting the sites is for lazy people, you have to remake them all…come on, that’s not THAT much and you do change frequently. My fiance now when we were just dating, I told him about my sites and such and he was a little upset so I got rid of them when we got serious.

If you’re in a casual relationship, and its kept up in case you two split, fine…if you and your person are getting serious, delete them or make them unviewable, there’s no need to be looking around and the one you’re with should be giving you all the cheering up you need.

Anyway, his approach has clarified and given ideas for me… as a current non-dater, due to precisely these fears. I do not want to feel trapped by a date, or pressured in any way to behave in a certain way, or make a certain impression…. that makes me never want to date - as it is not my style or who I am. I want to be able to feel comfortable as me - with the date, and allow them to feel the same. I liked his approach to encourage people to be themselves in the dating world and to use online dating as the tool to “meet” initially but then to really meet in person “as soon as possible” so as not to waste time, emotions, or money… lol.

However, I also enjoy online “dating” sites that offer social interactions, i.e. boards to post on and read about others ideas, blogs - as in this, etc., because one can learn about people, grow personally (if feeling a bit shy or unprepared to just dive into realworld dating), or to form a semblance of support through friends online facing similar challenges, obstacles, fears, interests, etc., to buoy one up to approach realworld dating with more confidence.

I am a non-dater just dipping in my toe right now.
But I hope to actually find and go an dates with the approach that this guy would advise. That casual, less-pressure style suits me better. And I would hope to be better able to sort through the daters better and more immediately this way too. (but I haven’t got that far yet) so- to thine own self be true - might better be a way for me to sum up my mental preparation, and keep his short-but-”real” tips handy.

Thanks for sharing this cool video lesson!

(p.s. wish this blog-site offered italics, bolding, and a way to correct/edit the blogs… as this lack of it took me a lot of time to try to get “it” as “right” as I could… thanks again.)

~MTJM~