Online dating is our continuing theme and there’s always another online dating story I can share. As a dating venue, lesbian online dating has become extremely popular but it doesn’t always produce the results we hope for and honestly not all the hot lesbians are online!
There are now over 1600 online dating sites. And people come up with new ideas for making a site unique and special all the time. DatingAdvice.com has a good report on lesbian online dating sites you might want to check out.
When I jumped into online dating 10 years ago, it was new, it was buggy, it was full of guys posing as women and women who had no idea how to use the clunky systems that were used to host profiles.
Technology has come a long way and so have dating sites since the early years. I met my girlfriend, Lisa, online just over 9 years ago. No, I didn’t know about requirements, needs and wants. I had no idea what conscious dating was and I was certainly being driven by those drugs we call hormones.
Way back then, I remember just doing a sort of wide-open search. Lisa was one of hundreds that showed up but she definitely caught my eye. The problem was that she lived in Florida and I lived in Maine.
I was young in lesbian years, excited about meeting someone and so I dove right in and wrote her. I probably wrote some other women at the same time, but I’ve no memory of anyone else. I was excited about what I saw in her pictures and I liked what she had written – she came across as fun, active and interested in exploring life. I certainly found her to be attractive and I liked that she seemed to have a certain relaxed presentation about herself.
Her picture looked like she’d just stepped off the beach (turns out she had.) Her hair was pulled back in a very casual way. As if she’d just grabbed it back and stuck it in an elastic band with no thought of it having to be perfect. (She does that still…)
She was skeptical but friendly and suggested we write and we ended up doing what I’ll call tag-poetry. I’d write a few lines and she’d write a few lines. In between the lines of poetry, I worked on convincing her that she should come to Maine and visit me.
To cut to the chase, here we are 9 years later seeing each other again after a many year break. The current version of our relationship didn’t come easily. We’d been a stereotypical drama driven couple caught up in our own wants for a long time to the exclusion of really listening or hearing each other.
I think we both needed to grow and reach different stages in our own personal development. Now here we are so much the same women but also very different from the women we were 9 years ago.
What is so interesting is that over the years, we have both dated other women we met online. We’ve both met some really wonderful women that way and now here we are together again and I hope together for the rest of this journey. But in those meetings and others that came through friends or just meeting someone at some event, that process of dating other women helped each of us to get more familiar with ourselves and to grow and shed some old ways.
Ultimately, I believe each person we truly connect with is here to be our teacher and a mirror to us of the impact we have on others. You are also a teacher to them.
Other people are often the best way to see our own true reflection – the good, the bad and everything in between shows up in the lovers we chose, the family we have, the children we raise and the friends we keep. Everything about our relationships is a reflection back to us about the values we live by (which may actually be different than we think) and what we are doing with our lives.
One of the big lessons for me about life, love and relationships is that for a relationship to really work requires sacrifice. Nothing in life is free, right? Right! I thought I’d learned this lesson a while back with having two children. Seems I needed to learn it at a much deeper level.
A great relationship comes from both persons giving a lot more than expected and often having the feeling that you are giving more than your partner. That’s the feeling you should have actually. This also means you’ve moved past dating for casual fun into a pre-commited relationship. You’re getting ready to make the big jump into long term commitment.
Remember we don’t compromise or sacrifice in a casual dating relationship. That belongs to a committed relationship.
An amazing relationship is based on both partners giving 100% – not 50% each, or 25%, or even 75%. But being willing to give 100% so that your partner feels 100% loved, valued, appreciated, heard, and held.
So what’s this got to do with an online dating site? Easy, what’s the level of commitment you are looking for? Casual dating? Long-term relationship? Friends? Or whatever other category is offered… realize that with your choice you’re saying I can give a certain percent of myself to this.
We all only have so much energy to go around. Where is your energy going? Why? Does that need to change? And if you’re the one looking for the 100% commitment, then of course you want that the lesbians you connect with online to be looking for the same.
Be sure to read between the lines also. Don’t ignore what that online profile is saying just because you like the way she looks. Don’t tell yourself that something a woman says doesn’t matter. It does, that’s way she wrote it on her profile.
The continuing story of online dating is dealing with long distance relationships. Yes, I’ve done that too more than once. And I’m doing it again right now with my girlfriend. We are hoping to see the end of being apart in the coming year.
So you – take a breath and know that there is an amazing woman out there looking for you too. Now go out and enjoy your day. Give some joy and love to someone else. Give another person a warm smile, a genuine hello or a special hug that says I value your friendship.
Giving is the best way to getting what you want.
