Lesbian Online Dating!! You want to get out there and dig into a galaxy of gay girls! Hold your horses girlie and pay attention in order to avoid a few online dating traps.
If I didn’t mention this before, let me be perfectly clear. Online dating was my go-to choice for dating for years. I discovered the world of lesbian online dating shortly after I came out and in spite of some really weird experiences (I’ll share those another time) I loved it. It was intoxicating. So many gay girls were available all the time! I could find lesbians all over the world but not in my backyard. That felt so exciting. I felt so powerful, for a while anyway, until I learned a few things that brought me gently back to earth and had me leaving my cape and superwoman outfit on the hanger in my closet.
Don’t get me wrong. Online dating changed my life. It is how I met my girlfriend. There are lesbians who meet other gay women successfully through online lesbian dating sites. It does happen! So yes, you need to explore this as an option. It is one way to find a lesbian relationship in a world that is sometimes less than friendly to us but to be clear its not the most successful way to find lesbian love and relationship.
Let me put on my Mama role for a bit and say that much like too much sugar and super powers, the amazing experience of online dating can become risky if it’s misused. And I’m not talking only about scam artists and stalkers. Even the big-hearted and bright-eyed among us can fall victim to bad habits if we aren’t careful. I want to help you date like a grown up but have fun like a kid.
I’m going to talk about the worst of the worst online-dating habits (I might mention my own bad habits) and hope if you see yourself that you’ll back away from the computer and go outside, talk to some real people and breathe some fresh air for a change of pace.
Here goes:
The Fantasy World of Cyber-Connection
You hide behind your keyboard and monitor. You connect online but you delay in person meetings. You only connect with gay girls on the other side of the planet and neither of you has the time or ability to travel for romance. Ok, what’s wrong with this? Perhaps, you’re playing a game with yourself and the fantasy of having a girlfriend is easier than the reality of meeting a real lesbian? Come on, we know that in some circumstances this is true but that’s a story for another day.
If you are particularly shy or self-conscious dater, one of the greatest draws of online dating is the fact that you can initiate contact without having to face the fear of immediate rejection and embarrassment that comes with being turned down face to face. The truth is that this is likely to happen anyway, either by lack of response from women you wink at or write to, or the first date that never goes any further.
Meeting face to face means dealing with body language – your own and hers! Online, you can have a conversation without obsessively watching her every twitch or every nod, searching for a clear sign of whether or not she’s in to you. You also don’t have to worry about what you’re wearing or wonder if they hate your laugh, think your hair is too much or what your breathe smells like never comes up. But if you use the Internet as your shield for too long you’re going to have a pretend relationship with a fantasy women. An online relationship . . . especially an online relationship with someone in your zip code . . . lacks real intimacy and real life pleasures. If you’re resisting a face-to-face encounter, you’re preventing a potential relationship from progressing and cheating yourself out of something that could be very fulfilling. Before you send out Email #52, at least tack a date invite on the end of it.
The Fantasy World of So Many Options
When you walk into a bar or a club or a meet-up event, your present options are limited to the people in the room. If you’re going to make a move, all you have to decide is who you want to approach first: Tall Butch In Cowboy Boots or Smokey-Eyed Blond With Lipstick and Cosmo? But maybe you’re not the kind of lesbian that approaches real life dykes? Online, you have hundreds or even even thousands of lesbians to browse through if you live in a big city or aren’t particular about location. The problem with this is that you get overload by the number of choices and the fire hose load of information. It gets hard to keep track and to sort and screen. You get lost in the amount of faces and information. This is where having your relationship requirements nailed down becomes so important. If you know, for example, that you definitely want a local, non-smoking butch who shares your beliefs about gay marriage and wants children then you immediately eliminate every gay girl that doesn’t fit that profile. (See how simple it can be and no excel spreadsheet needed to track hits.)
The reality is that there really aren’t lots of Ms. Right options. There are tons of Ms. Wrong For You out there. Consider again the advantage of knowing your relationship requirements, needs and wants up front. You’ll save yourself lots of potential dates with someone who is just down right wrong for you. That means your little heart isn’t going to have to feel rejected, hurt or disappointed quite so much. Wouldn’t that be great?
The Fantasy World of Not Getting Any Satisfaction
This is a similar but opposite problem, too many options to pay attention to any one for too long. You start to suffer from ADDD – Attention Deficit Dating Disorder. It’s like there are too many toys in the room and you can’t settle on any one for more than a couple of minutes. Even if you’ve found Ms. Right, it’s hard to ignore that little voice in your head saying something better might show up in your next search. UGH! When do you shut that profile down? Well if you are clearly still in the dating for fun stage and do the scouting, sorting and screening part of dating, then you keep that profile alive until you decide to become exclusive with someone. I’m just saying, that if you move to exclusive, it’s a self-sabotaging move to keep your profile alive. And having that profile up and getting hits, which you are checking out, is a form of cyber infidelity at the point you become exclusive. Yeah, so we can admit that the browsing and fantasy of online dating is a kind of drug sometimes, but you’ve got to kick it for the sake of the real thing – real in the flesh lesbian love and relationship!
The Fantasy World Social Life Takes Over
It is a bit addicting to be able to entice women to connect with you online. Perhaps you’re a great writer or you know lots of really great one-liners that translate well in an email. Maybe you’re a winker. You get off by sending winks to lesbians everywhere. While these little activities may not signal addiction to Internet dating, if you’re ignoring your real life friends and family to hang out on an online dating site, well there may be a problem. Are you neglecting good friends andignoring family to hang out on the Internet in the hopes of connecting with a woman online? That’s not a healthy social life and you probably wouldn’t want to date a woman that does this, i.e. has no friends and no family in her world. The key here is balance. Stay connected to your real world while you enjoy the process of exploring the big world of online dating.
Just remember, it only gets real when two women show up at the same time in the same place and meet in real life!
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xoxo and go hug a Gay Girl today!
Mary
About Mary Malia:
Mary Gorham Malia is a entrepreneur, business consultant, dating and relationship coach, speaker, writer, strategist, gay girl community builder, mentor, mom and lover of women of all stripes. She has worked for and consulted with Fortune 500 companies, national non-profits and managed multi-million dollar projects. She has also run multiple small businesses.
As the founder and organizer of lesbian focused community groups in multiple states, with members numbering in the thousands, she brings her unique philosophies to women dating women wherever she can. Her unique focus is as a ”Step by Step You Can Live an Extraordinary Life” Gay Girl Dating Coach because happiness is more than a date!
She is committed to serving the gay girl community anywhere and everywhere it is in order to support women in being their most brilliant selves and creating extraordinary lives. Her focus on authenticity, humor and daring to dream show up in her writing and speaking and in her own life as well. Not only does she teach women how to date 21st century style but she also works with business owners and executives across many industries including marketing, health services, nonprofits, and technology.
Her business, Gay Girl Dating, LLC, was founded on the belief that lesbian, gay, queer, bi and transgender women can live extraordinary lives when they understand the principles and practices that make life great and put these practices into action in their own lives.
Gay Girl Dating Coach, LLC PO Box 10924, Portland, ME 04104 | Office: 207-450-1611| © 2011 Gay Girl Dating Coach, LLC
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