There's this pattern that I keep encountering over and over in my adventures in online dating, and I just don't get it.

Now... I'm a very sexual person. Within the confines of a relationship, I am wild and passionate and adventurous and and and... but I'm not about discussing that in great detail with perfect strangers. I've encountered plenty of guys who are interested in one thing - getting laid and moving on, and that's something I'd like to avoid. That's a whole other behavior pattern I won't get into here... the one that prompted me to open this line of discussion is about a pattern where guys seem unable to keep their pre-date conversational inquiries away from talk of sex.

( Read on for more... )

The more and more our economy tanks, the more and more people I know who are finding themselves out of work (or teetering on the edge, waiting for the pink slip that may come with each new round of layoffs). This brings me to the point of wondering if I need to rethink my personal policy on dating the unemployed.

Generally, if I encounter someone in the world of online dating who tells me they're unemployed, that is my cue to move on and/or tell them to get in touch again when they're gainfully employed. It feels terribly cold and even superficial to do so, but as someone who is financially independent and gainfully employed, I really don't have much desire to date someone who's struggling to make ends meet, and who could go months and months without another paycheck. And one you start dating someone and see all the good bits about them, it can be difficult (emotionally and otherwise) to extricate yourself later on down the line because they (still) haven't found a job and have become an emotional and financial drain.

But as more and more people are facing layoffs, unemployment is becoming less of a sign of irresponsibility and/or unemployability and more of a sign of the economic times and the flooded job market. And it's also making finding employment that much more difficult. So when I started chatting today with a guy who told me he was an unemployed mechanical engineer, I found myself wondering if I should run the other way or give him a chance.

He said he's been unemployed since the beginning of the year, so it's been about 3 months and he's still not found another job. This, too, concerns me (that not only is he unemployed, but has been for several months and has no prospects for a new job). He is, apparently, getting by on his severance, unemployment, and rent help from a roommate. In fact, he said he's been "living it up" (socially, if not financially) since he's been unemployed.

None of this instills confidence in me. But given the skyrocketing unemployment rate, should I still be eliminating all unemployed dating prospects? This will mean excluding a lot of good people from my dating pool, but my concerns about dating someone who's unemployed haven't changed, it's just the number of people who that will eliminate from my dating pool has changed.

So, the dating pool shrinks. But I think my "no job, no date" policy should still stand.

-Vixen

Back in September, I started what I promised would be a semi-regular feature, Vixen's Online Dating Tips. And here it is, February, and I just realized that while I wrote several installments of it, I only actually posted one of them. So... here is the next installment. The first installment had to do with tips about online dating profiles. Next up, we'll talk about pre-date communication... emails, instant messages, phone calls... read these tips and take them to heart to improve your experiences with online dating!

( Read on for the knowledge! )

Since I've been doing this online dating thing a while, I've gained a lot of insight into the online dating world, I thought some of my readers giving the online dating thing a try might benefit from some Online Dating Tips.  So in what is to be a regular feature, enjoy reading Vixen's Online Dating Tips! 




( Read on for Vixen's Tips for online dating profiles... )