An experiment in online dating — The truth
For various reasons, I have recently become single after a very serious relationship. And now I am trying to get back out there and by god it is hard.
Upfront, let me say what I am after. I want to fuck. I want to fuck hard. I want to fuck slow. I want to fuck experimentally and vanilla and everything in between. I want to seduce and be seduced, be hunter and hunted. I want pre-, post- and non- sex related cuddling. And I want to do it without expectation of anything deeper. Maybe that will happen, but I doubt it.
But the trouble is, I am working against my own prejudices. See, since I started dating I have always treated it like a game. Not an actual game. I dont think sex and relationships are like a dating sim or HuniePop. I may be crazy, but I am no Lawrence Sonntag (although I love that guy. Shout out to him if you can), and I mean that in the highest and best possible level. For me it was a mixture between game theory and social engineering, as much science as art.
The idea in my mind was that if you did the right things in the right order at the right time, it might just work. And part of that was that you couldn’t just come out and say what you wanted. TV and movies made me believe that women would be shocked at the implication that they may actually WANT to have sex with you. You had to trick them, to do things to lower their defences and get past their walls. This mindset is also the basis of the pick up artist community.
This is not a good mindset, and having grown up a lot I see it for the childish attitude it was. Women are independent, thinking and feeling people who can love or hate sex as they please (yay for female empowerment). But as much as I have grown traces of that idea still remains.
Even when I was in casual relationships, it was still all a game to me that usually ended up with someone getting hurt. Somehow I was always giving off signals that I was available for more, unconsciously still playing the game in my head that I thought women wanted me to play. Still thinking that the women I was involved with needed or wanted anything more from me.
Part of this idea sticking with me the enforced world of online dating. Men who say they are out for something casual are seen as the creepiest of guys, even when they are not. Women who say they are DTF are bombarded by unwanted pictures of guys dicks, so their position is hardly any better.
Seriously, a friend made an empty profile to help me with mine, and she got 17 dick pics in the space of a few hours. Really? Dicks aren't pretty. 99.99% of women don’t get steamy vaginas from seeing your dick. Dicks are not pretty!. They look like the ugliest of internal organs that somehow ended up on the outside.
So, outside of some very dubious paid sites, the unwritten expectation is that we are all on these sites to somehow find the love of our lives. Or it seems that way to me.And so, lots of people are pretending to want something they don’t. Including me.
In light of this, I decided to try an experiment.
I would just ask. Openly and honestly. No games, mind or otherwise. Lay out what my intentions are, in the most uncreepy way possible. Now this may seem like a very tiny thing to some people that read this, but for me it is huge. It is an entire change in mindset that will take me beyond where I have been before. The idea of asking is just weird to me.
And that is what I did. I made a profile on Oasis, as apparently that is how they get down there. I have debated whether or not to give out the name of the profile, but since I doubt many if any people will read this, it doesn’t really matter. The profile is Experimentality in Western Australia. Share it if you want, or not.
So now I will wait, and hope that I don’t get any more bots. As for all men in online dating the odds are not in my favour. I am just one in a sea of sad lonely voices. But hopefully mine is a little bit more honest, and a little bit less creepy. And maybe that will count for something.
(Although seriously, if Lawrence Sonntag did read this my mind may explode).