I turned to online dating because the places we spend most of our time (work, gym, etc) aren’t really appropriate places to respond to the immediate, innate sense of chemistry we get for someone. In the real world our sense of chemistry, our unique internal “butterfly meter”, is the trigger for mustering up the courage to say “Hi!” to a potential date.
Finding out about someone’s interests, their age, where they live…those come later…after we’ve experienced a high enough number of butterflies-per-second (hereby coined as a Flutter ;)) to decide to put in time learning more about that person. And whether we’re aware of it or not we’re constantly checking that meter…did it suddenly drop below threshold because we don’t like their voice? Their scent? Some other reason?
The problem is online dating sends our “butterfly check” to the back of the line.
Current online dating platforms put our intellect ahead of our intuition. It’s no wonder so many first dates result in “blah” on one or both sides. The odds that doesn’t happen are actually incredibly long. As a result it’s easy to burn out, to turn off our profile, “take a break”, or worse yet let our insecurities or gremlins tell us it’s our fault…but it’s not.
Before we can even check our butterfly meter we’ve had to navigate past hundreds of curated and staged photos, words, words, words, our personal but often arbitrary filters on age (too low, too high), filters on distance ( > 50 miles? no thanks…), a random amount of sense-less (no sight, no sound, no smell, …) small talk via texts, maybe a phone call.
In the real world we scan the equivalent of thousands of profiles in just a few minutes of accumulated time. Every time we look at someone part of us glances at our butterfly meter. Someone’s eyes, the shape of their mouth, their clothing, the way they move, their tone of voice, it all feeds into our meter.
Our senses process an immense amount of data in milliseconds. Sometimes our senses say “run like hell” (creep)…sometimes they say “safe to ignore” (blah)…and sometimes they say (cue Susan Sarandon) “oohhh my…” and peg the meter.
What’s more, if your butterfly meter is pegged your other filters tend to fall away. Distance? We can work that out. Age? Age is just a number. Doesn’t like to ski? I can ski with my friends. They say love conquers all but the advance scout is chemistry.
Chemistry clears the road to relationship like a snowplow on the interstate…because “oohhh my…can you believe those eyes?…I could look into them forever..”. Yes, sometimes it’s a road we wish we hadn’t taken…but we undertake the journey because of chemistry.
Online is a completely different world. A world where the odds are stacked against us because the entire platform inverts intellect and intuition, removes our ability to “sense” a person in any meaningful way, and perhaps worst of all lets our intellectual biases about looks, age, and interests discard people in seconds…people we may well have incredible chemistry with…but we can’t tell because our senses have nothing to latch on to.
So yes, there will be a lot of average dates with average guys…not because you’re doing anything wrong…but because no profile in the world is going to trigger a true Flutter. Only a real, living breathing person your senses can fully experience can do that.
Why keep doing it? Because we’re all only looking for one…one person who triggers that “oohhh my…” and sweeps us of our feet once more.
