Why I gave online dating the flick

Online dating doesn’t work for many looking for real love, especially in big cities like London, New York and even Sydney, just ask my mates – or me.

Everyone knows meeting the right person for a long term relationship isn’t easy.  There are songs, you tubes, books, poems, lectures, therapy sessions, counselling and even retreats all about it.

But I’ve concluded online dating is not only a waste of time, it’s potentially dangerous, as it allows each of us to create a false identity, and even a false world, which ultimately leads us right back where we started – at best.

Think about it for a moment; When you “meet” someone online, you’re not actually meeting them – you’re testing your attraction to a photo of them, a one dimensional visual image, matched with a couple of quirky sentences, that is not a real person. It is the same as eyeing off someone in a magazine – you do not know them. You cannot feel their energy or if there is any chemistry.

And like magazine photos, many online photos have been altered, or at best taken in good light at a one off occasion or event – but they’re not real.

By the time you get to meet them, you’ve exchanged texts, built up a picture of who they are, probably shared a lot of photos, all of which has nothing to do with reality. You are both setting yourselves up for a false reality, a false relationship built on image alone from the get-go.

And more often than not, the man is nothing like what you imagined  and/or visualised when you finally do meet in real life – but the catch is, you often don’t see it, as you’ve already put on rose coloured glasses before you’ve even met him.

And stay online for a while and the same people come up over and over, year after year. The minute they break up, they’re back on it. It’s not a good look.
I was sitting in Raffles Hotel in Singapore recently having breakfast, when I ran into Phil, a friend and his beautiful wife. They’ve been happily married for a long time. I joined them.

They were asking me about the singles world and I was explaining the prevalence of online dating, and how it works,  and Phil tore me to shreds – for good reason.

“Anyone who is online is desperate, all of you people who go online to meet someone should have a good look at yourselves in the mirror, because if you can’t meet someone in person, there is something wrong with all of you.”

Ouch. I was shocked at first, but on reflection, I think he’s right.

Come on, lets be honest. Anyone who is online looking for love has to be, well a little bit desperate. Yes, I know there are couples who defy the odds, who met online and are now married. I know some, but not many.

And there’s another more sinister side to online dating – there are men out there using it to prey on women. Online dating has facilitated a world where a man can land in a different city – or even suburb-  every few days, get online, click on 20 women, date 10, have sex with a few, then fly away and do it all again in the next location.  And there are plenty of them doing it.

Having sex – without paying for it- is as easy as ordering a pizza thanks to online dating apps.

Online dating is a womaniser’s nirvana.  And allows them to make up all sorts of identities, tales and stories, pretending they are looking for a relationship, even a family, when they haven’t the slightest intention of it. Some have a whole other life going on.

This duplicitous behaviour is happening every day in every city in the world.  It’s easier than ever to have multiple people on the go at any one time – and online dating is the key. The way to avoid it, is to get off dating sites.

So how do you meet someone I hear you ask?  The real way, the old fashioned way. You know, in person, remember that? You can meet through friends, or by going up to someone and saying hello, catching their eye across a bar,  or by looking someone in the eye and feeling a real connection.

I was chatting to a man yesterday who met his partner in an elevator, another who met their dream girl at a traffic crossing. True stories.

Because in the end, not withstanding technology and our global world, nothing has really changed. We all want to love and be loved, and have fun whilst we’re looking for it, and real love starts with real connection.