Fishing For Love In All The Wrong Places

As a single working women I was tired of coming home to an empty apartment and eating alone every night. With very little time to socialize, I decided to try one of those online dating sites. A friend of mine suggested Plenty Of Fish, the name should have tipped me off, but I was desperate so I gave it a try. I do not know about most areas, but where I come from there are not so many fish in the sea. At least not keepers.

My first date with anyone from POF was with a guy from France. On our first date, the only thing that he wanted to do was to go to his house for drinks. I wanted to get to know him better before going to his house. Besides, I was hungry. So I suggested we go someplace for some food. He very calmly sized me up and then said, “I am not interested in feeding your, I am only interested in having sex with you.” Well my response to that was, “Unless you want to be wearing your balls as a pair of earrings, take your filthy hands off me”.

My God, I could go on for many days telling you about the sleazy guys I met on plenty of fish. Men who are married, pigs or just perverted that will tell you anything to get you between the sheets. Then of course there are the borderline stalkers that call even after you tell them you are not interested. I do not get the mentality of some guys who think that by being excessively persistent you will somehow change your opinion of them. Sometimes even the threat of police action does not deter them. From my experiences, the site has so many abnormal personalities on it, I wonder if the penal system is allowing access to dating sites. Certainly a Lady Gaga video I have seen would suggest that POF is available from inside.

I have never seen a place before with such a concentration of liars and cheats. I met over two dozen men in person via plenty of fish in the months I was a member. Only one of them was worth going beyond a second date with, and it turned out that on the fourth date he drops the bombshell that he is an illegal alien and needs to get married to stay in the country. Others wanted me to go on web-cam so they could see what I really look like because they did not believe my profile photo. Can you imagine, they didn't believe what I looked like when most of them looked nothing like their photo. POF does have its good points I suppose. If you are of average or even a bit below average in the looks department, you will get more than your fair share of attention.

The last straw for me with POF came when I made a date with a so called registered accountant, who by the way lives in a first class condo in down town New York. Everything was great. He took me to a top of the line restaurant. After questioning my tastes in food, he ordered for me, which was quite different than what most men would do. He ordered a really nice Pinot Grigio to go with our meals. We gone back to his place and he was a real gentlemen, we talked, laughed and snuggled.  Just when I thought I had broken my POF curse, the inevitable happened. The creep got around to telling me that he wanted me to prance around his apartment naked wearing nothing but a horse tail butt plug. Well after yelling at him a bit, using words like creep, pervert, twisted, and I forget what all else, I smacked him with my purse and galloped right out the door.

It was then I realized that POF was not for me and deleted my profile. I was so discouraged about this site that I vowed I would never again use a free dating site of any sort. My friend, being the pal that she was, did a bunch of searching on her own and said that she found a link with a bunch of recommended dating sites on it. She twisted my arm a bit and got me to at least check it out to see if I could find a better place than POF. When I got there I viewed it with a lot of skepticism, but once I realized the POF was not on their recommended list, they gained a bit in my esteem.  I was also surprised to find that eharmony was not there either – with all the ads on TV I had seen, they were the one I was going to try next, but they were just so darn expensive. After checking out some of the sites on one of their category pages, I signed up to a couple. I had decided that by spreading my profile farther afield that it would make it easier to just delete it from one of the sites. Best move I ever made. Now I am meeting decent men who are not looking for a bed buddy, but are genuinely looking for serious long term relationships. My happiness index has gone up a few points since then because I now have a social life again. What a nice change!

Most dating sites are not bad, although the totally free ones tend to attract more riffraff I am told. Even the best dating sites will have a few bad apples in them. You have to be on your guard anywhere. With internet dating you have to practice safe hex before you practice safe sex. Many sites are excellent at deleting the accounts of freaks and weirdos, but even the best have some zany characters haunting them. You have to be careful with your personal information, and remember, if you have any doubts about the person, do not agree to meet them.

So visit the link below. It has some great advice for online dating as well as lists of recommended dating sites. I think you will find what your looking for just like me. Good luck.
Advice for Women

I Found Love On My Computer

I was a recently divorced single woman in my early 50's and I like so many of my friends turned to  online dating for a solution. Because of my age, I really didn't think I had much of a chance of meeting  anyone online. I actually was not even going to try online dating, but my friends and sisters sort of twisted my arm to do it. I made my profile, and had my sisters pick out some of the best photos of me. Then I had one of my friends post my picture on my profile since I didn’t know anything about posting stuff online. In any event, once finished with all of that I just sat back and mostly waited. I had no idea how these dating sites worked. I mean, I browsed around and looked at some men's profiles, and was pleasantly surprised to see a lot of guys my age, but I just felt it was too forward of me to contact them first.

The next day I had over a dozen emails in my inbox. I could not believe it. It was pretty exciting.  Some of that excitement ebbed a bit when I read some of them. I cannot believe the stupidity of some men. However a couple were quite interesting and I replied to them. If I got to the point that I wanted to meet in person I made sure that I met everyone at a nice restaurant down the street from where I worked. Since I knew some of the staff, I felt safer there than any other place I could think of. It was exciting, but it was exhausting.  Learning so much information about so many people and keeping it all straight in your head is tough work.Interacting with all of these men was exciting, but it was mentally exhausting as well. Keeping them all straight was difficult. I finally resorted to opening a diary for each on my computer and reviewing it before I talked to each of them. It was lots of work, but I kept at it. I started questioning if I could keep up the pace, but I was determined not to spend much more of my life by myself, so I kept at it.

I felt most comfortable in my life being part of a long term relationship. I thrived on that and really wanted to find someone to have in my life again. After all that activity, one man really piqued my interest. He had a way of wording things in his emails that I found refreshing from the rest of the men. He was concise, yet managed to be articulate at the same time. It showed that he thought about what he wrote about before committing it to words. So much better than the random blathering that I got from most other people. It even showed in his profile which left me with the impression that he was someone well educated, who was not ego centric. He seemed to be really in touch with the so called “feminine side” of himself. I was surprised about how often he asked me how I felt about things. When you talk to most men about things that are troubling you, they instantly try to tell you how to fix it. He was not like that. He would often talk to me for a long time delving into my feelings about things before ever venturing an opinion. My first instinct was that he was gay and just pulling my leg, but I later realized that hew was the genuine article. He was just a very caring person who believed that women were not second class citizens. He told me that he had not always been so open minded, but he had spent many years in Europe, and had seen what can happen when people let outside cultures influence society's mores. He had been transferred back to our city fairly recently.

I had traveled to Europe several times. On top of this, we both shared a love of most winter sports. We often chatted about our impression of various cities, and which ski resorts did we like the best.  His profile had no picture on it, so at no point in our early interactions was I chasing a pretty face. It was his communication ability and points of view that won my respect. When he later emailed me a picture of himself, I was not disappointed. When we first decided to talk over the phone, I was nervous about giving him my number. I convinced him to give me his instead. He gave me his number but I was actually too scared to call at first. After several days I finally got enough courage to call, and I'm glad I did.

“He was fantastic, charming so sweet and such a gentleman.|He was just so amazing. In real life he was even better than online. So sweet, and always a gentleman.|He turned out to be an incredibly sweet and charming guy. Always a gentleman. For that first date we met at a nice little restaurant that we were both familiar with. I got there first, worried that it would make me look needy, but I could not help myself. I am compulsive about being early to everything. My biggest concern was that we would not click. As I looked towards the door, in walked this gorgeous hunk of a man. Before he came over, he looked at me from across the room. As he stood there, I absorbed the fact that he had dark hair, almost black, with just a touch of gray at the temples. Almost like professor X in the Xmen comics. I was in complete awe. We talked and laughed and shared some personal stories. Time was streaming by but I could not stop it. I did not want it to have to end. The meal would not last long enough for me. I was having too good a time.  We left after he paid the bill. I noticed that he left a nice tip as well. He kissed me when we got to my house. As he drove away, I sighed. Everything was just too good to be true. The chemistry for me had been instantaneous. I already knew that he was the one.

We had several more dates after that, and it seemed that every date was better then the one before. But something began to bother me. I had not been exactly truthful about my age in my profile. My friends had convinced me to exaggerate a little. Just take a few years off and when he finds out later, well maybe it won't matter. I put my age as 51 but in fact I was 54, “not a big deal I know”, but most people, even guys, don't like to be lied to and will wonder what else you've lied about. I decided to tell him the truth when I felt the time was right.

We went to a small bar one evening for a drink. The waiter asked me for proof of age with a smile on his face. I just knew that my honey Max had put him up to it. To play into the joke, I pulled out my license to show him and we all laughed when he pretended to scrutinize it really closely. Max asked if he could see my license and I just passed it over without a thought. He said, “Holy cow, you're fifty four!” I just sat there not knowing what to say. Then he started laughing like an idiot! When I asked what was so funny, he said that the joke was on him. He had lied about his age as well. As it turned out he was older than he stated in his profile. It seems he's two years older than me and not two years younger. We laughed about the fact that we had both caught each other out.

We had dated for six months or so. Late one night he called me and woke me up from this sensual dream I was having about us. He just had to tell me something right that moment and was not something that he wanted to discuss on the phone. He wanted to come over immediately. Half an hour later he came in, sat down and said, “I have something to say to you that can't be put off any longer.” I thought to myself, “Oh God this can't be good.”

I braced myself for the worst, even opening a box of Kleenex because I was sure I was going to need them. Well I needed them, but in a good way. He got down on one knee, told me I was the best thing that had ever happened to him, that he had been waiting all of his life to find me, and asked me to marry him. I had to say yes. I mean what else could I do. I was madly in love with him.

I have been married to Maxwell now for three years. It has been the most wonderful period of my life. My former marriage does not compare to what I have with Max. It is like being a new bride every day. And to think I found him on an online dating site. Someplace that I had thought of as a last chance place to meet someone!

So that is the story of Max and me. It is only the beginning. Maybe I will write a followup some day. If you have been loath to try Internet dating, you should give it a try. It is not all as rosy as I have depicted in my tale. I found that there were a lot of truly despicable characters on just about every site. But each site gives you tools that allow you to easily block them. When you block someone on a dating site, you cease to exist for them. They will never be able to find you in search results again. From their perspective, you no longer have an account on the site. I tell you that only because I have met a lot of women who stopped using dating sites because they ran into a few morons, and never spent any time learning how to deal with them. In any event, even with the negatives that you will find, I would recommend online dating to anyone.
Below I have posted a link to one of the resource sites that I used. The sites referenced there are some of the best and are well organized. There are so many to choose from you are sure to find what you want. Good luck in your search!


Dating Advice

Sex Products - Read The Label

This misadventure happened to me a few years ago, but it is somewhat timeless and is worth mentioning to other people.  It was one of those moments that in hindsight was truly funny, but at the time was really, really embarrassing!

I was going out with a really nice guy that I had met for a few months at that time. We were pretty far down the commitment road with each other, to the point where we were exclusive, had moved in together, and were not using condoms anymore. After all, I was on the pill, and neither of us had any disease to be concerned about. Why would we need condoms?  In any event, we had been enjoying sex for quite some time.  Looking back, I realize that he was the first person that I had oral sex with. I was only passable at it, but he was amazing. Boy could he get me off!

Although my boyfriend was great at oral sex, I was not fully happy. You see, he had a problem with conventional sex. He just could not last long enough for me. The oral sex was really a boon to me because he could at least make me come that way, but as soon as he entered me, he was done in about thirty seconds. Oh, I wanted more, if for no other reason than because it just felt so much better for the short time he was in there.

Being somewhat frustrated, and because I would not talk to anybody I knew about it, I felt compelled to take the initiative to correct the problem all by myself.  There was a sex shop in a mall a few blocks from where I lived. One day when my boyfriend was out with his pals playing baseball, I decided to see what they might have to help. When I went in there was nobody there, thank God, and I approached a sales lady and let her know what my problem was.  She smiled and said that it was very common, especially with younger men. She showed me a cream that was designed to numb things down a bit so you could last longer. It sounded like a good idea, so I bought it.

Time seemed to be at a standstill for the rest of the day. I had in my hot little hands the formula that would change my sex life forever. It would move my sex life up about a hundred notches at least! Finally, I was going to have the mind blowing, earth shattering orgasm that I had been reading about. I was on pins and needles.

That night, as I was getting ready for bed, I squeezed some from the tube and applied it liberally to my pussy. I could feel the effects immediately! I hopped into bed and started to get very affectionate  with him. As we kissed and got more amorous, he did what he always did. He started to lick me into a frenzy.

But something was missing. He was not stimulating me as well as he usually did. What was wrong? I kept telling him to lick me harder and faster! When I looked at him, his eyes were wide in panic. He tried to say something but all that came out was “AHHU HUAM MUHA”. He could not seem to talk! He literally flew to the bathroom and rinsed his mouth. He tried water, then mouthwash. Nothing seemed to work. As a last ditch resort, he used hand soap on his mouth, but that did not work either.  Gradually the effects seemed to lessen, and after a half hour or so he could talk again.

He asked me what the hell I did to him.  When I explained, he looked a bit pensive, and then asked to see the tube. After he read them, he started to shake his head and then looked at me. He guessed that I had not actually read any instructions. I said that the woman in the store told me to just rub it on. How hard was that?  He said yes, that was true, but I was supposed to rub it on him!  Not only that, but the instructions on the tube said that under no circumstances should you engage in oral sex!

I was so embarrassed and turned red as a beet. Then I started to giggle. He also started laughing. Pretty soon we were hanging onto each other stark naked. Needless to say, one thing led to another and we had some pretty terrific sex that night. He was better than usual, and finally made me orgasm, but unfortunately the Moon did not stop in its orbit for me.

Well several years have gone by, and I am a lot more worldly. As it turns out, that was not my last trip to a sex shop, but I always read the instructions completely, and do exactly as they say.  Unfortunately, our relationship did not last for very long after that night. His career took him some place I could not go. But of all the men I have loved, he is the one that I always smile about when I think of him.

For more sex advice and funny stories, try this link:

Relationship Tips for Women

Manufacturing Mates

The Amazon.com kindle is just one of many e-readers flooding the market currently. In fact, e-readers are going to pretty much shut down the brick and mortar side of the print industry within the next few years. Authors will leverage this paradigm shift to self publish. There will be a lot of book sharing between people. In effect, this will do to books what the Ipod did to music. And although the music industry will cry foul and that people are stealing copyrighted material, the result will be that more people than ever will read on a regular basis. In fact, these e-readers will be the final enabler for people to sell serial stories on a mass basis for the first time. Once publishers and authors adjust to this new paradigm, they will make even more money than ever!

Well so much for speculations about the publishing business. But something that you have to be aware of is the amount of information that companies like Amazon glean from your e-reader habits.  Likely you already know that they use the titles that you purchase to figure out what to recommend to you. Most people would just consider this to be good merchandising. Most people are not aware that Amazon also tracks what you are reading and what you are re-reading as part of this exercise. Just because you buy a book does not mean that you read it and like it. They track how fast you read it, and if you re-read it. The creepy thing is that they also track anything that you highlight as well. They are also sharing this information with publishers so that publishers know what it is that people like within each publishing genre. How scary is that?

Welcome to the true electronic age.

People have been bandying about the term electronic age for over 30 years, but it is only in the last 10 years that it is really getting into the types of machinations that we saw in George Orwell's book 1986. It would seem that our society was a bit slow in living down to George's low expectations of us.

You may wonder what it is that these companies are doing with all of this personal data.

So far, the publishing companies are focusing on choosing plot scenarios that are sure to sell well. They have been financing assistant ghost writers for popular series writers to accelerate their output.. At the same time, they are able to check for consistency of story lines. The star trek series of books through 20 years was written by a series of guest writers. Can you imagine how much better and more successful that series would have been with better character consistency, better plot consistency and better knowledge of what it was that their buyers liked and did not like? What do you think that similar tactics could do for the likes of Nicholas Sparks, Luanne Rice or Ken Follet?

So take it a step further. Why have a real author at all? Why not have an author team and create an artificial persona to front them. They can be cagey and invent a fictitious person by doctoring a photograph, create a website with a blog, have a bunch of social media profiles, and hire a PR team to look after that persona. They could play up the fact that the author has agoraphobia and will not appear in public. Now you get a team of ghost writers to start working on new books, and an editor checking for consistency of story lines if the books are supposed to be a series. If they are just all of a genre, then the only check is for consistent style. Of course the next step in this sequence will be to hire people to do blog posts and answer email from these fake entities. Faced with this, most people would just assume there is a living, breathing person that belongs to the name. Welcome to the likely future of the big publishing companies.

There is another industry that would benefit from applying similar information and tactics. That industry is Web Dating Services!

The work that Microsoft is currently doing with computer interaction is truly impressive, but likely the gaming industry will be the only near-term beneficiary. Apple's deployment of SIRI in a big way is also likely to shape a lot of near future technology.  Voice technology is most critical on small mobile devices, but will find their way into most computer based systems.  The really interesting part will be when voice, gesture and face recognition technology is widely employed in other regular home appliances and vehicles.

What if these gesture recognition, face recognition, interactive voice and video technologies were combined? What if you could come up with a simulacrum that would be able to interactively chat with someone? What if they can recognize you on sight, pull up your previous conversations? What if they can tell if you look sad or tired?

Almost every dating site on the Internet has some form of contact initiation mechanisms where they entice people to respond. Part of this is to get them out of the habit of being lurkers, but mostly it is to coax people into signing up or upgrading to a paid membership. When people upgrade so they can reply to these messages, they have people on staff to interact with you.  So that hot chick that seems to be so enamored with you seems too good to be true, and probably is. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch, and dating sites have to make money to stay in operation. It is not all fake, but some of it is.

It takes a while to find someone to mesh with even on a dating site. You will never do so if you quit too soon, or if you are too timid to interact in the first place. These systems may seem money grubbing and greedy, but they do serve a useful purpose. People who hang around longer are more likely to be successful at finding a match.

Likely the next step for the dating industry would be to manufacture ideal profiles for you based on what you are looking for. You are looking for a 5 foot 5 inch brunette with a trim figure, a steady job, who does not smoke and is not interested in having children. Well amazingly enough, there are a few that have joined up in the last few weeks when you log in and search. In the couple of moments that it takes you to complete a profile, and log in, they could have a bunch of perfect profiles created for you to interact with, and they can keep creating a few more every day for you to find.

What might the next step be? In a decade or so, it should be possible to have a computer generated entity that can interact with you one on one via video chat. Programs currently exist that will can interact with you, and they will fool most people into believing that there is a real person at the other end. Where the media focuses on the more mechanical aspects of artificial intelligence, like walking and running robots, the true breakthroughs that need to be made are on the intelligence side of the equation.  At the present time, nobody has invented a computer based mechanism that is capable of independent thought.

So if you are on a dating site and want to know if a person is real or fake, just try to enter into a video chat with them. The fake ones will never commit to it. If they will not video chat with you, you will know one of two things. They are either lying about what they look like, or else they are really a fake entity. Either way, you are better to seek other people, either on that site or on other sites.

Currently then, your litmus test for determining how authentic someone is on a dating site is video chat. If they are available to video chat, then they are legit.

In spite of all the negative information we just talked about, dating sites do work. I mean, people lie all the time, even in bars. People hand toss out fake names like crazy. Any dating site has literally millions of real people looking to interact. There is a strong chance that many will be in your own town, even if it is small. If you are a man, to minimize the artificial contacts, just upgrade to a paying membership as soon as you join. That will pretty much ensure that you ware always interacting with real people. Women should just join sites where women can interact without paying and men have to pay. These sites will only show women real profiles. Women are strong communicators, so there is no need to entice them into conversation. Sites were men can interact for free tend to be full of cheapskates and unsuccessful men, stay away from them!

This blog post should enable you to understand the more negative side of dating sites, and what is possible. Dating sites do provide a useful service in spite of this, and are worth joining. Just make sure you keep your sensibilities about you.  For a list of some of the better sites, click the link below:

Dating Sites