Adventures in online dating #1

One of my friends has a blog which is devoted mainly to crazy dating stories (or at least that's her trend). And since I haven't blogged in a while I thought it might be a good topic for me to venture in to (since I never blog about love and relationships...)

As all my readers know, I haven't been in a serious relationship for over a year. First, I became single. And then I wrote about the post-relationship healing process. Along the way I dated some women and had a funny story or two. I've had summer flings, and winter flings. But somewhere along the way I decided that it was time to stop "playing the field". I was ready to find Ms. Right, instead of Ms Right Now.

Now, I've already written about this moment; the moment where I was ready to be in a relationship again. Of course, the issue is that there aren't lines of women waiting anxiously for me to make this declaration. I needed to go out and find them.

...And so I did.

In the past month, I've written MANY messages to women on a dating site. I get about a 30% response rate. And out of those 30%, maybe 10% are interesting enough to talk to for more than one or two messages. THEN, an even smaller percentage turn into a face-2-face meeting. Basically I'm saying that for every 20 or 30 messages I sent out, I would eventually meet 1 of those women.

So far I've met 3. One of them became "just a friend". Another was fun, but I don't know if we'll see each other again. The third woman seemed to show real promise.

And here's where the point of my blog post comes in.

I hate dating more than one person at a time. I feel like you don't give either person a real chance because you're dividing your efforts between them.

And that's a problem when I've been on dates with 2 women and may potentially meet more in the future. I can't just say to these women "I like you, but I went on a date with someone else and I want to see where that's going first. So hang around and if that strikes out then I'll call you again." Life doesn't work that way. Women don't just sit around waiting for us.

So I'm faced with all these issues. How attached can I become to any one woman? How long can I date someone before I decide they pass or fail? How do I know from just a few dates whether or not they can be a good partner for me? Are any of them reading this blog post right now and planning on dumping me?

If anyone has good dating advice then feel free to share...