How to Crush Without Being Crushed

First impressions count for a lot. If you’re meeting people online, there’s a good chance your profile picture is a hefty part of your first impression.

The crew over at OK Cupid (you know them–they’re a dating site and also one of the big producers of silly meme-quizzes) has dipped into their massive user-base and mined the data to answer some questions about what kinds of profile pictures work best for getting a response.

Keep in mind that while this deals with online dating (and specifically those who use OK Cupid, as opposed to other dating sites) some of the ideas put forth can be very useful in crafting your general online identity or your own profile on a dating site. It’s also got some other flaws (some of which are discussed in the comments of the article).

More importantly, it’s an interesting look at a handful of theories we’ve all tossed around every now and then.

Check out The 4 Big Myths of Profile Pictures.

Tags: dating, identity, online, study

With my current schedule getting in the way of all sorts of things, I have yet to write what I planned on for this space.

Luckily, friends in other places stumble across interesting things.

For example, here’s a little vintage educational film about dating…

By today’s standards, that’s some amazingly tame (and downright square) stuff. At least for most people I know. Even more so for those of us in our third decade.

But it did get me thinking about two things: First Dates and Best Dates.

And since I’m pressed for time, I turn the stage over to you, dear readers. Tell me stories of your First Date and/or of your Best Date.

Tags: dating, open mic, video

You’d think that with three years of a totally obsessive and self-destructive crush behind me, I’d have learned my lesson.

Especially with everything else that I started to learn in high school.

Well, you’d be wrong.

I still had a habit of fixating on people. Usually people I was interested in dating and horribly crushing on. Sometimes, those crushes would come and go–their intensity waxing and waning over time. Most of them never got intense enough one way or the other to overcome my personal anxiety barriers.

There were some, though, that did. For good or ill, I think I actually went on more dates in high school than I did in college or since. Almost none of them are what anyone would call “successful.” (Especially by high school-themed pop culture standards.)

One of those waxing and waning crushes had been in place for at least a year before it really hit me.

She was a year behind me, in the orchestra, a bit of an athlete, tall as anything and, as far as I was concerned, near perfection.

In my sophomore year, my courage peaked once or twice and I actually asked her out to dinner and a movie. (That was the standard thing to do back then, some days I wonder if it’s changed all that much in modern high school culture.)

Amazingly, every time I asked, she already had plans to go. Fantastic! We had the same taste in movies, too! What’s that? And I can come along with her? Well that’s a win-win situation… me surrounded by women! It doesn’t get any better than that!

Yes. Those are almost exactly the thoughts that ran through my teenage head back then. Totally oblivious to the reality of the situation.

To put it bluntly: she really wasn’t that in to me. But she was trying to be nice about it. Which was great.

Except for the fact that I was way too dense to get the hint. My wishful thinking and obsessive habits blinded me to the harsh truth, just as they had in prior years.

And so, more than a couple of times, I paid for dinner for three and bought three movie tickets.

Some of those nights were fun. One time, the friend she miraculously already had plans with was the older sister of a guy in my scout troop. I actually got along better with my troop members sister than I did with the girl I was supposedly on a date with. I can still remember that odd flutter when I ended up holding her hand and locking eyes with her (for oh! such a fleeting instant) at the McDonalds across the street from the movie theater.

(Being the proper sort of gentleman, I put that flutter right out of my mind. Because, after all, I was on a date with someone else. *sigh*)

Some of those nights were not much fun at all. Like the one where lobster was ordered and my supposed date and her friend sat in the row behind me during the movie.

Thankfully, she eventually started dating someone else and my attention shifted onward.

There were other, low-key crushes that were a near constant in my high school career. Being in band, my homeroom and first period class took place in the lower-floor rehearsal space of one wing of the school. That left me plenty of time to just hang out in the hallway after my bus got in. Dozens of people walked past me every day as I held that wall up. At least half of the girls I had, at one time or another, had a crush on.

Many of them were in the band or orchestra.A few were just passing through. Cora was one of the latter. Every morning I’d greet her with a smile and a kind word or two. We never spoke too much outside of those morning greetings, but I was modestly smitten. Never drawn enough to overcome my fears, I never did ask her out.

What I did do was invite her to my graduation party.

She was the only one who wasn’t family who showed up at the beginning and didn’t leave until the end.

And still, it seems, even at the end of my high school career, I was blind to obvious signs.

Tags: crushes, dating, high school, lessons learned, obsession

Just about everyone gets into a relationship because they’re looking for something.

What that “something” is can and does vary widely from person to person. These oh-so-varied things are the endgame–the reason for throwing your chips into the relationship pool, in most cases, into the dating game.

People play this game in different ways. Some are all about the physical conquests. Others about gaining new experiences. Needless to say, some people play more nicely than others and some do so in a more healthy fashion for everyone involved.

Even people with the same endgame can go about it in different ways. The main thing is they all have a goal that they’re heading for and a set of personal rules they’re willing to follow, bend or break depending on the importance of that goal.

An endgame like having sex with someone is pretty standard and pretty straight-forward. There are tried and true methods for getting into people’s pants. Shelves of books have been written about the various methods that work often enough. The same can be said about the endgame of getting married… this is the sort of thing some online dating sites focus on.

But what if your endgame is something a bit more amorphus? What if it’s something like getting to know yourself better? That’s the endgame of the Grown Up Crush and, more often than not, at least a side-effect of being in a relationship.

It doesn’t work so well as the main goal of getting into a relationship. In fact, it can be downright bad for the other person (or people) involved if the whole of the relationship is just an exercise in self-exploration. (Unless that’s stated right up front and everyone is genuinely OK with it.)

What if your main goal in a relationship is to see the other person happy? How does that play out when it turns out you’re not the best one to make that happen? (I can tell you for a fact that it all depends on how comfortable you are with change and how dedicated you are to genuinely obtaining your own happiness from the happiness of others.)

If you have a non-standard endgame, getting into a romantic relationship often becomes problematic. Part of that is because people tend to expect the more standard endgames and will read into any of your actions things that you probably don’t intend to be there. My most common example is saying “I want to spend more time with you” and that being interpreted as “I want to have sex with you.” While one may follow the other, the first is not predicated on the second in all cases.

As someone who is very comfortable (and quite happy) being single, I have a great deal of trouble justifying getting into a romantic relationship except under very odd or specific circumstances. Why? Because all of my endgames are served perfectly well by working the Grown Up Crush path.

There is very little impetus to make the leap into a relationship when, at any given time, either yourself or the other person are not important to the endgame.

How often have you pursued a relationship for very specific reasons? What’s your typical motivating endgame?

Tags: endgame, grown up crush, relationships

On a semi-regular basis, I toss around the idea of really dating again.

After all, it’s been more than a decade now and sometimes I think I should just go for something different just for the heck of it.

I know that if I were to suddenly start “playing the field”, most people I know would be alternately surprised, confused and, mostly, happy for me. Some would see it as “better” than what I’ve been doing for the past decade, even though I’ve been quite happy myself.

The point is, those closest to me (and some who aren’t all that close) would be actively paying attention to what was going on in my romantic life. Not because I write and talk about it regularly, but because something had changed in it.

Movement catches our eyes, changes in status grabs the attention of our minds. Changes in relationship status not only get the mind going, but pull in hearts, too.

Nowhere is this more obvious than on the social networking sites.

I know that over on Facebook, one of the main profile info lines is about relationship status. Are you single? Married? Taken? Involved in something “complicated”? Or do you hide that status from prying eyes?

Some of the longest comment streams I’ve seen have been generated by changes in relationship status. The comments usually run the gamut from “Yay!” to near dissertations on why the change is a good/bad thing. For changes from single to something else, there’s often as many requests for more information as there are bits of congratulations.  For changes from involved statuses to single (or  hidden), commiseration is the norm with considerably fewer pokes for the more lurid details.

When it comes to the romantic relationships–or the lack thereof–of those around us, we are all voyeurs. Regardless if the reason is selfish (to measure our own relationship success against theirs or maybe we’re waiting for our own chance to ask them out) or altruistic (because we do so want our friends to be happy), it’s something we keep an eye on. It’s something we like to talk about.

Except, maybe, when it’s our own status changes that catch the attention of others.

Sometimes, talking about it, good or bad, isn’t something we want to do. It takes time to settle into a new relationship or to let an old one pass. Some poeple (like me) have no problem talking about it as the process progresses. Others don’t want to mess things up or rub salt into their own wounds. We all work through things differently.

Once upon a time, it was easier to keep things to yourself.

Now, in this day and age of Facebook, once you’ve put your status out there, you can’t help but draw some attention when you change it.

Even if you do so only to get a different set of ads running on your sidebar.

How often do you talk about relationship stuff with your friends, online and off? Are you more likely to toss off a quick comment on a status change or send a private message?

Tags: observations, relationships, technology