We
want all the visitors to our website to have safe and happy lives
that include positive, successful relationships with significant
others. If you are considering using an online dating website, please
read the following:
First and foremost, please use caution. The Internet can be a wonderful
place to meet great people, but there are also a heck of a lot of
sexual predators in the world. These types of people are excellent
liars and can suck in even the most savvy and intelligent women.
There
are lots of good people out there searching for love, but there are also a lot
of people out there who are single for a reason. The reason could be drugs, alcohol,
or any other form of addiction, which may not be a good or healthy reason for
you to take a chance on getting hurt either emotionally or physically.
That said, we thought we would list a few things to help you if you are considering
meeting women through an online dating service. The Case In Points are from our
own experiences online, and actual posts from women in our Support For Lesbians
Coming Out group who have experienced online dating situations: 1.
JUST COMING OUT AND ONLINE DATING
When a person is just coming out, she can be vulnerable to a lot of different
situations. There's nothing more exciting than your first contact with women who
are like you, but please remember that online dating needs to be approached with
caution for both your physical and mental health. If you are just coming out,
you may want to check out our book How to be a Happy Lesbian: A Coming Out Guide.
There is loads of information in this book that will help you in your new life.
Case
in Point from a Support For Lesbians Coming Out group member:
If you are
feeling fragile, online dating is not the place to be. Experiences of mine: in
3 months I have talked to approximately 20 women. I've gained one person I think
will be an ongoing friend--I won't pretend that I didn't want it to be more for
a while, and that it didn't hurt when her interest went from possible relationship
to friendship. Exchanges of Emails averaged about 5 per person, most of which
stopped through mutual lack of interest, and most just stopped with no closure.
I personally have been guilty of not answering people I'm feeling uncomfortable
about on the first initiation. This included a man looking for a bisexual woman,
a man in transition to living as a woman, and just some people who are so obviously
not right.
Another issue for us as newly coming out are the inevitable
questions: "How do you know you are a lesbian?" and "Are you going
to get too scared and disappear?" Women who are first coming out are a risk
group for women who have been around for a while. A lot of women do not want to
risk getting involved in all the coming out issues and the potential pain involved.
In terms of someone being unsettled or emotionally fragile in any way,
every day without an Email can be a rejection. You need to be prepared to have
relationships fizzle without closure. Some people will push fast and back off
just as fast. It's an intense little subculture. Somehow I was weirded out when
I realized that a lot of these people I was talking to knew each other and had
dated each other at least for a while.
For me, the benefits for someone
just coming out are:
1.
Getting your feet wet, and getting to know some people and possibly finding some
mentors.
2. Learning lessons that most people learned as teenagers but that
are just as new to someone just coming out (usually involving some confusion though).
3. Speeding things up in terms of meeting people. Without Match.com I knew
approximately 15 lesbians (literally), and I've doubled that in the 3 months.
I'm not sorry I joined Match.com but I'm hiding my profile a bit to take
a breather, which is an option as well.
2.
LESBIAN LONG DISTANCE DATING
Unless you are rich and can travel to foreign lands, it's best to date women in
your country, and better yet, in your local area.
Case in Point:
We knew one lesbian couple who met in a chat room. They "dated" online
and on the phone for over a year, but never really met. They fell hard for each
other, and finally decided that they should live together. The drawback to this
was that one lived in Australia and one lived in the United States. The one in
the United States opted to leave her job, sell her home, and move to Australia
to be with the love of her life. The relationship lasted less than 3 months, and
the woman from the United States had given up everything for a fantasy.
We've heard of at least 50 stories like this, and we are just saying you have
to be mighty careful with online love affairs. If at all possible, you should
meet the person personally and date her personally as soon as possible. Dating
local means you may not have huge phone bills, and it saves on expense when you
do finally meet face to face.
3.
ASK MANY QUESTIONS, AND THEN ASK SOME MORE
If you start emailing back and forth with someone who seems compatible, keep asking
questions. For any relationship to work, there are many things that two people
must be on the same page with. For example: if you are an animal lover who could
never do without your furry babies, it would be horrible to find out that the
person you are wanting to get serious with has horrible allergies and she hates
cats and dogs. It's better to find out sooner than later, and it's very important
not to give up who you are for a relationship.
Case
in Point from a Support For Lesbians Coming Out group member:
I have to
say that when I started online dating, I got over 10 potential matches each week
and yes some just were initial winks and inside match-emails, but there is one
that will always be my favorite, and she is who I am with today. Yes, it is scary
to dive into the world of online dating and you have to be prepared for the worst
and hope for the best. It can be a bust or the beginning of a beautiful relationship.
Ask many many many questions and then asked many many more! You will find out
who and what you are dealing with in just a short amount of time.
Case in
Point from a Support For Lesbians Coming Out group member:
I am one of
the women who met the love of her life through online dating. But I met a lot
of weirdos before Lisa came along. Common sense and caution are the key words
when meeting people in this manner. It is not an unknown occurrence for a man
to pretend he is a woman in order to meet lesbians and try to "turn them
straight." I made it a rule not to respond more than once to a person who
refused to send me their picture. Granted, a man could have sent a picture of
his sister or his wife or whoever, but that's where even more common sense and
caution come into play.
After emailing and IMing, I insisted we talk
on the telephone. It is pretty hard for most men to very long during a phone conversation!
If the person and I hit it off over the phone (after MANY conversations!) and
we wanted to meet in person, I insisted on a coffee date or a well-traveled public
place to begin with. From that meeting, we would decide if we wanted to continue
to get to know each other, if we could just be "friends" (and I have
several lasting friendships from my online adventures), or if we wanted to call
it quits and move on. Be careful. Have fun. Be careful. That was my mantra when
involved in online dating.
4.
MEET IN PERSON AS SOON AS YOU FEEL COMFORTABLE
If you find someone online that you love to email with, we suggest also speaking
on the phone, and then eventually meeting this person in a public place, like
a restaurant or a coffee shop. The only successful, long-term relationship stories
we've heard from women who have met online are when they can actually date each
other, in person, for an extended period of time. It's easy to "Fall in Love"
with the fantasy of someone online, only to later meet and find out that this
person is not who she, or in some cases HE, said she was.
Case
in Point:
Best thing is to meet the person you are interested in as soon
as you both feel comfortable doing so. We have known several people who have been
"Madly in Love" online, only to find that once they met the woman in
person there was nothing there but the heartache of what could have been. Situations
that turn out like this are not really worth all the time and long distance phone
charges.
Case in Point:
About Internet dating, I would meet
as fast as possible. I had two dates with women from a dating site, The first
date happened pretty fast, since we lived in the same town. The second date was
six hours away, so we did not see each other for a while. We hit it off real well,
had fun, and got to know each other very well, but all in writing and on the phone.
It looked good at first, but fell apart pretty fast when it came closer to meeting
and when we met. That's why I can't stress too much to try to meet rather soon,
before you fall in love with a person through e-mails. It might be totally different
once you meet. We put a lot of our own feelings into the picture we have of the
other person, and it can build up real fast. What we imagine might not be what's
there at all.
5.
TELL A FRIEND
When meeting someone for the first time, always tell a trusted friend where you
will be, and what times you expect to be there and then home. Always call your
trusted friend if there is a change in plans so that she or he will not be worried. 6.
MEET IN A PUBLIC PLACE
When
meeting someone for the first time, always meet in a public place--not a motel
or a person's private home. Have your own transportation that you can leave in
if things get weird, and make sure that the person does not follow you home.
Case
in Point from a Support For Lesbians Coming Out group member:
This is
just my experience from meeting women online: most are total flakes but then again
so are most men online. A lot of them try to pretend to be something they are
not. My best experience seems to be to try to find someone who is fairly close
to you. Long distance
relationships never seem to work no matter the
orientation. I met my girlfriend on MySpace.com of all places and we originally
met just to be friends (come to find out we lived about a mile away from each
other) and it kinda progressed from there. We've been together for about a year
and a half now, and plan on buying a house very soon here.
The Internet
is just like any other medium. The most important thing is to be yourself. If
she likes you for who you are then it's meant to be. If she doesn't then she's
not the one for you and why waste your time trying to be something you're not?
I do agree that you should meet the person fairly quickly. I always liked to meet
in a very public place like a restaurant or mall for safety reasons. You'd be
amazed how many men try to pose as women--weirdos.
7.
FIRST MEETING AND THE BEDROOM
When
looking for a serious long-term relationship, a good thing to do is to date and
get to know the person before you go to bed with her. Sex only screws up the perception
of what is real and what is not. If you get to know someone, you can then fall
in love with her, not with sex. Don't become the Lesbian U-Haul joke of your community,
or as one of our friends put it "Lesbian Ryder is more like it."
Case
in Point:
As far as a woman you've met online, just be upfront with her
as much as possible, and state that you would like to meet to see if you all can
be really be friends. If there is chemistry, it will go from there. If not, then
you haven't wasted loads of time, and future pain of a possible online broken
heart.
8.
SAFER SEX
If
you do end up in bed, always practice Safer Sex until both
partners are positive that they do not have any STDs. Safer
Sex is not a guarantee that you will still not catch an STD,
but it's better than unprotected sex. If you need to know
more about STDs and Safer Sex techniques, both our Coming
Out Support and Sensual
Support book packages have large sections on these
subjects: Both have essentially the same STD and Safer Sex
information, although the Sensual Support Package is written
with inclusive language for anyone who loves women.
9.
THINK WITH YOUR HEAD, NOT YOUR SOUTHERN REGIONS
The
best advice we can give is to always use common sense and your "Woman's Intuition."
If someone seems "Too good to be true" they probably are. Remember to
think with your head, not your regions down South. There are a lot of people who
use online dating just for sex, so be careful and always listen to those warning
signs in your own gut.
Case
in Point from a Support For Lesbians Coming Out group member:
My last
experience was with a woman started by Emailing and asking just to talk. Within
a week we were averaging 3 Emails a day, an IM, and some phone calls. We met for
a date after week. Being very new to this, it was exciting. I was open to what
might happen despite lots of warning signals. Long story short, she was also initiating
another similar relationship at pretty much the same time, and with the same intensity
(which was moving very quickly) with someone else. She became intimate with the
other person after about a week and a half, but in the meantime she was still
emailing, calling, and setting up dates with me.
10.
IF YOU ARE PATIENT AND LISTEN TO YOURSELF, GREAT THINGS CAN HAPPEN
We
don't want to scare you with bad online dating stories, because we believe that
online dating can be a great way to meet new people. Sure, there are crazies everywhere
you go, but there are also good, honest women out there, just like you, who are
looking for love. Be safe, have fun, and date until you find your lesbian or bi
mate : )
Case
in Point from a Support For Lesbians Coming Out group member:
Four years
ago this month I used Yahoo Personals and happened to meet and fall head over
heels for the love of my life. Besides meeting her, I "met" one other
extremely nice lady who is still a part of my life. I also met and talked to a
hand full of women in a 30 or so mile range from my home and we had some good
conversations. I'm still in touch with one of them. For me, the experience was
great and I wouldn't be where I am now with this most beautiful person in my life.
I know there are some weird things that happen in any sort of personals service,
but I got very lucky. Our first meeting was in a very public restaurant.
GREAT
NEWS!
We have found several reputable online dating programs
for Lesbians
and Bisexual Women WARNING:
Per recommendation of legal counsel, we urge anyone using online dating services
to be adult women, 18 years of age or older, who are of sound mind and can make
safe decisions for their own welfare. Amazing Dreams Publishing or Lesbian Ecard
hold no responsibility for the actions of any members of our Online Dating Affiliates.
If you are under 18 years of age, or if you are accessing the dating sites
from any country or locale where this is specifically prohibited by law, do not
enter the sites listed below. Please visit our other services at Amazing Dreams
Publishing HERE. By
entering any of the websites listed below, I agree to the following:
I am at least 18 years of age. Misrepresenting your age in order to gain
access to this site may be a violation of local, state and federal law.
The material I'm viewing is for my own personal use and is not to be viewed by
minors or anyone else but myself.
I will always be safe in my online
dating choices--meaning if I ever meet anyone from an online dating service, I
will make sure to always do so in a public place.
I agree that
the material presented here is not illegal or considered obscene in my street,
village, community, city, state, province or country.
By clicking any
of the Online Dating links below, you agree everything stated above. If
you do not agree, please feel free to browse the rest of the Amazing
Dreams website.
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