Online Dating Safety - For Men?!
So I’d been chatting with this one girl I met on Yahoo Chat off and on for the last week or so. She seemed pretty cool and laid back. We had similar interests and her picture wasn’t bad. She was by no means a hottie, but definitely not bad on the eyes.
It was Tuesday and I had no solid plans for that evening. So when I received an email from her asking what I was doing after work, I replied “nothing,” to which she called me “boring,” and asked me out for a drink. Normally I prefer to be the one doing the asking, but I was in an adventurous mood so I said I’d meet her for coffee.
And what a boring cup of coffee it was. Upon meeting her I realized just how un-interesting some people can be. And to put it kindly, her picture… well she didn’t look anything like her picture. All I can figure is that she took 500 pictures and then photo shopped the very best one. Maybe the picture was her sister or something, I dunno.
So after an excruciating 30 minutes of utter boredom, I politely excused myself and fled for home. I figured that would be the end of that. An hour later I received what was to be the first of many emails sent by my new admirer that night. The title of the first email was “I MISS YOU!!!” Yikes. That was enough for me. I deleted the first email without reading it. Then I deleted the second, third, and fourth emails, all sent within the following two hours. After receiving yet a fifth, I blocked her email address. Problem solved, or so I thought.
The next day at work I received a dozen red roses from this woman. The scary thing is that I never told her where I worked! Some guys think that receiving flowers from a girl is romantic. I’m not one of those guys. After one too many “Ah, how cute! Your boyfriend sent you flowers!” type comments, I gave them to the new girl in media.
Two days later while at work I got a call from the front desk saying that my “Fiancé” was there to take me out to lunch. WTF!!! Security ended up escorting her out. To make a long story short, I ended up calling her and being very direct, mentioning several words like “restraining order, therapy,” etc… Thankfully, she got the point.
So the moral of my story is? Men need to be just as careful as women when considering dating someone they’ve met online. Trust me, it is NOT fun having a psycho chick show up at your work. Your colleagues will never let you hear the end of it. And the women at work will just assume that it’s your fault, and that you somehow lead the poor girl on. Or worse, that you used her and dumped her. They still don’t believe that I just met the girl once! For thirty minutes! Over a cup of freaking coffee!
So how do you avoid having something like this happen to you? By watching for warning signs. Too much personal information too soon is one of them. Emailing you too often is another. Anything signaling that she is overly eager to meet you. Her asking YOU out is another red flag. Quality women get asked out on dates ALL the time. Unless you’re Brad Pitt’s twin, you need to ask yourself why would a hottie need to ask anyone out on a date? Hot women mostly turn down dates.
If God forbid you do find yourself being stalked by some crazy female, the worst thing you can do is try to avoid the situation. Attempting to ignore her by deleting and blocking her emails is not smart. The correct thing to do is be direct with her. I should have let her know immediately that I was not interested in her. I’m not telling you to be unkind but if they don’t get the hint, sometimes you need to be brutally honest. In the long run it’s actually kinder to the female to let them know where they stand. It will save hurt feelings, and avoid (hopefully) the type of thing that happened to me at work.
Good luck and stay safe!