Sweet Charlotte's Dating Advice: Should you make that long-distance trip to meet an online beau?

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  Posted by sun2go Fri Aug 28, 2009 2:44pm PDT

  Initial physical attraction isn't everything, and if you think it is, there might be a reason you need to travel to another country to find a woman. Beautiful relationships can grow from friendship that aren't based on appearance. If you can afford it, go for it, pay your own way entirely, and make a personal vacation out of it. Do not allow her to pay for anything. Otherwise you'll feel obligated, and that's a bad place to find yourself. Find your own transportation and accommodations so you can have your own fun and space, in addition to meeting her.

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  Posted by Charlotte Anne Fri Aug 28, 2009 5:29pm PDT

  Sun2go, you're advice is good on several counts: if you can afford to travel from the US to South America for vacation, and you can tack on a meet-up with your online beau as an aside (and not the main course), do it. If you can make such a trip and have no expectations but friendship -- a valuable connection, especially across national, language, and cultural divides -- that would be ideal.

  This course of action, however, is fraught with potential awfulness; and I have to beg to differ with your first two sentences.

  Part of the reason I went to see two of the men I wrote about -- the D.C. resident and the Vermonter -- was a hope that a "beautiful relationship could grow from friendship not based on appearance". It didn't work. Appearance per se doesn't matter in and of itself; the subjective attraction matters the world. I can't have sex with someone I'm not physically attracted to. And we are, I'm afraid, talking about sex in addition to the foundation of friendship. Now, there are women who will disagree with me. There are women who care very little for appearance, and are turned on almost exclusively by the nature of the friendship, or other aspects of their mate (power, money). There are women for whom attraction grows over time, and is not readily apparent. I'm not one of those people.

  Most men are not, either. And we're talking about my friend Giles, who is male. We are not talking about initial physical attraction. Giles has been corresponding with his online beau for seven months, so her personality has had time to wend its way into being an integral part of the "attraction equation". And physical attraction isn't "everything", just because it's a deal breaker. Giles would not spend months wooing a woman who was questionably attractive to him if she were a zero in the personality department. It's her personality, in fact, that has kept him corresponding with her so long, in spite of not being sure about the physical spark. But I repeat: Physical attraction, for most men and many women, is a deal breaker when it comes to sharing a bed. There is nothing about that that is in any way "Shallow Hal". It's animal evolution.

  And it does not exclude people (most of us) whose looks do not conform to the standard of beauty perpetuated by the warped fashion and entertainment industries. Nearly every person on the planet is attractive to at least one other person, regardless of degree of "non-comformity". Attraction is a slippery thing to pin down, and it's often based on elusive qualities that baffle us. It often has little to do with objective beauty. I went on first dates with many men who were beautiful, but who didn't do it for me. Attraction is in the chemistry, and as I wrote in my post, that has a lot to do with body language and smell -- two things you can't get out through email dating.

  And so we are back to the beginning: how to find out about chemistry when your beau lives half a planet away. Yes, he could fly down there. Few of us are rolling in an extra two thousand in this economy, but if you've got, use it. And pay for your trip. If you pay for everything, though -- yes, that makes it easy for the man to slip away. But what about the woman? Seriously. You're a woman. If a man made the financial and emotional effort to vacation not in the other 193 countries in the world, but your country in particular, and he happened to be smitten with you after meeting in person, and you thought to yourself, ouch, I don't feel a thing . . . how are you going to feel about saying, "no, thank you, let's just be friends"?

  If you're a good girl, you'll be honest -- gentle and kind, but honest. But you'll feel like crap. Won't you? I would. It's like the "he paid for dinner and champagne and roses", about 20 times over. It's awkward -- and sometimes, unfortunately, even dangerous -- enough to say "no" after a lovely dinner. Are we going to suggest our South American sister be put in an exponentially greater potential awkwardness?

  The second reason I went to see the Vermonter in Vermont, and the D.C. guy in D.C., was to make an effort -- and expense -- equal to theirs. They were sincere efforts. And they allowed me to say "no, thank you" and not feel like total crap. I am concerned that, if Giles were to make the trip to South America, his beau would not have an easy out.

  I'd love to hear if readers have a solution to that dilemma . . .

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  Posted by Mauna Sun Aug 30, 2009 4:53pm PDT

  It's your call, my experience was not all that great and it eventually did not work out, because he could not let go of his 'in the process of divorcing his first wife". The scary thing about on-line is that On-line is 100% not like meeting someone directly and it can be dangerous at times. I would just say, be careful and if you do meet him make sure there are plenty of people around.

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  Posted by Charlotte Anne Mon Aug 31, 2009 1:11pm PDT

  Hi Mauna. Online dating is indeed very different from meeting in person. I think we do it because there are some distinct advantages: access to a much larger pool of people than would be possible in normal face-to-face life; an ability to know things about people before ever "meeting them"; and an ability to reveal/find out things you wouldn't normally, but the anonymity of the Internet makes it possible. But each of these advantages has it's darker flip side. And certainly meeting people of the Net can be dangerous, especially for women. Meeting men when and where "there are plenty of people around" is basic. That means never get into a car with a man from the Net. I have broken this rule, and I was fine, but it was stupid. There are lots of ways we can protect ourselves (maybe I'll write a post specifically on that), and we should obey those rules religiously. And in doing so, we women are able to take control. In many ways, women can have more control over their dating experiences online than they do in strictly face-to-face dating. If we're careful and choosy and follow our instincts, we can make online dating a positive thing. I found my husband that way :-)

  As for your experience with the "divorcing" man online, ugh. I think there's a lot of that out there. Which is why at least one online dating site actually checks up on people to make sure they're really divorced (www.true.com) -- and also don't have a felony rap sheet.

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