Hi Karen,
I have an online dating pet peeve: men who send an email that simply says “how are you?” and nothing else. Or men who clearly don’t read your profile and what you’re looking for and write to you anyway even though the deal-breakers are obvious (such as wanting or not wanting kids). Those things drive me bonkers and, frankly, turn me off to the whole online dating “thing”. – sign me “Peeved”
Hello, there, Peeved,
The opportunities available through online dating are so abundant!
I’ll start off by sharing a perspective I often use with clients, when they’re focusing on what they don’t want (which is very easy to do, and most people’s attention is/stays there):
How far will you get if you get in your car and say “I don’t want to go to New York!”?
It doesn’t work that way.
You get in your car and say “I want to go to Chicago”, right? And then you look at your map, or you set your GPS, and off you go.
How often do you, or your friends, focus on what you don’t want in a man, or a situation?
~ I don’t want to have to wade through tons of men online;
~ I don’t want married/separated men to approach me;
~ I don’t want a man to ask me out if I don’t like him;
~ I don’t want a man who doesn’t own his own place;
~ I don’t want a man who is out of shape;
~ I don’t want a man who is stingy…
Get the idea?
There’s a huge amount of creative energy (which is what attention is…creative, powerful energy), drawing exactly what you don’t want, straight to you!
So, you sign up for an online dating site (by the way, I always encourage my single clients to find a site they like, and get active on it), and the next thing you know, you’re attracting men who are not a fit for you.
So what do you do?
Put all your creative and magnetic energy (focus) to work drawing to you what you DO want. If you’re not clear what that is, use what you know doesn’t work as a starting point; if you don’t like something, that means you’ve got an idea of what you would like.
And in the meantime, take the men who are taking the time to write to you as a compliment (sort of like being whistled at as you go by a construction site), and move on.
One more item to note: men are highly visual, so if they like the photo(s) of you, they’ll be likely to write to you (yes, without going through your profile to see whether or not they’ve got a chance).
Enjoy the fact that you’re attracting men who are showing interest, take it as a good sign that good things are on their way, and practice focusing your attention on what you want.
Best of luck to you!