Group therapy in a blog.
YOUR HELP NEEDED!!
Hello, everyone…I’m putting together a plan for the next few months of my Jewish Week column, First Person Singular, and I’m asking the JDaters Anonymous community for help.
If you have insights into, opinions of or reactions to the topics and activities listed below, I need your help:
* Speed dating (REACTIONS NEEDED ASAP FOR THIS ONE)
* Shabbat singles dinner events
* Long-distance relationships
* Jewish singles travel (how effective is it, are we truly ourselves when we’re on vacation, why is or isn’t it a good environment for meeting a soulmate)
* Dating karma (whatever that means to you)
* Dating your friends (transitioning from one to the other, and sometimes back again)
* “The Code” between same-sex friends and how it impacts dating
* Relationship Dealbreakers
…and anything else you’d care to suggest as a future topic.
Thanks, and I hope to have more exciting columns and blog posts for you soon…
Speed dating: The five minutes can either be the shortest or longest in existence, depending on who you’re paired up with. And if you’re paired up with someone you have already dated, it can be disastrous. (Yes, that’s happened to me.)
I will second everything Keith said. It is also uncomfortable if you get paired up with someone you got paired up with at a previous event.
I could also go on about the scarcity of speeddating events for people over 40. Women fill them up quickly and men don’t, so they get canceled.
I have done both 8 minute speed dating(where you meet 8 people), and 3 minute (through hurrydate where you meet 20 people and there is alcohol). I think the 3 minute dating is way better. It’s funny you end up recognizing the same people that are on jdate and from other events but it seems more natural meeting them in person through speed dating, then via jdate.
Long distance dating: I did it with a guy I met at Jewish Community 7 years ago. We would chat every night for 3-4 hours, either online or via the phone, for 7 months straight. We met in person 5 months after our online relationship started. It was a whirlwind from there. After a few more weekends together, I was asked to spend a week with him in which I would be going on interviews that he set up for me. That week I accepted a job, and within 2 months I moved to him. Within a week of moving, he had an epiphany that he wasn’t ready for a commitment, I lived out of my suitcase for a month (I wasn’t allowed to hang things in his closet) until I found roommates, and the relationship quickly faded. All within a year…
Therefore, my advice is proceed with caution.
A friend of mine met her fiance at a Shabbat Singles Dinner. They were at the same table and one thing led to another.
Shabbat Singles Dinners can be a great way to meet people. Two complaints – people who complain about the quality or amount of the food v. the price and/or the ability of the organizers to have all the names down of those who registered – those comments are a real downer at a non profit jewish organization. Also, while I am all for inclusion, allowing people in who wear ratty clothes/ripped jeans is not cool, in my humble opinion.
Unveil the Jdate liars
I wish there was a website for women to share their stories about the men they have dated on the internet and bring out into the open what these guys are truthfully doing. I pride myself on being very honest and having high integrity. Unfortunately, I am very pure-hearted and I was just fooled by someone that I thought was the same. I just had the worst experience of my life. I wish there was a place to bring the names of these cyber-dating deceivers out into the public.
On March 21st, I woke up in the morning, made love with my boyfriend and felt like I was in a very happy relationship filled with love and a future of the rest of our lives together. He left my home the morning of our break up telling me he loved me and was going to be moving into my place in July (something he had committed to on January 3rd). Later the same day, (when I was very distraught after a visit with my father who appears to be dying) he chose this time to express that he was having doubts about keeping this commitment. I needed a friend that night being as distraught as I was and I knew at that moment, I had to leave him because he was torturing me. We broke up that night.
He had done this 2-3 times in the last couple of weeks, changing his mind and not being able to leave me because he “loves me so muchâ€Â. We tried to figure out if our issues had anything to do with incompatibility, but I feel they did not and so did members of his family. I asked him if he was feeling the need to date other women or if he had met someone. He said, no he could never even look at another woman because he loved me so much. And even if we did break up, he would not consider dating anyone for a long time as it would take him a long time to recover from this relationship.
This was his third time to make a commitment promise and break it. At a relationship counselling session in January, he made a commitment to move into my place in July. He agreed and understood that if he changed his mind this time, it would be a “deal breaker”.
On March 26th, five days later, he was back on Jdate, where we met.
I read a book that night called “Men Who Can’t Love, How to Recognize a commitment-phobic man before he breaks your heart.” by Steven Carter and Julia Sokol. In case you think that this is some kind of funny expression for a “gun shy†guy, it is not. These guys are truly sick individuals that prey upon unsuspecting women by appearing at the beginning of a relationship to be everything you are looking for. As the relationship unfolds, they start revealing their true identity and eventually sabotage the relationship to the point where you have to break up with them, because they can not even commit to breaking up. For more about this on the net, please go to:http://members3.boardhost.com/commitment/index.html
There is already one feedback comment on this posted there. If you don’t go there, Sally just posted, “I think new book needs to be written.. ” How to Prevent Internet Dating Fraud, 100 Undercover Stealth Tacticsâ€Â.
I suspect that my ex-boyfriend did his cheating by contacting women on the internet and having “cybersex†and possibly meeting women for future relationships. He did this to a previous girlfriend (he told me it was only thone previous ex that he did this to, but I suspect he did this to everyone). The week before our break-up, I suggested he move his computer desk and computer in so that we could see if it fits. I guess there was a reason he would not want to keep his computer here. Even though, he stayed here 5 days a week and spoke to me on the phone all night the other two days, he did not want to give up his place. He had a key to my place, but I did not have a key to his place. I asked him that same week why he did not offer me a key to his place? I think it was because he might be trying to hide something. He always erases the Url history in his own computer, even though he is the only one using it. I think these challenges to his sickness precipitated his doing things to make me want to break up with him.
Apparently from what I have been reading on the internet, there are lots of these guys doing things like this. They are addicted to the internet like a gambler or an alcoholic There are also cheaters and womanizers. The ones who seem to be the worst deceivers are the nerdy looking ones that look like the nice guys.
I was raped 10 years ago and I had not had a relationship with anyone for over 10 years. This experience feels worse than that. At least in that experience, it only lasted one night, but right now I feel like I have been the victim of fake love for 10 months. I broke up with him only a few days ago and he is right back in there on the internet (or maybe he never stopped) fooling the next woman. I could not fight back in the rape situation, but I have thought of a way to fight back in this one.
I used to think that I would not want to go to a bar because all you might meet are womanizers, cheaters and liars. But on Jdate, these dishonest bad intentioned men can get away with anything because only they don’t have to answer to anyone. A lot of them are even cheating on their girlfriends. They break up with you one day and go on Jdate the next. In the non-cyber world, it is harder to fool the next woman that easily because people would talk, but here we have no voice because of the way this is set up. No one can tell that they aren’t as sweet as what they say or their profile says. But I have thought of a way to have a voice and I am sure everyone will tell me to be quiet and get on with my life, but I wish someone had warned me.
The women on Jdate or any internet dating site should find a forum and share their stories so that these guys don’t get away with what they are doing. I wish someone had warned me about him.
I feel like I would like to rejoin Jdate just to warn all the women about him.
What do you all think of this?
If I could help one woman from going through the heartache I am going through right now, it would make me feel better and I wish someone had done the same for me. Right now I don’t know if I can ever trust another man. Please give me some feedback.
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Please comment at my blog as well:
http://unveiltheliars.blogspot.com/
Thanks!!!