The Pluses of Personals
There are some days when the whole personals thing is a drag. It’s like having a lot of blind dates and by the tenth one, you’re ready to hang up your hat.
How many hours have you yourself spent browsing or searching through pages and pages of men or women? You search, you browse, you send, you hope, you wait. Some times you receive a decent email in return, some times you receive nothing at all and some times you’ll receive ones that you have no intention of returning no matter how desperate you get.
Have you ever spent a good portion of your day or night trying to find someone you think you might be compatible with, only to end up feeling exhausted, discouraged and disgusted with yourself? Surely, you think, there must be a better way. I think that would depend very much upon who you talked to.
The people who have done the whole dating thing by personals will tell you that shopping for someone in this manner is the best thing next to hot bread right out of the oven. They will tell you that having photos to look through and profiles to read cuts down very quickly on whom they actually have to spend time going through to find the one(s) they are really interested in. They will tell you that the amount of money and time saved from uncomfortable, awkward dates is wonderful. They will tell you that because no one really knows who you are on the opposite end of the computer, that in many ways you can be yourself more openly; and they will admit to you that yes, sometimes someone lies by not presenting themselves as they really are, but that these instances are much less than you would think.
They will tell you that there is a wonderful freedom in being able to express yourself without having to put yourself out there in a face to face meeting. They will tell you that communicating through the personals is a lot like therapy-there are hundreds of people that you can talk to whether you are in a good mood or a bad one. They will tell you that its more fun looking for someone dressed in their pajamas on a Sunday morning then having to get all dolled up to look the part and be on their best behavior. They will tell you they enjoy being able to go online any time of the day or night. And all of these things that they would say would be true.
But this still doesn’t mean that the times in between looking for someone and making a connection with them can’t also be long, boring, hard, despairing and discouraging. For this would be true too.
Trying to find a partner in whatever capacity you are wanting one is a difficult enough thing to happen by chance anyway. If scanning through the personals is an acceptable option nowadays, then why not try it?