In the year of the great COVID-19 pandemic, the only certainty has been economic uncertainty. One of the early IPO filings of 2021 is the female-driven, Austin-based online dating site Bumble, which easily raised $2.2 billion and skyrocketed 80% in its first trading.
Though the dating site industry has not historically been a serious contender for investors, a changing world devoid of human contact has also changed opinions of its potential to strike up more than just a match.
As investors swiped right on pandemic-proof Bumble, the realities of online dating for the lonely soul stood both as a mainstay of millennial-era dating, as well as one of the biggest potential traps ever set for society’s prince seeking his long-awaited Juliet.
Conversely, every girl’s Romeo can be a big Fakeo—a prince, once kissed, turned frog. In spite of the 20% of true love success stories that spawned online, more than a quarter of a million online dating app users are still bumbling around for their Forever. One fifty word text exchange leads to the next morning’s, pre-coffee, Good Morning, Beautiful!
Ladies beware—if you are the innocent recipient of this type of premature flattery than you need to look in the mirror and tell yourself that Needy Joe gotta go! Respond to Good Morning, Beautiful! and you will be setting the stage for Prince Fraudulent to gain control over your life, as he is flagrantly waving his big red love bomber flag.
Two text exchanges and one video chat later, if the timbre of his voice has yet to deter you, you agree to meet in a public location that you consider a safety zone. Despite his good community standing and ability to pass a background check, the intimate exchange of even one kiss with a love-bombing stranger is like a fast track to fantasy land where you could potentially wake up living your worst nightmare. Any woman of value wants the provision of a man’s Godly heart, not his cash, but this is a rare find in this fallen world.
The notable late speaker Myles Munroe delivered enduring messages about dragging a man into Eden and then spending a lifetime wondering why he won’t live as he should, laying his life down for his beloved. “If he wasn’t in Eden when you found him, you don’t want him.”
Secondly, the DNA of a Godly man inherently makes him a provider in every way, rather than an infidel that deposits havoc in his wake. While Munroe reminded ladies that they should ask, “Are you working?” today it is the men, often living through financial carnage, who bear the urgency to press women, “Are YOU working?” Baking pies and sewing curtains for the home don’t qualify in the modern man’s online quest for companionship where women are at risk of becoming chattel.
Finally, if you cannot resist online dating, a word of wisdom from a writer’s perspective through a female lens that will help a man avoid cliché snafus, sure to get him ousted from the audience of a queen. Take a look at your own profile and remove limiting words like “just” in your display name or otherwise. JustMe, JustLarry, or JustBob— just no good. The word just is such a limiting word to define a man. And for the love of all that is good and holy, please do not add the term “Country Boy” to the end of any display name. This will already have been evident.
Other helpful hints: Post more than half your face. The main thing a girl wants to know is what you look like. Try smiling at the camera in a regular headshot. Think about what a girl wants, and it’s probably not your dog, your fish, your motorcycle, your ex-wife’s arm, your cat, the deer on your wall, or your boat.
Resourceful as you may be, there is no need to hide behind your hobbies or hang a stethoscope around your neck to show your worth. Then ask yourself, “Am I attractive or am I kind of scary in this picture?” One clue is that you might want to trim that facial hair and change your display name from “BornLoser” to something more positive sounding.
Requesting a phone number or private meeting too early ranks just behind Good Morning, Beautiful! for the kiss of death. A recent meme wisely declared that if a woman is out there paying her own bills, the last question that will turn her attention your way is a text that says, “Hey, WYD?”
Finally, you know what they say: When you point the finger at someone, there are three pointing back at you. When a girl reads the words “no drama”…well, you know. Besides, if you find a female with no drama you might remember that we girls are doing a lot of multi-tasking being superwomen and sometimes what you considered “drama” in the past was your lack of response to a blaring need that could have been solved with a hug.
Online dating is a real, living, breathing part of society in the modern lonely world, as evidenced by the recent rush of investors to get behind the likes of Bumble. But it can also be to the detriment of an unwise user in a virtual world where the label of LTR really means casual sex disguised as the magic words “I want to marry you (albeit someday…)”.
World-renowned family psychologist, Dr. James Dobson, teaches the 12 steps to intimacy in a safe order that guards not only purity, but hearts: eye to body, eye to eye, voice to voice, hand to hand, and so on. Online dating is an invitation to get these out of order without a resolve by both parties to get to know one another properly. Never underestimate the power of words with a stranger to create a connection that will betray your truest needs.
Further, the old adage that if you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes holds here. Our world has become unsafe for a woman to be picked up from her home and taken out for a nice meal, then returned with no obligations other than the pleasure of her company in conversation. Today’s day and age breeds selective contact that allows accelerated familiarity to be cut off with one touch of the block button, leaving someone in love with a ghost. There is a high chance you will either get desensitized to intimacy or suffer emotional trauma.
Dating sites gone wrong will break a girl’s heart and ruin a guy’s thinking, though the intentions may have originally been pure! Although narcissists, predators, and imposters are rampant in dating sites, Bumble executives know that just like one good drive in golf, sheer curiosity will always lead a player to play another round.
The downfall of many who play a hand at the online dating game is the breadcrumb of hope that the prince will be authentic in his noble calling, without an overlording ex-wife and a so called “ex-mistress” in his life. The false belief that you will be the only woman for him, rather than one of hundreds of online ear-ticklers from which he derives his machismo, is a costly game.
Next time you hear the little dopamine ding that zings the strings right out of your heart, remember that the only Good Morning Beautiful! you want chasing you is a man who is already in Eden chasing God more. A man like that won’t be so fast with the enter key to express his wit and charm to rope his next cowgirl and take her on a ride to nowhere fast.
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