Singles Dating Scene: A Bridge Too Far, Is Your Prospective Date Geographically Undesirable?

Singles Dating World: A Bridge Too Far, Is Your Dating Prospect Geographically Desirable?

G.U.D. Is your internet dating prospect date geographically desirable or undesirable?

In the early days of internet dating when it was still commonly thought of as computer dating (a term some online singles still use), many cyberlove seeking single men and women would search for their Soul Mate online and toss their fishing nets to around the whole world.

These Open Love singles would say things like, “I’m open to love wherever it comes from.”  

Additionally, they would cite that they were “willing to relocate for the right person.”

While we have all heard romantic stories of couples having found each other who lived thousands of mile away from each other, even those who lived in different countries.  The reality is, this percent of the population who meet and marry like that is a very small percent, about 1% of marriage.  Not 77%.

Single Guys Ask Themselves, “What If There’s Someone Better For Me Still Out There?”

Also, it seems that more single men have a particular single dating mental mindset that impedes their ever popping the question, proposing to their actual girlfriend, getting happily married, and genuinely starting married life together.  A number of single men have this mental obstacle about “The One That Got Away.”  Really, it is “The One Who I Never Met.”  They have an expectation that the girl they would really want to marry is some perfect ideal woman who they just haven’t met yet.

Single women have their own variation on this perfect spouse pipe dream.  Single men might approach us at the social networking sites like Facebook or one of the Online Matchmaking Dating Sites like Match, Mingle, or Lavalife.  And they live thousands upon thousands of miles away.  The connection starts with emailing at the dating websites and could go on for months, even more than a year or two.  They start to develop a relationship connection which is exclusively online based.   Both men and women can develop feelings for each other.

It’s just I hear tale after tale of when the majority of those online relationship singles finally meet, if ever that 97% of the relationship was a fantasy in their mind.  They really only knew their prospective love mate only a little, and their mind had filled in the rest of the picture with their ideal.

The realities of courting and dating were impossible do conduct, of course, exclusively online.

When I was in college and we met a cute guy, say over Summer Vacation, who was also in college but in an entirely different state and region than where we were going to college (Massachusetts, where it seems like 87% of the country attends one of the colleges there….), we had a phrase to describe how impossible it was to date him in an ongoing basis.

We would describe him as “He’s cute, but might was well be Omaha.”  Nothing against, Omaha, NE.  Just the point here is, he lived a few hundred miles away from us.  At that point in our lives, a few hundred miles might as well have been a few thousand.  Hence the label, “Might as well be Omaha.”

Here in Southern California, singles in San Diego, Orange County, and Riverside County, will consider dating Singles in Los Angeles County.  However, what part of LA county…  If they live north of the 405 interchange and you live south of that, despite the number of miles that is, it’s the traffic around the interchange is just impossible.  If you have to navigate that week in and week out, that Chinese Water Torture of driving attrition is just so annoying that over time, you will just decide that “It’s a bridge too far” for dating each other.

I also mention bridges because I used to live in the San Francisco Bay Area.  When I was first widowed, I lived in San Francisco and became an active member of the San Francisco Singles Scene.  And then I moved to the Mid-Peninsula.  A man had just started dating me.  He knew where I was moving to.  There are 7 bridges in the SF Bay Area. (Here’s the Map of the 7 SF Bay Area Bridges cited.)  He had to cross 2 of them each way to see me.  And yes he did, for awhile.  But that drive of the bridge commute traffic starts to weigh and drag on you, pulling the vitality and energy from you every week, week after week.  Surely, crossing 2 bridges each way is just too much?  And yes, indeed, it was. Crossing 2 Bridges each direction plus the related commuter traffic, really, “might as well be Omaha.”

When you are selecting the number of miles within which to search for love at the online dating websites, keep in mind the commuter traffic flow patterns, and remember that driving across 2 bridges each direction while dating makes your prospective mate lives “a bridge too far” from you to realistically consider courtship.

Happy Dating and Relationships,

April Braswell

Orange County’s Internet Dating and Relationship Expert

As seen in Dating for Dummies, 3rd Edition