Some of my best education for life came from massage school, and one of the stand-out lessons was to listen to the little voice in your head, even when it makes no sense.  Some dude you’ve never met calls your massage practice on the phone and wants to schedule a massage.  98 times out of 100, that’s a totally normal thing and means that your marketing is working.  But the other 2 times, the conversation isn’t anything special or strange, but you feel uncomfortable and you don’t know why.

They taught us to say no immediately without waiting for a reason.  Make up a story, lie, whatever, but shut it down and say no – AND YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE RIGHT.  Our instructors all confirmed that the rare times they had found themselves in an unsettling or dangerous situation, it was a time when they KNEW something was wrong, but couldn’t justify it and didn’t want to be a jerk to some stranger, so they did nothing to stop it.

So here’s the deal.  Online dating can be a fun day at the beach, but remember you are swimming in a cesspool.

Here’s what you are going to do:  Reject early.  Reject often.  Don’t wait to know if you are right.

I know you weren’t raised that way and it seems shitty and inhumane.  It’s not.  It’s all good and here’s why and how.

Your instincts are smarter than your brain

Years later, one of my classmates got attacked and beaten pretty badly by a group of teens while she was walking home in an urban neighborhood.  Afterward, she said the same thing – she knew it, but couldn’t justify it logically.  She didn’t want to be dramatic, suspicious, racist, whatever.  She said that all she would have had to do in order to avoid it was simply start pretending she was a giant chicken as she walked – bocking loudly, flapping her arms, and essentially acting like a crazy person.  Nobody gets hurt, no big deal, and suddenly she’s a high-maintenance target.  And she actually thought to do it in the moment, but then thought “That’s crazy.”  But it was dead on.  She knew.

Now I’m not saying that your instincts are going to scream out “serial killer!!” very often, but more often they’ll just whisper a quiet “yucky”.  Go with that.

You already know what works and what doesn’t

Everybody has things they care about.  Maybe you get up every morning and make a fresh organic kale smoothie.  Maybe seeing your friend’s Facebook post that says “Your right” makes you want to stab yourself in the eye with a butter knife.  Maybe you vacuum every day so you can see the perfect lines in the carpet.  Maybe you smoke a lot of pot and/or let your cat sleep on your face.

These are your things.  And while you may have all the room in the world to respect someone who makes opposite choices – and even be friends with people who are very different than you – you can look into your crystal ball of “no shit, genius” and know that someone who doesn’t complement your important things just isn’t going to be a good fit for you in the love monkey category.  Don’t mistake open-mindedness or compassionate respect for lack of proper personal discernment.  Reject early.  Reject often.

You don’t owe nobody nuthin

I know, I know.  You were raised better than that, but hear me on this.  Exchanging online messages with a stranger doesn’t put them into a category of friend.  Get the information you need, be kind, and don’t waste anybody’s time.

People have strong feelings about this one and it is a hot topic.  I believe that going silent on someone you have not yet met in person is a totally acceptable form of saying “no thank you” when it comes to internet dating.

Other people will rage about the rudeness of this behavior and I get it.  But I have 2 reasons I endorse it:

1. Online dating is a high-volume situation. Getting active, detailed rejections with any regularity is exhausting.  The point of chatting is to decide if you want to meet.  If the chatting stops, there’s your answer.  I don’t want you to break up with me and tell me what you felt went south in our 10 minute history.  I don’t care.  I just need to know if you are interested – and not responding tells me that you aren’t.  Move along.  Thank you for not making me listen to an awkward rejection from someone who doesn’t know enough about me for it to have anything to do with me anyway.
2. Our 10 minutes of history is not a relationship and I don’t owe you an explanation. My investment is not great enough at that point to take the time to reject you.  And (see above), knowing you for such a short interaction means the reasons aren’t about you anyway – they are about me.  And you don’t know me well enough to care about that shit.  Or at least you shouldn’t.

So let’s pass on the 5-10 mini breakups every week.  No thanks.  Exhausting and wasteful.  Silence is platinum.

No, it doesn’t make you a bad person

If you are one of the over-educated, west-coast, progressive-thinking, compassion-chasers like I am, this is going to feel a little more Donald Trump-esque than you may be comfortable with.  We’ve worked so hard to learn NOT to judge people (or I have, at least) and to find value in all our differences.

And everybody DOES deserve love and acceptance and bowling and cuddles and use of the carpool lane – but not necessarily with YOU.  This is the difference.  Live and let live is a grand thing.  But “come on over and live in my world and eat my zucchini and pet my dog” is a special thing and it is your job to protect it.

As always, do it with clarity, kindness, sincerity, and an eye on your own values.  But do it.  Don’t be a big chicken – unless a gang of roving hooligans is about to beat your ass.  In that case, bock bock.

Go-do’s

Here’s what you’re going to do.

1. Figure out a couple of things you care about and reject people out of hand when they bump up against them. Here are mine:  Wait…pause here.  It took me a while to get comfortable admitting these to myself, so typing them here scares the shit out of me….Here we go anyway.
   1. Literacy. Not to say that I won’t forgive a bit of this and that if there are other good things going on, but in general – If you only deal with people who can effectively string together coherent thoughts and proper sentences, you will instantly eliminate layers and layers of weirdos.  I’ll admit that I have gone on A LOT of dates, some in risky situations (knowingly), and many from sites that you’ve never heard of – or only make jokes about because they are so sketchy.  And while I’ve met some very complex people, I have never, ever, ever felt unsafe for a second.  If you stick with literate matches, you rule out a lot of riff raff.  And I figure higher-end criminals like serial killers are probably going to choose women better looking than me, so I’m cool.
   2. Emotional health. If the message exchange involves any Eeyore shit, party over.  If you need someone to talk to about your ex-wife, mother, drug habit, ruined business, or chronic fatigue syndrome, I’m not your baggage handler.  Party over.
   3. Being uninteresting. I won’t answer any first message that doesn’t have some element of interesting thought or relevance.  “Hi, how are you?”  “Wow, your so pretty!!” (it’s always with the fucking “your”) “You DTF tonight?”  Delete delete delete.  Same goes for a conversation that starts with potential and then just gets pervy.  I’m not against a pervy conversation, but only if it’s happened organically and remains interesting.  “Send me a picture of your tits”, while rude, offends me more because it is uninteresting.    Also my tits are kind of too fabulous for that.  I’ll bet most people’s are.
   4. Unhealthy habits. If you eat Doritos for breakfast, sleep until noon, or play a lot of Worlds of Warcraft, there’s nothing wrong with that, but we aren’t going to get along.  I wake up at 5am almost every day – and I am happy about it and ready to get up – and yes, that makes me a fucking weirdo, but it’s also a great gift and I don’t want to apologize for how I am any more than I think you should have to apologize for how you are.  So let’s just skip it.
2. Pay attention to reasons you reject people and take note. This is an important one because you are going to get rejected a lot and when it happens, you need to remember it isn’t about you.  Watching your own thought process allows you to imagine someone else’s.  I swiped left because you look like my ex-husband (who is a handsome man and good human, but best left in the past, thank you very much).  I swiped left on him because he has a cat in his picture and I am allergic.  You get the picture.
3. Consider trying cutting off early communications with someone without talking about it. Don’t do this if you’ve met in person or talked on the phone, because that is too shitty, but if you’ve only messaged, try disappearing.  See how you feel when it happens to you vs when you get rejected actively and decide what you think is right.
4. Practice saying no. Any time, for any reason.  Keep your cool.  Be kind. And if your gut says go – get the hello outta there.  And enjoy the victory when you do it.

What do you guys think about all this?