The inns and outs of the online dating world through the eyes of a serial dater.

What is a serial dater?

A serial dater is someone who initially becomes a member of an online dating site seeking love, and quickly discovers the vast choice of women out there. Now before this vast potential choice he starts to collect and multiply his options. This notion of having so many women to seduce becomes a kind of challenge between you and yourself, and each time you try and get the bar a little higher, either in the style of woman or the number interested in you. You feel a real buzz when you have so many women who are interested in you, it’s like having a keyring full of options that you know is in your pocket and you can just choose which one you want to date. At this point you are no longer looking for love just sex.

How do you decide which online dating site you are going to start with?

You tend to choose the one with highest number of female members in the beginning and the advertising that you have seen also influence where you go first, most dating sites are all more or less the same in, subscription and services, but the big names tend attract more women than men. The other thing about a joining a dating site is the anonymous aspect, when you hang out with your mates and go out there is always the competition and bragging aspect that comes with male company, with the online dating sites it really is between you and the woman and your conscious, my male friends never talk about which dating site they are using, for men it is quite shameful to admit that you have to use a dating site to be able to find a girl, not much of an ego booster, where as women will talk about their dating sites subscriptions and adventures far more spontaneously. Once you have worked the top names, you start to look more at the profile of the dating site and start to shop around more. For example, you knew that on the major dating sites it was more about sex, whereas on some of the smaller sites it really is about fun or actually meeting someone.

How did you choose your date?

Obviously, physical appearance, age too, preferably close to my own, culture and general knowledge really important, but most important of all, spelling and words in full were always a giveaway when chatting, if these written skill boxes were ticked then I would find the time and chat for hours getting to know all about that person, until the time we fixed a date. With chatting you can share a lot with each other which helps with choosing a nice place to go out, something fun to do together,  you are constantly looking for something different to do on your first date. One day a women who I was chatting with just wanted to go to the beach and watch the sea and have an afternoon picnic, which I thought was a really nice idea and a pleasant change, so we did that for our first date.

What does a serial dater expect from a date?

To have a pleasant evening and to end up in bed with the date (laugh). Once a date has been fixed you honestly expect to have a nice time and just meet someone, sure you always think that this could be the time when love strikes as you head off to the date. With all the dates I had, the biggest let down was getting to the date to find that the women had lied about her age, which was a pity because the aim of going on a date is to have a nice time, and when you show up and find that you have been lied to since day one, well it puts an edge on the evening.

What about money issues and paying the bill?

I had no problem with travelling and the cost of it, I was brought up to believe that the man invited the woman out for dinner and I always set out with that idea in mind, some women get the question out there before you even get to the date, but if at the end of the meal the date said she wanted to go Dutch then I was fine with that too, but quite a few men who have suggested to go Dutch beforehand are perceived as being cheap and the date rarely calls them back, so it is tricky situation, and today with feminism being more and more about equality in all, its not aways not easy, but I try to be gallant, listen, and watch the body language to,  it helps to understand what the women might be feeling or what her intentions are.

Why date so many women?

I did ask myself if I was trying to prove something to inner male being, but fond that the answer was no, it was more about meeting women, I knew that the woman of my dreams was not going to just pop up, so I thought that this was a great opportunity to meet as many women as possible and find out just exactly what was this opposite sex and by meeting so many different women I felt like I was somehow getting closer to these women I met, I learned so much about what women expect not only from a man but from a relationship too, I was less and less in a stereotype role, where man verses women, there was of course a sexual drive too, multiple women meant multiple partners and each woman had her individual desires aand needs and that was truely fascinating, the other big player that we don’t always think about behind the screen is seeing how just important the body chemistry really is. Honestly I thank all the women the I dated because they all gave me clues and insight as to how to make a woman happy.

Would you say it was addictive dating so many women at the same time?

Oh yes very addictive, you become addicted to the drive and how to manipulate the situation and the person. The highest number of women I ever dated in one week was 5, which is not that high really but getting to know five different women at the same time and in the same week, with goal of the having a good time and of spending the night together  with each one needs a great deal of energy, orgainising, imagination and tact. To be able to chat to so many differnt  women, I did my homework and knew which kind of language to use depending on the site I was on, the kind of questions that would trigger the fastest response, there was even a software you buy that would visit different profiles and leave a digital trace on the woman’s profile page, women don’t like it if you visit their page but don’t leave a trace, so the machine would visit multiple female profiles whilst I was out at work and then, based on my profile photo and pitch that I had studied and written using the offer and demand marketing technique, added with just the right degree of charm and seduction would bait and hook almost any woman. Women would see that I had been on their profile , then look at mine and and nine out of ten would leave me a message, the maximum of positive responses and messages I received in one day was 80!!!  Knowing that there were, and still are more female than male members on most of the dating sites, all I had to do was sit back get myself a drink and choose the ones that suited my taste the best, then  get to work on chatting with them.
It was all about mastering information, for example in those days I was a photographer which is a profession women always find intriguing, well the number of naked photos I received under the pretext of “art” workshops  they had modeled for and wanted to know what I thought about the work, was amazing, women always want the photographers feedback, something a little narcissistic or insecure there maybe!

Why did you stop using online dating sites?

For a few reasons, but mainly because with my schedule being always busy and full of dates and chat rendezvous, I felt like I had really busy social life, but after ab accident I realised that it was all fake. So I gave online dating a break and joined a group of people that just wanted to go out and have fun, 45 of us would go out and do different things together the goal was to meet up and hang out, after a dinner in a restaurant one night I found myself driving four women home, when one of them started joking about which kind of underpants I wore, then the others joined in and then they started talking about having me as a sex slave for a night, one of them even had a condom that they were going to share, it was a real disappointment, I dropped them off at their homes and decided that it was easier to do the one-to-one of the online dating world, where there were in fact far more taboos than in the real life singles clubs. The bottom line is that dating sites are safer due to the framework that you sign up to respect and navigate in.

In the past years which are biggest changes you have noticed with online dating sites?

That they have all created too many subsites and that is a real shame, and the whole matching system is just ugly, with all these subsites it creates just a bigger gap between top end and bottom of the barrel, plus it adds a social class difference that was not there before and these match catalogues just kill the magic of a real encounter, plus with all these apps, your phone never stops pinging, they are almost intrusive, it is all just too much now, bring back some simplicty someone please!

What would your advice be to a young serial dater?

Be polite, stop watching porn, sex it is not like that in real life, be gallant and use your listening skills, be a nice guy who can look himself in the mirror, don’t be heavy and over do things, use your sense of humour and don’t think only about yourself and your own desires. For those who are used to using snapchat, learn to write a real email, don’t be a digital stalker, get creative, be inventive even with your dating propositions, think outside of the box and off the screen.

The end.

Never give up:
Today our serial dater is happily living with his partner of four years, whom he met online!