Advice About Answering Personal Ads
What to Do When That Sexy Single Woman of Your Dreams
Sends You E-mail in Response to Your Online Personal Ad?
She wrote me! She wrote me! She wrote Me!!! OMIGOD! What do I do?
Simmer down. All the lady did was decide your ad was interesting and send you some e-mail. She's not ready to jump into your arms and have your baby. She's just given you a nibble. It's up to you to make it work from here. And remember, if this doesn't work out, there will be others, if you have a good ad and are just patient!
Here are some important things to keep in mind:
Don't question it: She is interested in you, or she wouldn't have answered your ad. So, get over your insecurities. She's a woman looking for a man, and you sound interesting to her. Now you just have to see whether you're interested in her, and whether there's enough of what she wants in you to sustain her interest.
But here's the important thing: Be patient. Yeah, once you get a response, you have to be patient again.
- Don't push to get her phone number.
- Don't push for a face-to-face meeting.
- Don't whine to her about your personal problems with women.
- Don't talk about sex or anything of that nature.
Don't pester her with lots of e-mail. Let her explore who you are at her own pace. If she takes a couple of days to respond to one of your letters, sit on your fingers and wait. If it's been more than three or four days, you might try one letter to the effect of "hey, where'd you go?" but that's IT. If you don't hear anything more, either she doesn't want to talk to you, or she's not reading her e-mail anymore, or she's just busy.
Keep this in mind: it's scary for a woman to go away for a few days and to come back and find a dozen plaintive, "Oh, where oh where did you go?" letters. It just makes you look desperate and weird.
All in all, the most important thing to remember in this situation is that it is easy to scare a woman away. If she thinks you're a weirdo, or a psychotic, or a pathetic, lonely loser, she's going to walk away. (And by the way, if you ARE a pathetic, lonely loser, STOP IT. Find something else to do with your time and realize that the only way you're going to get a woman is if you stop assuming you'll never get one.)
Now, besides all this, you need to remember something even more important: you BOTH need time for a relationship to develop, so you actually have something to talk about when finally you do meet. Rushing to meet someone and suddenly finding you have nothing to talk about can be very uncomfortable.
If you are an impatient man, you might as well not bother advertising. You'll get nowhere.
Anything I Should Look Out For?
Anybody, male or female, needs to be cautious. Placing or answering an ad might get you a psychotic, or someone who's dishonest with you.
The single biggest hazard is probably those strange creatures out there who post messages pretending to be what they aren't. Especially common these days seem to be "MorFs" (Male or Females) who are usually men pretending to be women, who are often provocative teases.
All in all, if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Don't get your heart crushed by a liar; use caution, and don't buy too much of anything until you actually meet the person face-to-face, or at least by phone call. Watch for the warning signs of someone yanking your chain, or wrapped up in their own fantasies and not really paying attention to who you are. Don't fall in love or get your heart ripped out by someone who may just be a fantasy-woman (or man). Don't be paranoid, but make sure you don't expect too much until you actually meet the other person face-to-face -- and remember that you can meet someone nasty, sociopathic, or criminal anywhere, not just online. Don't be paranoid, but do use common sense!
This article was posted with permission of Dean Esmay and this entire article is Copyright 1995, 1996 by Dean Esmay.