Getting Started

I chose 'Hunting and Gathering' for the title of this blog because I want to explore the idea that men and women have very different motivation and behavior in the world of online dating. 

What if men and women approach online dating the way they have fulfilled their roles in community life from the beginning of time?  Here's how it would look:  men are the hunters.  They go out to hunt with the objective of scoring a hit, or making a kill, and they are judged in their value to the community by how welll they do these things.  Women are the gatherers -- harvesting and preparing food, tending the homes, keeping safe in relationship with others.  If the two roles are applied to online dating, men behave in online dating as if the objective is to score hits, or make a kill, not to be in relationship.  Women are the ones looking for relationship.  What if?

Of course I'm not a scientist, anthropologist, researcher, and I'm certainly not a man.  So I speak from very limited experience.  But so far, the men I've met through online dating seem to have a very different approach to success.  Universally they speak of how 'overwhelming' the process is, as they sort through all the women who've contacted them.  I also have a hunch, and need to research this, that women far outnumber men in online dating;  So men have their choice from among a pool, or herd, of potential game.  As hunters they want to score hits, pile up the kills, and move on.  

I read the articles about online dating, chock full of advice about how to make men crazy about you, how to tell if it's real, 10 things that really bug men, and more.  But those articles are written by people who are paid to write articles.  I want to hear from real people, men and women, about the differences between the two genders.  I want to know why it's so difficult to know what's really going on inside the head of the person across the table.  Dating can be hard!  Relationship on the other hand, seems relatively easy.  I haven't dated since 1986 so I need all the help I can get.

What do you think?  Do men and women have different motivation as they enter this strange land of online dating? 

Next entry:  why is it so hard to just say, 'We're not a match"?