Yesterday I talked about one kind of online nightmare: The bully. Today's potential-date time-waster is the Online Flasher: the man who exposes his emotions too quickly online….and wants you to, too.
The man who bares his soul to you—tells you too much about his ex-wife, his past (or, worse, present) girlfriends, the intricacies of his libido and his appetites….is being inappropriate--unless cybersex happens to be your thing, in which case, ignore the rest of this. Once again, you know in your gut that something is amiss, but you think, well, this is the internet; this is a different medium, so, well, it’s okay. No, it’s not. If your first instinct is, "Why is he telling me about his ecstatic experience with a dominatrix last year? Who asked? What’s his "bitch" of an ex-wife, or his problems with his prostate, got to do with me, or with meeting me?"--then, I say, pay serious attention to your own questions and make sure you come away with answers that make sense to you. Whether he hopes you'll tie him up or hopes you'll talk about your own experience with chains, ex-lovers and sexual parts, baring his soul to you--someone he hasn’t yet met, after all, and who hasn’t asked-- is telling you something: He’s not interested in whether you want to hear it or not. He's interested in exposing himself. The question is, why?
A related question is, Does the Online Flasher even want to meet? Often, he doesn't. Like the regular flasher--the guy in the raincoat exposing himself to women on street corners, he is getting his jollies doing just that--exposing himself--and only that. God forbid you walk up to a flasher and say, "Hey, young fella, that looks pretty terrific under there: Wanna go out?" He'd have a heart attack in a flash. So it is online: Fortunately, I think, the Online Flasher reveals himself quickly to be not only unappealing, but completely and totally unavailable.
So don't waste time. Move on fast. Listen to as little as possible and say even less. Find yourself a date online who wants to meet you and then, maybe, when you really feel like it, click here to you'll be comfortable sharing your feelings.
TLG
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