Search Results: if you meet a woman online

I recently broke up with my girlfriend Sandra because I had too many trust issues. I really love Sandra but I had to end it because I always thought was cheating. She seemed kinda flirtatious and inappropriate with her male friends.

Right after I dumped Sandra I went online and found a girl named Brenda. Me and Brenda were a good match. And I usually don’t do well with online dating. Only problem with Brenda is she lives in another city. I live in Seattle and she lives in Portland. So we talked online for 3 weeks until she finally drove up to Seattle to meet me. We had a great time together with the best sexual chemistry. I drove to Portland the week after. I agreed to have a long distance relationship with Brenda to keep her coming back. Brenda calls me her boyfriend. Now Brenda is talking marriage and wants me to move to Portland. I’ve told her I don’t wanna live in Portland but she’s trying to convince me. I do like Brenda and I want to keep her. But I can’t live in Portland.

As much as I like Brenda I know I’m eventually gonna have to let her go, but I’m not ready to let her go as of yet. On the other hand Sandra wants to get back together. I do love Sandra and want to be with her and try again. But I also love Brenda who I know is gonna be gone eventually. What should I do?

When I have a first date, it is usually a result of an online meeting through a dating site. We have each seen a few pictures of each other, exchanged a few DMs, and usually spoken on the phone once or twice (although I occasionally "meet" a woman who wants to proceed directly from DM to meeting for dinner.

She's looking at me, forming impressions, and by the end of that first date, she knows whether she wants there to be a second date. I'm doing the same thing, of course.

One of the things I look at is how she is dressed. A first date for me is almost always dinner at a very nice restaurant. I look at whether she is dressed appropriately for the place, and whether she has obviously put effort into making herself look as nice as possible. She doesn't need to be wearing the latest designer fashions to look nice and she doesn't need to have spent $100+ preparing for a date (new dress, new shoes, etc.); I just want to see that she made an effort because that tells me that she treated this occasion as important.

Do you form impressions based on how your date is dressed? How important is his or her appearance on a first date?

I have had two relationships in my life upon which I periodically reflect and wonder what might have happened if I had tried harder. One relationship happened in 1980. It was a co-worker who I started dating and I really liked her, saw no warning signs or red flags, and we were very compatible, but the circumstances in my life led me to moving from Tampa back to Jacksonville. I should have tried to keep it alive over the distance but I didn't and I have heard from her in decades.

The other was an online acquaintance that could have blossomed into something more but there was a great distance between us. We talked for months and she impressed me as being a great woman and she undoubtedly would be a very loyal partner. I was willing to travel to meet her and then the pandemic hit us and there were travel bans imposed. The idea of waiting indefinitely overwhelmed me and I met someone locally who really wasn't a great match but she was here, a real flesh-and-blood woman who I could spend time with right now. And she was horribly hurt that I wasn't willing to wait for her. . . totally understandable.

The strange part is that they both have the same first name. And they had some of the same physical features.

That's my story; what's yours? [Please don't respond to tell me that no relationship is a failure if you learned lessons from the experience. I understand that but I still think of my exes as failed relationships.]