After several years in a committed partnership that failed, I have found myself dating again – and it feels like I’ve walked back into some parallel universe where I don’t understand the rules anymore. I went on a date with a guy recently and we spent a lovely day together, came back to my house and started making out. It was then he expressed a desire for me to spit on his face.  This is not an isolated incident with an isolated person; again and again, I seem to be encountering men who request sexual acts I would politely regard as ‘specialist’ far sooner into meeting them than I would expect. Am I just meeting jerks because I’m dating over the internet, or is this a thing?  You say you’re dating again for the first time in a while. A long hiatus can make it feel like any attention is good attention, but you seem to have already learned firsthand: that’s not the case. So let me tell you straight up: you just need to get better at screening them out, if being spit on is not your thing.  If the measure of success at online dating is never having a horrible first date with a jerk, then I am very successful at it. (If the measure of success at online dating is quitting online dating because you’ve found true love ... well, we’ll talk about that later.)  To be clear: that doesn’t mean that I’ve come across a myriad of men who have swept me off my feet. The majority of my online dates have involved one drink, a conversation that ranged from interesting to a little bit tedious, and a friendly hug in farewell. But no jerks, not really, and none of them have made me feel gross or violated or convinced that the world of online dating is exclusively populated with weirdos.  Do I have a system? You bet. Like everyone else, I swipe and tap with abandon, but once I get a match, I get selective.  My profiles are brief, but they’re seeded with conversation starters – I connect with men who identify these and talk about them, and do the same with them, to establish that there’s real interest, rather than a scattershot approach. Jerks aren’t looking for people to get to know; they’re looking for people to exercise their agendas on.  I don’t think it’s too picky to expect a handful of exchanges that feel interesting before the idea of meeting in person is suggested. If someone gets snotty about that (“not here for penpals”) then they’re not for me. People who ask you to meet immediately are asking everyone to meet immediately – another sign that they don’t care that much about other people and may have a “specialist” agenda.  If a correspondence starts off fun and becomes weird, I stop. I used to not be so good at this (I worried that it was rude, or that I would make someone feel bad) but I think it’s OK to understand that everyone you’re meeting online is meeting a lot of other people online. You can be a little less polite than you would be if you met someone in person. For example, if you met someone at a bar, and lost interest mid-conversation, you’d say you were going to the restroom; online, you don’t need to make an equivalent excuse ...you can just stop responding. They’ll deal, just as you’ll deal when people ghost on you.  If you’ve made arrangements to meet someone and then before you actually go out you get a bad feeling: you’re allowed to cancel. Again, it may feel rude, but it’s actually kinder: do you want to spend an hour with someone who doesn’t want to be there? No one does. When I logged on to one app to remind myself of what the guy I was going for a drink with that night looked like, and found that he’d updated his profile with a selfie of his thrusting crotch in a pair of well-worn briefs, I didn’t feel bad concluding that we had divergent interests and that I’d rather not meet him.  It can be worth thinking of a first internet date as a pre-date, and not conducting it in a context that is likely to lead to sexual activity – a coffee shop at 3 pm on a Sunday afternoon rather than a cocktail bar at 9 pm on a Thursday. That’s not because there’s anything intrinsically wrong with hooking up on a first date; no judgment here. But that pre-date will serve as a further filter against people who are just looking for objects on which to exercise their fantasies, rather than people to get to know.  Worst-case scenario: you find each other so compelling, you immediately schedule a follow-up date at a sexier hour. Best-case scenario: no stranger ever asks you to spit in his face again.  And remember, even if screening fails and you come across a person who seems great online but really jerk in life: you are not the problem. You just met! Be as kind to yourself as you’d like any stranger you meet to be.  Struggling with online dating? Eva would love to help you. AskEvaGuardian@gmail.com
Swipe Right, our new advice column, tackles the tricky world of online dating – starting with how to screen people out