Men to Avoid in Online Dating: Part 1

            

            The first few weeks of online dating usually pass by in a blur.

You can’t even respond to your e-mails because you’re too busy checking out who’s viewed your profiles, taking mind-numbingly pointless (but somewhat addictive) quizzes, and figuring out the proper response to a wink (answer: ignore it).

But after a while, the pool of eligible partners starts looking smaller and smaller, and you’ve rated so many people in your city that your Quickmatch comes up empty.

As desperation starts to set in, your standards embark on a nosedive that begins so subtly you don’t even realize it’s happening.

And this is when you become the perfect target for the two biggest wastes of time at the virtual singles bar: married men, and people who live in other cities.

In approximately one out of two marriages in the U.S., boy meets girl, boy marries girl, boy and girl live happily ever after.

The other half 1) deicide it’s not working, 2) split up, and 3) meet new people.

There’s nothing wrong with a person who failed at marriage the first (or second or third) time around. There is something wrong when said person decides that step three should come before step one or step two.

Divorce isn’t a regular breakup. When your boyfriend tells you he wants to see other people, he never has to say the word “asset.” When your husband delivers  the same message, you suddenly have to divide up things you never even realized you only half  “owned” (cars, houses, friends, family members, pets, health insurance).

We’re going to skip over the “emotionally available” bullshit that some women use to justify or oppose the practice of dating married men. You should be thinking about your emotions, not his, and regardless of whether or not his “feelings” are ready for another roll in the hay, yours aren’t.

Let’s start with the obvious. This guy is ready to cheat on his supposed life partner, and regardless of what you think of marriage as an institution, he took commitment one step farther than he had to when he said, “I do.” When you’re dating a guy, you might agree not to see other people, but you haven’t entered into a legally binding agreement that basically only says that you won’t see other people. So if he’s ready to screw monogamy with this woman, what makes you think it’ll be any different with you?

Then there’s the fact that he’s still married (or separated, or anything other than legally divorced). If he really wanted out of this marriage, he’d be out, and he’d be too busy sorting out the legal implications or building a new life to sign up for a free trial on Match.com. If he’s still living with his wife, or attending couples therapy, or even keeping the marital status in name only, he hasn’t made up his mind, and don’t fool yourself into thinking you’ll be the deciding factor.

People go crawling back to former partners after they see what else is out there. No one buys his ex a take-me-back diamond when he’s rediscovering the joys of keeping the seat up, drinking milk out of the carton, and brining home a different woman every night of the week. It’s after he tries to settle down with a new woman that he realizes how much he misses the way his ex-wife made the bed each morning.

Long story short: when you date a married men, you’re entering into a messy, emotionally turbulent situation that has a lot of potential for pain with only the slimmest glimmer of hope for payoff. You don’t have to be a gambler to figure out that the odds aren’t in your favor, and you’d be better off waiting for a better split.