We are fortunate to be living in this most exciting era. For example, it is spectacular that you can find like-minded people on the Internet. Sadly, for Shys, you seldom meet them face to face.
It is spectacular that you can telecommute to work. Sadly, for Shys, you don’t get to chat around the watercooler.
It is spectacular that you can learn just about anything on the Internet. Sadly, for Shys, you don’t use social skills while researching on the Web.
I am not in the least bit shy when I communicate with people by e-mail. I have been doing it for three years now and have communicated with lots of great guys. I can take all the time I want to get my thoughts together, correct them, and then reread it to make sure it sounds like what I genuinely mean to say. This helps someone to get to know the real me and I can get to know the real them.
—Sarah F., Northampton, Massachusetts
But can you, Sarah? When you’re talking with someone face to face, you don’t have the luxury to think five minutes before you respond. You can’t push backspace/delete in a conversation. And personality and “chemistry” don’t travel well in cyberspace.
Also consider that some of those “great guys” you’re communicating with may be misrepresenting themselves. Is every tall, dark, handsome, brilliant, loving, caring, and honorable man who e-mails you really tall, dark, handsome, brilliant, loving, caring, and honorable?
I e-mailed Sarah to ask what some of these “great guys” were really like. She told me she hasn’t had any face-to-face meetings yet. Hmm.
Many lifetime relationships started on a tiny computer screen. You know the sequence. Placing or answering an ad. Communicating by computer. Exchanging pictures. Having phone calls. Meeting. Dating. Mating. Marriage.
Sadly, Shys don’t do well in the online love game. They often hide behind it and never meet their cyber pen pal. If they do and nothing clicks, they can plummet deeper into shyness. It can even shake the confidence of a Sure.
A good friend of mine, Ann, is good-looking, professional, smart, and a fabulous dresser—and she knows it. Because she hadn’t yet found Mr. Right, she put an ad on a dating website and received several dozen responses. She wrote to six of them, had phone conversations with four, exchanged photos with three, and then agreed to meet two of them.
The first rendezvous point was a well-known restaurant. The meeting time was seven. She told her blind date that she’d be wearing a yellow pantsuit and a long orange scarf so there could be no way they’d miss.
Ann arrived on time and waited at the bar. She thought several men walking by looked like the photo she’d received, but she couldn’t be sure.
By seven forty-five, she paid for her drink and left.
At eight, my phone rang. Ann’s voice was bordering on the hysterical, “That’s the first time in all my life that I’ve ever been stood up!” Ann was usually pretty confident, but I knew that the experience had taken a big bite out of her ego when she said, “Leil, he must have been there, taken one look at me, and decided not to approach.”
If that wasn’t enough of a blow to her ego, she got clobbered by computer dating again. She met a doctor online and they made a date at a fine restaurant. Over cocktails, potential Dr. Right told her that an emergency had come up at the hospital and he wouldn’t be able to stay for dinner.
“He apologized,” Ann said, “and told me that my dinner check would be ‘taken care of.’ What an insult! Did he think I was some pauper? I know he was just buying me off because he didn’t like me.”
If Ann hadn’t had a healthy self-image to start with, these experiences could have strangled her confidence forever.
Don’t take a chance on your growing confidence being cut down before it fully blooms. Do more of the flirting and practice dating ShyBusters before you start exploring relationships in cyberspace.