Read about frink Krstn701's experiment with online dating. And y'all know how I feel about online dating. I am all for it. So don't hate.

Here's the first installment. There's more to come next Friday ...

In discussions over bottles of red wine with dear friends all going through the so-called "quarter-life crisis", I found us whispering with curiousity about this mysterious phenom called "online dating."

Let's be honest, the commercials feature pleasant and fun-looking people who seemed to be at their wits end, just like a good 75 percent of us here in Kansas City, with stupid grins and googly eyes thanks to meeting the soul mate on a ".com". We all say "yeah, right" out loud to others but in our heads we are thinking, "perhaps..." It makes sense right?! It's a tool to cut through those first few conversations or dates which end up with you feeling disappointed that another one bites the dust. Well, the curiousity was too much for me and I'm always up for a challenge so, $140 bucks later, my six-month-long experiment begins....

Ugh. Why do we have to play these games? I guess because they work.

The Dating Game: Want to be wanted? Make yourself scarce

By Fred Gonzalez

Timing is crucial. And sometimes cruel.

I dated a guy once who seemed great but was fresh off a broken engagement. SURPRISE! He ended up not being ready for a girlfriend. If the timing had been different, things might have worked out — for a little while.

If the timing isn’t right, it doesn’t matter if you’ve met a great person, if they would have liked you at another time, in another place. Things just won’t work out.

My aunt once said sex, money and control are three of the biggest things people argue about in a relationship. What do you think? I think I agree to an extent.

My friend is dating this boy. She found out he's bad at some foreplay stuff. Too shy. He has things he won't do unless it's a special occasion. You've heard about the people who reserve certain sexual favors for "birthdays and holidays only." It sounds like he may be like that.

Hmm. It's no crime for women to like sex. And if they are going to become boyfriend and girlfriend, she would want all the perks. Is being bad in the bedroom a deal breaker? Is even being a bad kisser a deal breaker?

Young people don't have an exclusive on online dating. Some older people I know who shall remain nameless (Dad) have looked for and found dates online too. Sometimes they are seeking "short-term relationships" which to me, sounds like they only want to use someone for their body, but seniors are probably thinking more along the romantic line. Who knows. Here's a little story for you to peruse.

More seniors using Internet dating services to find love , and
skipping remarriage

By Frank Greve
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — Murray Katz, 82, a retired senior federal patent-appeals
examiner, has made a transition that lies ahead for millions of
Americans.

"When I was growing up, I didn't see women who were in their 60s and
70s as women," he said recently. "Now, it's amazing. The men I know
are all looking at 80-year-old women. They're our friends. We listen
to them. We dance with them. We have sex with them when we can. It's
beyond comprehension."

For many it's unimaginable. But one of the things new under the sun
since Katz was a boy is an 18-year increase in U.S. life expectancy,
much of it spent in healthy retired life.
Those who are living through it spend their time in the traditional
American way: pursuing happiness. And so it is that seniors today
aren't just dating more, they're the fastest-growing users of Internet
dating services and the fastest growing group of cohabiters.

To be sure, older men remain in short supply and millions of widows
decide that meeting one man's needs was enough. A few million more are
ailing beyond caring. Still, there more couples than ever like Eleanor
Robinson and John Kunec.

She's 85, a Scrabble player, poet and table tennis champ whose social
hub is the bustling Holiday Park Senior Center in Wheaton, Md., just
north of Washington. He's 83, fit and friendly, a retired government
accountant. Both are widowed.

As surely as she carries his harmonica in her tote bag and they
finish each other's sentences and watch ballgames together, they're a
couple.

"I never had a relationship such as I have now," confided Robinson, a
Roman Catholic from West Philadelphia who married at 19 and was
widowed 54 years later.

"It's like I'm a kid," she said. "When I'm with him, I'm caring for
him, and when I'm not with him, I'm thinking about him."

Her beau — still a term in their set — had less to say. But Kunec's a
fine harmonica player, and the first tune out of his mouth during the
intermission at a recent senior center dance was a stately rendition
of the old Ray Charles hit "I Can't Stop Loving You."

Nonetheless, the couple maintain separate houses and marriage isn't
in the picture. "The complications wouldn't be worth it," Robinson
explained. "I've limited income that I've decided to share with my
grandchildren and I wouldn't want to interfere with his family."
Multiply this by a million or two, drop the ages by a decade or more,
and you have a more accurate picture of what many seniors are up to
these days, or would like to be.

Longer healthy life expectancy is part of the explanation. There are
also more men around, thanks largely to better drugs and treatments
for diseases that more often afflict men, such as heart disease and
cancers of the prostate, colon and rectum.

Seniors are also richer, their constant-dollar incomes more than
triple what they were in 1960. Sex is hardly out of the question,
thanks to Viagra and its cousins, which about 14 percent of senior men
use, according to an AARP study.

Finding partners is easier, too, the Internet being a superior
resource to barstools or the friends of friends. According to Mark
Brooks, a consultant and newsletter writer who tracks the
Internet-dating industry, the number of seniors joining online dating
services has risen at double-digit rates annually since 2003, the most
of any age group.

But attitude changes are probably the biggest factor in the expanding
social lives of seniors.

A generation ago, romance among the elderly was widely derided, said
Pepper Schwartz, a University of Washington sociologist who's studied
dating among older adults.

"Falling in love at an elderly age was seen as somewhere between
unwise and dementia," she said. In the parlance of the day, only
"dirty old men" pursued sex. Cohabitation was not just low-class, as
the term "shacking up" implied, it was morally "living in sin."

Today, the elderly find remarriage fraught with headaches: It
threatens some pensions. It alarms children worried about
inheritances. It comes with love-testing anxiety about liability for a
new spouse's future health costs. So remarriage rates among seniors
are flat.

Instead, Schwartz said, "People who wouldn't have let their daughters
into the house if they were cohabiting are now doing the same thing."
According to Susan Brown, a demographer at Bowling Green State
University in Ohio, cohabiting among older people increased 50 percent
from 2000 to 2006, based on census figures.
The total — 1.8 million — counts only couples who live together full
time and were willing to admit it to census interviewers. Part-time
cohabiting — traveling together, sharing a summer house, spending
weekends together — is up at least as sharply, according to seniors
and people who work with them.

Does anyone in their age group disapprove?
"Maybe in the red states," sniffed Eve Jacobs, 87, of Friendship
Heights, Md., a labor demographer who still publishes in the field.
Opposition is more likely from children whose widowed parents are
newly in love, said Joanne Wilder, a Pittsburgh lawyer and the editor
of the Journal of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.
"Many of them take a pretty dim view of this behavior," she said, and
their parents know it. "Matrimonial lawyers see a lot of people
looking for ways to break things to the kids," Wilder continued.
"They'll say, 'My daughter will kill me!' or 'They really like her,
but I don't think they'd like it if we got married.' "

Consequently, prenuptial agreements are much discussed at poolside in
adult communities. "They make it safe for his kids to like you," said
Linda Stevens, 70, of Arlington, Va.

I already talked about how to know if somebody wants to kiss you. (If you missed that, shame on you. Click here.) Now here's a story on how NOT to kiss. If you are grown and you need this advice though, well, I dont know what to say. One I think she left out was the vacuum kisser.

There are people -- and this has happened to people I know -- who put their whole mouth over yours when kissing. Yuck. A guy did this to me in high school. If someone is kissing you wrong, stop them and say "This is how I like to be kissed" and give them a demo. If they don't follow your advice, dump them. There's nothing worse than a bad kisser who doesn't take direction.

From Frink Rezn8:

So I have this ‘on again, off again’ relationship with this girl (but she is not a ‘girl friend’). Let’s call her Susie. I met up with her at a bar; we’re listening to some music, talking about old times.

Later in the evening, she’s giving me the ‘bedroom eyes’, more and more. We’re sitting close, getting touchy feely, all that stuff. We move the conversation outside, to where she and the other patrons can smoke. Another, more attractive girl enters the frame, lets call her Jane. Susie, a bit drunk now, aims to make it clear to this new girl that I’m here with her.

Guys: You can and should work this to your advantage.
Girls: You know you love what you can’t have.

Later, while Susie is at the bar, I’m minding my own business (seriously), just chilling, watching the extra inning All Star game. Jane walks by and we begin talking.

Guys: This is where I messed up. I was focused on the wrong girl. “The sure thing”, as they call it. Gimme a break. Girls are quite finicky, the only time it’s a sure thing is when you are both naked and she’s purring.

So, anyways, Jane has a “friend”. You know, some guy who hangs around and is obviously “just the friend”. Kind of like a pawn chess piece.

Guys: Don’t let the “friend” turn you off to the opportunity. You can and should use him to your advantage. Just befriend him. But, keep your primary conversation with the girl.

Susie comes back with her drink, again, doing her best to show Jane that she ain’t leaving with me. She’s a bit belligerent, ranting, raving, about God knows what. Jane is confused and just leaves.

Guys: Let me ask you something. Why in the world would I continue to focus my attention to Susie? -Why would I not go try and find Jane, at this point? Yes; those are rhetorical questions.

Anyways; long story short. I didn’t leave with either of them. Why? Because girls are finicky. Susie got wasted, her behavior turned south and she ended up taking a taxi home. New girl (Jane)? I don’t know what happened to her. Like I said, even though I should have, I didn’t put my focus on her.

There are women who do, women who absolutely won't and women who say they won't but secretly do. There are also, apparently, women who compete. I heard about "rainbow parties" among teens a while back and I couldn't believe it, but this was even crazier.

A friend alerted me about this story of women being arrested in an oral sex competition.

I always wanted to go to Greece if I ever had a honeymoon. I might have to rethink that.

Or even a booty call? Gas went up again. Times are not cheap. (But here's some cheap date ideas if you are looking.) Which makes me wonder, how far are people willing to go for dates with gas prices so high? 

My Novio is visiting from Colombia and he's staying with his fam up north of the river. It hurts our pockets a little bit driving back and forth, but we rarely get to see each other so we do it and I don't mind at all.

But the driving is temporary.

At the bar on a recent Friday night, buying KY Yours and Mine came up. I was with some girlfriends and the conversation started with "What did you get at the store?" So guys, next time you hear women talk about shopping, don't tune it out completely.

A friend of mine said she was embarassed to buy that sort of stuff. I piped in and told her if she ever wanted something sex-related, I'd go with her. (Click the link to read what I told you awhile back on how I think that kind of shopping is fun.) I feel like people, especially women, shouldn't feel ashamed of their desires.

And then we started talking about props. Not that lube is a prop, sometimes it might be a neccesity.

But my friend Nina said a guy tried to bring some of that warming lube into the mix once with her and she was not feeling it. (No pun intended)