“People are afraid if they get too intimate, they won’t be accepted, so this is a way to delay that and prevent it,” she says. “They feel like they’re in a real relationship – they get all this attention, people see them getting texts and emails, they have society’s stamp of approval that they’re in a relationship – but they don’t have to deal with the intimacy factor. They don’t have to deal with their own sexual fears or admit any of their deep, dark secrets.”

A person who relentlessly pursues you online but never seals the deal in person may also be married or involved with someone else, Irwin warns. “It could be someone who’s bored in a relationship and doesn’t know how to recapture that honeymoon phase, so he or she is constantly reaching out and enjoying the fantasy of being with someone else,” she says. “Then, this person doesn’t have to look at the reality of his or her own situation.”

Set a personal timeline for moving past email

Match recently asked the question: What’s the average email exchange time between online daters before arranging an in-person date? Out of the poll’s more than 4,000 respondents, 30 percent said they emailed back and forth for three or more weeks before meeting, 43 percent emailed for one or two weeks before getting together in person, and nearly 28 percent sent out two or three emails at the most before making a date.

Regardless of whether you prefer to exchange three or 300 emails before meeting face-to-face, Irwin suggests setting some ground rules.

“Have a sense of humor about it, but tell the person you have a policy of exchanging only so many emails, then you talk on the phone, then you set up a coffee date,” she stresses. Celý příspěvek →