Dating through online sites is becoming a little more popular and mainstream than it used to be, but I think there's a lot of people who still feel unsure about it, so I thought I'd spend a little time mentioning some of my own experiences.

It's not directly related to masturbation, but it can be in several not too indirect ways. For one thing, even though married and dating men generally still masturbate, for the single guy it's often the only option he has. And while masturbation is an absolutely fantastic way to pass the time, even masturbation can get a little repetitive if it's the only action you're seeing. So for those of you who are single, I thought I'd share a bit about online dating as I experienced it.

Right out of college I didn't date much for a couple of years. I moved to a strange city to work, but didn't really know many people, and the few I did know were guys who lived nearly an hour away and didn't seem to have many (or any) single female friends. I worked at a small office, and there weren't any options there, either, so I just didn't have any good ways to meet women. I wasn't really the type to go hang out at bars by myself, and couldn't come up with any other options, so I went online.

At the time (this was in the late 90s) the biggest site seemed to be Yahoo Personals, so I spent a lot of time there. Most of what I liked about it, besides having a large user base, was that it was completely free. So I set up my own profile, and then started poking around for likely looking female profiles to match my own, and said hi to a few girls.

Overall the experience was pretty decent. I talked to a number of girls online. Some of them I only made it through a message or two before one of the two of us gave up on the idea, but others kept up a good conversation, and that alone was pretty entertaining. It took me several months to meet up with the first girl, though. I think I was worried that if I asked to meet before she was ready, it might make her nervous. Especially back then the internet was new enough and a lot of people didn't really trust it. As a guy, if I mentioned that I was talking to someone online, almost everyone (and I really do mean everyone) told me "I hope she's not a guy, Hardy." I guess everyone just assumed that no real women could use the internet, or something. But all the girls I talked to got a different treatment. In their case, their friends would all tell them they hoped I wasn't a rapist. Just one of those weird double standards, I guess.

So anyway I worried at first that if I just asked to meet someone, she'd assume I was out to abuse her, and so I decided I needed to talk for a long time first to reassure them that I was normal before meeting. Later on I realized that I was actually losing girls who were looking for a relationship and thought I was being too slow, or ran out of things to say over email, or something like that.

Overall the experience turned out to be okay. One girl I met was really cool, and we went on several dates over the course of a few months before she moved out of state for work. Some of the other dates weren't quite so great--one side or the other just didn't feel the spark, or didn't really get along--but none of the experiences were awful, and all of them were better than spending a night at home alone.

Eventually as I got to know more people personally in the city I kind of stopped using the sites, and I quit completely when Yahoo started to charge for the service. In retrospect, though, the fee probably would have been worth it if I'd still been looking for dates. You see, part of the problem with the completely free site was that anyone could set up a profile, or multiple profiles. Eventually it got pretty bad as porn sites and jokesters flooded the site with fake ads or sent you sincere-looking messages that then prompted you to go to some pay site to download nudie pics. Those are good for masturbation, sure, but not so good when you're looking for personal contact. Things have changed a lot in recent years, though, and sites are now better about filtering out the junk, a service that's probably worth paying for on its own. Plus I've gotten more used to paying for stuff online--back then, when everything was free, paying for anything seemed nearly criminal.

These days, the best personals site I've been able to track down (a whole series of sites, actually) is FriendFinder.com. They also have a whole series of specialty sites for specific audiences, like AdultFriendFinder.com (if you're looking for more ... um, sexy ... meetings), SeniorFriendFinder.com (for people 40+), GayFriendFinder.com (for same-sex dates), and Amigos.com (for Spanish-speakers everywhere).

I just added all of these sites to my masturbation resources page, because I'm hoping they might be useful to some of the lonlier masturbators out there. The cool thing about the sites is it's completly free to sign up and add your own profile, and to browse other profiles. If you decide you like what you see, I think at some point you do have to pay (a monthly fee) to be able to contact anyone you're interested in, but people interested in you might be able to contact you even if you don't pay anything.

And coming back around to masturbation, I think there are a number of ways a dating site can improve your solo love life as well. For one thing, there's nothing like talking to a sexy, fun girl to get you all horny and excited about jerking off again. And if you do end up meeting someone and hit it off, the variety can make masturbation that much more fun when you do come back to it.