Midlife Dating Podcast

Episode 12 - Dealing With Picture Only Dating Profiles

• Paul Nelson • Episode 12

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Are you dating someone and seeing them 4 or 5 times a week or more? If so, you had better watch out for Fusion catching up to you, in this episode's Glossary Term. For today’s Chick Flick Movie Review, Paul takes a look at the way love finds people even in the worst of times with Last Chance Harvey. Finally, with your smartphone in hand, you go through your dating app, and you run across dating profiles with several fabulous pictures but no written content. Should you swipe right on them? In today’s Potpourri Segment, Paul discusses how to deal with those picture-only dating profiles.

We're retaking dating questions now that the podcast production is more dialed in. If you've got one you'd like Paul to answer on the podcast, please submit it to the email address below. We'll keep your identity confidential. The team is also looking to add a woman's point of view to the podcast! If you're a Gen X or Boomer gal interested in contributing, please get in touch with us at the same email address.

Recommended books for learning more about Fusion: for men specifically, Paul recommends Dating Essentials for Men by Dr. Robert Glover. For both men and women, Mating in Captivity by Esther Perel is a good choice.

Questions and Contributions: questions@50datesat50.com

50 Dates at 50 Website:  https://50datesat50.com/

Episode 12 – Picture Only Dating Profiles

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Introduction


Paul Nelson: 50 Daters, here we are at episode 12: Dealing with Picture Only Dating Profiles. 

So I've got a question for everybody. Are you dating someone and seeing them four or five days a week or more, or have you done that in the past? Well, then you better watch out for Fusion catching up with you, which is the glossary term in today's episode. 

I'm also going to be taking a look at the movie Last Chance Harvey in our Chick Flick Movie Review, which will allow us to see that love can find us, even in the worst of times. 

All right. So now you've got your smartphone in hand, right? And you're going through your dating app and you're running across those dating profiles with no written content, but several fabulous pictures.

Should you swipe right on them? In our Potpourri segment, I'm going to go over how to deal with picture-only dating profiles and what to expect when you swipe right on them. 

So, by the end of this episode, you'll know how to spot Fusion in a dating relationship. And if not in yours, you undoubtedly will begin to see it in the relationships of others, because you'll start to be aware of this phenomenon. 

We're also going to see why it's worth taking a chance and continuing to put ourselves out there from our movie review. And additionally, you're going to learn all about the type of person that you're getting involved with when it comes to pursuing online daters who have the picture only dating profiles.

If you like what you hear, please take a moment and click on the subscribe or follow button. I don't want you missing out on making your date nights more memorable.

So now 50 Daters, let's start turning those dating busts into bests. 

Glossary Term - Fusion

 

Paul Nelson: Fusion. Let's talk about Fusion. This is a phenomenon that produces a combination of dependency, neediness, boredom, and resentment. It occurs when a couple spends way too much time around each other. One or both in the couple cease to do the activities that initially made them attractive to each other. They then expect the other person to fill the hole and time that's created. And then the phenomenon of Fusion takes over. 

Both the guy and the gal, and the couple are fusing all their time together. They are becoming one. Many, a man or a woman, can attribute the cause of many failed relationships in their past to Fusion. 

Newly dating couples, guys and gals, you really gotta be aware of this, who are seeing each other four, five, or six days a week are on a collision course with Fusion. This is why most men, incidentally, get dumped by surprise within the first few months. 

For some good in-depth information on Fusion, I highly recommend guys specifically read Dating Essentials for Men by Robert Glover. Both guys and gals need to read Esther Perel's Mating in Captivity. 

Last Chance Harvey - Chick Flick Movie Review


Paul Nelson: Last chance Harvey, released in 2009, is this episode's review. And let's get into why 50 Daters would benefit from watching this movie. 

Harvey, played by Dustin Hoffman, is down on his luck at work, and he suspects that he'll soon be replaced by new talent. He leaves his chaotic work situation in New York to fly to his daughter's wedding in London. 

Kate, played by Emma Thompson, is down on her luck with dating, and she's pretty much given up on finding her guy. Kate and Harvey first cross paths at Heathrow, where Kate works, in a not so friendly exchange.

Once reunited with his daughter, Harvey learns that her stepfather is going to be giving her away at the wedding. The next surprise comes in the form of his employer, cutting out his ideas from an account that they were working on. 

In a final attempt to defend those ideas, Harvey decides to leave immediately after the wedding ceremony, missing the reception so he can fly directly back to New York. However, when he gets to the airport, he learns that he's been let go from his job.

He crosses paths with Kate again in the airport bar and strikes up an awkward conversation. Realizing he has nothing to lose, he asks Kate to attend the wedding reception with him. She reluctantly agrees, and at the reception, they hit it off.

What's the midlife dating podcast take here? This movie is about taking chances. Harvey realizes these are some of his last chances, so he goes for broke. If more of us lived life like that, we'd have fewer regrets. 

Despite having a high level of frustration on several fronts, Harvey conducts himself quite well. On Kate's side, this movie's about thinking that love has passed you by and then finding it when you least expect it. Even a terrible day can ultimately turn into a great one. 

So why do 50 Daters need to watch this? Many of us in the dating process subconsciously condition ourselves for disappointment. We rationalize why things won't work before we even meet our date, especially after we've had a string of bad ones. 

The movie encourages us not to give up when the chips are down and life seems to be falling apart. When things are at their worst, that's when the unanticipated happens. It's highly likely that, like Harvey and Kate, we'll find the one that we're looking for when we least expect it. 

Retro Dating Clip - How Do You Know When It's Love - Coronet Instructional Films 1950 


Potpourri Segment - Dealing with Picture Only Dating Profiles

 

Paul Nelson: I'd like to talk about dealing with picture only dating profiles, and in my online dating experience, here's what I've learned in dealing with these. What you're going to find is, you're going to find many physically attractive people online who post only pictures. 

This is going to be true mostly of dating apps, and one of the apps that's king here in this situation is Tinder. I've seen it on Bumble at times. I've also seen Coffee Meets Bagel, where people enter literally nothing into them and just post only pictures. 

And I'll additionally say that I have actually been stunned at how many gals I've seen and actually dated that I've met on websites such as match.com, for instance, or Eharmony, that have put up a profile on Tinder. And when they put their profile up, they won't fill out anything on there. They'll just put up great pictures and put absolutely no content on there. 

It's almost like when people put up a Tinder profile that actually took the time to fill out a profile in other areas, like on the legacy websites, it's like when in Rome, do as the Romans do.

On a lot of legacy websites, however, they do make you enter something into there. And one of the things I've noticed, a popular statement will be is, uh, people that are getting really close to picture only profiles, they'll put in a statement that just says, "I'll fill this out later," and leave it at that.

Here's what I've learned when it comes to interacting with the owners of picture only dating profiles. 

They tend to be intellectually lazy, not all of them, but for the most part, they are. This is obvious because they're not even taking the time to fill out their profile in the first place. 

Under most circumstances, this type of individual has been able to get by on their looks, and this should tell you something. This, this individual puts heavy emphasis on having great, sexy, or attractive pictures with empty calories when it comes to substance in filling out their profile. They've generally been cut slack all their life, and when you start to interact with them, they're going to expect you to cut them some slack too. 

They can get away with this. Why? Simple, because they have many, many dating options. Albeit, those are going to be many shallow options.

The next thing that you're going to discover when it comes to these types of profiles is, this type of individual will not invest in the conversation. I mean, it makes common sense here. Let's look at this. If they won't put any effort into their dating profile, this actually telegraphs how much of an effort they're going to put into a dating relationship. You are going to be the one, basically doing all the work.

On top of that, it's highly likely that you're going to get ghosted or deleted before you even get a chance to meet the individual with a picture only dating profile. Again, they have many options, and I hate to say it again, but there's a lot of shallowness here. They tend to gravitate towards other shiny objects.

It's, it's like Huey Lewis back in the eighties, had a song called, "The Heart of Rock and Roll," and he talks about LA bands, and the lyric goes something like, "When they play their music / that hard rock music / they like it with a lot of flash."

Well, that says a lot about what dating can be like in LA and Orange County here in Southern California: a lot of empty calories and a lot of picture only dating profiles. 

Now I'm not meaning to brag here, but, unlike most men, I can easily start a conversation with a gal who has a picture only dating profile, and I can maintain that conversation. However, I will tell you that you need to be prepared if you can get a conversation started to deal with one, two, or three-word answers to your questions. Again, this demonstrates to me somebody that will not invest in a relationship.

Additionally, picture only profiles are the boon of those strictly on the dating apps for entertainment. These are people that I've heard the term to explain this is Electronic Vanity Validation. I am sorry I can't give you the origin of that, but it describes the individual that's on dating apps that validates themselves through making connections and texting conversations without any intention of actually meeting up.

Next problem you're going to run into with these picture only profiles is, there is a degree of these. Some of these are going to be fake. It's getting harder to do that these days. It really is. Many of the apps, once you post pictures, you got to take an instant photo of yourself with your hands or posing in a certain position, and there's an algorithm on some of these dating apps that'll match up your current picture with the pictures you've posted. So it's, it's harder and harder these days to fake a profile, although some of them, I'm sure, do slip through. 

The next problem you run into, especially on Tinder... It seems like I'm beating up quite a bit on Tinder here, but I'm not intentionally trying to do that, but Tinder started as a hookup app. It's not quite that way now. You can find people on there… I've found Christian women looking for Christian men on Tinder. This is not uncommon, but for the most part, there's a lot of people that are just looking for hookups, and this is where Tinder is king and this is where the picture only dating profile is king. 

You know, I would recommend that all us Gen X-ers and Boomers download Tinder onto your phone, just so you can see how low the bar can really go. 

 So to sum this up, my advice here is to stay away from picture only dating profiles. Conversations that you start will merely turn into the entertainment for the person on the other end. This goes for guys and gals alike.

Further, picture only profiles represent people that have absolutely no dating plan. We, as 50 Daters, don't have the spare time to entertain this type of group of people. We're looking for the real thing. 

What We Learned


Paul Nelson: So what did we learn today, 50 Daters? We now have an awareness of what Fusion is in a dating relationship and a little bit better of an understanding of how important time apart from each other is just as important as time together. 

To get some quality detailed information on Fusion, I highly recommend you read Esther Perel's "Mating in Captivity." This book is a real eye-opener in how to maintain attraction in a relationship. 

From the movie, Last Chance Harvey, we learned that love can easily find us in the least opportune of times and why we need to continue to take chances in putting ourselves out there. 

And let me add that you'll continue to be surprised at what can happen when it comes to dating if you just show up. 

From our Potpourri segment, we learned why attempting to engage with picture-only dating profiles, in most cases, is a waste of our valuable time. Unfortunately, this is what boomers and gen X-ers have a very finite amount of. 

Here at the Midlife dating Podcast, we're all about providing as much value as possible for our listeners. If you've got some dating questions, I'd be happy to answer them on the podcast.

I'd also like to get a woman's point of view on the podcast. If you're a boomer or a gen X gal who's interested in contributing, please get in touch with me. The email address will be in the show notes for both questions and if you'd like to contribute. 

Conclusion

Paul Nelson: And now for a little ending humor, I got a quote from Rodney Dangerfield, and he said, "My wife and I were happy for 20 years. Then we met." 

As always, these episodes are a blast to create, and I look forward to being with you on the next one to take your dating experience from a bust to a best. And that's a really good place to be. 

Until next time.