I have to confess I didn't know exactly what "winking" was in relation to dating sites until Amy blogged about it (this column, I'd wager) a little while back. I'd heard the term, but I didn't know what it was used for. Not much, apparently.

After reading the comments on that blog post, I have to conclude that "winking" from a guy on a dating site is equivalent to a guy telling you that he'll be at the pub with a bunch of his friends if you want to hang out (didn't a guy do that in a column once?). He's showed interest but lacks the balls to actually ask a woman on a date. And on a website, it doesn't even have to be a date. How about an email? That's nice and noncommittal. It's not like you're obligated to take out a mortgage just because you sent her a message asking if she's into film noir.

And, Mr. Daterguy, as far as a "wink" being the same as an introductory email- not so. I will continue my earlier analogy. If a "wink" is an invitation to her to come look at your profile, then the real-world dating equivalent would be you actually winking at a woman, thereby letting her know you find her visually pleasing, then sitting back and expecting her to come up to you with a date all planned out-- just add you. Not gonna happen. The introductory email is you catching that woman you like the look of alone at the bar and saying something witty about the house band's cover of "Muskrat Love."

Online dating and real-world dating aren't that different. You still need to be a man and ask a woman out. You don't get a pass on having cajones just because you're behind a computer rather than on a bar stool.

NumberSix, I like the cut of your jib. The "I'll be here if you want to hang out" non-date invitation is a good analogy in this situation.

Guys doing online dating should know that there are women who quickly receive literally hundreds of responses, so you need to stand out if you're going after someone desirable. A wink makes someone very easy to weed out during that process. Of course, if the guy looks really appealing just from his name/profile picture, he might get a profile visit and perhaps a wink back, but definitely no more substantial contact. Also, it's always kind of a minor strike against him from the start, since it's can reflect a lack of assertiveness.

I like the cut of your jib.

Tee-hee. I love that phrase. An Irish author I like uses it in her books when a character is drunk and it always amuses me.

it can reflect a lack of assertiveness

Well, you went and said in one phrase what I was trying to say in an entire post. I like your conciseness, CB.

Winks are free to send, emails cost money for the sender but not the recipient to reply to.

Some of those ladies are just cheap. Possibly more ways than one.

How come many women on online dating sites expressly state in their profile that they don't want "winks" from men, only e-mails?

Pretty much simple supply and demand - generally there are far more men than women on dating sites. So women can be pickier than men and/or have a greater need to filter out those who aren't making an effort.

By the same token, women can often get away with never paying to join, most men are happy to receive winks then use their (paid for) account to contact the woman.

Mostly, if you send winks, you look cheap. If you're not willing to spring a few bucks for an email, what will happen at dinner? And what distinguishes you from all the other guys? t doesn't work the other way round - a woman's profile and especially photo is what separates her from other women.

I didn't make the world Online Daterguy, I just live in it.

Proofread, proofread...

It doesn't work the other way round - a woman's profile and especially photo is what separates her from other women for most guys. But remember that women look for different things than men - you may not find winks a bad thing (I wouldn't either), but women want to see something of your personality upfront.

Winks? E-mail?

Sounds awful. Thank god I had to meet women the old-fashioned way: getting hammered at parties and being surprised when a gal just kept standing in front of me until I blearily realized she had been talking to me for an hour, and I was not saying anything interesting enough to warrant that attention.

"Oh," it would dawn on me at some booze-clouded moment, "she must have some other purpose besides hearing my slurred dithering..."

Eh. I never minded the winks. I ignored the profiles that didn't interest me, which saved the guy some trouble, and winked back to the ones that did. He still had to send an email if he was interested. But it's unwise to wink at a person who specifically says she doesn't want winks. It makes you look either inconsiderate or illiterate.

"Oh," it would dawn on me at some booze-clouded moment, "she must have some other purpose besides hearing my slurred dithering..."

Sounds very familiar - although the sign for me was usually realising everyone else had gone home two hours ago and the girl was still patiently listening - and presumably screaming internally "Kiss me you fool! How obvious can I be?"

LTW, yeah, the funniest memory in that regard for me was when I was 15-16 years old and gals would show up unexpectedly at my parents' house after school. It took me a bit to figure out that they really did *not* want to watch television in the basement.

I suspect they found my initial befuddlement annoying, especially since their question walking in the house was usually "so, when do your parents get home?"

Young men are pretty dumb that way, but with a little help, they catch on.

See, I learned something else new. I didn't know it cost to send an email on a dating site. Is that in addition to a sign-up fee, or is it on a piece by piece basis? Either way, money would definitely be a motivating factor. In light of that, I'll amend my earlier post to include that the cost just means you should be more discriminating if the money is an issue for you.

The reason that you send a wink is to determine if the account is even active. A lot of them aren't. So it doesn't make sense to spend half an hour putting together an email just to send it to a dead account.

Generally online dating sucks, for many reasons. If you want people to behave more politely and graciously, go into the real world and meet them. Dating online is just catalog shopping for fuck buddies.

I met my boyfriend online. We would never have met in person, living 35 miles away from each other and not moving in the same social circles.

I'm not sure what sites Kendra has been to, but it was NOT free for me to respond to his e-mail. Most of the sites I had been on require payment from both parties for them to communicate beyond the "wink" phase. Only the really hook-up geared sites make it easy to reply for free, but I was looking to date, not just hook up.

We've been together 3 years now, so it worked for us. The hard thing about online dating is that people tend to treat it like online shopping, thinking that they can custom-order a partner, or that they can find a better "deal" on the next site. It's just a tool for connecting like-minded people, not a smorgasbord where you can have access to everyone equally, just laid out for you to pick through.

NumberSix & Peggy C, it was lava life when I used it back in 2003/4. I don't know what it's like now.

I met my boyfriend online. We would never have met in person, living 35 miles away from each other and not moving in the same social circles.

Same for me. My husband and I met through Match. It's like any other way of meeting people. People just get weird about it because it seems less natural than meeting in a bar or at a concert. I never would have met my husband in any other way.

I met my husband on-line as well (Lava-life). Not sure what its like now, but back then you could narrow your search/browse to people who had been on-line in the past x days. That's how you could figure out if it was an active account. I didn't mind winks either. I'd check out the profile and if it was interesting, I'd wink back.

I tried initiating winks and all that got me was guys thinking I was looking for a hookup.

I also tried initiating e-mails and once took the initiative to make the first phone call. Both approaches fell flat. That was before I understood about the thrill of the chase for guys.

In the end, the few guys that I actually dated, including my husband, were ones who winked at me first, I winked back and then they shelled out the $1.50 to send me an e-mail. I could respond for free from there.

So I'm not the only one who states 'no winking' on my profile, eh?

As it is, too many guys never read your profile anyway, and only contact you based on the photo. If they can't figure out how they match me in some way and point that out in an email which then tells me they:
1) can read
2) can comprehend
3) have something to offer
4) are willing to make an initial effort
- why would I want anything to do with them?

Online dating is just one more way of meeting people - it's not an entity unto itself, at least for those of us looking for real (not virtual) relationships.

It works just as well/poorly as real life - it's how well you present yourself, communicate, read other people's signals, sheer luck and timing.

Everyone's out there - PhDs to illiterate twits. But I've been to 3 weddings from online meetings, made a couple excellent friends, and just started dating another really great guy, so it's effective.

Winking online is similar to real life - flirting without substance. I don't stop in person if a guy winks at me on the street, and online, I just hit 'delete.' (Too bad we can't get THAT function in real life ;-)

NumberSix writes: "Either way, money would definitely be a motivating factor. In light of that, I'll amend my earlier post to include that the cost just means you should be more discriminating if the money is an issue for you."

The (pre-Internet) dating site in which I met my wife was rather expensive. They had a huge song-and-dance about why that was; supposedly it was necessary to fund all of these services. Well, of course that wasn't true. But what it did was: it filtered out the poseurs. No one would spend that kind of money if all they wanted to do was (to steal a line from the column above this one) flirt for sport. And in fact, that was a big problem that I had been running into and gotten fed up with, and that's one reason I joined the service.

When you have to put your money where your mouth is, it cuts through a lot of crap.

I haven't really used dating sites but I've browsed through a few, and the rules/methods of payment vary a lot. Some have monthly fees etc with a certain number of messages per day allowed and free responses from the recipient, some require both to be members, some charge per message or for opening a channel of communication for a period of time. The hook-up sites do seem to tend to the free response from non-members option more than the serious dating sites, which makes sense because on the dating sites men are looking for some commitment from the woman as well. Whereas on hook-up sites the "men join up to contact female trial members" tendency helps women filter out hundreds of offers.

Dating online is just catalog shopping for fuck buddies.

You make that sound like a bad thing Mike :)

RE: Dating online is just catalog shopping for f*k buddies.

You get what you look for ;-)

Talk about over-analysing ... ladies get over yourselves, it's just a wink, a click of the mouse, it doesn't mean the guy badly wants to jump your bones or wants to marry you. People take shit so seriously. MonicaP has some sanity.

(FTR, before someone calls sour grapes, I've never done online dating nor 'winked' at anyone.)

Lobster, I think what most of us (and I've never done online dating, either) don't like is that you can't tell the difference between the guys who "wink" for flirty fun and the guys who "wink" because they're lazy or cowardly and the guys who "wink" because they're just looking for easy sex. There's no way to separate those guys like you'd be able to in a face-to-face setting. It would require further contact on the part of the wink-ee. So it's either respond to every wink just in case, or set a minimum standard on the winking. Online dating tends to force the adoption of some standards you may not have in the real world because of the convenient and anonymous nature of the medium.

I have the wink stuff disabled because 1) I get enough messages from fake guys as it is ('hi! You are gorgeous and clearly my soul mate! I can't wait to move to your country to marry you!') so don't want to make it easier, and 2) I'm okay with the theory of 'I'll wink, wink back if you like my profile and we'll take it from there' but before I disabled them it would always go quiet when I did that, and I hated that because it smacks of 'I think you're cute, please make all the effort'.

I have instant messages disabled for the same reason. I hate it when guys contact me and just say 'hello' and then leave it to me to make a conversation happen.

"There's no way to separate those guys like you'd be able to in a face-to-face setting. "

I completely get that. There has to be a way of separating who's serious enough to put some skin in the game, so to speak, from the non-serious ones that just view it as a toy. There seems to be way too many of the latter around these days.

TAgree with Cousin Dave. When I tried online dating, I used a paid site and took a systematic approach. I spent hours going through all the men in my age range within 25 miles and sent a 2 sentence email to the ones I found attractive (about 30 people). If we clicked after a couple emails then I gave my number, and I always asked if they had a facebook, so I could make sure they really were who they said they were and looked like their pictures (and so that they could do the same for me). After that initial upfront time investment, I didn't spent much time on the site, and I didn't have time to look at all the winks, so I just deleted them. Like others have said, its just an easy way to filter people out.

And I don't think there's anything wrong with women initiating emails. If you're sitting in a bar with a guy you're interested in, then you can flirt and look cute and probably he'll approach you. Online, the guy you're interested doesn't necessarily know you're there, and its silly to sit around and hope that he'll randomly stumble upon your profile.

I get pleasure from, result in I discovered just what I was looking for.
You've ended my four day long hunt! God Bless you man. Have a nice day. Bye

Terrific article! This is the type of information that are meant to be shared
across the internet. Shame on Google for no longer positioning this publish upper!

Come on over and visit my site . Thank you =)