Getting To Know Someone Online Quickly and Easily

Online dating, it’s such a game of chance. It’s scary, it’s exciting, it can be heart breaking or fun and flirtatious. You read their profile and look at their picture and wonder is that really who they are. How old is the picture? How short is the profile? Did it reveal anything at all besides what kind of music they do or don’t like. And how far away do they live, within a half hour or an hour and half to two hours away. How often will you really get to see them? If you are still fairly new to online dating, maybe even if you’re not and you want to know some safety tips about it, read my other hub called "Developing Online Relationships". It has some practical ways to protect yourself while developing an online relationship.

Let’s say you’re interested, you send a wink, or a flirt, or a short, but cute message. Will they even answer back? Will they be interested after reading your profile? But you’re still wondering, who is this person really. If we meet, if we connect, how long will it take to get to know the real person? How many dates will it take for them to let their guard down for me to see their real personality and how they treat others or if they will put my needs above their own sometimes. What if I told you, I had a way of speeding up that process? That I can have some very keen insights to a person’s real personality within a week or two at the most. Is your curiosity peeked now?

Yes I know it takes a few days or a week of exchanging those winks, asking question after question in those first get to know you messages, and hopefully exchanging a more current picture. Are they even answering truthfully you may wonder. But I can have a very good indication if that person is right for me before I even go out with them, if I can get them to game with me for a week or two. I know your first thought is gaming that’s not even real. It’s all a fantasy but I’d like to give you some insights to the gaming community when the game is of high caliber with a majority of adult players like Lord Of The Rings Online. I also want to show you how I can get to know people better and faster in this game than I can dating them once or twice a week for a couple of months.

First let’s tackle the gaming takes over your life misconception. I’m a mother of two college age children; fairly well adjusted I might add too, so nurturing them is always my number one priority. Add to that equation that I’m a preschool teacher and the energy that takes, and I am also currently dating a very sweet man that I care about very much and having fun investigating that relationship. So along with my other interests such as photography and reading and writing these hubs, I feel like there is a sense of balance in my life. I usually game in the late evenings on the nights when my favorite TV shows aren’t on. Why you may wonder… well online gaming allows me to talk and interact with other friends online. Yes they may have chosen to be a dwarf or elf or human and you go fight the bad monsters together. But LOTRO is so much more than that. It’s a very social community. You have kins/guilds which are a circle of friends in game, some are huge with 50 -100 players, but ours is a cozy, small knit group of friends that talk about their families, their vacations, or just their favorite places to eat. These are friends that you voice chat with using headphones and a microphone sometimes every day or sometimes a couple of times a week. These friends can become as close as family when you spend so much time talking about each other’s lives. These kins/guilds also usually have their own website where each of the members can exchange game strategies on the forums or post things about their real life like face book pages, pictures, or even recipes or even chat using guild instant messengers that are just like yahoo or gtalk. I have even met four of the dozens of friends I have made on LOTRO in real life. The relationships you develop in this game are real. I even fell in love with one of those friends and we had over a year long relationship that made me incredibly happy. Finally with some of the background out of the way, I can get to the essence of this article, why it is easier and quicker to get to know a guy playing beside him in a game than it is at an online dating site.

First of all a person generally chooses a character that fits their personality traits. I’m a healer; I will sit back and keep filling your life bar back up as long as you keep those monsters from hitting me. That is my nurturing spirit. A hunter may be someone that prepares for situations like one of the friends in my kin/guild; in real life he helps set up for big exhibitions making sure everything is perfect for the big performance and adjusts the details during it as necessary. So his real life job is similar to his hunter that sets the traps, or roots the monsters before the fight starts setting everything in place so that he can stay behind the main fight plunking arrows into the monsters but staying mostly safe too. A burglar can be a planner/goal oriented type of personality too. Then you have the guards or tanks and champions, the doers of the world. They like to tackle the problem head on, just watch them as they charge in and clobber or tackle something to set the world right again. Sound familiar? Wouldn’t you like to know up front on a dating site what type a guy he is from the start? You can get a pretty good idea if you game with him.

Another reason I like to talk a guy that I’m getting to know online, into gaming with me is because it also reveals another side to their personality very quickly. Are they a team player, or fairly self absorbed looking out for only number one. I came across a question on a gaming dating site that asked “If you are walking through the woods, and see a low level character fighting a monster but is about to die, do you…

a) Help the lowbie kill the monster and ride off triumphantly after he thanks you.

b) Demand money from the lowbie as a condition of your help

c) Watch the lowbie die and then send them a tell making fun of them

d) Let the lowbie die, then kill the monster he was going after and steal the loot he was trying to get.

Observing how the guy you like plays the game, says a lot about the type of guy he is much quicker than just asking him questions on a dating site. If he is a team player willing to do quests he doesn’t have yet just to help others in the guild or kin, he’s definitely the type of guy I want to continue to investigate a relationship with. On the other hand if he is only interested in obtaining the best loot first to better only his character, and he isn’t willing to wait for me while I rearrange my packs or help catch me catch up to his level, he’s probably not going to understand, when I don’t want to meet them for a first date the next week. Do you ever want to say to the guy, “Get a clue; I’m a woman, yes I like to be taken care of but there are also times I like to take the lead.” It’s fun when you can do just that in a game like LOTRO.

Another reason why you can develop real relationships while gaming with someone, is that you are talking to that person over the headphones and you hear all the nuances of their emotions the same as over the phone. But the conversations generally last much longer than just a phone call. You explore new territories with that person as they fight side by side with you saving you from getting eaten by that monster and you healing them so they don’t die. You take care of each other and help each other on quests, developing a level of trust in each other as you ride off side by side into the sunset. Sound a bit romantic…. It definitely can be. There are even emotes which are ways of expressing general emotions in the game such as a flirt, a giggle or a blush and then with aliases, you can write your own personal emotes that can really make someone blush lol.

Falling for someone that you play a game with happens much more often than people realize. It’s not because it’s a fantasy world but much more because of the social aspect of the game. More often than not you can find me standing in one spot for hours just talking to friends and finding out how they and their family are doing. So the time you spend getting to know someone you care about is very real. The person you play with reveals who they really are much more quickly in the game than just dating someone who’s always on their best behavior around you. When you are in game, you are relaxed because they can’t see you and you are in your own home, but the personalities that come across reveal so much more about everyone. So the next time you meet a gamer in an online dating site, don’t be afraid to take the plunge and try the game he or she is playing. You will learn a lot about that person very quickly and you may just find a hobby that you can both enjoy together.

You can set up a LOTRO account HERE. It's free to play and a great way to make new friends and get to know people you meet at online dating websites.

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DEVELOPING ONLINE RELATIONSHIPS found HERE. It includes advice I wish I had known when I started the process of online dating such as using a separate email just for dating sites or new people, and setting up a buddy phone call code phrase for first dates that go south and you need an excuse to get out fast.

LIFE IS LIKE A BEACH BALL found HERE. Does your life sometimes seem like a beach ball in God’s hands? In this hub, I describe how my life/beach ball, has been batted and/or punted causing detours in my life despite the goals or plans I have tried to maintain.

OBSERVATIONS BY A PRESCHOOL TEACHER found HERE. Just a few observations I've gathered over the years as a preschool teacher of young children. Hoping that parents will reward the good behavior not the bad behavior of their children.

SOME DAYS ARE LIKE THAT found HERE. A not quite so typical day of a preschool teacher but one we can laugh about none the less. And as parents and teachers that can relate to one or more of the events happening in their lives, you realize when they all happen on the same day, all you can do is laugh when the mom finds you and the child in the bathroom with a wet shoe.

SHOES ON THE RIGHT FEET found HERE. It's an easy parenting tip for teaching young children how to put their shoes on the right feet.