I plan on visiting China in the next few months.  To this end, I'm speaking to a small handful of ladies, vetting them, if you like.

I intend to see more than one person during the trip.  I thus want to ensure that everyone I’m chatting to here is aware of this.  For those men intending to do the same thing  - to meet more than one person  -  it's essential that we're all as open and honest as possible about this.  We're playing with people's emotions  - potentially their entire lives, after all.

To this end, I started a forum thread recently titled “If You Intend To Meet More Than One Lady”.  This soon attracted a lot of comments that  were much appreciated, yet slightly distracted from the original message I was trying to convey as other interesting areas of discussion opened up, turning the thread into a veritable "can of slippery, wriggling and mischievous worms".

So this article is part one of a recap or summary of my thoughts on this subject. Part two will follow.  If anyone wants to see the diverse array of comments originally posted on the topic, simply take a look at the relevant thread in the forum section of this welcoming website.

So let’s begin. 

In relation to my chatting to ladies on ChinaLoveMatch, here's what I'm saying to each person.

“Please let me say that I plan to visit China in the next few months. I hope to meet a small number of ladies and I'm pleased to say that you're one of them. I hope to spend maybe 3, 4 or 5 days with each person, depending on individual circumstances.

I do not wish to have sex with anyone - I just want to meet them and for them to meet me.

I know from experience that chatting over the internet - even using webcam - is not good enough to really know if you're going to like someone or not. Person to person contact is essential. When you and I meet, maybe you won't like me as much as you think you will? Or maybe for some reason, I won't like you as much as I'd hoped?

We won't know these things until we meet FACE TO FACE and spend a few days together, getting to know each other. I hope you can understand this?

I have no problem if you'd like to talk to other men during this period, just as I'm chatting to more than one person. Let me say though that you’re a very special lady to me and I greatly look forward to meeting you in person."
 

I encourage any men reading this who are also intending to meet more than one person on their trip, to please feel free to copy and paste the above note for their own use, should they wish to.

To be quite honest, though I should be excited and happy about the prospect of soon potentially meeting a wonderful new partner, deep down I'm actually troubled by the process.

I worry that I can only choose ONE lady.
I worry that I will have wasted the time of everyone else.
Most important of all, I’m troubled by the knowledge that possibly one or more of the ladies I’ve been talking to will become naturally quite depressed if they’re not chosen as their long held, cherished dream of living in a new land suddenly explodes in their face. 

I’m acutely cognisant of the fact that I’m playing around with people’s heads here, delving deeply into both their private and emotional lives as they ingenuously bare their very souls to me.  God bless you all. 

There’s another important consideration that  must be considered also.  Like it or not, there's a reasonable chance that after meeting everyone, the person I feel most attracted to may in fact decide that she doesn't feel the same way about me. Aaahhhh!  I'm not necessarily the best catch in the world after all, not arrogant enough to believe that just because I want someone, that automatically she'll in turn want me

This is yet another good reason to not place all one’s eggs into just one basket, but to have a few alternatives. A back up plan.  Imagine going all the way to China to meet the lady of your dreams and she doesn’t like you!  This happened to someone I know, in fact.  He travelled from Perth in Western Australia to Hangzhou  -  a mighty long way  - only to be told, “Thanks but no thanks” by the lady he was smitten with.  The poor guy.  I felt much sympathy for him.  But instead of seeing just this one person, he should’ve visited several, but ah, this is all murky water under the low hanging bridge for him now.  An expensive lesson learnt, both emotionally as well as financially.

I’ve been through all of this internet dating process before.  I was a member of an introduction site here in Australia and over a period of time met a bunch of Western women, before slowly yet inevitably realizing that Chinese ladies were superior in so many ways.  The normal process on these dating services is  for folks to exchange a few emails with each other, then arrange a personal meeting, normally in a local coffee shop.

Let me advise that some of the ladies I met in person were totally different to what I’d been expecting.  For example, instead of having a smooth complexion as shown on their profile photos, their skin sometimes showed blemishes or other signs of ageing and maybe a few wrinkles.  There's no problem with this, except their pictures weren't always up to date.

Other things were noticed also.  Upon meeting, some persons were surprisingly quite uncommunicative and hard to talk to, despite my having exchanged plenty of long, flowing emails with them previously, where communication skills had been excellent. It was sometimes like trying to communicate with a dead fish you'd just found lying on the beach.  Maybe someone else had written the emails for them, cleverly disguising the fact that the person I'd been speaking with was in fact a Russian or an Icelandic who knew no English!

Some of the ladies also were poorly dressed or otherwise didn’t portray themselves well.  I often wondered to myself why someone would go to a meeting with a prospective new partner, looking like she’d just crawled out of bed?  One lady even had body odour  - I didn’t know what to say to her, whether to advise or not that she please have a shower or take a bath!

Then other ladies did the opposite.  They’d arrive at the coffee shop dressed up as if they were ready for a night at the opera, wearing stylish high heels with a lot of make up and plenty of sparkling bling such as rings, necklaces and ear rings.  The problem being that such decorative displays didn’t impress me in the slightest  - au contraire, I prefer a simple, neat and natural look.

To my chagrin, the reverse scenario occurred also.  Instead of me not liking the ladies, sometimes it was quite obvious that they for whatever reason, didn’t like me.  They'd sit there and answer questions with one word answers, looking at their watches every twenty to thirty seconds, giving every appearance of being utterly bored.  This is all part of the dismaying and difficult dating process and needs to be expected unfortunately.  Taken on the chin, like a prize fighter in the boxing ring, being smashed with a hefty and unexpected uppercut.

I could recount many interesting if not downright amusing stories of meeting ladies through introduction services, but the main lesson to learn is this.

PEOPLE MUST MEET FACE TO FACE AND SHARE SOME TIME TOGETHER, BEFORE HAVING ANY TRUE IDEA WHETHER THEY’RE COMPATIBLE OR NOT.  PLEASE DON'T DELUDE YOURSELF THAT CHATTING ENDLESSLY ONLINE EVEN WITH WEBCAM, IS GOOD ENOUGH TO KNOW WHETHER ANY GENUINE ATTRACTION WILL EXIST BETWEEN YOU TWO WHEN FINALLY YOU MEET.

Given the above, it thus is important that folks here realize that one should never say, “I love you” to anyone over the internet, because how can anyone know for sure whether they’ll genuinely love the person when finally they're toe to toe, cheek to cheek?  Harsh reality in the bright light of day can be so unflattering, compared to blurry webcam pictures in a dimly lit room, after all. 

This applies to both men and women who haven’t yet met in person.   If a lady is told, “I love you” by a man  -  or a man is told, “I love you” by a lady  -  both statements should be viewed with a little suspicion.   Whenever someone says this to me over the internet (yes, it does happen occasionally!), I take the words to mean, “I like you a lot”.  

Because how on Earth can true love exist with someone you’ve never yet actually met?  The internet is simply a guide, an indicator  - and certainly shouldn’t be taken as a guarantee.  This is regardless of how many passionate prayers of piety you've made to God above, or how many fervent solicitations to the wispy angels of Light that you've earnestly incanted.

This in fact is a big, hungry bear trap that many fine men and women on internet dating sites have haplessly fallen into, year after year.  Guilelessly believing that because they’ve been told, “I love you” by someone over the net, that this “love” is necessarily bona fide or real.  Because maybe it is  - or sadly, maybe it's not?

Internet romance is akin to traversing a craftily constructed minefield.  Play it patiently with wisdom and not too many false hopes or scatter brained unrealistic dreams, so you can get across safely. 

If you take things for granted though or don't do your homework properly, then "Kaboom!", you'll be sitting there in the mud with a lot of rotten egg on your disappointed face, with tears streaming down like so much confusing, confounded, colourful, capricious confetti  (apologies for the mixed metaphors!).

Good luck to all my brothers and sisters here.

Part 2 to follow, "Your China Trip - Who To See Who?"