I've been saying this for a couple of years, there are fewer Christian guys out there and now it's been proven it's a world-wide concern. Here's an article from Christianity Today.
My brother in law heard an analogy once of the Christian dating scene today for women: It's like driving through a parking lot and only seeing handicap spaces or a space taken up by a shopping cart. The handicap ones, in my opinion, are the guys who can't interpret signals from women, allow themselves to fall into the dreaded "friends zone," or simply don't know how to treat a women properly. The blocked spaces could be potential future boyfriends but they could also be my other dreaded subset of guys, the ones who are into everything but building a relationship. This type of guy has the money to spend wooing a young woman but instead he spends in on tripping out his apartment/house with tech. gadgets or a fancy car. That's called being a bachelor, I know. When is it time to ditch the all leather furniture look or the dreaded futon couch for something more mature?
On the other hand, a future mate in the blocked space may not be aware of his potential great boyfriend personality. To be fair, young Christian women don't make it easy for this type of guy. We're either driven to get married asap (aka they went to a Christian school and major in Mrs.) or we want time to enjoy our 20s career and social wise. We are the ones sending mixed signals more often than guys, I would argue.
I know I sent them to my last boyfriend and that contributed to our "failure to communicate." I don't want to get married right now but I wanted to know early on in our relationship (6 months in to be exact) if this was a remote possibility. I think our relationship officially failed the day I happen to be driving with him through the town where my sister's reception was. I pointed out the site and said "isn't that a beautiful house?"
When we broke up two days later, the first words out of his mouth were "It's clear you want to get married. I don't know if I'll be ready to, even a couple years later." Not 3 months before we'd talked about where we wanted to be in 5 years and the first thing he said was "I want a wife and children." Looking back, I now realize what he was REALLY trying to say that day was "I don't want to marry you." Throughout our relationship, I tried to take my friend's advice and when it came up I said I really don't want to get married now. In this case it didn't work.
I have yet to know for certain if one can send mixed signals through e-mail when you're doing online dating. If anything, it's a conversation that often takes a while to get going if at all.
I was talking to my friend who's also registered on eHarmony about why guys don't like to email during the Open Communication stage. We concluded that guys are social creatures who would prefer a face to face conversation or at least a phone call.
One of my matches out rightly refuses to move our conversation beyond answering questions I send him. I'm frustrated that he hasn't asked me any questions and really only wants to talk about business topics it seems. My friend suggested giving him my cell number to see if he's different on the phone. Frankly I have no motivation to at this point. He's coming off as a someone very set in his ways: work and more work. But I'm trying truly to give him the benefit of the doubt...
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