Person I just started dating: “You said you were easy to find with a Google search, so I took a look, and I’ve been reading your blog.”
Me: “That’s…great.” Oops.
*
A thought I’ve had in the middle of a flirtatious conversation: “Oh, you’ve totally been reading my blog to try to figure out if maybe you want to date me/to find out if I’m available. That doesn’t make me even vaguely uncomfortable.”
*
On an online dating website: “I’ve been following your blog for quite some time, and it would be great to have a conversation with you.”
Me: “Am I professional Amy or dating Amy right now? I am SO CONFUSED.”
*
“This totally inappropriate thing I did was inspired by you and one of your blog posts.”
Me: “Um….” ???
*
I love my blog, but I do not love having my blog and dating. I try to pretend it’s not weird because sometimes the best strategy is to bluff your way through something, but in reality, IT CAN BE PRETTY WEIRD.
It’s a question of a balance of information.
Whenever I write a blog post, I ask myself if I’m okay if the whole entire world reads what I’ve written. That is my base assumption, not because I think that will ever happen in a million years (it won’t), but because I want to do my best to remember how very public this blog is (even though it doesn’t always feel super public). So I’m sanity checking whether what I’ve written is something I’d be willing to say in public, even knowing whichever person I’d least like to might, in fact, read it.
So it’s not that there’s anything of which I’m particularly ashamed on the blog. I’m sure I’ve said some stupid things sometime in the past, because in four and a half years, that’s pretty much a certainty. I’ve probably also said things that I no longer agree with, because hey, in four and a half years I’ve learned new things and changed my mind and become aware of more nuance in certain issues. But overall, I don’t find the blog embarrassing.
What I don’t like about having the blog and dating is that at the beginning of getting to know someone, I think it throws off the balance. An enterprising person can read four and a half years of more and less well-thought-out essays from me. Surely most people won’t have the time for such an undertaking, but even so. Even if they don’t read all or even most of my essays, there are still an awful lot of them.
And meanwhile, what do I know about them? A few emails worth of carefully curated information? A single conversation’s worth of anecdotes? The flow of information is the opposite of balanced in this situation.
And then there’s the problem of assumed intimacy. People read this blog, and over time, perhaps they feel like they’ve gotten to know Blog Amy. And that’s as it should be. I’m happy when you get to know Blog Amy. But the people I’m dating? I don’t want them to get to know Blog Amy. I want them to get to know Personal Amy. Preferably by talking to me and spending time with me. I want to share my stories and opinions myself instead of past Blog Amy getting to have all the fun.
It’s not even that I don’t want the people I’m dating to read my new blog posts as I’m publishing them. It’s more that I then want to talk to them about those posts. I want to have a conversation about those subjects, because if they weren’t interesting to me I wouldn’t be writing about them. I want to talk about what was hard about writing them, or how people responded differently than I thought they’d respond, or how no one is interested in reading about such-and-such a subject.
Meanwhile, I don’t want to think of my backlist of four and a half years at all.
Blog Amy or Personal Amy? Sometimes it can be hard to tell.
I’ve actually thought about whether to continue the blog, given the potential dating weirdness, and you can see the answer to my deliberations in my continued blogging, and even my new willingness to blog about dating. My discomfort, when it comes, is the price of maintaining a public persona, however obscure, on the internet. And I’m willing to pay the price.
I’m willing to stand behind this blog, and say, yes, this is part of who I am. I am a writer. And dating a writer can probably also be weird. Take it or leave it. The blog leaves no room for anything less. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
*
Person I’m dating: “So I saw your most recent blog post. On dating.”
Me: “Oh….”
Person I’m dating: “I didn’t read it.”
Me: “There’s nothing about you in it.” Please don’t freak out. Please don’t freak out.
Person I’m dating: Doesn’t freak out. Starts a conversation based on the headline of the blog post instead.
Me: Sometimes mature communication wins.
The Practical Free Spirit 
Don’t worry too much about what your dating friends think.
Just write and be authentic to ….yourself. You have control to reveal what you wish. Have you dated any bloggers or writers yet?
I met my partner before blogging was even invented. But now he blogs too…different focus than mine. You’ll see the blog post about him in my blog.
Have I dated any bloggers? Hmm, none spring to mind. Writers? Well, briefly. 🙂
Best wishes in blogging adventures.
I’m completely the opposite. I _hope_ the people I date have read my blog or followed me on Twitter. I feel like my online presence is my best self, and that if they’ve exposed themselves to it then I’ve already done half the work of charming them. That’s also why I’m quick to Facebook friend people who I meet: I find that after a few months of exposure to my thoughts, they feel much friendlier towards me than our actual level of contact might otherwise merit.
This is fascinating to me, and probably a really healthy and positive way to approach it. I guess my blog could be charming? I actually have no idea.
Of course it is! However, as a woman dating men it’s possible that you need different tools. You might need less help charming them and more help discouraging the ones who aren’t going to be good matches for you. Which might mean your blog is less than good, precisely because it’s so friendly and observant and relatively inoffensive that any guy could read it and think, “She is the one for me!”
So what you’re telling me is I need to be more offensive on the blog. I don’t know. I already get told I’m intimidating as it is! (Although actually, I agree that is probably a positive thing.) 😉
No, you could just include things that would turn off the wrong sort of guy. Not sure what those are, though. Actually, in matters of the heart, who knows? Probably all our assumptions about what we like are completely flawed.
Obviously the right thing to do is to blog more about feminism. You’re brilliant, Rahul!