I had met a guy on OkCupid back in February, and we talked on and off for about a month and a half - we never met or even really spoke, just texted mostly. He seemed to really like me and was even alluding to the possibility of us being in a long term relationship, etc. Then, about three weeks ago, he asked for a full body pic. Currently I'm a size 16/18 and really self-conscious about my figure, so all my pics online are just my head and shoulders. I was immediately apprehensive when he asked this because I thought it was a shallow thing to ask, but then I asked him why he wanted a pic, and he just said because he doesn't have any pics of me and wants one. I asked jokingly if he was just trying to make sure I didn't weigh like 1000 pounds, and he said he doesn't care about my size and finds thick to be attractive anyway. I have currently lost about 30 pounds and am full force in the process to get down to my ideal size, but I didn't tell him that because I want someone who likes me for me, not some idea of me being thinner in the future. Also, I wanted to see if he was telling the truth that my size didn't matter to him. So the next day, I sent him the pic, and three weeks later, still no response. We're still Facebook friends, but he completely ignored my pic.

I wasn't in love with this guy or anything, not even close, but it still hurts. I had invested quite a bit of time into talking to him, and then he just disappears. I see now on Facebook that there are old pics of me from when I was a teenager as a size 6/8 - he probably saw those and thought that I still looked like that or at least close (even though my face is fuller now and I would have thought it was obvious that I wasn't really thin). I get that he has a right to not find overweight girls attractive, but I think it's really sucky that he lied and said he didn't care about my size when he clearly did, and that he didn't even have the courtesy to respond - even if he didn't like it, he could have at least said "thanks for sending the pic."

He himself is really buff with a six pack and everything, so you would expect him to want to be with a girl who looks really fit as well. But he thought I had a really pretty face, and just...I really thought he liked me. And I have been putting so much effort to lose the weight, and am down from a size 20-22, but this is just another reminder that people superficially still see me as a "fat girl" - they don't know that I'm working out every day, and they don't know what my size was a few months ago. All this guy saw when he looked at the pic was a fat girl, not ME for everything I am.

It just sucks because we had good conversations - and at the end he was so quick to throw that all away just because I'm chubby. All that seemed to really matter was my appearance. And it makes me feel like all guys are going to be like that - it won't matter how smart, kind, funny, etc. I am - being overweight will just make me invisible to them. And I don't want a guy who specifically prefers overweight women because I am trying to lose weight and I don't want someone who would hold me back and try to keep me big.

I do fully plan to stay Facebook friends with this guy and post pictures of myself when I'm down to a size 10, then 6, then 4. I'm curious to see what his reaction would be then...

Has anyone here had similar experiences?

i dated before internet dating, but IMO it's good riddance to bad rubbish. it does not matter what sorts of nice conversations you had with him, he has shown you that he is not the guy for you. be glad you know now instead of him trying to hide it to get laid, or trying to fool himself into believing that it doesn't matter to him when it does.

of that, i speak from experience. i spent three years with a guy who was not interested in being with me bc i was fat... but was still with me. and i was still with him despite my knowing that he wasn't attracted to me.

be absolutely PROUD of you as you are now, take full body pictures showing how beautiful you are as you are now, and you will meet the guy who is right for you.

I am very sorry that you have been hurt.

I agree with Katerina. You are better off without him.
You will find someone much better for you and you deserve that.

I've had a similar experiences, and I was on the opposite side too. Once a guy whose profile said he was 30 and 5'11." After we'd hit it off, he told me that he was 50 and 5'1"

He tried to brush it off as typos (but then why was his profile still uncorrected.

Ironically, I would have had no problem with his height or age, but the deception left me wondering what else he might be covering up.

No doubt this guy thought his age and height turned me off, but it was the pussyfooting around the truth that turned me off.

It turned me off so much that when I placed the ad that would attract my now-husband, I not only put my height, age, and exact weight, I also listed my highest and lowest adult weights, I also made it clear that I dieted and fell of diets (and changed hair colors and styles) frequently and that my weight and appearance could vary a lot, and I was looking for a guy who could accept me at any weight and any hair color. I also used a 3/4 shot for my profile photo, so there would be no surprises. I am VERY bottom heavy, so I made sure my gigantic hips were in the photo.

I didn't want to waste my time on men who might be unpleasantly surprised at my actual, true-to-size, true-to-life appearance, so I put it out there from the first. No surprises.

I got plenty of responses, including the only one that mattered (dear hubby) so my weight and full-length appearance (5'7" and around 360 lbs, if I remember correctly) obviously didn't scare off the guys I really wanted to meet (and if it did scare away some guys, it was only the guys I didn't want to meet anyway - in essence by being honest about my appearance, weight history, and my lack of interest in making my weight top priority in my life, I rejected the men who would care about those things before they ever had a chance to reject me).

You don't feel the rejection when you don't see it. By placing the ad with a very accurate picture, the guys who didn't want me, never responded to my ad, so the only guys I met through my ad were guys who liked what they saw. Win-win for me.

No doubt I would have gotten more responses if I had been more evasive about my appearance, but it also would have increased the number of guys who would have to reject me. And if I had not been so specific about what I wanted, I also would have gotten more responses but would have had to do more rejecting to.

By placing an ad that was very specific about who I was and what I wanted, I got a lot fewer responses, but also had less rejecting to do, and less rejection to receive.

I'd much rather have 12 responses that had a good chance of a match, than 100 with a low chance of working out.

I never would have met hubby, if I had gone a more traditional route. What drew hubby to me, and what drew me to him, was our openness - no hiding, postponing, glossing over or exagerating potentially important details.

It's hard to put that much of yourself out there, but it pays off big, because it does most of the "weeding out" for you.

Thanks for all the support everyone. I agree that I am better off without this guy. I am at the point in my life where I want to find someone to spend the rest of my life with, and being shallow is a dealbreaker for me. Likely if I had dated this guy, I would have wasted months with him and could have missed out on meeting the right guy for me.

I know what you mean. However, I had a couple of reasons for only including a pic of my face on my profile. First, I didn't want my body, especially the big boobs and hips, to be ogled by pervs on the Internet - the thought of that just makes me uncomfortable. Second, if I had put up full body pics, it would have undoubtedly attracted "chubby chasers" which I did and do not want. I am committed to losing weight FOR ME, because I know it will make ME happy, and I don't want a guy who prefers me heavy and may hold me back from losing weight. Even if he's a good guy and doesn't try to keep me heavy, once I lose weight, I'd know that he preferred me when I was overweight, and I wouldn't want that. I want someone who would find me beautiful at my new weight as well. Ideally I would want someone who would find me beautiful at any size, although I know that's a tall order. Which leads me to my third reason - I was hoping that by just including a headshot, I would attract guys who don't care so much about body type. I want a guy who doesn't need a girl with a specific body type for him to like her, for whom a pretty face is enough.

In the past, when guys who messaged me asked for a "full picture," I was done with them and would no longer reply to their messages. I found it shallow and thus not compatible with what I wanted. But I actually liked this guy, so I complied - also I thought it would be a good test to see if he was telling the truth when he said my size didn't matter to him and if he really liked me for me and not my appearance, unfortunately neither of which turned out to be true.

It's just disappointing when someone turns out not to be who you thought they were. But I will say that revenge is a powerful motivator - I have been working out twice as hard, and I lost almost 4 pounds last week. I really can't wait to put pics up on Facebook in a couple of months so that this guy can see what he missed out on by being so shallow! My friends say he'll probably contact me then, and then I'll be able to say "we can be friends but that's it." Then, hopefully, he'll think twice before being so shallow with the next girl!

Women are in the driving seat when it comes to choosing men. We really have no say.

Don't forget that.

So good riddance to that bad apple.

He must be f@cking nuts!

Hmmm...IanG, from everything I've seen, it's the guys who decide. They're the ones who generally approach girls, etc. But thanks for your support also!

Also, if anyone wants clarification, the pic that is currently my avatar and profile picture is the one that I sent the guy.

Just another thought to confirm previous posts . . . If the guy is this shallow now, he probably won't be a good partner to you in the future or be able handle the bigger problems that come up in life in a long term relationship. I have been married to a wonderful man for over 30 years and believe me, you see the best and worst of each other. We have been through some terrible and wonderful times together. I couldn't have stayed with him if he was shallow and selfish.

Congrats on finding out now who that guy really is so you don't have to waste any more time on him.

His loss...

I've been happily married for more than 20 years to a wonderful woman... I tell everyone I "married up", and I'm pretty sure she tells people the same thing.

The perfect match is out there for you. Not someone who will make you "happy", because no other person can do that, but the person who "completes" those pieces of you that are missing. Sometimes I feel that my wife and I are in many ways opposite pieces that together form much more than either one of us apart.

You deserve much more than this guy offered. The right one will want you for you, not for your appearance alone.

Dean

I'm sorry you've had to experience this. I've been on both sides of this, to be honest. I've sent pictures to a guy who I had become close with and he's stopped talking to me. But I've also received pictures and realized that hey, I'm not attracted or maybe they aren't what I thought. It sucks, but it's a reality of online dating.

One thing I learned that helped ease the heartache a bit is to not put too much time and effort into someone until you've met them. Chat enough to get to know the basics, but make it a point to meet up (safely) early on, before you've developed too many feelings. Sometimes the chemistry just isn't there or there's no attraction and it's easier to walk away from it. Sometimes you don't think you'll be attracted and the reality is you can't keep your hands off each other!

I'm glad this has given you motivation to work even harder - you're doing awesome and don't need someone like him to pull you down!

I had to share this with my partner - we found it hilarious

I like Kaplod’s method and I don’t think that it would result in a lot of chubby chasers because if you get those, you can just weed them out from creepy messages (or eventually find out later anyways) and you would more likely weed out the skinnier-body-types only men, and get that guy you want – the guy who doesn’t care or is attracted to you at your current state. The way that I see it, I think that relationships are based on a combination of emotional and physical attraction and for some people, physical attraction might matter more to them than others – it doesn’t make them any better or worse, they should just be with other people then. Sometimes I meet guys that I’m just plain not physically attracted to and vise versa – as long as we are courteous to each other and maybe even become friends later on, I don’t really mind. I figure it just frees us up to find someone who IS attracted to us – the worst thing ever would be to discover that someone is secretly with me out of guilty-courtesy and not of true attraction. I did OKC for a bit too and internet interacting/dating is always super awkward (some people just don’t commit to it and think its OK to like stop messaging because its only internet to them – even if they write a lot) – while definitely not nice to just ignore and not just be upfront – like “Hey I’m no longer interested in trying out a relationship” but at the same time so much nicer than some of the meaner/creepo comments that generally happen on the internet.

Actually this isn't true. I watched a documentary on dating that studied dating customs in countries in which it was customary for the men/boys to ask out the woman/girls and in almost all of them, including the USA, Canada, and Britain, it is actually the women who almost always makes the first move with some type of attention.

In their studies, they found that men almost never approached women who haven't given some show of interest (eye contact, a smile.... something) and not only that, men who DID approach women who hadn't made first contact, were almost universally rejected by the woman, no matter how attractive he was.

When they interviewed the women after the experiment, many of the women had no idea that they had made "the first move" until they were shown on tape, and when asked why they had shot down the guys who had approached out of the blue, they said the guy "came off creepy" or something to that effect.

Watching the documentary did make me realize that I had probably rejected guys for that very reason. When I was in my early twenties, I had a couple experiences in bars of men coming on to me unexpectedly, and at the time, I shot them down fast, even though they looked to be guys I would have dated. At the time I thought the guys came off as creepy, in part, because I assumed they were drunk. Now I'm thinking, I probably felt weirded out that the guys approached me without my having shown any intetest first.

Seeing that documentary did really change my life, because I had always avoided eye contact in new social settings, and so I started flirting more and it gave me the courage to place personal ads. My social life skyrocketed.

People watching has become a habit now though, and when I do see strangers (from each other) flirting, it does seem that not only does the woman usually make the first move, guys can be pretty unobservant (or insecure) and the woman has to make five or six moves before the guy finally "gets it" or works up the courage to show interest and if he shows too much interest, too soon, he's shot down (probably coming across as creepy or predatory).

I think men who are attracted to heavier women (either primarily or because they're attracted to many body types) are often even more wary of approaching a woman who hasn't flirted first and obviously, because the ordinary fear of rejection is compounded by the fear that they'll come off as a chubby chaser, pervert, or as a guy looking only for sex.

I do know I'd have never met my husband if I hadn't made most of the "first moves" in our relationship. Hubby was so extroverted on the phone and in his emails that he seemed like a different (insufferably boring) person in real life. It took a month for his irl personality to match his phone and email personality.

If I were younger when I met him, I wouldn't have had the patience to see if sparks would eventually fly.


There are men and women who will be with anyone who shows any interest, but most people want and need more in a relationship.

Even if guys did make the first move, the women still do have all the power, because we decide whether or not to say yes. Asking for anything does not put you in the power seat, it gives all the power to the person who has the power to fulfill or reject the request.

@Crazygurl1211: I'm so sorry that happened to you. I'd like to tell you it gets better on the online dating world, but that's just how it is. I'm the lowest I've ever been and had a guy who still didn't like me because I wasn't stick thin. You have to accept there will always be some guys out there who's first priority in a mate is how they look. Now most of those guys may find someone who looks good but isn't kind, or ambitious, or remotely a good person. Some may find the holy grail who is all of those things, but I bet that's a really small percentage of people.

Truth is, we all have to accept that we will not always measure up to someone in some way. If we don't, just have to dust yourself off and say "Well I wasn't their cup of tea, which makes them not mine either". Keep going, keep searching and don't give up hope.

Now you did mention that the guy you were talking to had a six pack and was buff. Now I'm not suggesting you date someone you're not attracted to, because attraction is key, but I have found that sometimes it's those regular joe's (who may not be the most buff/full head of hair/chizzled handsome adonis faced men) that typically can accept some physical flaws in a person because they're after something much deeper. I know for both men and women, once they know they are desired by a lot of people... they can and will shop around for mate's knowing there are a plethora of men/women falling over themselves to be with them.

It's hard, and the dating/courtship process is especially hard on the psyche. However I think it's a lot of compromise. I'm 5'3...still a good 50lbs overweight. Need to tone up all areas of my body... I am far from physical perfection. It would be oh so nice to meet a handsome, tall, toned man who said "Baby I don't care about your imperfections... I love you just as you are..." LOL! However I'm not holding my breath on that either. I also need to really take a hard look at the men talking to me. Who really seems interested? Who isn't asking for "more photos"? If he seems interested...why am I not replying to him? Is it because I too am measuring him against some really harsh physical ideals I have? There have been guys who are a little more rugged, short, and stocky who have approached me who weren't bad looking. If I can compromise on my ideals, and he can compromise on his... maybe we can meet in the middle and see if there is something between us that far outweighs the weight issue.

Best of luck Crazygurl! Stay strong, and keep up the fantastic work!

Hmmm, I think he is jerk for not responding to you but not necessarily for rejecting you. I just don't think people are automatically bad people for being honest and saying they aren't attracted to a certain body type. Some guys like skinny girls, chubby girl, curvy girls, fat girls, and some don't like girls at all! I think a certain level of attraction is needed.

I definitely have my own preferences and also rejected men based on them on social media but I am a lot nicer than this guy!