Monday, March 26, 2012

What to do when you no longer wish to continue with a lady on Chnlove

Dumping someone, for the want of a better term, is never easy. Unless you have no heart of course.

I have to believe that every man that signs up on Chnlove.com connects with several women there, and doesn't limit himself to a single lady. Perhaps not all at the same time, but over the course of your membership, it would be odd to imagine you could find that special woman on the first try.

When you join Chnlove, you will likely connect with several, perhaps many women and drift away from most of them when relationships don't reach some kind of critical mass. Eventually, if you are lucky, you and your future bride will find each other and survive the test of time and distance, bringing your daliances on Chnlove to a happy conclusion in the form of marriage. In the meantime, though, there is plenty of housekeeping to be done. Some ladies might lose interest in you, and you will lose interest in some of them. You can't communicate with all of them forever, and you certainly can't settle down with more than one of them, so you will inevitably have to end some of the relationships deliberately. Some of the short relationships will simply drift away to die alone in the desert. Others will hang around like that nobody-knows-what-it-is-anymore thing in your freezer. These have to be taken care of, for everyone's sake.

So when does a relationship on Chnlove "end" and how do you make that happen? Do you ignore a lady's letters in the hope that she "gets the message", or do you use the Block feature on Chnlove to simply stop her from writing to you? If you do block her using that feature, which of the three "reasons" do you select, and how can you know how that block message is presented to the lady on the other end?

Drowning a sack of kittens


Today I did in fact block two ladies with whom I was communicating for a few months, so this is all fresh in my mind as I type this.
I'd been wringing my hands for about two weeks, wondering how I would break it off with these two ladies. And so, this morning, I reduced the number of ladies I was communicating with from three to one, in the belief that the remaining "one" might actually be The One. I don't know that she is The One for sure yet, but conversations are definitely getting a "planning the future" quality to them.

BUT, I did send each of the other two -- the "runners-up" you might call them -- a final letter before I used the Block feature on Chnlove. I explained exactly what had happened. I was very close to three, I explained, but had to finally decide to limit my communications now to just one lady. I explained that it was a hard choice, taken only after a lot of soul searching. I told them I "wished I were three people", the choice was so hard, and I encouraged them not to be disheartened, that there where good men waiting for them, and soon they would make another connection with a good man again.
All pretty patronizing blather, really, though my intentions were sincere. Being a gentleman about it, I thought, might have made it even more painful for them because they might think, oh that proves he's a gentleman and the kind of man I want.

I felt like I was putting a litter of kittens into a sack and tossing the sack into a deep lake. I really did feel very bad about it, actually. Of course, there was a good chance that each lady was in fact communicating with several other men on Chnlove, but I had no way of knowing that. Even if they were, a break-up letter can be a real punch in the gut. I knew it was the right thing to do, though and the longer I put it off, the harder it was going to be.

Still, it's hard to dump someone and not hurt their feelings. If you don't hurt their feelings, you're probably not explaining the situation honestly to them. It's hard to strike that firm-but-kind balance. But it is harder on everyone and indeed more cruel to drag it out -- or to be vague -- when you know you have decided who The One is. You can write a kind but honest letter to each of the ladies you will not continue with, without driving a dagger through their heart.

Remember, you are not communicating with Western women here. The average Western woman will need only a few minutes to get over you, especially if they have never met you. Not so with Chinese women! Chinese culture is one which, when it works well, respects the sensibilities of each woman, and rejection can be devastating to her. You really must do your best to let them down gently, reminding them of their warm heart, kindness, attractiveness and qualities of the lady that she is. Remind her about all the great qualities that attracted you to her.
My feeling is, explaining to her she was one of a small number of Excellent Candidates will help her a lot in not feeling like she is a total reject.

I had a few early connections that I eventually broke off by writing a caring Chnlove letter, only to get sucked into a series of back-and-forth communications about "how she would wait for me", and "how I was her ideal mate", and so on. Don't let that happen. My advice to you, if you want to discontinue communications with a lady on Chnlove, is this: Send her a polite and sincere letter, then block her with Reason B. It's quick, it's honest, and it helps everyone to move on.

The balance you must strike here is one of letting her know clearly that it is over, and still not pushing her over a cliff in one big surprise shove.

It does cost a few dollars for you to write each letter, but it is the right thing to do. And it is good karma to respect the lady and take your time to write that let-down letter to her. Once you have written that final letter to her, spare her the need to respond back to you: use the Block feature on Chnlove to block her from communicating with you. I suggest you use "Reason B" when you do that. "Reason B" will tell her respectfully that you have found someone else.

Remember, too, that you have being paying for all the communications so far. You may also have send her gifts. And if you haven't had a phone call yet, I would be less worried about letting her down that I would be if, for example, you've already visited her in her home country. In the end, every lady on Chnlove must understand how this all works. In terms of how you end a relationship on Chnlove, your options are fairly limited: if you need to end the relationship, do it. As my grandfather used to say "ya gotta know when to shoot your dog".

The very first lady I communicated with, I did dump in the end, but I was very sloppy about it, and I regret very much how I handled that. I think I left her confused and hurt, and i promised myself I would not do that again. I learned later to be more graceful.  It is absolutely worth the few dollars credit to write her that final letter. She deserves your honesty, and it really does come with the territory of being a gentleman.

After you have behaved like a gentleman, know that she will in time get over it. Some ladies of course cry their eyes out every evening for a month after being dumped. Others will simply focus more on the other men on the site they have stayed in connection with. Oh, you though you were the only one??? Now THAT is something worth crying about!

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