So you’ve met someone new online. You’re vibing and the conversation is flowing. You seem to be really hitting it off. On top of that, they’re attractive and seem like your type.
You’re both interested in meeting up for a good time, but does the chemistry online translate to the real world?
You know you’re into this person’s personality.
You likely know what they look like – at least assuming their pictures aren’t fake, old or manipulated.
But that’s about it. You’re missing the entire verbal, visual and physical spectrum. All of those go in to the perception of your mutual chemistry together.
You won’t know for sure if you match on all those before you actually meet, but you can get more confident than you are now.
Here are four strategies, in increasing level of effort and gain, for checking chemistry before you meet someone to have sex.
1. Voicemails
It’s a simple strategy really: You create an old-school “voicemail” for the potential partner and they do the same for you.
This way you can hear each other, but without having to worry about responding straight away.
It’s fairly low effort and low risk. You can usually even do several takes to get it exactly right if you’re nervous.
You can determine a lot about a person by the way they talk and carry themselves in conversation. If you find yourself put off by how the other person talks over a voicemail, chances are you’ll feel the same in real life.
Dependent on the app or website you’re using to communicate, it may already have functions for sending audio messages built in. If not, I would recommend using Snapchat, as it’ll lend itself to the later strategies as well. Also it allows you to be anonymous, if that’s important to you.
One important way to NOT do it though:
DO NOT give them your phone number!
As much as we would wish the world was only full of nice people, the reality is some people are assholes, crazy or downright dangerous. You don’t actually know if this person is who they say they are. Keep it semi-anonymous or at least not easily traceable. Stay safe out there.
2. Video messages
Being attracted to each other’s voices is a good start, but it’s usually not enough to determine if you actually have chemistry. You’ll usually need to take it at least a step further with video.
Thankfully Snapchat has you covered here again. You can simply send a video message saying something simple like:
“Hi this is me Michael – just checking in so you can see my face – I’m human. Hi there”.
The other person can then respond in kind, with some equally simple short greeting, like:
“Hi Michael – Leah here. You’re cute. I’m also a human – hurrah”.
Doing this has a number of benefits. For one, you obviously get confirmation that the person on the other end is truly who they said they were and look as you expected. With the number of people regularly getting catfished online, that in itself is a big win.
Beyond that however, knowing how a person moves, talks, smiles etc. really goes a long way to informing whether you’re going to be interested in them sexually.
If things go well with this initial exchange, I’d then recommend continuing a normal Snapchat conversation with video messages in this fashion for several messages. Make sure you can carry on a good back and forth banter. That’ll give you both the confidence to know you can actually have a conversation with some chemistry, without having to be charming on the spot straight away in a video call. You get to think your answers through properly.
Doing video messages rather than a straight up video call also has the added benefit of being able to check you look as good as possible before sending each message.
After all – you can retake bad videos if you don’t like how you sounded or didn’t land a punchline the way you wanted. This give both of you the best chance you can have of making a good first impression.
If we’re meeting up with someone we’ve talked to online, e.g., for a FFM threesome, this is usually all it takes for us to determine there’s chemistry. If you or the other person is still unsure though, carry on to the next level.
3. Phone or video calls
At this point you’ve technically established that you guys can hold a conversation and have chemistry. What you haven’t established however, is that you actually still have that chemistry if you don’t get 5 minutes to think your answers through. Is the chemistry still there when you have to let the conversation flow naturally with no pauses?
Que the trusty old phone call! It was good enough for people in the 80’s and 90’s – perhaps it’s just what you need as well.
Obviously, depending on how many video messages you sent back and forth, you might want to skip the plain audio-only phone call and go straight to video calls instead. The principle remains the same though. For some, having a normal conversation over the phone may just be the last thing they needed to make sure they can actually hold a conversation with this person and it wasn’t just the prep-time saving them. But if speaking over the phone without video seems weird to you (as in: you’re not that old just yet), go for video directly. Then you’ll be as sure as you can feasibly be without physically meeting this person.
So, how do you talk over the phone without actually sharing your phone number or FaceTiming? Simple. Use any of the common chat apps out there, including Snapchat. They pretty much all have the ability to make a call with or without video.
4. Chemistry meeting
At this point, you’ve both heard and seen them speak, you’ve seen them move and finally you’ve held a live conversation with them. If at this point you’re still not sure if you have chemistry, the honest answer is you probably don’t.
If you do want to make sure though, you can always go for the nuclear option – chemistry meetings.
What is a chemistry meeting you might ask? Well, it’s actually a very common tactic a lot of people use. Instead of meeting up to have sex, you meet up to determine if you have the chemistry to later meet up to have sex.
It usually involves going to a bar or going to dinner. Some public place at least and essentially in many ways just a normal date. Albeit perhaps with a different focus than a romantic one for most people.
Do I recommend chemistry meetings?
Honestly? No, I really don’t.
Some people you’ll meet online will insist on doing them. Either after a while or even sometimes as a first step without ever having spoken to you via anything other than text.
If you’re doing it after having used my strategies 1 through 3 above, then I think it has its place as a strategy. But never as your first move.
While you obviously can’t help if someone else insists on this strategy, I would caution that chemistry meetings are just not scalable. They are a ton of hassle, effort and cost.
Dependent on your life situation, you may have to get time off work, get a babysitter, make excuses to family members, drop commitments, pay for a night out, drive far away, get a hotel and a whole host of other things.
Doing all that for each potential hookup is way too much effort unless you’re quite convinced the chemistry will be there.
Most people who go for this strategy straight away thankfully do have the foresight to realize that the chemistry meeting may actually go well. In case it does, they’ll usually have a plan ready for sex straight away, rather than setting a new date and having an evening of “blue balls”. Perhaps saying beforehand that if you are going to have sex, they live nearby.
But generally speaking, I would try to determine chemistry using strategies 1 through 3 first. Only use chemistry meetings if you need to or as a last safety measure to make sure you haven’t been very elaborately catfished up to this point.
At the end of the day though, it takes (at least) two to tango, so you may be forced into a chemistry meeting regardless of how unnecessary I or you view them. Sometimes you have to go with the flow if you want to get to the end of the river.
Attributions
Post image courtesy of Alex Kondratiev – thank you.
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