Ok, this is my first topic post here so I hope you'll be patient. I'm somewhat new to this community having just moved over from BOM and POF and still learning the rules and attitudes here. :)

Also, I'm talking about both men and women here because in my years of online dating (about 21 now, yes from the dawn of time) I've found that women accuse men of certain things and men accuse women of certain things yet both genders are pretty equal in their shortcomings online and in life.

LongHairBiker wrote "They got to know you and found something that was a dealbreaker and lost interest. Could be smoking, drugs, alcohol, allergic to cathair, your personality or lack thereof, or your constant generalization of men."

This was a good start but not quite complete. Yes it could be something as simple as these but most of these can easily be found out just by READING THE PROFILE. I put that in caps because so many people don't do that simple thing. Even people that put "Please don't email me unless you read my profile first". You'd be surprised how many people I go out with and how many are surprised that I smoke. I'm always honest about it, its right up front there in my profile. So that might be another thing is that they don't read your profile and find out something later that they don't like.

Here are a few more things...

They have an interest in you then meet someone else or more interesting than you. This is a very possible reason since we are online with thousands of choices to choose from. They might not have MET the person but the interest is there. At the same time they don't want to stop communicating with you completely since what ever other mutual interest they have may not develop. It may just evaporate so they don't want to sever all connections.

They have an interest in you and have pursued you some too but you aren't showing much of an interest in them. This is a big one too!!! I don't know how many times I've let things fizzle out simply because I was showing all the interest and the other person didn't seem to be interested in me. I'm may be a man but I do think and feel with more than just my reproductive parts. I like to feel like the person cares about me too because the person I'm with will know how I feel. Sorry but that is called a "one way street" and if it happens pre-date then its going to happen in a relationship too.

You're just a flake. Simple and straight to the point. You don't answer emails or questions of interest. You don't call when you say you will. You don't show or cancel at the last minute on dates. You don't even bother with a five second text to let someone know you can't make it. Then you don't even bother to apologize or try to explain. Does this one need anymore explanation? No one except for the truly needy will put up with someone like this. Unfortunately there are a LOT of these people out there.

Life, the universe and fate conspire against them and life gets way to busy or complicated to do the online thing full-on like they were. Ok, lets face it... At this stage no one wants to hear about every problem being faced in a day. Sometimes life just gets too much to give attentions that they were giving before and they don't want to spew on about their problems. This point of meeting possible interests is somewhat fragile because this is the test area before meeting live and in person. One or the other can be spooked just because of the littlest thing. So they don't want to weigh you down with their problems and tend to get a little dry for conversation. A good thing to do if you think this is the case is to just ask... I'll come back to this near the end but I do want to touch on the beginning of this paragraph, reverse it and give some advice. Ladies (and gentlemen I suppose) DON'T be rambling on and on about your problems, ex's or have a two hour conversation which ends up being a one-way expose about all your woes and why I really wanted to end the conversation after the first five minutes. Deal with the baggage, turn it into experience learned from and move the frack on because if you have nothing but problems, everyone is going to run from you except for the terminally un-laid.

Ok, I've touched on a few of the major points I wanted to make. I hope this helps you in whatever you're facing and maybe sheds some light on things. If so, good enough for me. If not, let me know and I'll give it some more thought. In closing though I'll say that if something "feels wrong" or it feels like someone is drifting away, it is alright to ask. Be nice but be direct, don't hedge around things with vague questions. Don't be accusatory but be communicative because without good communication none of the five relationship levels will work. And if they don't want to answer or answer vague then let that be and decide what to do from there. Either give them a little more time or cut your losses and move on. If they DO talk to you though it might be something really simple. AND it shows that you cared enough to ask in the first place. VERY important in the beginnings.

Nuff said for now~