by PRP Group, on 03/28/2024
“Woman’s empire is an empire of gentleness, skill, and obligingness; her orders are caresses, her threats are tears.” — Jean-Jacques RousseauDating on online apps forces us to answer all sorts of questions our parents never had to consider: Is my profile clever enough? Too clever? Genuine, but not edging into the dreaded realm of TMI? Are my photos just revealing enough to be cute, not garish? And then there’s the biggest irritant of online dating: How do I escape a chat with a jerk without suffering verbal abuse or worse?
Forget meeting a decent partner — getting away from the trolls has never been harder, right? Well, take comfort: My research into “subversive sensibility” in the literature of the 18th century has taught me that when it comes to the delicate dance of saying no without saying no, you have at your disposal an array of dating defenses with origins in the drawing room, not the chat room.