Living in the Present, only Looking Forward

[Coconut]

I really don't think I'm cut out for online dating. I have a really hard time gauging someone's intent behind their messages. So far, the first girl I ran into was way too aggressive, I played along for awhile and when I finally decided to just outright tell her I wasn't interested, she stopped texting me.

Then the ranch lady and I have been communicating back and forth for a few days, but her messages are very short, usually only answering or commenting on what I say to her, which doesn't leave me much to reply to, or show that she has any interest in getting to know me. So I figured she's just being polite and not really interested, so I hadn't responded to her last message since yesterday morning, but I don't want to stop communicating if she is interested and just isn't very good at holding a written conversation (if you followed my sitch, you know I tend to say a lot when writing).

Then I started chatting with another person this morning who caught my attention because all of her interests matched mine (fishing, kayaking, camping, etc), and the same thing as ranch lady, she keeps replying with just a comment or answer to something I say.

And yesterday I had someone that didn't interest me reach out and made a comment about a few of my pictures, it was a funny comment and so I responded politely about what she said (kind of what the other two are doing to me), and when she responded again I thanked her for reaching out but told her I wasn't interested in continuing to chat.

So I decided to send this message to the other two (ranch lady and fishing girl):

"I really can't figure out if you want to chat or are just being polite. You keep replying to me, but the short responses don't leave me with much to respond to.

If you're not interested in talking, I won't take it personally, but if you would like to talk, please give me more than just a short comment or response to what I said."

and I sent it.. then wondered if it was a bad idea. and to be honest, I'm still not sure. If I am talking with someone in person, it's pretty easy to read body language to determine if there's any interest. But in that scenario, if the conversation is good, I wouldn't end the conversation just because she wasn't interested.

But in written word, it's all but impossible to determine interest unless the words demonstrate it. I don't want to stop talking to someone just because they aren't good at holding a conversation via text, but I also don't want to keep up a relatively boring conversation with someone who isn't interested anyway.