2009 September 04 | Intimate O(pi)nions

Remember me?

September 4th, 2009 |

Sometimes on dating sites and social networking sites, we get contacted by people who somehow automatically assume you remember them even though they haven’t been in contact for months or even years. They send you a friend request or an email picking up where you left off, and never mind to remind you how you know each other. Worst cases you get an email saying something like: “I haven’t written to you for a while, but I just wanted to check if you’d still be interested to see me.” They might have changed their profile pictures and their text so that there’s nothing connecting you to the previous contact, and since they were the ones breaking the contact, you decided they are not interested and deleted all the previous conversations from your inbox because they were there just taking up space.

I personally have the worst memory of faces and people of anyone I know. If someone wants me to remember them, they have to make a really strong impression in good or bad. For example I went to this new school for 2 months, when one morning I got to the class room door and there was a note saying that the class had been moved to a room X. A guy followed me and said out loud: “Oh, I see we have to go downstairs.” I looked at him and thought to myself that I had never seen him before in my life, but that he must be in my class of 15 students judging by his behaviour. Knowing that I have a crappy memory of faces, I pretended like I knew who the bloody hell he was and chit chatted on our way downstairs.

Online, however, people should not assume that others remember them. If it’s a social networking site, it is simply polite to add to that personal message a little bit of a clue of how you know each other. It is considerate, because some people are really uncomfortable adding people they don’t know, and at the same time, too polite to decline invitations. On a dating site, if you have had a conversation with the person before, and no matter how good of an impression she or he made on you, don’t assume it is mutual! It gives an impression of you thinking a tad too highly of yourself, and even if they did remember you, they might notice that… On the other hand, if you give them a reference to who they are and what you talked about, they might feel like they remember you even if they hadn’t before, as they remember the conversation, but not you. Regarless, it is never unfitting to check that your reader remembers or knows who you are, or makes a connection to the reasons why you contact them. (Unless you do that constantly in every email sent month or less apart, which shows a really poor self-esteem, of course.)

Do’s:

Include previous email conversations if you have a copy.
Tell them who you are and how you know each other, and where and when you last were in contact.
Refer back to a previous conversation.
Explain why it took you so long to get back to them, and apologize!
Ask them how they have been.
If you don’t want to seem obvious of the fact you doubt they remember you, add clues as to where you met or what you talked about, put into a context of your message. Like: “Do you still do pen palling by the way, as I noticed your profile has been inactive on Interpals.net for a while?”

Don’ts:

Assume they know you after a few emails months ago.
Assume they are still in the same situation they were months ago. (Ie. that they are still single after 6 months or so, even if their profile said so.)
Assume they know you of your profile photo even though you have one and they’ve met you IRL. (People change and sometimes the photos don’t look like you as they know you. Especially true with women who change hair style and make-up more than men.)