Email: See if he cracks [EH]

Whether you're online or meeting someone in real time -- are there ever het[erosexual] men at those pottery painting places, by the way? -- the key is to balance optimism at the possibility of serendipity with the reality that anything worthwhile takes time and attention.

Try not giving your phone number to a man online sometime and see if he cracks -- bad egg! Don't kiss on the first date -- or at least until it feels sincere -- and if he presses, he's a wolf! The gentleman -- if he soils himself with the tarpit that online dating seems to have become -- will always be gracious and kind. [Accept no substitutes.]

The other key, of course, is to resist falling back on what is familiar because it is easy. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, but no one ever gets a (first, second or third) bird in hand without reaching for it and hanging on.