Adventures in On-Line Dating, Part I

So I decided to try this on-line dating business. The theory is: I'm totally cool and I live here, therefore there's the possibility someone else totally cool lives nearby who is single and available and looking for me on-line.
Well here's the news: I tried it and there isn't. Heh. But of course it's a bit more complex than that and let me just say now that if you are a parent or any kind of parental figure of mine, please, just stop now and don't even read these ones, ok? Ok.

I wasn't sure at first that I was totally invested in the idea of on-line dating but let's face it. I'm not going to meet some nice guy at church. I've met all the nice guys at work and have concluded that I won't be dating any of them. I haven't met any single men yet by running races or at the grocery store and I won't be meeting anyone while I'm sitting in my back yard on my deck. My daily and weekly routines do not include meeting a lot of new people.

I did a minimal amount of research and decided to try a free on-line dating service called Plenty of Fish. I just wanted to see if people in rural South Dakota were really using these types of services or not. I was pleasantly surprised when I first signed up to see that there weren’t just people, there were lots of people within driving distance of me! But as I started to search I found that the people there were a little off. Like, for example, the somewhat obese guy from my town calling himself Chief Crazy Bear, pictured from the waist up, naked. Fortunately, he was also ultra-conservative so I knew he wouldn’t be contacting me. I eventually concluded that you get what you pay for. Seeing some of those men was when I started to hatch my idea for my consulting business: Match it UP, Men, where I advise men on how to make their profiles more appealing to women. Rule #1: Put on a shirt. No one wants to see that.

My next step was to sign up for match.com. I actually enjoyed the questions and filling in all the little boxes. I could specify not only what sign but also what religion, height and political bent my potential dates would be?? I'm in heaven here, over-thinking it all as usual--analyzing my sentences and editing and reediting my paragraphs, attempting to capture my essence in (what??!!??) only 950 characters?? Oh, wait, no, there's a bunch of little 200 character paragraphs too for special topics like my job, my favorite places, my religion, my pets. Ok, then, I should be able to sum up who I am and who I'm looking for. Yes, I write and I write. I edit and I edit. I spend time trying to sound smart without sounding like an arrogant jerk. I fret over grammar and proofread and recheck to make sure all words are spelled correctly. Let me tell you, people, I put some work into my match profile. And if you were to read it, I do think you would say, "Why yes, Pam had really done a good job of summing up who she is and who she's looking for." You would. I was pleased with my work, finally and chose to post it.

I paid my money to subscribe and decided to do the logical first thing: I would put in all my preferences, all my essential "must haves" and see how many cute eligible men were out there, just waiting for my profile to come on-line. Let’s see… I would like a man who isn’t still married, who is a bit taller than I am, isn’t obese, isn’t a dogmatic religious person (agnostic, atheist or spiritual but not religious), has a college degree, is liberal, likes dogs and cats, doesn’t smoke, does drink but isn’t an alcoholic, makes enough money to travel with me, doesn’t want kids, and… lives within 50 miles of me. How’s that sound? Perfect, let’s search! Go! Guess how many there were? 0. Yes, that's right zero, none, no one. No men who matched.

But match is very helpful, of course, and it told me to change my criteria (There are no perfect men! You must compromise to be happy!) because “even small changes can make a huge difference!” So I did. I decided to allow men who chose Christian/Other, those who were Middle of the Road with politics and those who had some college but not necessarily a degree. Still not taking smokers or men who want kids. But there were still none. Uh-oh. Ok, how about I allow all Christians, men who already have kids and also people who are the same height as me? Too many compromises, people. And still no matches.

So I finally did a very inclusive search just to see who all WAS out there even if they weren't people I'd consider ideal matches. And what did I find? I found a ton of men. Men near me, even. Men who value their faith, men who “definitely” want kids, men who are conservative, men who smoke, men with no higher education. And it showed, God bless ‘em. There were few men who could spell, few who chose to actually use punctuation… lots and of run-on sentences to decipher but really only lots and lots as I looked at multiple men because each man used a maximum of 5 sentence to describe himself: I don’t like to talk about myself I’m an easy going guy easy to get along with don’t know what to say but I like to do things outside hunt fish and grill in the backyard take the harley out ridin family is important to me and if you want to know more send me an email and just ask.

Remember how I said it was a 950 maximum word limit? With options for several little 200 word paragraphs? Well, it’s also a 200 word minimum limit and most of these men would write 200 words and skip the auxiliary paragraphs—so match just shows the religion (they are all Christians and mostly Catholic) and political views boxes that they checked (they aren’t liberal). Not much to go on, really.

But it didn't really matter, because my intent was to put myself out there and see who, if anyone, contacted me. I wasn't going to initiate anything. I read that book, I know better--men like to make the first move. I know, how old fashioned of me, right?

I looked, I searched, I spent some time getting to know the match.com system. And then I waited to see what would happen next.