Online Dating Update

After a few weeks of searching around, I have signed on to Chemistry.com - that's the new online dating service that has all those anti-eHarmony ads going. What the heck, right?

I've been doing it for about 2 weeks now, and there are some guys with interesting potential that I have started emailing. For some reason, though, they keep matching me with middle-of-the-road to conservative types. Eh?

And, after having a fun dinnertime conversation tonight about how several of us in our extended group of friends have gotten matched up with people we actually know.... well, I logged in tonight, and it took all of 2 weeks for me to be matched up with someone I've gone out with before! Yes, DC is indeed a very small town for singles.

Some eObservations

It's been nearly 3 months now that I've been back on the online dating kick, and there are definitely some trends I've noticed this time around. (Note: important addendum at the end of this post.)

Based on the advice of others who've had some good luck, I skipped Match and went straight for eHarmony. I had heard that people had very different experiences with the latter, so I decided to check it out.

After going out with 3 men, with varying degrees of success but no regrets, I do have to agree with the friend who says "a different quality of men" are on eHarmony. It's true - you can see it even in their profiles, which seem to be more thought-out and actually feature complete sentences. (In the world of online dating, that's saying something.) Perhaps it's because eHarmony costs more and thus is more of a commitment, but it does seem to have people who are more serious and more reliable about the whole thing. Perhaps eHarmony is the site of last resort for us lonely singletons?

So, a few things I've noticed on eHarmony:

• Freakonomics must be the best-selling book of all time! I swear every 3rd guy says it's the most recent book he's read. That and The Da Vinci Code and The Alchemist, both of which are a total turnoff for me. (I do give props to the minority that cites The Kite Runner as a recent favorite.)


• My anecdotal observation is that about 9 out of every 10 guys somehow mention "physical fitness" within the first 2 questions on the profile. Um, right. DC isn't quite Muscle Beach... so methinks that's the guy equivalent of a girl saying she thinks a "sense of humor" is the most important thing. Classic "just say what they want to hear" answers.


• Like on any other online dating site, it's always a mistake to put up pictures of yourselves with other people. If you're a guy and put up a pic with one of your buddies, you run the risk of the "who's cuter" comparison. If you put up a pic with women, it's worse - you either look like you're trying too hard, or you'll intimidate other women who feel like they'll have to compete with the gals in the picture.


• But, a picture of you and your dog or you and a baby niece/nephew is always a winner. We're suckers for that.


• I'd always heard that eHarmony was just filled with Christian military types, but that's not really been my experience. I put that religion was not important to me, and I wanted that in a match too, so I haven't been matched with anyone who comes off as a majorly religious person. (As a friend and I joked, we agnostic/deist/secular humanist types tend to get matched up with other non-religious types with the occasional Jewish guy mixed in. Works for me!) There are a lot of military / defense / government types, but heck, we are in DC. So that's not surprising -- but I've actually found there are a whole lot more IT and computery types. We must all now accept a dating culture in which it's most likely that we can not even explain what our partner does all day - but if it means we don't get bogged down in work-talk, that's okay!

All of this being said, I think it's been very good for me to do this. It's gotten me out of a wintertime rut, has enabled me to meet a few new people and have some interesting conversations (well, 2 out of 3 ain't bad), and I even have met my own online dating goal of finally making it to a 2nd date! There's a lot to be said for pushing your own boundaries, and forcing yourself to get out of your usual comfort zone.

And, though my feminist mom may cringe to hear this, 2 months of free dinners ain't bad, too! :-)

Addendum: Okay, color me embarrassed, but here's a case where I've learned something from my readers. Turns out I should have done a little more investigating of eHarmony before I signed on. It's true, eHarmony does not allow same-sex couples to use their services, and a quick Google search of "eHarmony same-sex couples" turns up a whole lot of interesting and enfuriating links. Dr. Warren is good friends with the Great Satan, James Dobson, and his books have been published by Focus on the Family. So, my apologies for being ignorant of all of this. I'm going to go cancel my eHarmony account now... but with all the above lessons I've learned, I'm ready to go find a different site that is more inclusive. Does anyone have any recommendations? (Which this time I'll research on my own, as well.)

Addendum 2: I did just go on and cancel the account. It takes several screens to do so (typical online tricks), but at one point they make you tell them why. So I did. And, I cancelled 2 days before they were about to charge me again - phew!

Teehee!

You know what's funny?

When an online dating site matches you up with the old profile of one of your best friends' boyfriends! (And when you all know about it, no sneaking around.)

That's pretty hilarious!

My friend and I tend to have pretty different tastes in guys, but the day we thought would never happen has finally come.... the Internet has found a guy that's supposedly compatible with both of us!

So, friend o' mine, have no fear - I shall make no move, you win the prize! (Well, actually, he does. :-)

Harrumph!

So, yesterday I turned 32. Yikes. To me, that even *sounds* old. And yeah, sure, it's just another birthday.... but lately I've been feeling a lot older, and it doesn't help that I'm totally feeling stuck in a rut in my personal life. So, against all of my own past experiences, in a fit of loneliness and boredom over the weekend I went and did it, I signed up for eHarmony. Whatevs, at least it gives me a new something to do in all my hours of Internet usage.

I've been checking out all of the new matches eHarmony is giving me, and I've started their little process of communication with several people. There could be some potential there, who knows?

But, yesterday when I got home I had to experience one of the pitfalls of online dating - the unintentional crushing of your soul via the Internet.

I clicked on "My Matches" to see that there were about 5 new guys on the list. But one of hem had already "Closed" the match, meaning he didn't want to start down the road of emailing/talking. Okay, fine, people do that for a variety of reasons. So I clicked on his "Closed Message" to see what he said as an explanation for why he didn't want to communicate. He had picked one of their template statements:

"I think the age difference between us is too great."

Hmmmmm, okay. Then I looked at how old he is.

He's 28!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That *did not* just happen. *Not* on my birthday!!!!!!!! Ugh. Havisham time again.

Practice, Practice, Practice!

I had a great conversation last week with someone about the nature of online dating. This person is now happily involved in a relationship that seems like it has real potential for the future, but she didn't meet this person online and I knew she'd had her ups and downs doing the dot-com-dating thing. So I asked her opinion, as to whether she thought it was useful or just a lot of wasted time and money.

She said that she honestly never felt like she was going to find the right guy for her online, but she still did it cuz she considered it all very important "practice" for when she'd meet the real someone special.

Hmmm....interesting. I too still have somewhat of that romantic schoolgirl's notion that I will meet someone who will sweep me off my feet, and I've never really felt that it would be over email. But her idea of "practicing" is very interesting.

Frankly, I've never been really good about practicing anything. In school, I very quickly learned how to sign my mom's signature to the band form saying I practiced my flute every night. Although that adventure only lasted 4 years, I took piano lessons for about 10 years and I was never very good about practicing my assignments. I was pretty good by the time I finished taking lessons in high school, but I hold firm to the belief that if I'd practiced regularly, I would've been great. Although maybe that's just my defense mechanism -- "I don't need to try to achieve and then fail cuz I can always just blame it on my own indifference and lack of discipline." You know, set low expectations for yourself and you'll exceed them.

But, lately I've been watching the people around me start getting more and more serious in their relationships (yep, last week, a certain someone got a ring!) and I really feel that I'm missing out on the fun and adventure of getting to know another person. And the traditional methods aren't working. All my beloved guy friends are no help - 4 out of the 5 of them don't even seem to have any single guy friends at all, they just hang out with women all the time! And the fifth? Well, his friends are entertaining but much, much younger. I meet a ton of people through work, but so far they're all married or just out of the realm of possibility. I take classes and join book clubs and stuff like that, but it seems all my interests are only shared by other women or gay men. So, more fun people to join me for happy hour, but no dating material. What else am I supposed to be doing to meet guys?

So, alas, I have resigned myself to going back to the well and trying one more time. Match.com, I am back. And this time I think I need to be a little more aggressive and not draw out the email-courting period, and just cut to the "let's meet" part sooner. Maybe that means I'll actually have a date for the first time in, oh, way too long. This will be much harder now that Match.com gets the evil firewall of death at my office, so I can only work on this from home. But I have finally accepted that it is actually *work* - and let's just hope it's good practice for the real thing. Or, heck, maybe the stars will prove me wrong and I just might meet a great guy. Wish me luck!