i have a question...

Monday, March 15, 2010

An Unforeseen Peril of Online Dating

I've admitted on here that I'm sort of...dabbling in internet dating.

I've been on two moderately successful dates since December, which, honestly, for me,
a) is totally a record and
b) means they were not disasters: the conversation wasn't deathly boring, I didn't have an anxiety attack, and I didn't feel ugly.

I have profiles on a few sites but do not pay for any membership, which limits my picks considerably.

Both dudes I met seemed fine on paper and even emailed well. Their messages made me laugh and were interesting enough for me to write back to them and then meet them. And then, in both cases, there seemed to be a mutual and amicable disinterest, so I haven't heard from either of them since meeting.

Sigh.

I check out the one free site I'm on once in a while, and I get messages from them every now and then, letting me know if someone has messaged me or if I've been rated highly on what they call Quick Match.

Quick Match is sort of anonymous judgey rating of profiles, where they flash profiles in front of you and you give them one to five stars. If the person you rated highly matches your rating, OKCupid sends you a message that you've both rated the other highly and you are left to contact that person if you choose to.

So, I got a message that someone had Quick Matched me and I signed on, reading through the profiles.

The first one I read was highly encouraging: the guy was cute, he obviously read books, he had a job, was going back to school, liked word games, etc.

All systems go!

Then, I read this under the section of the profile where we're supposed to list the six things we couldn't live without:

"There's my wife, of course, but we've talked about it and we both feel we could live without each other."

...

The site even had my preferences listed, as I read through his profile: guys who like girls; 25-31; Boston; at least one photo; SINGLE.

I'm so confused.

2 comments:

Mel said...

Oh dear. That all sounds so confusing.

Annie, I admire your courage. I'm so terrified of awkward/boring conversations OR feeling ugly OR me having an anxiety attack that I would never even consider online dating.

For fear of sounding like a 90s feminist cliche...

You go, girl!

Annie said...

I appreciate the support, Mel!! I'm so busy with school, this whole endeavor has been left on the backburner...but it makes for a good story now and then.