When my wife finally told me she wanted a divorce, I was crushed. Devastated. Heart-broken. And pretty dog gone pissed off, too.
But to tell you the truth, the thing I was most upset about was the loss of security, and how, in just a few sentences my entire world — all of my plans and assumptions about the future — were crumbling right before my eyes. I don’t think that I was so upset that I was losing the “love of my life” but rather I was going to have to go out there again and find another “love of my life”. Who the hell had time to do THAT?
Oh, GOD, I was going to have to date again. I was once again being pushed out of my comfort zone, and I’d have to figure out how to meet women, come up with ideas for dates, make and listen to small talk and actually act like I cared about it, update my casual dining wardrobe and wear condoms, assuming I ever got lucky enough to be invited “up for a drink”. And all of it, this time, while having to worry that I was 20 pounds overweight and that I had a bald spot and crows feet.
And where do you meet women these days anyway? The office? No way — NOT a good idea. I had to start somewhere and on-line dating seemed the logical place to start. After all, if I needed anything in my life these days from a digital camera to tennis shoes, the first place I always turned to first was my computer.
After turning to the one thing left in my life whose advice I thought I could trust at least a little – Google – I settled on the ones you would probably expect I would settle on: Match, Chemistry, OurTime, Zoosk, eHarmony. Plenty of Fish, and Marriage Minded People Meet.
Just for the record, there are lots, lots more, as well as those with a more targeted datitng strategy for those so inclined. These include services like Cristian Mingle, J-Date (Jewish dating site), Single Parents Mingle, Latin Singles Connection, and a whole host of others. If you’re looking for something specific in a mate, it seems you can find an on line site catering to your desires.
So I answered all of the questions put to me as honestly as possible — ALL of them — and then came the hard part: trying to package myself into a few paragraphs called a “Personal Profile”. Your profile is really just a marketing piece similar to those “What I Did on My Summer Vacations” you wrote eons ago in elementary school, but this essay had to be about how wonderful a guy you are and what a great catch you’d be for any woman, despite the fact that you’re 50 some odd years of age and have been involved in two disastrous marriages already so that you could somehow trick women into at least answering your introductory emails so that you could get your proverbial foot in the door with her.
Most of the dating sites even offer a service now whereby, for a fee, a “professional” profile writer will actually “help” you write a “more effective” profile to “increase your chances of meeting that special someone”. Great. Just what I need – an almost certain guarantee that I’ll meet someone totally unsuited to me so that within the first 5 minutes of our dating we both know that I’m full of crap and nothing at all like what my profile said I was. Now there’s a formula to base a great and lasting relationship on from the outset, wouldn’t you say?
Next time: The email paper chase and full time job of on line dating.
No comments:
Post a Comment