It's one thing to be single when you're twenty-seven. It's quite another to find yourself uncoupled at fifty-seven. Suddenly I was back in the dating pool again. And it was a little scary.
What is erroneously called "online dating" seemed like it might come to my rescue. After all, why couldn't the same Internet that helps you find a book on Amazon help you find romance? It can.
"Online dating" isn't actually dating at all. It's really connection-making and one reason it works is that many of the alternatives are limited or simply unacceptable.
The bar scene is, well, the bar scene. A bar might be a great place to meet friends, but it's not the best place to make friends. And, if you're my age, there's also the fact that most of the folks in those singles bars are young enough to be my children.
I didn't want to do the bar scene, so that left me with fairly few options. Most of my friends are coupled up and have been for a long time. Their idea of the folks I should date was generally limited to the people they knew and liked who were single, or assorted relatives in the same condition.
Of course, I might meet somebody in my normal contacts around and about, and that meant the folks I'd meet at church, at the gym, and just running around town, doing business. If I met somebody there we'd start out by sharing at least one common interest. That's good. But the number of people I was likely to meet at the church and the gym and in business didn't seem all that large.
So I decided that what I'd do is try the online dating thing again. The last time I dipped into this world, it was a world mostly of chat rooms and mostly on America Online. Those were just like the singles bars, except it was easier to lie and you didn't have to put up with ferns. What I discovered, to my joy and amazement, is that today's online dating scene is very different and that it can be effective.
Online dating services like match.com let you cast a much wider net than you can in your normal day-to-day life. The first thing that I found out when I hooked up with one of these services is that there are a lot of single, attractive, interesting women in my age range, who live nearby.
When you go online in one of these services, usually you get to take a look, for free, at what other folks are listed in the service's database that meet your age and geographic criteria. You can even put your profile up for free. So how do the services make their money?
Once people start to contact you, the only way they can do it is through the service. And the only way that you can get contacted is to pay for a subscription. These are not incredibly expensive subscriptions. Three months for me cost about thirty bucks.
The profile that you put up for inspection has three components. There are standard questions that the system will supposedly use to "match" you with other folks. There is the free form description that you use to tell others a bit about you and what you're looking for. You can put up a picture, too.
The standard questions vary from service to service; but, essentially, they are there so that the computer can find you a match. Do you like classical music? Are you athletic and outdoorsy or would you prefer intimate dining and a quiet evening reading?
The free-form part of the profile is the part that humans read most. An interesting profile that sets you apart from other people and that represents your strengths and interests is a big help in making this process work.
Lots of the profiles that I saw seemed to try to be all things to all people. There seem to be an awful lot of people who wanted to discuss deep philosophical topics while snowboarding or camping. My goals were a bit more modest. Besides, I'd gotten camping out of my system when I was in the Marines.
Putting up a picture can make a big difference. Folks who study this kind of thing say that having a picture dramatically increases the number of replies that you're likely to get.
It would be nice if putting up that profile as all you had to do, but it's not. Like with most things in life, you get better results if you put in some effort.
Most services have a way for you to let someone know that you're interested without going into great detail. On match.com it's called "Wink." If I wink at a woman whose profile looks interesting, she finds out that I'm interested. Then she can check out my profile and wink back if she shares the interest.
Just like in the physical world, it's the guys who are most likely to make the first move. Even so, the process usually follows the progression of wink, email, call, meet for something simple like coffee, then meet for a more serious date.
The process lets you find out a lot about the other person early. People who are angry or fixated on one thing or another tend to show that in email and phone conversations just as much as they do in person. It's easy to figure out if you really share interests and values. And it's easy to determine if you have some of what is called "chemistry."
I had several phone conversations that lasted less than fifteen minutes. Those were the ones where it was clear to at least one of us that there wasn't much of a match. Other conversations lasted longer, over an hour, and those usually led to a physical meeting.
When I called her, though, the first conversation went on and on, through several cell phone batteries. It lasted longer than any conversation I have ever had in my life. As you might guess, it led to a physical meeting.
That's where the other aspect of "chemistry" comes in. Email and phone conversations can tell you about many aspects of compatibility, but they can't tell you whether you and another person are really attracted to each other. We were.
Now we've moved on to the verification part of relationship building. We've suspended our match.com accounts. We're "seeing each other" as the saying goes. Now we'll find out if that chemistry has legs. We'll discover the things about each other, good and bad, that no profile can cover and that you just won't find out in a couple of dates. It's exciting.
How will things work out? It's too soon to tell. Maybe there will be an update next year on Valentine's Day.
