how very lucky to be a girl

While reading the wonderful Wombat’s blog the other day, I was led to an article about online dating. And specifically, why it doesn’t work.

Considering how it hasn’t exactly worked for me, this was like finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Or at the very least, some misery to accompany me. Not that I’m miserable. I’m not. Not even in the least bit. It’s just that I’m feeling a little down on the online dating marketplace. I’ve had a lot of great dates that have led nowhere. I’ve spent a lot of nights out with men who liked me or men that I liked, but, as yet, never mutually. I wouldn’t say that any of them have been bad experiences. I’ve grown and learned and laughed from all of them.

But it came at the price of sacrificing time with the people who really matter to me, of sacrificing the time to do things that I enjoy, of sacrificing time for me. A worthwhile compromise in pursuit of a life partner, perhaps.  But I hadn’t found that partner, and I was really starting to miss those other things. A quick sojourn online confirmed the relatively small pond of players. I’d seen most of them before. It’s all the same guys on all the same sites, and the only difference was that rather than contempt, familiarity was breeding, well, familiarity. Guys that never seemed even moderately interesting, started to seem so familiar that they became interesting. I felt as if I knew them, or should know them. Except that meeting them only confirmed the reasons we hadn’t met earlier and should not have met later.

I’ve taken interludes along the way, away from internet dating. And I’m in the midst of another, with no idea when or even if I will return. In part, this scares me. How will I find a partner if not online? I meet people everywhere I go, but increasingly rarely do those meetings turn into dates or relationships.

My limbo state. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t. It felt like a long, dark alley with no end in sight. That is, until experts came along to tell me that it wasn’t me. It was online dating.

And they raised some very interesting points.

Points like: Research from Duke University shows that it takes about six hours of online dating activity to set up a real life date, but the odds of wanting a second date are low.

Check.  Been there, done that. A lot. And it certainly didn’t play well into my feeling of lost time.

Points like: Online dating distracts us from listening to our bodies, which are designed to find a compatible mate. And, also: Online dating is not a reliable indicator of chemistry.

News flash: neither of these are news. I’ve written about both before.

Kim and Luis go on to say that: The qualities that you need in a good lifetime partner, such as compassion, empathy and generosity can’t be tested in online dating. And they point out: (Almost) everyone lies in their profile.

I can’t say whether or not this made me feel any better, but it made me curious about Kim Lockhart and Luis Santiago. Just who were these dating experts with whom I was seeing eye-to-eye, and how could they help me?

Here’s how*:

Wait.  What?!!?

So online dating does not work…Unless you pay $599.

 

*image taken from Mix It Up LA, the dating and relationship website of Kim and Luis.

 

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