The Promise of Online Dating

Well, here we are, all of us, together here on the internet. It’s cozy. Facebooking and picture sharing, business card creating, bill paying, car renting, net –flixing, job finding, stamp ordering, grocery shopping, appointment booking, recipe finding, generation SCREEN. We are on the internet for everything. Remember when it was just for research, when Google was God? Now you’ve got every which site for every what purpose and beyond. We’re sick, sick and twisted and freakin genius my friends. So what about dating online? What makes bill paying so shameless and convenient and dating so unacceptable? You may recall my earlier bouts on online dating where I nearly bashed the idea to shreds…you may also need to know that I once thought gay marriage shouldn’t be legal, now I’m marching in the parade with a rainbow flag stapled to my body; or when I told my parents I’d never move out and live with them forever…okay, I was 6 but you live, you learn.

There is a large part of me that’s never going to “believe” online dating, it’s probably because of my Faith. I don’t understand why God (as I so choose to believe) would put this person on a site instead of right before me in a restaurant or Starbucks, but that’s just me and my morals. Still, there was something about those exact morals that convinced me to give this idea another whirl around the dance floor.

So far, in my twenty-something year old dating research (…face it, your biggest task in your twenties is to figure out the other side of the field.) I’ve gotten as far as understanding that physical attributes can be adjusted but not changed – you’re attracted to what you’re attracted to, give or take. Personality is something that’s totally negotiable on a case-by-case basis; Then there are deal breaks that have to match up to what you’re looking for – marriage, wanting to have kids, religion, possibly height. So, I’m no longer trying to find the “perfect male” as I once was, yet I’m stepping so far outside of what I find attractive that, well, I’m not attracted. If it sounds like I’m trying too hard, believe me, I spend 80% of my time at or thinking about my job, I’m allowed to spend the rest of thinking about dating.

So what now? Well, a friend of mine had been suggesting Match.com to me for a few months and I wouldn’t have any of it! She advertised it as the site that no one wants to end up on, thinks they’ll never end up on, but everybody does ::enter dancing Facebook Logo::. It started to boggle my mind a bit, so here I am knowing exactly who I want to be with but not setting my barriers so close that I’m making him surreal; I have little to no time to go out but I also don’t want to just date for the sake of dating, I want lettuce and tomato with that burger! Not just the bun!…maybe this Facebook for dating isn’t half bad? So…I browsed. I entered the greeting card aisle and browsed like one would when all they need to buy is dandruff shampoo but they’re making it appear like they’ve got a whole list of items this store is about to be out of stock in. To my astonishment there it was – BAM; a whole bushel of boys who love sports and had great jobs, loved their family and dogs, bel, Fat, Secret, Dating Facebook had boys! Cute, Christian, Cuddly boys! And suddenly, being on an online dating site was the last embarrassment I had…

Online Dating isn’t for everyone, there’s a large chance this is not at all for me, there’s a large chance I may be okay with this and everyone around me may not be, there’s a chance all those great boys turn out to be losers, but chance is what makes this thrilling! In the New Year, I felt like I had two choices in dating: get with it and try something different or become a Lesbian Cat Lady who sells organic cookies at the Union Square farmers market, clearly the later wasn’t going to happen for another few years (due to some technical issues) so I figured this deserved a shot. I have three months of evaluation time, three new months of post-teenage love research to conduct, three whole months of you hearing about this ridiculous adventure I’m on.

…who knows, the world is a mysterious place full of humans who know how to use computers. Imagine that.