All Right, Eros
I'm online dating now and it's not just fodder for my fledgling blog. I work at an elementary school with about two men to every 200 women. With football season closing in, I'm reminded that my Aaron Rogers and Von Miller fantasies are getting old. It's time for real life contact with men.
I've gone with a free site that asks 200 million questions ranging from "Do you have all your teeth?" to "Have you ever been arrested?" to "Suppose you have an attractive cousin, and the cousin is also attracted to you. Suppose both you and your cousin are adults. Would you have non-procreative sex with your cousin?"
The site applies a mathematical algorithm to every question answered to determine a compatibility score for potential couples. Percentage matches show up in your feed, and from these you can look at a potential's profile page, where there are pictures, a biographical statement (which I scour for punctuation and spelling errors), and critical stats like marital status and sign of the Zodiac.
Here is what I've learned in my first month:
1. Putting in your profile that you're a mountain-loving woman who drinks craft beer is not going to make you stand out in Denver, Colorado the way it might in, say, Columbia, South Carolina. Expect very few "likes" unless you come up with something original. Right now I'm trying "I just love foosball!" with limited results.
2. When you contact a man with whom you are an over 90% match and he doesn't respond, don't go directly to your therapist in tears claiming you now have categorical proof you are ugly and undesirable. (Wait until at least ten men don't write back.)
3. When the Catholic - "and it's important to me!" - guy who's a 33% match contacts you, don't believe for one second that you're being kind when you write back "Hey, thanks for reaching out. You seem nice, but I stopped being Catholic in 1988, and since it's important to you, we might not be a good match. But good luck!"
4. Don't be surprised when the Catholic writes back, "I'd never date you anyway. Agnostics are so negative."
Three of the men I've gone out with have shown up for our date in flipflops. I'm not looking for Gucci, I don't even expect a collared shirt, but come on. Flipflops are for people who just caught the last wave of the day and drove over with surfboards strapped to their van. Since we are about 1,200 miles from the nearest point break, I don't want to see your feet the first time we have dinner.
What's most fun is all the things I'm learning that I didn't know about myself. For instance, footwear matters to me! I had no idea. Also, while I put a higher priority on our percentage match than how the man looks in pictures, if he's holding a tall boy of Coors, it's over before it begins. And this - this one's huge - I find myself way more attracted to bald, broke, bitter alcoholics than to happy guys with hair and good jobs and their own homes.
That last one is something to take to my next therapy appointment, which is kind of a relief. Sometimes I make stuff up to talk about in therapy, and this week I won't have to.
