Match: Day One

So the profile is up and limping along with one picture--and not the picture I hired a photog to take. No, for some reason, though I have received emails from Match telling me the professional shots are approved, they have yet to appear on the site. Well, as luck has it, my eyes had Serious Bags the day of the photo shoot, so maybe it's all well and good that those pictures haven't appeared.

An observation: online dating makes you picky. As I was peering at profiles this evening I came across this good looking guy and in one of his pictures, what do I see but a pair of pleated shorts! It's so hard to envision that a man in pleated shorts (something a middle-aged man might wear to the pier with loafers and a sweater tossed around his shoulders just so) could be The One.

And yet I imagine (because I do have a good imagination) that my next guy will have some abominable habits. Maybe he even has a pair of pleated pants! And, when you think about it, does something this trivial (but unsavory) really mean that much when you love that person? No. The One That Got Away had a hairy back, for Pete's sake and I adored him still.

Ah, but this is a far leap, from Match to love, and I think this is where online dating fails: it's too easy to click the back button on the browser when you come upon an egregious misspelling or some other tiny thing. The guy with a kid at home you ignore online tonight might be the guy you're ogling in the grocery store tomorrow. In real life, we don't hand potential dates our lives on spreadsheets--yet that's essentially what online dating is.

Well, I emailed a guy ... I don't get this winking business, do you? It's like, if you're interested, shoot me a couple of lines. Is it so difficult? Anyway, I emailed a guy who had an interesting profile. No, not even the fact that he has children living at home with him deterred me. I've decided to be really selective about things I wasn't so selective about before. I'm looking for a guy with above-average intelligence who expresses himself well--who isn't out of a recent divorce. The kid thing? That's a complicating factor, but I'm headed towards my mid-thirties. A girl has got to be realistic.

Oh, and the guy? He wrote back already. It's the small successes that keep me motivated.