Online dating, after a year on the outside

It has now been exactly one year since I left the world of online dating. I met Suzanne one year ago, and that coincided nicely with me leaving Match, Yahoo, and everything else.

After a year, here's what I think.

Match is way over. Once in a great while, I look in on there and see, to no real amazement, the same tired women I saw on there nearly five years ago. Most of them still show up as having been "active on the site" within a few days, which means they're checking back constantly, yet some of them still have the same lame-ass pictures they had up there in the fall of 2002. Same lame headlines. Same (or worse) list of demands, mostly prefaced by "must not" or "I can't stand."

Girl, if you've been in that shit for FIVE YEARS and you still haven't found whatever mystical magic you thought you were looking for, get the fuck out.

Yahoo isn't much different. I still get periodic emails from Yahoo because I can't figure out how to turn off the emails telling me about my "perfect matches," even though I haven't been on the site in any form for a year or more. Yahoo is more downscale, sort of the Target to Match.com's Sears, and the women over there look even more tired. And they update their stuff even less often, meaning that if your profile didn't attract a rich, accessible version of George Clooney in 2003, it's even less likely that it will now. Having a long memory of these things allows me to understand that those same women who put up five-year-old "glamour shots" of themselves in the late days of 2002 now have... ten-year-old "glamour shots" up there.

Paul Simon asked the question 30 years ago...

"Who do you think you're foolin?"

eHarmony is still a basket case. I was one of their beta users early on, and the pseudo-scientific, nannyish approach they use doesn't work any better now than it did back then. And Dr. Neil Clark Warren still looks he hasn't had sex since the Carter Administration. Why not have the Rev. Billy Graham as your mascot instead?

I won't say it wasn't worth doing. It was, without question. However, here are some observations and suggestions I'll share:

1. You must learn (or relearn) patience.
   
2. You must have a sense of humor and a sense of irony, or, if you lack them, be interested in dating cops, toll attendants or the mentally challenged.
   
3. You must have "learning about yourself" as your only goal, because anything beyond that is a nice thing but not guaranteed. Not marriage, not children, not sex, not security, not love. None, and I repeat, NONE of those things are guaranteed by your $29.95 a month, but I assure you that learning about yourself is gonna happen, so you better have it as your goal.
   
4. You should have condoms with you at all times, regardless of your gender. Never know what might happen.
   
5. Prepare to spend money. I spent a shitload of money dating, somewhere around $20,000 over the span of four years. I am a guy. For girls, things are cheaper, but you ought to plan on buying some clothes, shoes, and the occasional drink, OK? Or expect to have your same lame-ass pictures and profiles on Yahoo in 2012.
   
6. You must be forgiving and willing to be forgiven, for nothing is 100% as it seems online. You aren't, either.
   
7. You must never treat first dates as either a job interview or an audition, even if first dates get to where they feel like a job interview or an audition.
   
8. You must take your pride and fold it up and put it in a drawer somewhere. You can have it back when you're done.
   
9. Smokers can be OK people, too, and they can be influenced.
   
10. Nonsmokers can be OK people, too, and they can be influenced.
    
11. Single parents may be OK people, but they're stuck with their lot in life. You will never be number 1 in their life, you will always be (n X number of minor children) + 1.
12. Avoid loud Jewish greeting-card salesladies.
    
13. Distance is not an obstacle. Get an EZPass. And a diesel car.
    
14. One last note: no one I know is online any more. True, the majority of us found someone -- Mary is married, Penny is married again, Melody met someone, I met Suzanne, various other lesser players I've written about here met someone, all online. But we're out of it now. Thus, anyone I see online, with the same profile, same pictures, same lame demands... well, you understand.
    

Completely unrelated: I went down to the basement and realized my hot water was set to 174 degrees. I actually realized this when washing my hands earlier and getting fed up by getting my fingers burned all to shit for the 73rd time.

Takes me a while to get around to dealing with some things, but eventually, I do.

There's a batch of beef jerky in the dehydrator right now, so the cats are freaking out. This is the first time I've made jerky here, so the cats are all like, "hey, we maybe could HAVE some!"

When I made it up at Suzanne's in New Jersey, I think the wabbits used to think, "hey, we maybe could BE some." And they seemed worried.