Adventures in Online Dating

Delusions, we all have them. Most of us exaggerate our circumstances in one direction or the other. For me personally I would tend to downplay everything positive about myself: I'm morbidly obese, grotesquely ugly, have no skills/talents, insert random insult here. Thankfully now I would like to believe I have a more healthy outlook on myself. Well i don't think I'm the most amazing person that ever graced this Earth, I do find myself pretty amazing. Thank you to the friends, family, and therapists that beat it into my head.

I have to laugh about this whole online dating experience, especially the last couple of months in particular. The two guys from craigslist. One guy boasted he was looking to fall in love again. His ad talked about romance and searching for something real. Obviously this appealed to me. We exchanged about two emails with the usual pleasantries: age, name, location, and hobbies before he told me about his strong sexual appetite and wanted to know if I had the stamina to keep up. NEXT.

The other guy wasn't attractive to me in the slightest possible way but I thought he had a nice personality so I decided to give it a shot. After about four days of texting he commented on my big boobs and made sexual innuendos. NEXT!

Then I saw an ad from a guy I dated briefly (he had a picture and used his real name in the ad) grossly lying about who he is and his circumstances. He also claimed to be the man EVERY woman wants. It's true that most women I know line up to date womanizing pot heads who work three jobs to make ends meet and get off on verbal abuse. NEXT!

Thank you Ilana once again for the craigslist intervention.

Because I have a severe lack of a social life, online dating still seemed like a viable option for me. I took the liberty of moving on to more "reputable" sites like www.match.com which claims they have more successful relationships than any other site.

Now I get putting your best foot forward when it comes to dating. You may primp yourself up more while highlighting your best personality traits and desperately trying to bury your less than desirable ones. This is a popular method to bait someone in then overtime they can learn how annoying you really are. Maybe because I'm getting older I just don't want to play these games anymore, so I'm putting it out there. The real Laura. If they don't like it then they can feel free to move on.

Match.com allows you to describe your traits such as height, religious views, political views, education level. These should all be pretty straight forward. The one that seems to confuse so many people is body type: slender, athletic and toned, a few extra pounds, full figured, heavyset, hefty, curvy. Now at first I classified myself as curvy, but then realized full figured was a better fit. Either way I have pictures of myself so people can decide my levels of chunkiness for themselves.

Countless guys have NO clue what they look like. This could be attributed to severe head trauma or vision impairment, not sure. I have come across at least a couple dozen profiles where at least in the photos the guys look more than 100 pounds overweight yet they classify themselves as average, a few extra pounds, or the one I came across today "athletic and toned". There is a difference between pectoral muscles and man boobs or so I thought. I guess it's all up to interpretation but if you have man boobs and a giant beer gut...well I think 99% of people would agree you aren't "athletic and toned". I'm 4'11'', should I start describing myself as tall? The thing is, why lie if you're going to post pictures that prove you're full of shit? Or maybe this is how they really see themselves.

It got me to thinking....what else are these guys being creative about? When they say they have a PHD does it really mean GED? Does master chef mean you run the deep fryer at Burger King? How about exercising five days a week, are you counting the 10-foot walk from the front door of your house to your car? I don't even want to know how I should misinterpret "loves kids" and "real close with my family"....

You gotta love the jaded profiles "No cheaters, no liars, no manipulators, no drama queens." Good to know because if someone hadn't specified that then I would have to assume those were the exact things they were looking for in an ideal match. And obviously a liar/manipulator/cheater/drama queen would out of their own decency for this person understand that this excludes them and not respond to this person's ad.

Then there are the guys who claim "I'm just looking to meet new people and see where it goes. I like people from all backgrounds and walks of life. If there's no spark we can always be friends. Looks not important." Sounds like a decent guy right? So I email them that I liked their profile and we can try to be friends and see where it goes from there...they read my email, look at my profile and never respond. Hmmmm. I guess being open to all kinds of people has certain exclusions afterall.

I will be the first to admit that I am a very weak technical writer and no matter how many times I proofread something there are still bound to be mistakes that escape me. However when you type a small paragraph about yourself without capital letters, punctuation, or proper grammar I am going to question your level of intelligence. Example: i luv going to the mooovies on wknds. This is a personal ad, not a text message to your drinking buddy. Maybe they were drunk/high/illiterate when they posted their ad.

Pictures that should never be posted on an ad when searching for your soul mate. Pictures you took of yourself with your cell phone in a public restroom, pictures of you draped all over other girls, pictures of you getting shitfaced, your high school senior photo from more than ten years ago. Just suggestions. When a guy specifically states he's done with the whole bar scene and he posts 10 photos of him at a bar drinking with his friends, well isn't that kind of sending a duel message? Then again maybe it's just me whose confused.

Speaking of sending a duel message, how about the guy who under the category "have any kids" stated "no". Then he went on to describe how much he loves his son. Another question I thought was pretty straight forward but maybe it was tougher than I thought?!

Evasiveness. Guys who leave excessive blanks on their profile for fairly important things: occupation, any pets, education level, religion, hobbies. And add that to a profile without any pictures. Clearly I am intrigued by these men of mystery and must know more. Really if you put zero time/effort into creating your profile then don't be surprised when zero women waste their time/effort responding to it.

There was this guy on match.com that "winked" at me, then sent me a bold email "Hi". His profile really caught my eye so I emailed him "You seem like a great guy, I would really like to chat with you." No response....WTF? This guy approached me. Clearly my mutual interest must have offended or scared him off.

My last peeve of this site. Match.com continually sends me matches that are looking for a girl that is not me: "catholic" "slender" "never married". What's the point in responding to these guys even if they do interest me since I am clearly not someone who would interest them? And why is it that almost EVERY profile shows a guy searching for a slender girl over 6' tall? Even the dwarf circus clown guys are looking for this in a woman. Even the athletic/toned guys that are more than 100 pounds overweight want this kind of woman. And thank you match.com for sending me "new matches" emails that are recycled from matches you sent me a couple of weeks prior.

Match.com says "1 out of 5 relationships starts online, most of these through match.com"...they need to add a disclaimer "fat chicks need not apply."