Internet dating is probably one of the most interesting social revolutions we've witnessed. Certainly in the dating world, the advent of the online matchmaker has turned blind dating from a random act of faith and human kindness to a very focused, studied, formal act of guided navigation. To do it well, one needs fine-tuned skills, both in the way one projects oneself in a profile and in the way one sifts through the dozens of inappropriate potential suitors to find those who wouldn't constitute a complete waste of time. The term 'searching for a needle in a haystack' has never been more appropriate than in cyber(dating)space, except that in this case the 'needle' is constantly on the move, looking for a find of its own. The fact that Internet dating EVER succeeds is really a miracle, when you think about it.
Yet it does succeed. One of my best friends met and married the love of her life through the Internet, and I hold them to blame for the many years I persevered in my own quest for love via computer. If it worked for people I know, surely it could work for me too?
The issue with Internet dating is that there are thousands of people 'playing the game' simultaneously, all the time. That makes the need for quick decision making an imperative – nobody has time for three or four dates before they decide whether to become a couple or not; not when they know they can go home and find one of 20,000+ eligibles just waiting to wink, nudge or shoot them with cupid's arrow. So meeting someone from the Internet has an unsaid rule that by the end of the first date you have to be in deep infatuation if you're going to see one another again.
I remember one particular date that seemed to go very well right until the end. He was a busy lawyer who lived near the ocean, and we met for a walk on the beach near his home one evening. It was a busy beach and I was comfortable with his company. The date was fun, he had a good sense of humor and we seemed to have quite a lot in common. Had friends fixed us up I would have given them bonus points for the good match, and in this case I felt like I had finally navigated well through the dating site I was on at the time. At the end of the date, we came up from the beach with sand up to our knees, and when he took my hand to help me up over the rocks we'd sat on, he didn't let go. But when he asked whether I would like to wash my feet off at his apartment, I felt like agreeing could give him mixed messages, and thanked him but declined his offer. I had a towel in my car and preferred the idea of going home sandy than going to his home at all. It was at that point that he told me that he would not be calling me again. I was really surprised – we'd had a nice time, we seemed to get on very well, yet when I turned down an offer to wash my feet at him house, he was put off? I asked him straight out what made him so sure we shouldn't meet again (another side effect of cyber dating, where you allow yourself to be as frank and direct as you like, since you know there is no way you'll meet your date again). He also gave me a very direct response: that he was not prepared to invest time and effort in dating someone if he hadn't checked out the chemistry in bed yet. It seemed like a true waste of resources to woo someone and find out too late that the intimate side of the relationship required work, so he preferred to 'nip the courting in the bud' as it were, rather than take a chance on bad bedding. When I recovered from my shock and gave this some thought, I realized that this was just another characteristic of the cyber dater – the need to condense weeks or months of relationships into the smallest amount of time to ensure your return on investment in the dating site was worthwhile. Makes me think we should call it 'microwave dating' instead.
Yet another feature of cyberdating that bears mentioning is cyber-amnesia: The forgetfulness of the serial dater who approaches the same person time after time, with no recollection of having made a move previously. One of my friends who's a guru of online dating told me he has a very specific technique – he makes dating a project, whereby at the beginning of the month he sends the same general email to 30 or 40 women on a site, without looking at their criteria at all, and then he waits for responses. He takes the profiles of all the women who respond and only then does he take the time to look at their profiles and see whether they are interesting or not. So for those women out there who have been contacted by someone who caught your eye, yet didn't hear back when you responded to their contact, that could be the reason you've been looking for.
I also had to learn not to take things personally when I was dating on the web, otherwise the exercise could turn into an ego-bashing episode of note. One guy corresponded with me for weeks, seemed to be very interested, yet when he asked me to send a photograph he quickly responded that I was not his type and that I'd not be hearing from him again. Since we'd never even met, I didn't take it personally, I simply expected just that: to never hear from him again. And if nothing else, the incident got me to post my photograph on the site for all to see, just to avoid a similar incident in the future. Much to my amusement, he did contact me again, using the same witty first email he'd caught my attention with months before. He'd forgotten we'd been in touch, and he also seemed to have forgotten that I was not his type, since my photograph was now available for him to see and he'd approached me anyway. I replied to his email by copying and pasting his response to me from months before, and that seemed to really do the trick – this time, I really did not hear from him again.
Even more extreme was the guy I actually MET a couple of times, went on some mediocre dates with, before making a mutual decision not to pursue a relationship with one another. Within 6 months he had contacted me twice more, on two different sites, with absolutely no recollection of having contacted me or met me previously. It made me wonder if he's actually dated so many women he couldn't keep track any more.
The moral of the story? That may be as elusive as the cyber dating industry itself. I would say keep things in proportion, don't take rejection to heart, meet in public places, and most importantly, have an escape route in mind. After all, if your next date doesn't work out, there are still 16,378 more singles online right now….
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