A Match-less Experience - What Happened

 “You hope to be smart enough to choose right… I had to kiss a lot of frogs to get there.”

                        Mark Harmon to Larry King on a successful marriage,

                        “Larry King Now”, Season 2, Episode 154, May 2014,
                          www.sharetv.com

    On to my personal experiences in this dating swamp…

      Let’s take a look at my matches. The first fellow billed himself as a foreigner living in the Baltimore area. We went back and forth on e-mail. He professed his love for me having never met me. I called him on it several times and tried to get a public meet-up. It never happened. I don’t miss him at all, but I was matched later on with a fellow with similar credentials and different pictures. I called him on it, saying that all of his information sounded very familiar. His profile came down really fast. Creeped out yet? So much for frog number 1. 

      I got a chat request from a fellow who billed himself as a retired Marine. The conversation denigrated to sexual content within five minutes. I told him he was a disgrace to the Marine uniform for showing such disrespect to a female. I swore off using the chat feature after that. Frog number 2…

      I did get e-mails from other gentlemen. I posted that my match choices were to be in an age range close to my own. I also required that the matches be local, or at least on the East Coast. What happened to that idea? It proved to me that many do not read the profiles they are sent. I was “favorited” by fellows on the West Coast, Midwest, or who are 25 (eeewwww) or younger. What part of “this is what I want” do you not understand, guys?

      I sent some e-mails too. Some fellows looked really interesting in their profile. So I wrote to ask about specific things they listed. Yes, I did get responses from many very nice gentlemen thanking me for my interest. But mostly my e-mails were ignored.

      My luck seemed to change with one gentleman, however. He approached me first and we communicated for a while by e-mail. He suggested we talk on the phone. We did. We met in a public place and had dinner. We talked for over three hours. We both thought we had a good match and agreed to stay in contact.

      Then came what my mother called the “Bum’s Rush”. Several phone calls and dates followed, along with his helping me around my yard with leaf raking. He wanted to try everything I usually did. We shared activities except for golf – too cold to play and I don’t play.  He asked to join me at church. I went with him to his church. We started celebrating the Christmas holidays with a barbershop choral concert. I met some of his children and grandchildren. He met my family members and friends. There were flowers, moonlight walks holding hands, movie dates, dinners out, dancing on New Year’s Eve, concerts and ….then nothing. It was like I fell off the face of the earth to him. He rudely refused to respond to my e-mails and phone calls. There was no explanation or excuse – no contact whatsoever. He who I thought was a prince turned out to be just another frog in the pond. This one hurt badly, because I didn’t see any of it coming and it happened so suddenly. I console myself with the knowledge that he is a total idiot (my kids’ assessment) and this is all his loss, not mine.

      So what’s next for me on Match? My six months are up and I’m considering packing it in. I am ready to date again, but I need to meet normal gentlemen my own age. The old fashioned face-to-face meetings are the best. But as I understand the site policy, my profile will be archived for one year, just in case I decide to venture to Match again. And true to my personal policy of learning something from every adventure, I want to share what I learned as an online dating service customer.

1. I learned that I’m braver than I thought.
2. I learned that I deserve a lot better than I got – from any of the men.
3. I learned that men think a 42-inch waistline and a beer belly is “about average” body type.
4. I learned that most men want to date women at least 10 years younger than they are. For some reason, they are uncomfortable about their own age. What’s up with that? Some of you are lucky you lasted this long (can we say “I lived through the 60’s and 70’s?”)
5. Men really need to get rid of baseball caps in photos. So what if you are going bald? If it was good enough for your father and grandfather, it should be good enough for you. Wear bald proudly.
6. Most men want women with colored hair and no grey. Guys, news flash, there is no woman around over a certain age with natural colored hair that does not have some grey in it. Women, here’s to you who let yourself show your greys. Fire Lady Clairol and be yourself.
7. Please smile in your pictures. Smiling makes the face more attractive. And it uses fewer wrinkle muscles.
8. Speaking of pictures, how about pictures of YOU? Not places you’ve visited, or your “daughter” or you and your last girlfriend. It’s ok for action shots of you doing the things you like to do. When there are a lot of irrelevant pictures, it makes me wonder who is really behind the profile.
9. I learned that I can love again, and I want to be in love again. That makes me vulnerable, I know. But I was so happy for a very brief time over the holidays. I liked the feeling and want it back again.
10. I deserve to be romanced, to have a man do activities that I want to do with me (not to only do things he wants to do and my things I do on my own), to be wooed. I deserve flowers – just because. No, I am not high maintenance at all.
11. I deserve respect and true, open communication. If there is something you don’t like, I expect you to tell me. Don’t feed me the line that you don’t want to make me angry or hurt me. Just saying those words makes me angry enough to go postal on you, because you think you have the right to control how I feel about a situation. Man up, speak your piece, and take the lumps if they come.
12. I know what is very important to me in a relationship, and what I am willing to compromise on with a date. Yes, I have standards. And, fellows, they are high and they will be met. (which also means I may be alone for a while, but that’s ok too)

     I’m sure the men out there have their own lists for the women they date. Let’s hear them. We can finally get a dialog going on this subject. We women can’t know what you want unless you speak up. We really are not mind readers. Men, I triple dog dare you!

      So with this writing, it’s Adios Match.com. Archive me if you want. Maybe I’ll try a different site… maybe I won’t.

      Vent over… for now.

The opinions expressed in this piece are my own, based on personal experience. Your experiences may be different – and I hope lots better.