Gone Fishing - Week 1

I would like to think that I'm a fairly normal person. I don't have any massive skeletons in my closet, good relationships with family and friends, and impeccable personal hygiene habits. Since I made it through a degree program, I might even venture to say that I have a brain in my head. It's got to be kicking around in there somewhere.

I also don't have a huge problem with getting dates or meeting men, that's not the issue, the issue is getting dates I want and meeting men that don't live in their parents' basement at the age of 26. I decided that a screening process was needed, and where best to find that but online? I can find out all the important information right away, like "Do you have an education?" "Are you a crazy right wing Christian?" "Can you spell?" The latter being the most important, of course. So, about a week ago, I dove into the insane, messed up world of online dating.

First twenty four hours were madness! I hadn't quite figured out how to adjust my settings so I was bombarded with messages, about 50 in the first four hours. It was fairly overwhelming, but fun at the same time. Imagine walking into a bar and getting fifty winks right away? That's going to make you feel pretty good!

As I strolled around this virtual bar I maximized the filter feature on my messages. I have a whole slew of requirements (geographical, age range, etc) that one has to meet before messaging me. In addition, I need at least 200 characters in a message - gotta make them work, right? That slowed down the pace a little bit and let me actually sort through my inbox.

I have to say, I'm pretty quick with the trigger. Don't use capitals? Out. No education? Delete. Have a picture of your car in your profile pictures? UMNOTHANKS. This cleared out a lot of space and let me narrow down my responses to only two people who actually intrigued me. One had a well written message and profile, and actually sounded smart! A smart guy! I have so rarely run into those, especially in my dating life, that I figured they must be a breed near to extinction. The other guy seemed nice and like he was just on the site to meet people, as he had just moved to my city about a week before me and like me, knew close to no one. I responded to them both and got replies back fairly quickly. This continued over the course of a few days, and I looked forward to checking my inbox to see what they had written - this was turning out to be pretty fun!

But of course, online dating isn't about dating solely online, at some point your will be asked to meet IRL. In Real Life. Ohgodohgodohgodohgod. Ensue panic now.

After a number of messages, one of them asked me out. I said yes and we arranged a time and a place to meet in a couple of days. It was a well lit, public place, and my roommates we were well aware of where I was and what I was doing, and I agreed to text them and let them know if things went to hell.

I had no idea what to think while waiting for this date to begin. Not only am I new to all of this and coming to terms with the possibility that I have agreed to meet up with a random stranger who could very well have plans to hack my body into bits, but dating in general scares the living hell out of me! It seems like a concept that is not applicable to my generation. For us, relationships go in one of two ways:

1) You meet through friends, you get to know each other, you start dating. Subsequently you break up and it is awkward within your friend group for the rest of eternity. You have to find new friends because of this, and because you need to find a new dating pool.
2) You drink too much one night and end up sleeping together (knowledge of this person's identity before this night may or may not exist, it doesn't matter). You feel like you 'should' meet up again afterwards so both parties can convince each other they are not sluts. You may have a reasonable time and begin dating. You break up because one of you drinks too much one night and sleeps with someone else.

This whole 'getting to know a stranger so you can possibly have a relationship with them' is so foreign to me, which is why I was putting so much effort into not running away before this date. But, success! I didn't run away, I didn't get hacked into bits, and I actually had a pretty good time. Online dating: 1.

Of course, dating and relationships are messy and complicated things. Even when you narrow it down to a search field. Let's see what else these waters hold...