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Amanda Patterson

I moved to Boston last January after a grisly break up. The wracking cold and grueling schedule were miseries I had predicted, but I thought dating in the city would be a snap. It’s not.

In the life I imagined for myself in Boston, I met smart, funny city men while studying at the café or out for a beer. Apparently, a lifetime of sitting in cafés not meeting people wasn’t enough to convince me that nobody meets in cafés. I became convinced.

Then there was the bar. It’s hard to compete with women who consider their thong an essential accessory. On good days, I fall somewhere between attractive and cute, but put me in a sequined halter top and watch me squirm. Men at bars, it seems, are like magpies and only pick up the shiniest things to bring back to their nests.

So I went online. A friend sat me down and we filled out a long, earnest-as-all-get-out profile for eHarmony. Fearing I’d be dating a minister, or a sanctimonious recovering alcoholic, I jammed the f word into a short answer question. They kicked me off of eHarmony with no hope of redemption for my filthy mouth.

But my interest in online dating was piqued. I coughed up the $30 to join Match.com for three months, blew off my homework, and started looking at men’s profiles online. Of course there are the obvious jack-offs, like a guy whose screen name is necknibbler, or Gabe_rockclimber, or Bostonguy1212, but at first anyway, the thousands of men online dizzied me.

Suddenly, instead of being alone in a cold city, I lived in a veritable grocery store of date-able men. Someone I chatted with online called it crack.com, and I’d say Match users may be in danger of being addicted to their own hopefulness. Many ugly bits of human nature are exposed in online dating, but it also brings out the eternal human hopefulness about love. Maybe the next one will be better, we think. And on Match.com you’ll never run out of next ones.

In the beginning, I spent hours late into the night reading profiles, and before I developed my elimination criteria, I found appealing morsels in far too many postings. Even necknibbler’s profile had an iota of appeal.

Profiles start out with a little write-up, “I can’t believe it’s come to this” is a common theme. And then there are the lists--the generally generic lists of likes and dislikes. At first I paid attention to anyone who liked the outdoors and was looking for a “partner in crime” unless their favorite activity was watching television. But there are hundreds of men to consider, and most of them are duds. Even the ones who seemed okay were likely to reveal some deal-breaking flaw in the first email. Or email once and then disappear. Or email incessantly.

I went out with one guy because his picture was taken on the top of my favorite mountain in Yosemite. He went on road trip there years ago, and had been festering in a lab since then. He hated George Bush, and the first over-a-beer meeting was okay. But the movie Sideways ended that brief, peck-on-the-cheek affair. He didn’t like movies that made him think, and I don’t like movies that confirm my suspicions about the vileness of men.

That is the kind of flimsy reasoning I used to choose one virtual man over another – a photo of a guy on a mountain I used to like. I might have been drawn to a nicely turned sentence, or someone with affection for gin and tonics, but those things aren’t the elements of attraction either. I got butterflies going on these dates, but they were first-day-of-school butterflies, instead of new-crush butterflies.

The seed of hope kept me coming back, but a cynicism crept into my pursuit. It takes up a lot of time – seek, contact, evaluate, repeat. I didn’t have the time or desperation to scan every damned profile that popped up on my screen.

So I made it simple. No golf. No puns or consistent spelling errors. Religion was to be avoided. Meaningless claims, like being laid-back, counted against. A 35 year-old man looking for women between 18 and 34 was toast-- either thoughtlessly casting a wide net, or a pig. No picture, no I will not ask you to send me one. Any mention of sex, kissing or sex drive is an automatic out, no class. I also got a laugh and never looked for a date from a guy who posted a picture of himself with his arm clearly wrapped around an ex-girlfriend who had been cut out of the picture.

Putting Red Sox or a favorite sport in a screen name is boring. Everybody around here likes the Red Sox, and your girlfriend is unlikely to care as deeply about hockey as you do. A friend once saw the screen name Teaser of Female. Clearly, some of these men have never met a woman before.

Lawyers, brokers, or real estate agents had a huge disadvantage. Any one describing themselves as a “truly regular guy,” just a Mr. Boilerplate, were clearly not worthy.

I went on some okay dates, I even went out with a guy for a couple of months before I admitted to myself that the crush had never set in. Who knows what chemistry between people is, but it’s real. Maybe it’s pheromones or the way someone laughs, but in either case you can’t smell it or hear it online.

Two people may like Armenian food, Howard Dean, cappuccinos, soccer, and American Idol, and yet find they hate each other’s guts. Or more likely, go out a few times trying to develop crushes on each other but fall short and quit.

In the end, I met a guy at a Halloween party, and we’ve been together for five months now. I really like him. But had I seen his profile on Match, I would have rejected him instantly. He is a Republican (sort of Green Party Republican) and a serious Christian who enjoys golf and casinos. Left to his own devices, he might well watch the cooking channel all day. None of the obvious connection points line up, but there is chemistry. It was there from the first time we talked.

He is cute and smart and funny. He likes gin and tonics. He is also kind, quirky, and, on paper, a completely unlikely candidate for me. Match.com sends me “matches” every so often, and sometimes I look at them. I know, though, that he could be an eloquent liberal with a penchant for carving wood, gardening, and backpacking, but it doesn’t mean a thing.

Amanda Patterson can be reached at apatterson@theoysteronline.com

03/08/2006   |   Permalink