The only thing worse than my actual dating history was probably when I made my friends listen to my tales of woe. This is why, at the age of 28, when my friends could take no more (I had undergone an especially rough breakup to which my sanity, sobriety and binge-eating habits were not responding well) I was finally convinced to give the online dating thing a shot.
The great thing about starting online dating is that everyone feels pretty bad for you. All of your happily-coupled friends will tell you how Greg’s brother Steve was having the worst time finding a girl after he had the liposuction because he just had no confidence and 15lbs of excess skin, but then he joined Match.com and met this amazing girl and they do couples power-walking every morning and now they’re engaged! And then there’s your Jewish Goth co-worker who stares through your soul when you try to give her your signature awkward smile-wave combo (which is usually paired with you making some weird little throat noise because you were going to say “hi” but then you panicked and decided not to, but the message didn’t reach all of your vocal chords in time causing you to spend the next hour obsessing over why YOU are such a freak; why couldn’t you have just said “hey, what’s up?” like a normal person, at a normal volume and with an average amount of confidence? But this pep-talk never works. The next time you pass a co-worker in the hallway you release a booming guttural “HI” in an attempt to correct your earlier social failure, causing great alarm to this new co-worker and confirming that indeed, YOU are the freak) and she found a life partner on DemocraticSingles.net who works at a tattoo shop and sketches dragon tattoos on her arms, FOR FREE.
With uplifting stories such as these, and my obvious cool and breezy nature, online dating was sure to be a success! I signed up with only mild hesitation, spending one day reviewing the plethora of dating sites available to the single gal nowadays, and a mere 48 hours meticulously composing the most alluring, sophisticated and professional but also totally relaxed profile that any dating site has ever seen. Did I have some cute photos to post? Uh, yeah. Attractive stats? Hellz yeah. I’m in my 20’s, thin, employed and my hair kind of rocks. Edgy “likes” and “dislikes”? Morals? Humor? An obsession with proper grammar? BOOM! I had magically transformed into a cyber-goddess who played her pipe and classy, sexy, rich men within a 35 mile radius were sure to come a runnin’.
And thus began my online dating experience…
