I surrender

I am extremely vocal about my personal hatred for online dating. I used to be a walking advertisement for it - I suggested that people try it at least once. But the experience never felt good for me. Then my sister pointed something out - people are able to play up their prejudices online. She hit it on the head. People weren't afraid to judge someone by race, or a few words put online in haste, or whatever the heck else. And then the Aurora shootings happened and they mentioned that the shooter had a profile on match.com which confirmed another thing for me - meeting someone online makes it impossible to observe them in a social setting, which is very key to knowing if a person is weird; and not weird in the pathetic attempt to get more attention way.

However, my friend said that she was going to go back online. And now that I am in a new city, and surrounded by completely age-inappropriate men, I got curious.

1. I made a profile. I promised not to add any information, because I was just there to see who is in the area.

2. I added words to the profile. I promised this was for sociological research, to see if anyone would be interested in my words, not just my face.

3. I added a picture, because I wanted to see if that would help or hurt my case (since 30 minutes of research indicated no one was interested in looking at a picture-less profile). I promised not to reach out to ANYONE, as this was just for looking, not to find a date.

4. I reached out to someone. I couldn't fight it - he had a very high match percentage, his profile was cute and witty, his pictures were good, he said he was out of town a lot, and frankly the idea of maintaining my own time and space while still receiving some benefits of a relationship appeals to me. And then another one came up.

5. So now I am going to obsessively check my profile to see if they reply (even though I will get an email if they do), or if they visit my profile without replying.

I was trying to avoid all of this. But the fact is, it actually makes me feel better. I feel like I have reawakened hope. Because though I assured myself that love could be right around the corner, I couldn't determine the logistics, so it didn't feel close at all. Even if I sit here passive online, it puts me out there a little more than NOT being online. I'm not using it as a replacement for getting out of the house (maybe I will meet people this weekend or the next, or any other time that I step out of doors), I just like feeling that I have used my time effectively.