15 Sep, 2008

Okay, I am going to be straight with you. I have been single for quite some time. Not even “some”, quite a looong amount of time. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I don’t meet men or even date men, it’s just that when it comes to relationships and The One, I am a perfectionist.

Waiting for 'the one'

I like to relate it to Clueless, when Cher said, “You see how picky I am about my shoes, and they only go on my feet”. And that’s the reality – if I am going to share my bed, my Foxtel, my time and my heart with someone, it’s got to be right.

But then I started thinking about the possibility of missed opportunities (I rarely give people a chance past the second date!). The ‘I can’t believe you’re still single’ convos with my coupled-up friends started ringing in my head. My mother frequently began dropping the “every time one of my friends tells me their daughter is engaged, it makes me sad” line. Cue despondent and accusatory glare.
 
Maybe they were right. Maybe I am too picky, my criteria too strict. Perhaps I did only venture to one type of venue and talk to the one type of person. Maybe my ‘list’ was holding me back?

Love bytes

I decided to try cyberspace for a soulmate and joined a dating agency, well, four to be precise. I joined au.match.com, lavalife.com.au, sugardaddie.com (hell – a girl’s gotta dream!) and rsvp.com.au. I know that internet dating is as easy to mock as Tara Reid’s boobs. But I try and reassure myself that, much like the sexual revolution when it was discovered that sex before marriage didn't necessarily mean you were screwed, these days hooking up on the net is less Paris Hilton and more Cory Kennedy.

And it seems online dating is quite similar to shopping – something I am very partial to. It involves browsing and choosing among a seemingly infinite array of possibilities. There’s a physical/demographic portion to fill out, followed by a variety of “compatibility tests” to help with pair-ups… and there’s usually a charge, too – often one you don’t find out about til you’ve spent an hour creating your profile!

Downloading Mr Right

Sticking with my usual aloof nature, I sat back and wait for men to find me – after all, my written profile was as enthralling as an advert for the new iPhone! Soon enough, I was getting winked, messaged and added to array of men’s hotlists. Note: huge confidence boost. I got chatting to this one guy, let’s call him Brad. Brad ticked all the boxes – good job, lived relatively close to me, charming, good-looking etc. But that’s the thing with online dating – the anonymity also provides a freedom, a sense of confidence that is often gone with face-to-face.

You can think about your comments and use a thesaurus to ensure extra wit. There are no awkward pauses or inappropriate laughs. You never have to worry about if you have the remnants of your last meal in your teeth. It’s like you can be you – but a better, more together version. Anyway, to cut a long story short, Brad asked for my digits. In online dating speak, I was already on third base and was only a phone-call away from a home run. Later that day, the inevitable happened and we decide to meet the following night at my local.

Cut and paste personalities

After a frightful hour of sitting at a bar on my lonesome waiting for Brad (and trying to guess if any of the patrons were him) he finally appeared. That is – appeared with different hair, different eyes, different height… hell – he even had a different job to the one we spoke about two days prior. And it basically went downhill from there. And it wasn’t just Brad.

The general theme of my online dating experience was less-than-perfect dates, increasing frustration and a lingering question: is it me, or is it online dating? Top that off with the fact it wasn’t just Brad that ‘exaggerated’ his profile… none of the men I met even came close to looking, sounding or being like their online profile! And that’s just it. Aside from being able to perfect the way they appear in an online environment, they can also ‘borrow’ other people's witty profiles, not to mention lie and exaggerate much easier than they can in real time.

Survey research conducted by media researcher Jeana Frost of Boston University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggests that about 20 per cent of online daters admit to deception. If you ask them how many other people are lying, however--an interviewing tactic that probably gets closer to the truth--that number jumps to 90 per cent.

Killing Cupid

The internet is a fantastic tool, but that's it. It puts people in touch with each other who might never have met. Over the internet, two people can explore their tastes, passions and values – but until two human beings have actually met each other, sat face to face, read each other's expressions and body language and heard each other's tone of voice, everything else is a dream (or in my case, a lie).