A Brief Foray Into "Online Dating"

In the midst of all the madness this month, I think I mentioned that I decided to give the whole online dating thing a shot.

I lasted about six weeks before I came to the realization that if I'm so resistant to it, it won't work. What I want is to meet my future husband/partner in an organic way, and that hasn't changed. Also, looking ahead into September, with all that will be going on, I realized that I wanted to keep the extra time and energy I have after work devoted to keeping up with what's fun for me--like spending time with friends, re-discovering DC, learning to play tennis, and making time for exercise. I de-activated my account, and I feel much better. For your entertainment and posterity, here's a summary of my adventure:

At first, after posting my profile, I was nervous and I didn't quite know what to do. Do I write people? Do I wait for them to write me? There are many different schools of thought on this. I was pleasantly surprised to find the first message was from a seemingly normal, attractive guy. I wrote back and never heard from him again. Perhaps this was a bad omen...

There weren't too many outrageously bad messages, but a few of the worst:
"Hi, I know I'm too old for you. Heck, if I had started having kids sooner, I could be your Dad! But just in case, I wanted to welcome you to Arlington."

EEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWW!

This one more than once:
"Hey, did I just see you on the cover of the NYT yesterday?"

(Said in reference to my admission that online dating made me nervous because I thought my profile would end up on the front page of the Times one day).

There were also a handful of guys who felt the need to make snarky comments about my statement that I appreciate proper grammar in e-mails (this quickly became a screening method--if you got it, you just did it).

With some encouragement from Gretchen, I did message a few people and in the end, had three dates.

#1: John
John was a 39 year old economist that works for a large government agency. I was ridiculously nervous about this date, because it was the first. He was perfectly nice and we had three hours of polite conversation. No sparks, and I spent 1.5 hours trying to figure out if/when/how to politely get out of there.

#2: George
George was a 33 year old communications director for a non-profit. I was much less nervous about this one, due in part to being slightly exhausted from having gone on so many site visits that day. We went to see a screening of Taking Woodstock, which was good, followed by drinks at Jaleo. We had a good conversation, and may actually go out again.

#3: Irfan
Irfan was a 42 year old cause marketing guy. I was running late, it was raining, and met him for lunch downtown in the middle of what was shaping up to be a bad day. He had a voice that I could not listen to, and though he was perfectly nice, I left the date frustrated at having wasted so much time.

So, that's about it. As experiences go, not the greatest, but I gave it a shot, quickly learned what I suspected all along--it's not for me, and now it's over.