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Taking a Summer Plunge
Plunge is a funny sounding word. It rhymes with sponge. Or more aptly, lunge. It takes courage. Just the other day, I stood at the ledge of a pool summoning the courage to jump in. I’ve been trying to plunge back into dating sites. Every time I get an email from Match.com with perspective dates, I scan the profiles and get a little disheartened. It’s amazing how many men write that they “walk with the Lord.” (Oy!) But one of these days, I’m going to make a splash.
Image by Michel Dumontier and Neil Farber
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You get “walk with the Lord”, I get “I like to ride my Harley on the weekend”, lol.
I also see a lot of pictures of men holding up a fish with a lake in the background, the picture taken while he’s behind the wheel of his car, or my personal favorite, the one where he’s taking a picture of himself in the bathroom mirror. Not one of those men has managed to convince me to meet him person (although there was one with a picture of himself in his car ALMOST convinced me…)
**Sigh** The whole process is disheartening…
That’s interesting, Stacey. I wonder what algorithms are sending these men our way.
I’d be so interested to hear if you somehow make it work. I haven’t dated in FOREVER but am finally getting sick of either being home all the time or hanging out with couples.
Got to keep trying.
Hi Wendy you should definitely make a splash.
It might be worthwhile to dip your big toe but not with a Lord walker.
My pet peeve besides the self portrait in the bathroom is men without shirts. Really? Your chest? I am not that superficial.
The exception being if you look like Ryan Gosling.
Good luck Wendy. I just got off okcupid. I give it 4 months then take a break of a few months. Enough bathroom photos, motorcycles, and my very favorite, freaks who want me to wear pantihose on every date. Why are men so wierd?
I’ve never looked at women’s online dating profiles, but I figure they’re just as weird, in their own way.
I’m with Stacey; online dating is a pretty disheartening experience. My low point was being matched with a man who bred ferrets. (Actually, that was so bad it was funny.)
Lauren, Do blind dates (set up by friends) fit into a different category?
Oh, dear. Back when I was on match, my profile specifically said NO SOCIAL OR RELIGIOUS CONSERVATIVES NEED APPLY. And I STILL got “I lead my church’s praise group”, “My politics are to the right”, etc. And the guy who thought that “a few pounds overweight” meant seventy-five pounds. At least I could weed them out right away!
Wendy, funnily enough, I’ve never been on a blind date arranged by friends. I’m a little sceptical, though. The few times I’ve met men my friends thought I would like (always at some sort of dinner party or something), the only identifiable trait we had in common was that we were both single. On one very memorable occasion, the guy was gay and the friends didn’t know it. That was right up there with the ferret-breeder.
I want to give these sorts of friends the benefit of the doubt: they are, as far as I can tell, very happy. And being a couple is one of the defining characteristics of their happiness. And they want me to be happy, so they want me to be part of a couple… but this is rather patronizing.
I’ve had a similar experience, Lauren. But I prefer when friends set me up, even when it’s a flawed match. At least, there’s a human link somewhere in there.
Even worse than friends wanting to set you up; I used to be an ER nurse and we nightly saw a population of homeless drunks who were brought into the ER to sleep off their latest binge. They were skanky and generally quite mean.
Invariably, someone would point to one and say, “There you go, Noelle, I’ll bet he’s single.”
The “jokers” didn’t seem to get why I found that incredibly offensive.
I prefer men that my friends set me up with someone they know. I feel like they’ve been vetted a bit better than the online dating websites. Sometimes not a whole lot better, but at least a little better. And the likelihood of them being complete jerks seems to be less, since it’s already known that it MIGHT get back the to person(s) who introduced us.
After a spending a year getting over a break-up, I took the online plunge again. And after a month, all I can say is that it stinks. I had forgotten how horrible this is. I have been ignored and blown off by more men than I care to count — in two cases after emails, phone calls, texts, and first dates. Who are these people? It’s so discouraging.
I wish you more luck than I’ve had.
Seems to me a central question is whether one adheres oneself to a belief that a partner outside the religion is second-class or that a marriage outside the religion is second-class. Unlike issues of personality and behavior and finances, it is impossible to accommodate oneself to work against God’s will — if you believe in such a thing, whatever you decide it is.