The story below is from our September/October 2015 issue. For the DIGITALLY ENHANCED VERSION, download our FREE iOS app or view our digital edition for FREE today!
In a world dominated by computers, it would not be difficult to imagine—at this point—that dating would change dramatically with the Internet. And it has. Boy, has it!
Dan Smith
How about a staggering statistic or two to start your day? There are 54.25 million “of-age” single people in the U.S. right now and 41.25 million of them have tried online dating. So says statisticbrain.com, which doesn’t stop there. It goes on to tell us that online dating revenue is $1.25 billion annually, or $239 per dater, per year.
If you meet online and ultimately get married—which almost never happens, according to our little local unofficial survey—it takes 18.5 months to reach that point. It’s 42 months after you meet offline. About 20 percent of all our committed relationships began online—and those are only the people who’ll admit it.
OK, hold on to your hat. A third—a full third—of women online daters say they’ve had sex on their first online date. Ten percent of daters are sex offenders.
There’s a bunch more we could chat about here, but the fact is that what was once called the “lonely hearts club” and was distinctly for also-rans in the game of love, is no longer that. Not even close. People are not only talking about online dating, they’re posting on Facebook and Twitter about their experiences. Friends compare notes and make suggestions.
It’s trendy.
Really.
We talked to a group of Roanokers—individually—about their experiences with internet dating and wound up with some pretty good stories, as we expected, some great tips and a good bit of skepticism/enthusiasm/hope about the red-hot way to meet people.
Miles, who oozes life, has never been married and finds e-dating “difficult to do. It’s like being in a room and everybody is talking to you at the same time.” She’s looking for men with “high energy, witty, buoyant, intelligent, somebody who, in the first couple of sentences can capture my attention. … Humor, confidence, personal pride are key elements.” Well, yeah.
Miles doesn’t go around bragging about her dates, “but I’m open when I talk about it. The first time [she went online], I thought about what I was doing. It’s another avenue to meet people I wouldn’t meet otherwise.”
The downside is those who fail to follow through once the first or second steps have been taken.
“I’m not looking for a pen pal or a texting buddy,” and she is selective about who gets her phone number: “four men in four months on one site, one man in three weeks on another.”
Take a deep breath: Miles says she has been floored a couple of times by men who have quickly sent nude photos of themselves and asked her to respond in kind. She shakes her head.
“Basically, I was ending up dating in the same social circle and wanted to get out of the box—even geographically,” says Layman, who has been internet dating for 11 years. He has dated women as far out as Blacksburg and Lynchburg and doesn’t mind those distances. His dates have been “mostly professionals. A recent one was a grad student. Half of the intent here is to meet new people, not going back to the same wells over and over.”
One of his dates was a nice young woman “who had just come from her job at Red Lobster. She smelled like fried fish. That was not the most positive experience.”
He says that “one of the drawbacks with online dating is repetition. You start to see the same tropes over and over and it can turn you off a lot quicker than normal. I can’t tell you how many women I’ve seen use the phrase ‘fluent in sarcasm’ on tinder.com to the point where I immediately swipe left.”
Clark’s goal is clear: “I’ve had lots of dates. The end is to find the person. Hasn’t happened yet. Two have ended up in relationships and we’re still on good terms.
“It’s like the real world in that a bunch of guys send messages hoping for a reply. It’s a numbers game and it can be discouraging. If females are bombed with 8, 9, 10 messages a day, some inappropriate, it’s the real world. Douchebags ruin it for the rest of us.”
Money matters. “Seems only the more serious people will spend money on dating sites. Most people my age can’t afford to spend [the $30 to $60 a month many sites cost].”
Clark doesn’t drink, so he meets prospects at coffee shops. “It’s better than sitting home playing X-Box,” he says. “I can read a profile and see what [women] say about themselves vs. what I can see: only what clothes they like. You see some random chick and there’s no info. … Helps weed out the creepers. When you get a date, you know you’ve made it past the initial screening.”
Tips: “Read the profile carefully. If it is nice and it fits, mention something from the profile [in your message]. Please say more than ‘hi.’ Fill your profile out. Don’t skimp on information and don’t be a creeper. Just be nice like in the regular world.”
Reality: “Probably 95 percent of the time—if you’re a guy—you won’t hear anything back. Just be a genuine human being, though. Use good grammar.”
“You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince,” she quotes Grimm’s Fairytales. And to prove it, “No matter which site you use, you meet the good and the bad. The [sites] you pay for can get expensive.”
“I don’t go searching,” she says. “I let them find me. If I feel a connection, I give my phone number and we talk for a couple of weeks. Texting doesn’t work. I want to hear a voice. I’ve probably talked to 75 to 100, but I’ve only met about five. I’m cautious.”
Anything interesting? “I was in one situation with a guy much older than he said and he was shaking. I high-tailed it out of there.
“One of the most interesting guys, I talked to every night for three weeks, two to three hours every night. He owned a business, a home, was very successful—I don’t want to support anybody.” First date, “he called just before we were to meet and said he was hung over and wanted to postpone. We finally met for coffee, had a great time and I haven’t heard from him since.”
Simple goals: “I’m not looking for anything serious, just having fun. It’s ‘dating,’ not ‘relationships’ yet and some don’t understand that. Some guys are full of crap: no driver’s license, been in jail …”
She’s been ’net dating for the past year because she moved to Roanoke and knew no one. “I was having a hard time meeting people, something that’s never happened to me before. I’m the greeter, never met a stranger. I did the bars and church, but I was looking for a relationship.”
She receives “40 to 50 messages a day” on her preferred zoosk.com and plentyoffish.com, but “all the sites mash you up with a lot of people. Some have inconsequential brains and don’t know how to greet a woman. They’ll say, ‘I wanna take you home to meet my dog,’ or ‘Wassup.’ Some of the grammar is appalling to a grammar Nazi like me.”
Deal breakers: “Talking about money, sloppy dressers from people who put forth no effort, bad attitudes.”
She does not attempt to respond to all her messages and “sometimes it takes a while for me to get back,” but, she says, “if she gets together with a suitor, the chemistry works or doesn’t within 30 seconds.”
Her suggestion? “The first message is like the first time you meet somebody. Spend a little time on it.”
First, the admission: “I’m still with my match from nine years ago, so I don’t do it any more ... well, maybe I peek occasionally.”
She “married one of the guys I met online, but he decided he wanted a divorce shortly after that. I had dumped a different guy I’d met online for my potential husband. After the marriage tanked I looked up the guy I had dumped.” It’s complicated.
Odd stuff can happen. “I met a fascinating man from Lynchburg who was a show-guppy hobbiest. I never got a second date, but I’d like to find him because I’m into aquariums and would like a show guppy.”
A hairdresser “kept staring at my hair when he thought I wasn’t looking. Didn’t get a second date.”
She met a persistent dude, who “was really into sex,” but she didn’t do it with strangers. “He said, ‘No one like you will get a date if you don’t put out, it’s what everyone does.’ That’s the only date I ever walked out on.”
Advice: Diet and exercise. “Almost every man I’ve spoken to has said that he is looking for a woman who is healthy or slender. … Therefore, working on bad eating habits will make a woman both healthier and give her a larger selection of interested men to choose from.”
They met—for the second time—on an online gaming site in 1995 and were married less than a year later.
“It was text-based and had no photos,” says Michael, so each had no idea what the other looked like. She was a student at Roanoke College, he in Hartford, Connecticut. After three months of talking online, he traveled to Roanoke on fall break (17 hours of train and bus) and they met at her dorm.
“There’s something to be said for being young and foolish,” he says. Still, the internet at the time, “ensured we weren’t going at it blind,” says Michael. “We interacted quite a bit in the first three months.” They had actually met before on the same site some time before and finally recognized the screen names after they met again.
“We didn’t go in looking for relationships,” says Michael. “It was just a connection. We shared an interest.”
She has a history: “I’ve been on and off this kind of dating since it’s been around. I did The Roanoker (ISO in the late 1970s) when [third-hand matching] was only available in print. I’ll do it a while, then shut down and eventually do it again.”
When she writes her profile, “I concentrate on three things that are non-negotiable: reading, Grandin Theatre, enjoyment of the outdoors. I stay away from sunset walks on the beach. I keep it positive, but I don’t say what kind of work I do. I say I don’t have kids. If you’re looking for a maternal figure, you don’t want me.”
Internet dating “is open among the people I know. It is pretty well accepted. I remember back in the day when people were embarrassed about it, but today people easily talk about. There’s a site for everything. I’ll continue to do it. It’s a reasonable way to meet people.”
When the response is odd, she says, “Sometimes I feel like the guys responding don’t read my profile.” She is amazed at the number of men who want sex on the first date. “I told one guy that we met on Match.com not Adult Friend Finder [a sex site].”
“The more I’ve been on [internet sites], the more I’ve discovered what I’m looking for,” she says. … I learned to ask, ‘What is it I want, dinner or a long-term relationship.’ That’s changed over two years.”
Time has “forced me to make a checklist: no smoking, likes outdoors, that sort of thing. I have three daughters and that affects how much free time I have. I have to select quality time over quantity … Sometimes it’s too much like shopping for a car: I want a Toyota, automatic transmission …”
And then, there’s the photo: “So much of what we reject is based on appearance [of the profile photo]. In a room with the same person, the response might be completely different. You must meet, but it’s still a quantity game.”
Haynes has been married for a good while, but she flirted (so to speak) with online dating for a spell. Mostly, her info is from her friends, though.
“One of my friends from high school tried various on-line dating sites. She thought Christian Mingle would be a safer bet. Turns out, it may have had the worst dating prospects out there.
“On a brighter note, I know of quite a few happily-ever-afters. Online dating sure beats lame pick-up lines at a bar. Although I must admit, my husband and I ‘re-met’ at a bar. But we knew each other from college, so it was more of a coincidental reunion.”
Sometimes you just have to pack your goods and sneak on out. The following tale was told by a woman who didn’t want to use her name or face because she didn’t want this dude following up:
“I heard from a local guy who seemed intelligent, well-spoken and interesting. He had a slightly off-kilter sense of humor that appealed to me, so I answered his post and we started corresponding.”
They met for lunch and “he seemed courtly, well mannered and non-threatening … which was encouraging. He was funny, and somewhat self deprecating, and I liked that about him as well. … Over Thai food, we talked about books, popular culture, our past relationships, and then he led the talk into the realm of politics and government. That was when things got a little hinky.”
He said “he was not at all certain that the Holocaust actually happened as it had been represented by the American government. At first I thought he might be joking, though from his expression I figured out he was not. I responded that Eisenhower took troops through the concentration camps and filmed what they found so that people could not deny their existence, and years down the road deny the horrors that were perpetrated. He suggested that those films could have been created.” The conversation deteriorated even further as he gave his “evidence.”
She bolted, but he didn’t give up without a fight. “I still heard from him for awhile, with links to websites which were supposed to prove his statements, but eventually he went away,” leaving her with a good story and not much else.
But the lure of love remains the lure of love and for ’net dating, it’s quite a compelling lure, no matter how you figure it.