What I Tell Myself to Feel Better

I have recently begun my third experiment with online dating. I guess it’s what I do in the fall. Fall 2005 was match.com, Fall 2006 was jdate, and now I’m 10 days into nerve. So far, no luck.

Even in the year 2007, when it sometimes seems rare to hear of an adult couple who got together after college without the aid of the internet (You met at work? Really? At a party? Wow…), the consensus about online dating still seems to be that it’s an easy way out. It’s for people who don’t have game. Those of us who, for whatever reason, have trouble communicating to people we find attractive or interesting (or, ideally, both) that we’d like to see them again. The internet allows us to skip all of the strategizing and innuendo and eye-batting. If I contact you through a dating site, it’s not because I’m just being nice or I think you might be able to get me a job or because I just need a social crutch at a party where I don’t know anyone. I’m contacting you because I might want to date you, period.

No doubt there is some truth to that perception of the internet dater, but things are changing. Single people who have no trouble meeting other single people at bars and parties have joined the online dating community (in New York, at least). I have a number of outgoing friends—male and female—who’ve given it the old college try. When they first told me I was surprised. Aren’t these my friends who have a gift for meeting strangers, who are energized rather than drained by putting themselves in new situations and making themselves available to new people? Why would they resort to using a dating site?

The answer is that although it may be easy for them to get a date offline, that doesn’t mean it’s easy to get a date that they want to see more than once or twice. Meeting someone you really, really like is hard and rare, and the internet is becoming just another real physical place where you could meet someone new or bump into someone you already know. (Anyone who’s tried online dating recently will tell you that they’ve recoiled from their computer screens coming across the profiles of exes, family friends, or coworkers in the same way that they would avert their eyes or suddenly change direction when seeing someone unexpected on the subway or the street.)

The internet may still be an easier way to “put yourself out there”—a phrase so often used by friends in relationships when they’re asked (or not asked) for dating advice—but it does not change who you are. Speaking very generally, those who are bold and flirtatious at parties are bold and flirtatious online too—they’ll contact a lot of people, write long emails full of question marks and exclamation points, and welcome that moment when the connection is made and the phone numbers are exchanged. Likewise, those who are shy and reserved at parties are shy and reserved online. They wait to be contacted, and when they are they hesitate to share too much too fast. The prospect of talking on the phone or meeting in person is terrifying and put off as long as possible. And those of us who are friendly enough and enjoy being social but have lazy or pessimistic tendencies and are good at making excuses don’t really change once we go online, either. We can write a good profile and a witty email, but maintaining our virtual dating lives can end up taking a lower place on our priority lists. Whether that’s because of unrealistic expectations or insecurity or cynicism or what is a whole other blog posting.

So the good news is that the stigma attached to meeting someone great on the internet is fading away. My friends who are in relationships that were conceived online will kick themselves for telling everyone they met on the PATH train, because maintaining the lie takes so much unnecessary energy. The bad news is that it turns out there really isn’t any way to make meeting a great person easy. At this point in life, we are who we are, on- or offline. For most people, what you get out of the search represents only a fraction of what you put into it, and often the real pay-off comes simply by getting lucky.