It has been several years since my divorce was finalized and about a year ago I began to consider the idea of “dating” and the possibility of being in a relationship. I hadn’t put off the idea of dating because I needed to “take some time for me” or “heal from the divorce”… the reality was mentally the divorce had occurred long before I actually filed. I hadn’t worried about dating because I wanted to focus on providing a stable and consistent environment for my daughters because I knew that wasn’t the case in their mom’s environment.
Fast forward to about a year ago, I was visiting a friend and his wife was again telling me I needed to “get out and start dating”. Both of them knew my ex-wife and were familiar with how my marriage had been. My friend’s wife had started telling me I should date about a year after the divorce was finalized. Holding to true guy form, whenever my friend’s wife would bring it up he would just roll his eyes and I would tell her I was hesitant about the whole online dating environment. I had always felt if you are intentionally trying to find something like that you’ll never find it. To further complicate things, there aren’t too many women that are also interested in the types of activities I was at the time. For several years I was involved with 12 and 24 hour endurance events… most of the women who participated in the events I was doing tend to look like Eastern European weight lifters or “batted for the other team” so to speak. One time after telling my friend’s wife I didn’t trust the online dating environment, she told me she would tell me all the things to look out for that her friends had told her about their online dating experiences. She refilled my wine glass and told me these were the things to look out for when viewing online profiles women post regardless of which site I went too.
- Be leery of profiles of women that only have one photo
- If they don’t put anything in their bio, how serious are they about a relationshiop
- Be leery of profiles where all the pictures posted are from the shoulders up… what are they hiding?
- Same as above but also if the woman is always standing behind something or strategically hiding most of herself or all of the pictures are with a group of people and you can’t tell which one is her
- Be leery of profiles where the pictures of the woman are all high angle selfies looking down at herself.
Keeping the above advise in mind I decided to test the waters of the online dating world… boy was I not prepared for the initial experience. I looked into a few different online sites and selected one that I thought would consist of the most legitimate site members… hahaha, yeah, right. I went through the effort of putting my profile together; I selected pictures that I thought were an authentic representation of me and my interests and personality. I then put some thought to the content of my bio that described what I enjoyed doing and the kind of person I would like to hopefully meet. When I finished all that I began searching through the various profiles that matched the search criteria specified… and what did I begin to notice and discover? I indicated the age range I was interested in was between the late 40’s and mid-50’s and I was initially surprised at how many of the women posted pictures of themselves where they were making some sort of odd duck-lip gesture. The next thing I noticed was a lot of women also posted pictures of themselves that had an image filter applied that superimposed some type of animal features over their face… like rabbit ears and nose or floppy dog ears and nose. Seeing these types of pictures posted by women in their late 40’s to mid-50’s all I could do was laugh to myself, shake my head and ask “why?” Another thing I noticed about the pictures women posted of themselves, a lot of them would use some sort of filter to alter their pictures… to smooth out wrinkles and alter their skin tone. The problem is a majority of them go way overboard when using those filters, so much so that I’ve seen store mannequins that had more realistic skin color than some of the pictures posted.
Many of the online dating sites require you to “verify” your identity by linking your account to a social media account (Facebook). When you do this it pulls a lot of your information over to your online dating profile… such as age, location, education, career, etc….. provided you entered it into your social media account. Now based on this, what I have found funny are all of the women’s profiles that display one age but in their bio they claim their displayed age is incorrect and they don’t know how that happened or how to correct it… despite when creating their account the site said it pulls that information in from their social media profile. In most cases their displayed age is anywhere from 2 – 6 years younger than what they state in their bio. I have found because there is a lot of misrepresentation, if I see a profile of a woman I might be interested in, I have to search social media for her in an effort verify what she posted in her online dating profile is current. Unfortunately more often than not, the pictures on their online dating profile are several years old, or there was a reason they only posted head shots.
Moving beyond the profile pictures and looking at the actual bio information they posted I noticed the following…
When it comes to the information in their bios, there are a lot of statements that are contradicted by the pictures they post. A large percentage of the women state they are “Christian” or make some sort of reference to their faith and how important it is to them but then they will post pictures of themselves where it appears they are about to have a wardrobe malfunction. Or they are wearing a skimpy swimsuit in a pose appropriate for an “exotic dancer”. Then there are the women who make a point of saying they are not interested in a “hook up” or “one night stand” yet they post pictures similar to what I described above; not to mention the women who say they want something “real” yet most of the pictures they posted have been altered or their age is not correct, or their pictures are several years old. The hypocrisy runs deep. Another thing I noticed about a lot of the bios… after a while they all appeared to read the same. Almost every woman says their interests consist of “drinks on a patio, live music, the beach, good wine, going to nice restaurants, sporting events, living life to the fullest…” and that they want to meet a guy who has a “sense of humor and is drama free”. None of this is original, it’s all cookie-cutter stuff and boring. Seriously, who doesn’t enjoy the beach, good wine, nice restaurants, etc. Also, what exactly is “living life to the fullest”?
Then there are the profiles that are obviously fake. The women who are extremely attractive, and I mean unicorn attractive because they are the one’s rarely ever seen in real life. They will usually have a senior level job title or very vague title if any at all. Many of the picture in these fake profiles look as though they were professionally taken and the careers consist of “senior executive”, “director”, “lawyer”, “nurse”, “doctor”, or “entrepreneur”. There are also a few that claim to be flight attendants; I’ve seen some attractive flight attendants but I don’t recall seeing too many that were super models.
Now in all fairness I’m sure there are plenty of guys on these sites that are huge knuckleheads. I’ve seen comments from women stating they don’t want to see guys posting pictures of themselves holding a fish they caught or with an animal the shot, or shirtless, or on a motorcycle, or all the other countless dumb things guys do. And I’m sure they put some ridiculously moronic things in their bios too. I guess with some guys the cavemen gene is still fairly dominant.
So, does all this mean I’m throwing in the towel regarding online dating? Probably not. I recognize the need to keep my options open and unfortunately the reality is online dating has become a more common aspect of being single and dating regardless of age. At times the process seems about as enjoyable as combing your hair with a cheese grater but I remain cautiously optimistic.