It's not as big a deal as you might have feared. If you’ve put a profile on a dating site, congratulate yourself. The hardest part is over: you’ve cleared the mental hurdle. As mainstream as online dating is, we’d all be kidding ourselves if we said we had no reservations about it. Sure, we all know the old stigmas of online dating don’t apply anymore. We’re busy people in a fast-paced world with little time to meet new people.
So why do so many of us feel reluctant and a little embarrassed to tell people outside our close circle of friends and family what we’re doing to meet people? Are we afraid of looking desperate? No one wants to be the person who can’t meet anyone and God help you if you’ve got a few cats lying around your house. Interestingly enough, I don’t think other people who online date are desperate. I think they’re smart and covering all their dating bases. Maybe it’s time we all just collectively agree to congratulate ourselves for being smart, progressive people and get past this desperation and embarrassment thing.
Besides, from personal experience I can tell you that having a drink with an interesting person on Saturday night is a lot more fun than watching Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde for the thirty-sixth time on the TBS Saturday night movie. (No offense, Reese or TBS.) That’s desperate. Create a profile. Please.
You find out what you want in a person and a relationship … and what you don’t want. I’m still not sure how I feel about the concept of “volume dating” that people seem to say is the case with online dating. But the best part seems to be that everybody’s pretty much there for the same reason—you both want to meet someone. You don’t have to feel apologetic that you’re actually looking for a relationship and not just casual sex. (Unless, of course, that’s what you want. You can indicate that on most profiles.) So you have carte blanche to find out as much as you can about this person, from important to trivial, in a friendly un-Glenn Close from Fatal Attraction kind of way, of course. Does he chew with his mouth open? Does she like her job and have an idea about what her next step is? Is he funny? Does she want kids? Does he hate dogs? Is she close with her family? Is he a red state man trapped in a blue state? After a couple of months of online dating, your list of deal-makers and deal-breakers will almost write itself. You may be surprised to find a few things on there you didn’t expect.
