Then the service assures you that they will review your file against the numerous files they have on single people of the opposite sex and find perfect matches. After a match is found, they contact your potential soul mate and find out when you both are free and arrange lunch, drinks, or dinner. Thus when you meet them if you are not interested, your date has no personal information on you other than your first name unless you give them additional info, so things can end relatively painlessly if it was not a good match.
The problem is there seemed to be no extensive search or hard work to match you up with people who had similar interests. As far as I can tell, they feed your information directly into a shredder and then pick up a phone directory of insane asylums and randomly select dates to inflict upon you.
The first date was with a guy who turned out to probably be the best catch, but at the time his egregious man-jewelry and bathing himself in cologne made me slightly queasy. Richie Rich* as I thought of him in my head could have been my ticket to bon bons and becoming a lady who lunched, but personality-wise we were not even remotely compatible. He managed to let it slip during the first five minutes that he was in fact an honest-to-God millionaire. I’d never known a millionaire before. I kind of thought they’d be somewhat suave and debonair, probably older, and would want to buy me lots of trinkets and dandle me on their knee.
Unfortunately this was not the case with Richie Rich*. He peppered the conversation with heavy mentions of his second home, time-shares, vacations, the boarding schools he would expect his children to attend, etc. In retrospect I should have dropped everything to become whatever it was that he wanted until I snared him with my wily ways and he was powerless to resist my charms. But his heavily gilded man-jewelry plus his ego the size of
After Richie Rich there was Shel* the Shrink. Shel the Shrink* was extremely sensitive and very solicitous about my thoughts and feelings on everything. Seriously – when the waitress forgot to bring us bread even though she had brought a basket for every other table, he asked me how this made me feel. When the kitchen had run out of the item I ordered, he asked me how this made me feel. While listening to me talk about my love of traveling or growing up in a big family, he tilted his head thoughtfully to one side and said “hmmmmmm...wow… I see…so, how did this make you feel?” At the end of the date I thought he was going to ask me for my co-pay and set up an appointment for a follow-on session in two weeks time but thankfully I managed to escape into the balmy summer night.
Shel* was followed by Married Max* – who I thought would forever hold the title of Worst Date in the History of the World. Prior to our date, Max* had been reading a lot of book jackets on what women want and decided that honesty was the best policy. Don’t get me wrong – I’m a major fan of honest guys. Not the kind that will tell you when your butt does in fact look big in those jeans, but the kind that are honest with the healthy white lie sprinkled in to soothe my troubled ego. But Max* decided that he would tell me everything that I could possibly find wrong with him in the first ten minutes of the date.
First of all, let me say that Max* was highly nervous. I have never in fact met so highly nervous of an individual. He was sweating profusely – the sweat of a man who is going on his first real date in something like five years and knows that he is carrying a substantial amount of baggage. Within ten minutes of shaking my hand with a death grip, he tells me the following things about himself:
- He is 26 (no biggie, I was 28)
- He has been married twice (um…..)
- He has two children (!!!!!!!)
- Well, if you want to be absolutely technical about it, he’s still married but had been separated for a few months. (here’s where I should have ran for my life)
- Whatever woman he winds up with next will have to understand that he will always be close to his current in-laws as they are his family.
- His own family is horrible and he never speaks to them anymore. Apparently he was never good enough or smart enough for them and they always made fun of him for not wanting to go to college.
- He has thus decided that all people who have gone to college are pretentious assholes.
- He next described his hatred of all animals.
- Waxed rhapsodic of his love of smoking heavily.
- Finally, he declared that he was looking for a woman who was happy with traditional gender roles as in taking care of her man.
Then he knocked back a martini in one gulp and threw his business card at me, daring me to date him. And of course he was cute. The previous two dates were not what I would call lookers. Thank God for my friend who upon sensing that my masochistic nature was actually leading me to think of dating this wreck, she threatened to beat me within an inch of my life if I ever called him again.
After Married Max*, came Stalker Steven*. Stalker Steven* seemed pretty good at first. We didn’t have a ton in common, but he could carry on a conversation and didn’t seem to be still married or insane. I wasn’t that attracted to him but wasn’t physically repulsed at first so I went out with him a few times to see if maybe after the nerves died away if there was more attraction. But after a few dates I was pretty sure we were not meant to be. Kissing Stalker Steven* made me feel slightly nauseated which is never a good sign for future physical relations.
I had a fabulous set of excuses to end it as things started getting really busy at work and I was getting ready to go on vacation so I told Steven* that I was really going to be unavailable for the next several weeks but would send him an e-mail or give him a call when things eased up to see if he still wanted to hang out, but that if he wasn’t interested that was okay too. A note to singles – just rip the band-aid off then and there. Most times subtlety is wasted on members of the opposite sex when it comes to relationships and you can save yourself and them some pain and time if you just take care of business then rather than delaying the inevitable.
So Stalker Steven* said he understood that things were hectic and that he was fine with giving me some time and space. In Steven*-time though, that meant 36 hours. Because within 36 hours he had emailed me twice “just to check in.” The following day treated me to a voicemail asking if I was free the following night, then another voicemail asking if things were okay. When I responded with an email reminding him of our previous agreement he said he thought he had given me enough time at which point I replied via email (I know – I’m a wimp) that I thought this was not going to work out and wished him luck with his future matches. Then every other day for the next two weeks I got voicemails and e-mails alternately apologizing for being so clingy or berating me for being so unresponsive.
After Stalker Steven*, I decided to take a break from the dating service and put my membership on hold to go to the beach and chill out and contemplate if being single was really all that bad. After a restful couple of weeks I foolishly decided that I should at least finish out my year membership – although the thought of another 10 months of this was enough to make me want to enter a convent. Just please don’t tell my mother that as she would get so excited she’d probably start embroidering me a habit.
Unfortunately my date after Stalker Steven* made him look like a good catch. But that story will have to wait for another day...*Name has been changed
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