Who remembers the first online dating site?
Who can tell me when it started?
It was Match.com and it started in 1995.
I didn’t even have a computer in 1995, and it would be another four years before I was caught making patterns in the air with the mouse, as I tried to get it to the follow that little cursor thing on the screen, Godammit! I know I’ll never live that one down, but I was thirty-something, working in a flash London gym with a bunch of kids fresh out of university, loaded with sports science degrees and computer skills.
I didn’t have computer skills and in 1995, I was twenty-eight, travelling the world as a fitness instructor on a cruise ship. Slim as a cigarette, living on ice-cream, with not a hint of cellulite. I could do the splits and I was tanned!
Internet dating? Not for me.
No, that was for people who, firstly had computers, and secondly were **** or **** or *****
You could choose any number of verbs with negative connotations to fill those gaps. I know I did. And yet looking back I can see, that along with an awful lot of things in life, my attitude placed me behind the times. Has me running to catch up. Online dating, although most of us didn’t know, was here to stay. More than that, it’s become ubiquitous.
And you know what? I think it’s a good thing. A really, good thing.
I first dipped my toe in the water back in August last year. My husband had moved out and moved on. So why not?
It was scary and I did feel vulnerable. Uploading a picture, describing myself? There’s a barrier to get over, the barrier of admitting that you want something that you don’t currently have. That you want someone else to want you. These sites are like pet shop windows, where we press up against the window and point out the cutest pup: Take me home. No, take me home.
But at fifty-six, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s not to take it personally. So I signed up and signed on. And in general it’s been fun.
I had a week’s worth of online flirtation with a very handsome woodsman from Norway. I say woodsman, because he always seemed to be out in the forest. I don’t know what he did. He did say, but it seemed so unlikely I’ve forgotten. After three days, he suggested we meet. It was quite a distance to drive and I had to take my son to football, and when I pointed these things out … he disappeared. Poof! Gone!
Then there was a UK business man, a regular visitor to Stockholm, who offered to help read and negotiate the screen rights contract I’d just been sent.
Let’s meet, he said, over a glass of wine, and go through it.
Or a cup of coffee, I responded.
And guess what? Poof! Gone!
Another ‘like’ whom I didn’t respond to within a few hours, disappeared. And another. But I had washing and work and those football runs, and it struck me as very revealing. The haste with which these men disappeared … Which is why I think online dating is a very, very good idea.
It seems to me to have all the benefits of an old style matchmaker/arranged marriage vibe (and let’s face it, sometimes our parents have known what is best for us, as we definitely know what’s best for our own kids), whilst allowing us to retain complete autonomy. I don’t give a fig about star-signs. I stopped studying Mystic Meg’s horoscope column, decades ago. And I know that listing ‘reading’ as a hobby nowadays, means a five minute scroll through twitter while sat on the toilet. (I’m right, I know I am.) And although that last indefinable, but essential ingredient, will never be available in digital format, going through a few interests and habits and hobbies to work out compatibility first, is no bad thing. I can’t help but wonder where I’d be now, If I’d tried this approach, instead of the wholly random way in which I have met the significant men in my life i.e. in a bar. I may as well have thrown a dice. I basically did.
Plus, of course I like it, because at the moment I currently have 1,400 potential matches on Tinder.
1,400 likes!
My head is enormous.
Was enormous, until my sister told me to check my distance settings and I realized that I didn’t have any distance settings. In other words, men from Patagonia, Uganda and the North Pole had ‘liked’ me and in fact, I only had 1,400 matches out of a potential 4 billion.
But it is fun.
I’ve met a couple of guys for coffee and they have been genuinely interesting, nice people, whose paths I would never otherwise have crossed, and with whom I have had genuinely interesting conversations.
Still, it’s exhausting starting from scratch, explaining who you are to a stranger. And what this has shown me is that at the moment I haven’t the energy required to start a new relationship. Only it’s more than that. I haven’t the room. My children – my younger son mostly, as I steer him through divorce and a move of country – take up all my heart, which is fine and good and the way it should be right now.
But it won’t always be like that. So when there is some elbow space, I’m going to be taking a leaf out of Pamela Anderson’s book. She’s my age exactly, been through five marriages and devastating humiliation, raised her sons wisely and is very kind to animals.
I want to keep my heart open.
Those are her words. Aren’t they wonderful?
Well, I too want to keep my heart open.
Until next time,
Cary,
P.S. I have a big move coming up, so 5 Minute Reads may not appear in your mailbox next week. Regardless of how short, or long the break, it will be back. I just have a lot of plates spinning right now.
Your summation of Pamela Anderson's life made me smile and think that if someone said the same of mine I'd feel pretty OK about it. A few years back I listened to young co-workers talk about online dating; it sounded terrifying and I felt ancient. Pretty sure I'd be with it the way you were with your first mouse. :-)
Love the pet shop analogy :) You make a great point about doing some sifting and filtering on interests and compatibility. Oh yes, I too can see the difference that could have made!