I've Been Had

O.K., so some of you know about my new plan, which was . . . to sign up for Match.com. Originally, I was only going to sign up to mine for blog fodder--after spending a few hours trolling around on the site, I realized it was rich with potential blog material. Some of the pictures these people post, the things they write in their profiles, even their nicknames, are just--ridiculous, nonsensical, absurd, hilarious. (Would you contact a guy whose nickname is "plushbunnies"? How about "fuggindude"? Dude--what???) It also surprised and kind of alarmed me that, after specifying that I was looking for men, ages 30-45, within 50 miles of the greater Columbus area, the site brought up a bunch of pictures--and I recognized three of them! One is a guy who hangs out at a local bar I sometimes go to--and up until about two months ago, he was hanging out there with his wife. Now, his profile says he is separated and looking for his "soulmate--that special lady to share his life with." Yeah, buddy, that's a great idea--why not hop right back on the horse, right? Another is --get this--the attorney who represented my husband in the divorce. I didn't notice the phrase "complete and total asshole" in his profile, so obviously he's not representing himself accurately. The third I will refer to as "the woman-man from Match.com." You should see his profile photo--he's got feminine features to start with, and he wasn't helping himself out by posting a photo showing his long, lovely hair pulled back in a ponytail and resting on his shoulder. I kept staring at this picture, thinking they'd put a woman on the guys' page by accident, when I suddenly realized he is a man, and that I've seen him jogging on the bike path. When you live in Columbus, it truly is a small world.

There were plenty of other noteworthy things I saw on this site, including:

• A guy who obviously cut and pasted his profile photo out of a modeling publication, complete with shirtless shot, 6-pack abs, and an artsy black-and-white background. This guy also claimed to be an American and native English speaker, but upon reading his profile, it's totally obvious English is his second language. It was like reading a profile posted by Borat. (His tagline? "Looking for someone that need nice man." His religion? "I believe on Jesus.")
• A lot of people who were unclear about how to fill out their profiles in the first place. See, when you first sign up, you answer all these basic questions about yourself--age, job, marital status (hopefully single or divorced!), whether you smoke, how often you drink, whether you have children and how you feel about having children, etc. You also describe what answers to these questions are acceptable to you in a potential partner. A lot of people, however, give contradictory answers to these questions. For example: "Do you want children in the future?" [Answer: Yes.] "How many children do you want? [Answer: None.] There's more of this type of thing going on than you might think.
  
• One thing I noticed is that there are some things everyone answers in the same way. Everyone loves to travel. Everyone loves the outdoors. No one likes to play games, and everyone is looking for someone who doesn't like to play games. (Headgames, that is, not board games. Board games are O.K.) Everyone loves dining out, especially at ethnic restaurants. Staying in and snuggling on the couch while watching movies with your sweetie is completely acceptable, but no one fesses up to spending some Sunday afternoons watching Law & Order for three hours. No one!

Anyway, I could go on and on, and maybe I'll revisit this in the future, but it's not the point right now. The thing is, as I was perusing the site, I found that there actually were some interesting guys on there. With some of the profiles I read, I found myself thinking that I wouldn't mind meeting this person. So, why not give it a try? I hadn't yet subscribed--you can troll around and create a preliminary profile for free--but I was seriously considering it.

Around this time is when all the computer stuff happened, and I wound up with my new (wonderful, fabulous) Mac. And I discovered that when I tried to log in to my Match.com profile, everything was all screwed up. I couldn't access or edit my profile, and I couldn't download a photo. I couldn't do much of anything. I e-mailed their support group, but I haven't heard back yet . . . and I started to get restless.

So, earlier today, I thought, as long as I was going to do it anyway, why not try another site until Match.com gets back to me (if they ever do)? And so, I logged on to eHarmony.

I should have clued in right off the bat, when I saw that they only match heterosexuals--no gay matching at this site. That irked me immensely--what's up with that? Did I really want to join a site that had yet to enter the 21st century? Big red flag. But, against my better judgment, I signed up anyway. I then spent about two hours that I will never get back filling out their "personality profile" forms, where they ask you about everything, multiple times. And, as they admonished me over and over to do, I tried to be completely honest--I didn't sugarcoat anything. Those of you who know me know what this entails. I was straight up about children, partying, politics, religion (or lack thereof)--everything. And, I actually paid the initial subscription fee, which is $60 for a month. (After that, it goes to $40 per month--still pretty steep, if you ask me.) And I clicked "submit" and waited for the 60 or so matches that I expected would pop up immediately, as they did on Match.com. And waited. Refreshed the page, waited some more. Finally, I got one match--Christopher from Pickerington. O.K., first of all, I'm not going to date anyone from Pickerington. It's too far away, and the people there tend to be--how shall I put this?--hicks. But, I clicked on his profile anyway, since . . . well, since there were no other options. Here's the basis of Christopher's profile:

"Christian man seeks girl-next-door type who will make our relationship the priority in her life."

Um, no. No, and no, and no. No no no. This is what I spent two hours and $60 for??!! They were supposed to match me up based on about 1,600 measures of compatibility, and they got exactly zero of them right. This seems to be almost a litigious-worthy situation. For those of you who are attorneys--thoughts?