The Perils of Online Dating

The website informed me that I was “hot”. Nevermind that this was a routine message and one presumably sent to all newbies to ensure they come back. Still, it was nice to receive a computer-generated compliment on a Sunday morning.

The message also told me that because of this, “we’ll recommend more attractive people to you. You’ll also appear more often to other attractive people.” Good to know – but it did suggest I had been languishing in the second-tier alongside the unwashed and unsightly for a while!
My friend Beth had been urging me to try OKCupid for ages. She’s been on it for a while and has had some interesting encounters. I was resistant. First, because I was worried about the ethics of turning unsuspecting people into anecdotes; and secondly, judging from other peoples’ experiences, online dating may be fun but it also fraught with freaks.
I didn’t meet any freaks, which is sort of a pity, because freaks are bread and butter to a writer – they make great copy. That’s not to say that no freaks emailed me, because of course they did. However, they seemed like stalker types instead of mildly and amusingly unhinged.
The most persistent sent me five emails over the course of ten minutes asking where I was and why I hadn’t responded to his first message straightaway. It’s all very well to be keen, but it’s not cool at all to be so eager that the recipient of your interest envisions a future replete with restraining orders.
Another sent multiple messages demanding my phone number. No “Hello” or “How are you?” or any of the introductory niceties you’d expect – just constant requests for my mobile, followed by an angry outburst when I didn’t comply.
Then there was the man who sent me the same email repeatedly – “42, married, near Lucan. Interested?” The only thing that interested me was the inclusion of “near Lucan” in all seven messages he sent. It seemed a very odd selling point.
If men in Lucan and its environs are known to be particularly skilful lovers or packing a punch below the belt, then this nugget of information has passed me by. Or perhaps he was implying that he would be happy to indulge in extramarital sex, but only if it was geographically convenient – which was a bit cheeky from a jowly man in an aertex shirt very obviously lying about his age.
So, I suspect, was a certain Peter, who told me he was 18, but looked no more than 16 in his profile picture. He sent me a very sweet mail, and given that young men are sensitive I decided to respond.
“You do realise I am an old person?” I asked.
“Age is just a number,” he countered.
“In my case, it’s a large number,” I replied, and you can’t fault that logic.
My first proper date was with Darren, and like most of the men I subsequently met, he was perfectly lovely but not for me. He was attractive, personable and any evening that combines the glories of wine and chocolate is a good time as far as I am concerned. However we had zero chemistry. I wasn’t feeling it. I suspect that he wasn’t either.
So here’s the first thing I learnt about online dating – an email exchange can give you a pretty good idea of whether or not you’ll get on in real life, but no matter how funny, witty or intelligent the banter is, the chemistry may not be there, even if you liked the look of each other’s pictures.
Even then, you may be mistaken, as I found out to my chagrin when I arranged two dates on the same evening. Bloke number one was not great at expressing himself in print, but was great fun in person, while the opposite was true of bloke number two.
Admittedly this wasn’t very nice of me, arranging a two-for-the-price-of-one, but the second thing I learnt about online dating is that it’s bloody time-consuming. Multiple men equals multiple emails and multiple dates. It adds up, especially if you want to save time for things like work, gigs, friends and sleeping.
Here’s the third thing I learnt about online dating and the one that most surprised me – OKCupid is full of struggling musicians! Who would have thunk it? Not me. Nor, I suspect, would the researchers at the University of South Brittany, who found that almost a third of women will give their number to a strange man carrying a guitar case. I began to suspect that I had been rumbled as an employee of this delightful magazine because every second person who wrote to me, or so it seemed, sooner or later included a link to his MySpace page.
Musicians are all very well, guitar-strumming, bass-slapping, drum-thumping, piano-fiddling misfits though they are. I like musicians, which is a good thing, because they are virtually inescapable in Dublin. However, they are far less trouble as friends than romantic partners. Depending on their level of success you’re either helping to carry gear or competing with groupies – unless you hit that sweet spot where you get to do both.
It was therefore with trepidation that I exchanged a couple of emails with Timothy. He was charming and attractive and offered to give me music lessons. A few emails in, he told me that in addition composing music he earned his crust as a computer programmer for one of the large American banks that have found a home in Dublin.
This gave me pause for thought. You see my brother is a guitarist who works as a computer programmer in an American bank in Dublin, as is my friend Ronan. One frustrated rock star/computer geek who works for Mammon should be enough for any girl – three seems excessive.
If you guessed where this is going, then you’re right – in a coincidence so beloved of rom-com writers, Timothy was bound to work with one of them. And so it was. Thus the path of true love – or a satisfactory fling – encountered a fairly large obstruction in the shape of my brother, who was not only Timothy’s colleague, but also his boss.
No man wants to make sweet, sweet love to a woman only to encounter her brother’s beady eyes across his desk cubicle the next morning, especially not when those beady eyes dole out the work assignments and the performance reviews. Unsurprisingly Timothy didn’t contact me again. Tant pis, as Marcel, the Frenchman I am meeting on Friday, might say.
That’s the most important thing about online dating – there is always someone else.