call me the goldilocks of dating

So, with some reluctance, I have reentered the online dating world. I am doing so with the previous online dating experience and a certain idea of do's and don'ts in my back pocket so we'll see how it goes. It wasn't until after I had already signed up that I looked into that whole "active singles" thing, where you go do fun activities like kayaking and paint-balling and pub crawls with other single people in order to meet and mingle, rather than have awkward email and telephone exchanges leading up to an awkward date. I think that would be fun to do at some point, too.

For now, match.com is relatively easy because I just go to work all day, and come home to winks and emails in my inbox, and can pick and choose. Over the last two and a half weeks that I've been back on, however, I noticed that I don't pick and choose - I mostly say "no thanks" to people because there's something "off" with a lot of the guys who decide to contact me. Feeling a little badly about this (but not too badly), I wondered what this was about.

Online dating poses an interesting issue that in-person dating does not. First, there is a virtual limitless supply of people you can connect with, and people that you would never meet in real life, because you have nothing in common (or because the cyber-geek actually never leaves his home). You basically peruse dating "resumes" of candidates, browsing through the pictures and "likes" of people until one catches your eye. My problem? Not many catch mine.

In real life, you strike up conversation and get butterflies in your stomach when there is chemistry--you can tell if there is nothing there, or if something is off. And if you meet someone you have great chemistry with, say at a concert, you're going to pay attention to the chemistry first, and the person's specific characteristics later. Online, however, you consider the separate characteristics (interests - the ones they choose to list, that is - appearance, etc.) before you even know whether there is chemistry! Because of this, I have decided that when dating online, I am allowed to be incredibly picky - it's like shopping, or hiring an employee. I can only judge based on the two-dimensional information I am presented with online. This means that I can be shallow and say "no thanks" to someone who has no picture, or who appears completely un-photogenic, or took a shirtless self-photograph of themselves in the bathroom. I can also say "no thanks" if he's too fat, or too skinny, if he's too ugly, or too pretty, if he's too dorky and shy, or too macho and egotistical. Basically, if there is something I don't consider "just right," I have permission to immediately reject the guy.

Go ahead, call me Goldilocks. That's the privilege of online dating.