I recently wrote an article about internet dating and the best and worst sites. In order to write this piece I joined numerous sites, emailed, spoke to and met numerous men, and you know what I really learnt. The internet is a terrible place to meet men!
What started off with gentle excitement at the thought of meeting lots of new and interesting people, left me wanting to stay home with an army of cats and watch rom-coms for a very long time.
Go into the real world, where singles often cross paths, strike up a conversation and perhaps exchange numbers in the hope of a future date. In that first interaction you would have have deduced the gentleman in question is confident enough to have an interesting conversation with, good looking enough for you to be attracted to and has the kind of style and demeanor that appeal to you. This can be a 5 minute conversation at a bus stop or a 30 minute chat at a bar, it really doesn’t take much to spot a potential partner, strike up a conversation and see where it goes.
I caught up with a professional matchmaker, (a service which with the help of shows like The Millionaire Matchmaker is becoming increasingly popular.) Siobhan Copland who owns Catch Me Cupid and asked her what her clients are finding drives them away from online dating and towards her service.
“Most of the members who sign up for personal matchmaking, have followed the trend of internet dating, and have been left disheartened, they meet someone on a dating site and after reading their profile and exchanging messages, feel they have a real connection, which is soon proved wrong when they meet in person. Although it seemed like they were having great banter over messages, when they finally meet, conversation is sparse and awkward, not to mention their disappoint of meeting people who look nothing like their photograph suggest. Plus the fact is often time consuming and challenging to pin an actual date!”
So what kind of men go on the internet to find love? Lets evaluate the kind of men who are online, and remember I have met a fair few of them.
1. Chancers. Men who sign up to a site like a fisherman in an ocean. If anyone bites, great he’ll take it. There is no challenge in approaching a dazzling women online, a chancer just sends a wink and sees what happens. He isn’t serious about wanting a relationship, he’s simply feeding his ego.
2. Damage goods. The internet is the resting place of the rebounding, the scarred and the bitter. While online I met many men who when pushed, told me they weren’t ready for a relationship, although they wouldn’t say this on their profile. They were using the internet to lick their wounds, take their mind off being dumped or cheated on. They didn’t need a girlfriend they needed a band aid.
3. Bores. There are a lot of these. Of course given enough time and reading through enough other profiles any man with the slightest semblance of intellect can make himself appear splendid in his profile. He will elaborate on his job, his height, income, everyone online will tell you “I have great friends”, “A job I love”. Really?? So why aren’t you out with them meeting people? Why does your fantastic job not introduce you to the “Partner in crime” you’re looking for? Why are your evenings spent chatting to strangers online, or even day times, why shouldn’t you be at your high flying job? I can’t blame anyone for giving internet dating a shot but a lot of these people have been at it for months, even years! Hiding the fact there is nothing interesting about them behind a few well versed paragraphs and the line, “I’d much rather meet in person than send messages.”
4. The Social Inept. It takes practice to be able to talk well to new people, we usually get thrown into the deep end as we approach adulthood and learn to let go of our shy awkward side and blossom into glorious, confident swans, or at least that’s the plan. Of course we all master this one with various degrees of success but I can guarantee those who have not earned the right to soberly talk to women are lurking in abundance on dating sites. He may well be everything he claims on his profile but in person he has a touch of axe murderer about him, with just a soupçon of creepy.
5. The regular guy. There are a few of these, I can’t say the internet is 100% failure city. There is a statical claim that 1 in 5 marriages start online, giving a 20% success rate to the internet. Lets also assume a far few of those relationships are based on both people being social failures who grabbed hold tight of someone who would have them, lets call this half. We’re left with the statistic that the internet has a 90% failure rate and those are not odds that I am betting on.