THE ART OF INTERNET DATING

Dear Spirit Man, I loved your description of yourself and laughed out loud at your story of you, your Ex-mother-in-law, and the veal.  Did you really need surgery?   I feel we have quite a bit in common, albeit I do not resemble any member of the Flintstones household, and the greater preponderance of my teeth are my own…Fondly, Tribal Babe

If you are looking on the Internet for your soul mate, you are not alone.  Over 25 million people are now using the web to search, and prescreen their potential mates. I am a 40 year old, white, divorced woman in the Holistic Health field and I have been playing in this milieu for the past year. I do not have the time or inclination to go cruising, and I would like to be in a new relationship.  Internet dating is fun and offers a huge playing field. After umpteen dates and a few hilarious experiences, I have some words of wisdom for you.  Following some simple guidelines can smooth the road towards romance, and help keep you from unnecessary pain, disappointment or even danger…

SIGNING ON

The best on-line dating services allow you to pick and choose characteristics like age, religion, location; ethnicity, etc. so you focus in on what you really want.  Many of them will let you choose a "“Key Word”, to further narrow your search.  For instance you can key in “Tall”, or “Spiritual” or “Monkey lover” if you really want to narrow down the playing field.  You limit your options quite a bit when you do that though.  Your computer can not read a dating profile and magically determine that 5’8” is tall enough for you.  When you add the specific criteria “tall”, the dating service chooses profiles that have that word in the body of the profile text. Almost all services are free; some charge a nominal fee.

Dear Tribal babe, you sound quite interesting, and I found myself wondering where one goes to study the sexual proclivities of middle management VS upper management,… gotta go, the episode where J. Cousteau goes head to head with a manatee is on, and I don’t think I have this one on tape.

SELECTING A PROFILE

I signed up with AOL’s on-line service because there are pictures and a three-page, detailed member profile.  I entered my criteria and 804 screen names came up.  I eliminated all the profiles that had body parts in the screen name, i.e. Best Butt in Bakersfield, Killer Abs in Arcadia, etc. I deleted any profile that showed a man holding either babies or pets, and all pictures that were clearly cut in half with a female arm sporting a new wedding band visible on the man’s waist.  Perhaps these are just my peccadilloes but there you are. That left me with over 500 choices.  I scrolled through the pictures and eliminated all unlikely suitors. Too bald, too much back hair, hands too little, etc.  Down to 293 choices.  I removed all men searching for petit blondes, triathletes, or surrogate mothers to assist them with the healing process that their therapist recommended. I am a tall, Jewish, pushy woman from New York.  Down to 115 choices.  Now the serious work begins….

HOW TO READ THE PROFILE

I was struck immediately by the number of men who desire nothing more than to spoil me rotten, take moonlit walks along the ocean, travel the world and cook me the best dinner I have ever eaten.  After a while, I stopped reading what the ads said and I started observing how they said it. Upon close inspection I noticed that some of the ads had typos, abbreviations, slang, etc. I personally care about those things so I eliminated the men who “lik sunsets, and the inhabbitentes of the oceans” and who TGIF…LOL.  That left 16 men.  Good enough.

Spirit Man, These past two weeks have been incredible.  Reading your emails is like going home.  I feel that you must be the soul mate I have longed for. I never thought I would tell anyone about the fiasco in Marrakech, and I almost fainted to find out that you had a similar experience in Peru.   Would you like to come over and review my study materials Vis a Vis Sexual Performance in the Work Place?  Perhaps share a dinner of miso soup with baby veggies.  Bring dessert and a toothbrush.  Affectionately, Tribal Babe

COMMUNICATING

Out of the remaining 19 profiles, my first choice is Spirit Man and I respond to his ad with an email and a picture. If you do not have a scanner go to Kinko’s with a photo and they will scan it onto a disc for you for $9.95.  Remember to send a picture that really looks like you.  People tend to be unhappy when they feel deceived or betrayed by a 10 year-old picture of you at the beach before you had the kids.

 Spirit Man writes back and we are on our way. I had to be careful of being too intimate right away. There is something about writing a letter to a total stranger in the safety of my home that creates a false sense of intimacy.  When I first started going on-line I sent a pretty racy email to an Internet prospect and inadvertently sent it to the wrong person.  I had to call up my friend and beg him not to read it, and then make him promise that if he DID read it he would: A) Know that I do not want to lick food off his body, and B) never talk to me about it. The problem with being intimate so early is that if Spirit Man is not for me, do I really want him to know my favorite sexual fantasy?  Also, he is still a stranger and I don’t want to tell him anything that would allow him to show up at my work, or worse, my house. 

Dear Tribal Babe, We MUST meet.  During my weekly ritual dance at the ocean the image of a dolphin came to me and spoke of you. A DOLPHIN!  Wisdom, kindness, and loving incarnate.  Let’s try to meet before the next high tide. Spirit Man

MEETING

I decide Spirit Man just may be my mate and we decide to meet. By now I have learned to follow these simple rules. 1. MEET IN A PUBLIC PLACE.  I don’t care how nice he sounds, and how good he is to his dog, I don’t know him and I do not want to put myself at risk. 2. Plan how long we will be together in advance.  The nice thing about meeting for a drink is that I can graciously leave in an hour if Mr. Wonderful picks his teeth with a leaf from a nearby plant.  If he turns out to really be Mr. Wonderful, I can always stay for dinner, or have a second date. 3. I do not have sex on my first date. Besides a personal value system that won’t allow it, and the age of AIDS, I found out that many people use the net as a way to meet women just for sex and I want to take myself out of that category. 4. Even though we have emailed each other and probably spoken on the phone it is the first time we are meeting so we treat it like any other first date, with the caution and excitement that comes with it.

Spirit Man, what can I say…last night’s dinner overlooking the ocean was a new experience for me.   I had no idea that anyone could know so much about algae and the ocean plates.  I want to apologize again for asking if that sculpture was for sale.  I had no idea that removing coral was a “rape of the world’s oceans”.  I wish you luck finding a woman who knows the mating rituals of otters.  Best regards…Tribal Babe….

Lastly, have fun…dating this way opens the door to men who are actively looking.  There are lots of men in the Internet sea, happy hunting.