A Muse with a View

People often say age is just a number.  However, there are two things I know to be true about online dating: men often lie about their height and women often lie about their age. And when you get into the 50-55 age bracket the men start lying about their age as often as the women do.

So if age is really just a number, why do so many people lie about it?

Middle aged women lie about their age because most middle aged men won’t date someone their age or older. Period.

Men lie so the younger women will find them when they search the dating sites. We all know the big 5-0 is the death knell in all online dating search engines. It’s rare to see a 50-year old man who’s dating range includes women 50 and over. In general the only men searching in the over-50 range are the ones who are over 60.

To all of the men and women out there who are lying about their age on their profiles, know this: if there’s one thing most people are looking for in a relationship it’s honesty and integrity, and you just blew it. If you lie about your age it makes your potential match wonder what else you may be lying about.

I list my true age on my online profile, and if the men my age don’t find me in a search it’s their loss.

And guess what, not everyone who’s near 50 looks like the Crypt Keeper or your Grandma Celia.

In the prehistoric dating world we dated people at work, in the neighborhood, or in the same zip code. If we were really adventurous we might venture to a neighboring zip code for a date. Well online dating has expanded that dating radius to every zip code, area code, postal code and country code in the world.

That’s great, right? Sure, if you have unlimited vacation time and a bottomless bank account.

What happens when a guy in area code 503 (Portland) meets a gal in area 206 (Seattle)? They exchange a few emails, maybe a phone call, and then one of them offers to make the 3-hour drive to meet for coffee (more likely dinner because it’s such a long drive). They meet and immediately realize there’s no chemistry. She thinks he looks 10 years older than his profile picture. He thinks she looks 30 pounds heavier. And they are both right. They could have saved themselves a lot of time and money if they would have done one thing: had a Skype coffee date.

All of the emails and phone calls in the world won’t show you what Skype will.  Skype adds the dimension of body language that you can’t get via email or phone. I highly suggest you skip the lengthy emails and phone calls and go straight to Skype.

The First Skype Date

Do yourself a favor and treat the first Skype date like you would any other first date. That is, take a shower, put some clean clothes on, brush your teeth, and pretend you’re actually meeting in person. I suggest “meeting” for coffee first, and following the suggestions below:

1. Pick an area in your home that is free of clutter, and doesn’t have any personally identifying information in it.
2. Set your computer on the table facing where you plan to sit, and then walk around to the back of the computer and take a look at what your date will see. Is there some hideous art in the background? Pictures of your kids? Your ex? Take them down or pick another spot.
3. Check that the light is flattering. Fluorescent lights and overhead spotlights are the worst.
4. Take a picture of yourself with your webcam so you can see the environment and the lighting before your date.
5. Make yourself a cup of coffee or tea before the date, and off you go!

The Second Skype Date

If you’re still not quite sure if you want to drive the three hours to meet your date in person, or fly 5000 miles as was the case with my first Skype coffee date, have a second date. In fact, make it a lunch or dinner date. You think I’m kidding? I’m not.

Have you ever been annoyed by the way someone eats a salad, munches their popcorn, or slurps their soup? Yep. Have a date that inlcludes food. Set your laptop on the kitchen table and have a meal with your date.

Once you have had a couple of Skype dates you’ll know if you actually want to make the effort to meet in person. You will also get the added bonus of not having first-date jitters when you have your first real date, because you’ve basically already met.

Happy Skyping!

I am a registered member of a dating site called OKCupid. One of the unique features of the site is you can write Journal entries, which I occasionally do. I posted the entry below a few days ago and I couldn’t believe how defensive some of the guys got. It was like I had personally attacked their masculinity with my simple tips on how to choose the right main profile photo.

Here’s the post:

Okay guys, listen up. I’m going to let you in on a couple of secrets about what goes through the mind of a woman when she looks at your profile and decides whether or not to read it or click the dreaded Hide button.

You have less than five seconds to catch our interest. This is the order in which most woman I know would notice things in your profile:

1. The first thing we look at is your MAIN photo.

2. The second thing is your screen name. Screen names like “PatheticLonelyGuy” and “Just4Sex” say a lot about who you are, how you feel about yourself, and what you’re looking for.

3. The three adjectives.

4. The first sentence in your profile (if we get that far).

Lesson 1: The Profile Picture

This is all about that very first picture we see. The rest of the photos shouldn’t follow all of these suggestions.

These are the DOs for your MAIN profile photo:

1. Headshot that clearly shows you from the shoulders up.

2. Smiling please. No one wants to date a sour puss.

3. Face the camera. No profiles.

4. Make sure the shot is in focus.

5. Recent photo.

6. Look directly into the camera. I realize I violated this with my original profile shot I had up, but there are exceptions to every rule.

These are the DON’Ts:

1. No hats. We want to see your hair or your chrome dome, as the case may be.

2. No sunglasses. We don’t trust you if we can’t see your eyes. How would you feel if you met a woman for a date and she never took off her sunglasses? Would you trust her.

3. Shot of you from far far away. Save that for the second or third photo.

4. No dead animals land or sea. A shot of you in a fishing hat and sunglasses holding up a dead fish does absolutely nothing to ignite the passions in a woman.

5. No photos of yourself in the bathroom. I take self shots a lot, but you’ll never see a bathroom mirror, shower stall or toilet in the background!

To be cont’d…

Originally published on MySpace on December 19, 2008.

Is all really fair in love and war?

I got an email from a good friend the other day. I’ll call him Mitch. The email started out on a very positive note. It started out with, Karma is shining her face on me I guess. The subject: Match.com.

But as always, there are interesting twists and turns when you are speaking of the online dating world.

Mitch’s email to me went on to say that he had just been thinking it was time to cancel his Match.com membership and give it all a rest for a while, because he just wasn’t meeting anyone worthwhile. Then he got an email from Cindy. She winked on a Monday morning, and they exchanged a few emails that day. It seemed she liked “nerdy, shy, intelligent types” (Mitch is), they enjoyed traveling to the same places, and even had the same favorite restaurant.

They arranged to meet for dinner on Wednesday. It all seemed too good to be true.

And it was…

He received an email from Cindy late Monday night, after they had traded emails all day and had planned to meet for dinner.

I would love to post the email verbatim here, but I don’t have permission from Mitch to do that. But here’s my version of it (grammatical errors and all!).

Mitch,

Hey, I’m sorry to have to break it to you, but don’t bother going to our
favorite restaurant on Wednesday – I won’t be there. In fact, I was really never planning to be there.

CONFESSION TIME: I put this profile up on Match and started emailing around to get my boyfriend jealous so that he’d get off his duff after 3 years and propose already, and it worked beautifully.

Sorry you got caught in the crossfires, but the emails had to look real. I guess your radar about my profile being to-good-to-be-true, was dead on. But hey, sometimes a gal’s gotta due what a gal’s gotta due.

If it makes you feel any better, you weren’t the only one I was emailing. Just one of the few I didn’t have to stand up. Happy Holidays!

Cindy <– Her real name because she deserves to be publicly flogged!

WTF Cindy? You used my good friend and a few other innocent bystanders to get your boyfriend to propose to you? And he actually walked right into your trap and proposed? Let me tell you something Cindy, people don’t like to be cornered and given ultimatums. Your boyfriend proposed to you under duress because he thought it was the only way he could keep you. Well guess what, if he’s not a dumbass he’ll wake up one day soon and kick you to the curb. Who wants to spend the rest of their life with a manipulative woman who acts like she’s still in high school? Or maybe you’re both dumbasses and you just saved my friend Mitch from a disaster. Good riddance.

The moral of the story? People misrepresent themselves online all the time to get what they want. And they don’t give a shit about you, because you’re just a fictitious persona they came across on Match.com.

P.S. My friend Mitch is not curled up in a fetal position because of this little incident. It’s just one of the many landmines of online dating. He was suspicious from the beginning.

I owe Ms. K a blog from my “Blogging for Dollars” fundraiser. She requested a blog on “Single Life in Portland.” Well if that ain’t a loaded topic!

Of course my mind immediately jumped to the topic of dating, not just being single in Portland. And I am an expert on dating in Portland, not something one usually announces in a public forum like this. But what’s a little girl talk between friends, eh?

Let’s get our terms straight first, shall we?

Single: only one in number; unique; pertaining to the unmarried state.

Bollocks! I am not “only one in number!” I have a load of close friends. “Unique,” absolutely. “Unmarried,” well duh!

Let’s get one thing straight: nowhere in the definition does it say “lonely.” Besides, I have three kids, heaps of friends, and Lili the Wonder Pug, not to mention an entire cabinet full of very good wine.

Dating: a person with whom one has such a social appointment or engagement.

If that’s the definition of dating then I’ve been doing it all my life! Is that really the definition of dating?

Dating: an engagement for an entertainer to perform.

Now that’s more like it! A first date is like an audition. I’m always wondering if I’m going to get a callback.

Online Dating: When I typed in “online dating” at Reference.com, I got the following:

They have no definition of “online dating,” but they sure know how to market it!

If you’ve been a blog reader for a while you know I have tried most every traditional online dating website, as well as some non traditional dating “sites” like Fry’s Home Electronics. One of my work colleagues who is new to the online dating scene recently asked me about my online dating experiences, and I found myself telling horror stories! Don’t we all? But, in reality, I have met some of the most interesting guys (and even one woman, who remains my friend today) on these online sites.

It’s a numbers game. And it takes patience.

(I do have recent horror stories about eHarmony though, and their new “relaxed matching” fiasco. That will be in a blog to follow.)

Portland is a fantastic city to be single in, to be dating in, to be married in. When people come to Portland they always ask me for recommendations of where to go and what to do. I have lived here almost 20 years, and I love to explore every nook and cranny of this city.

When I go out with friends, these are my top picks of places to go (I will add links later when I have time):

I could go on and on. These are just some things I’ve done in the past month. You don’t have to be single to enjoy Portland.

A blog for Jim, who requested the topic of “Emotional Monogamy,” in my Blogging for Dollars (fundraising for Relay for Life) challenge.

When I was 10 years old my mom used to drive my sisters and I up to San Francisco to visit my grandparents. We often drove through the Haight & Ashbury area, and I would press my hands and nose against the car window with wide-eyed wonder and plead, “Please let me get out and walk with them! Please!”

It was 1972.

Then the ’80′s came and the hippies were replaced by Madonna wannabes.

I dressed the part: the torn shirts, wild hair, and dramatic eye makeup, but on the inside I was still thinking about those hippies on Haight & Ashbury. I identified with them and their free loving attitudes, and surmised I had been born 10 years too late.

1980-1984: I attended San Diego State University, the complete antithesis of Haight & Ashbury, and felt like a child looking through the plastic packaging at the land of Barbie and Ken.

When I graduated from college I moved back to the Bay Area and shared a house with three of my high school friends, and we created the closest thing to commune living as you can in the suburbs of sophisticated Saratoga, California. We not only shared a house, but we shared a common belief, that openly loving each other was the only way to live.

I have been married twice since that time in Saratoga, and both times I had no problem being sexually monogamous. However, I constantly struggled with the concept of emotional monogamy, that is, being restricted to only having a deep and meaningful emotional connection with one person at a time. It seemed so unnatural to me. But jealousy rears its ugly head when people are insecure.

I am an openly loving person, and my friendships run deep. I have intense emotional connections with my core group of friends, and I’m not about to give that up. I have an equal number of male and female friends, and each one of them satisfies something in my soul.

So, the real question for me is, is there someone out there who can meet all of my emotional needs? I doubt it. Problem is, that’s what we all expect from our partners. We expect that person to be our everything. It’s unrealistic.

We are a nation of posers if you ask me. Everyone’s trying to give the outward appearance of being monogamous, but statistics say that 80% of those claiming to be sexually and/or emotionally monogamous are actually sneaking around behind their partner’s backs. Why? Because monogamy is a choice not a natural predication.

It is hard to choose emotional monogamy with the Internet at your finger tips 24 hours a day. We exchange emails and text messages like handshakes. The line has been eternally blurred.

We all try so hard to fit into this pre-defined society we live in, and wonder why we fail. The world is changing my friend. Look around you. People are redefining relationships every day.

When I die I want my obituary to say, “She loved.”