Note: This is the first of five parts.
I accidentally entered the online dating world a few months ago. It’s been a bit like tripping on a root while running in the woods and flying into the air only to think, “Hmm, flying is fun.”
It’s all my housemate’s fault, really. He went on Match.com some months ago, and after a few days of receiving email from men and realizing he’d checked the wrong box on his profile, he checked the correct box and started getting daily emails from women.
From across the room, he told me all about his daily matches. He was usually laughing, and he was making it all seem fun.
So, one morning, on a whim, I went to Match.com just to take a quick little peek.
When you get there, though, you don’t just see a selection of men who are available to you; you see questions that you are prompted to answer, and so, I dutifully answered them. I listed my favorite local places, my favorite books and movies, and then I wrote a statement about myself. The next thing I knew, I was paying $63.47 for a three-month Match subscription.
In a flood, I started getting my own emails, but I didn’t see anything to laugh about.
Okay, it was a bit fun to feel like you had a window into the world of all these single guys and could kind of shop around. But the build-up of emails in my inbox was a serious distraction, and figuring out how to respond made me anxious.
I was only receiving email from men I would never date—men whose profiles included photos of them sitting on motorcycles or with beards down to their knees, for instance.
I felt I needed to respond to each and every one of them, and I didn’t know what to say. I agonized about it. Each new email from a guy who didn’t interest me put a new heaviness on my soul. I asked my housemate and friends what to do, and they said, “Do nothing. You don’t have to respond to them!”
I heard it enough times that I believed it, and, well, that was freeing. I simply deleted the unwanted requests. Bye-bye.
First online dating problem solved.
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