I'll be honest, I was never the smoothest operator in my youth when it came to the opposite sex.
There was the girl who said she liked my hoodie. I replied, "Thanks it's from Gap".
There was the holiday rep in Magaluf, so pretty she made your eyes bleed, who told me this was her last night before flying home. "Lovely, what are you up to when you get back to England?"
There was the wonderful girl at University who, for over a year I thought just wanted to be friends (the women as friends thing is still an excellent way to live your life if your a bloke but it really helps to know which is which).
Thankfully in my twenties the sheer number of single girls was made the odds, even for someone as useless as I, relatively favourable.
But now I'm single in my forties and most women are not single. Being without hair, good looks, co-ordination and charisma means the odds are drastically reduced.
If that wasn't enough, to quote Barbara Streisand in The Way We Were, life in indeed was so much simpler then.
Time hasn't rewritten every line, there are no lines to deliver anymore, it's all profiles and selfies. It's online dating.
It's not like it was in my twenties, when you went to party, had a few to drinks and found yourself talking to someone lovely as if by magic.
Now you put together some honest, realistic but hopefully decent photos of yourself, write a witty, hopefully memorable profile and then start swiping left or right, in the hope someone else swipes right when you do.
That's only the beginning.
Then you go through days, sometimes weeks of striking up a rapport through messaging. Then, only then, if you get through all, you actually go out on a date.
You may be surprised, I know I am, to learn I've actually been out with a few people.
It would seem that having no hair and odd looks may not put everyone off, if you can spell and write a decent sentence.
Here's one thing I have learned in the process. The 'E-Person' is rarely the same as the 'IRL' person.
In many cases, it's the pictures. Looks are not everything, however if there is no attraction, there is little point.
So many profiles feature pictures from a few years ago. It's a bit daft, since nothing will kill a date quicker than finding someone looks NOTHING like their online image. It would be okay if they were actually better looking in real life, but strangely, this is rarely the case.
In fact, I think there should be a new dating law where the offender is made to buy as many drinks of their date's choice until beer goggles make then look a little more like the images in their profile.
Looks of course, are only skin deep though. There are larger challenges.
The first is how we build up a picture of the other person based on what we hope they'll be like, rather than what they are telling us.
They don't tell us of course, an idea emerges from the stream of exchanged messages, but there is still a person forming in the imagination.
It's natural for us all to ignore the facts that contradict what we want to believe, only focusing on the evidence that fits whatever we would like the person to be.
So you get your hopes up, only to find on when the meeting finally comes that, despite them looking pretty much like their pictures (strong start at least) they're not what we thought, not what we hoped, because we read too much into what they were saying and ignored the bits that contradicted it.
Loss aversion is a fundamental part of being human. The longer we have something, the harder it is to let go of it, so sometimes we go to a second, or even third date, simply because we're sure the person online will appear in real life eventually.
They don't.
On the other hand, there's the way we can't be true to ourselves online either.
We're not being dishonest, not even trying to show our better selves.
Sometimes, you naturally respond to what the other person is saying, they bring out different sides of you that may not come across in real life because you haven't explored them enough yet.
Sometimes though, we've created an online persona we truly believe is the real 'me', yet it's more like the person we want to be online, than the person we are.
So I've met someone far more charismatic and uncompromising in person than she was online, almost as if she subconsciously wanted to turn herself down.
Conversely, I've been on dates with people with a rapier wit online, yet nothing to say in person.
Of course, it's fair to say despite the fact I'm honest, almost to a fault, I'm sure some people I've met will tell you I'm far more self-assured online than I am in person. Then again, I guess we all are.
The solution? Simple, don't hang about.
Meet people as soon as you can before the illusion sets in. It's much better to have a few drinks and find there is no spark, than to get attached to an idea that won't happen in real life.
Phone calls work. I never plucked up the courage to ask for a video call, but in a post Zoom world, maybe more will.
That said, I've met some interesting people who have brought out things in me I'd forgotten about and, in some cases, never knew were there. Others have reminded me what I don't want also.
No matter what happens, meeting different people is good thing. Like most leaps forward in science, coming from teams experimenting for something else, yet finding something they weren't looking for, dating lots of people has really good side effects.
You might not agree this is a good thing but someone reminded me I like writing stuff.
Someone took me wild water swimming.
Someone gave me a whole new perspective on the music industry.
Just because sparks don't fly, it doesn't mean you can't get a lot out of if.
At the end of the day though, the only way to really meet people is to meet them.
The problem with online dating is, well, its online.
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