Dating idiocy

I've resisted writing about dating here, because a lot of dating posts end up unhelpful, and actually hurtful, even if they're not about anyone specific. If you try to give advice to single people, you end up making generalizations that are nearly cruel.

For instance, if you are a guy and you say, "Well, girls don't look for nice guys," it's insulting to the girls who do try to meet nice guys, but have trouble meeting them, or are constantly meeting self-proclaimed "nice guys" who are really not very nice. If you are a girl and say, "Well, guys are all jerks," you are obviously insulting a lot of nice guys who try their best and are continually shot down. (And I do happen to know a lot of nice people who have bad luck dating.)

But getting to my point...one of the modern dating conundrums is, "Why doesn't internet dating work as well as it should?" Obviously it DOES work to a point. We've all known people who met that way. But since people who do internet dating can get more dates, and more quickly, it seems like it should statistically work more often -- especially since you get to read entire checklists about people's personalities.

But this may be exactly the reason it doesn't work, according to an article published this weekend in the New York Observer.

The article interviews people who, when going down a list of women or men, will reject them based on things like what their favorite movie is, or favorite book. One guy says that if they put The Breakfast Club rather than Sixteen Candles, they don't know what they're talking about.

This is a reason that sometimes meeting someone in person works better...because the general sense you get of someone, the interaction and level of compatibility, ends up being more important than what they put down for favorite song. But if you are going through thousands of ads, sometimes you start looking for a way to narrow the field. Unfortunately, sometimes you weed out people by accident because of stereotypical beliefs you hold.

It is good to reject someone if their values and political views are at odds with yours. And yes, there are valid "red flags" and dealbreakers. But rejecting someone over a favorite song? Hmmm.

A few years ago I had dinner with college friends, and all of them were either in a relationship or had recently been in one with someone whom they never would have "met" online, because that type of person who wouldn't have met their checklist. In one case, the guy was dating a woman 15 years older than he was, and he really was happy with her. In the second, a woman had just dated a man 8 years younger than she was.

But they never would have met their lovers on-line. This guy would not have put his age parameters up to 15 years older if he was on-line. Sometimes it has to do with more than just a checklist, although there are some valid things you need in common.