Online Dating - Pros and Cons

I frequently rail about online dating: the men aren't sincere, the men are only looking to see how many women they can have interested in them at one time, the men say they want relationships but they really don't, and on and on. (Yeah, okay, these are gross generalizations.)

But there is one benefit to online dating. Before you ever lay eyes on a man face-to-face, you know something about him. Okay, you think you know something about him.

You probably know some basics, like educational level, number of kids, whether he's ever been married, occupation. You know an approximation of his height, although my experience is men tend to state the height they were at age 45, before their spines started compressing. (I've been out with plenty of men who said they were 6'0" tall but who stood eye-to-eye with me when I was wearing flats.) And unless his photos show him always in a ball cap, you have some idea of the extent of his male pattern baldness.

But you don't know whether he drools, whether he knows how to chew without his entire meal falling onto his shirt front, whether he says "y'know" or "like" every fifth word. You don't know whether he hates his mother and is going to take it out on you. You don't know if he's all about acquisition and will totally ignore you once he's got you on the line. (Oh, man, I just described EEFFH, didn't I?)

My point is that you go into the first meeting with some knowledge, however flawed, and some sense of possibilities.

Why am I thinking about this today? Because I met someone on Saturday night. Face-to-face, thanks to dear friends, without any foreknowledge, without any expectations. And saw him again on Sunday night, again thanks to dear friends, and this time with the foreknowledge that this is a really nice man who is thoughtful, considerate, funny, fun, intelligent, and caring. Wow! Truly, I wasn't sure such a creature existed — an over-50 single man who possesses those traits. (Again, apologies to the Traveler and others who are reading here and who possess those traits but simply didn't light my fire or I theirs.)

He doesn't live nearby, and maybe that's a good thing. Maybe if something is to develop, it will develop slowly over time, as opposed to the things that start online and seem to go from zero to bed in 60 seconds.