Pitfalls of Internet Dating


Jeanne, new to the wonders of computers, loved to browse internet dating sites, with me frequently at her side. We talked about opening an account for her, but she was wary, in part because negotiating websites was intimidating, but also the thought of creating a profile was daunting.

I shot a series of profile photos and she selected the totally girly one with a spray of pink roses under her chin, which I popped onto my inactive Match.com profile, to give her an idea of how her page would appear. She continued to balk at setting up her own account so I gave her my password and changed the defaults to browse invisibly. She was off and running.

One day I received an email from some guy named Ron, wanting to meet for coffee. He liked her photo and profile. Oh oh. Make that her photo and MY profile. In classic romantic comedy fashion I forwarded the email to HER, phoned her to say “you’ve got mail,” and logged onto Match.com to change the browser visibility, inadvertently changed while she was trying to log out. Ya gotta love the newbies.

Jeanne was atwitter. What to do? What to do?

“Just respond.”

Problem there. Correspondence on Match.com is encoded until such time one’s personal email, phone, etc. is divulged. I became part of a ménage a trios (totally unknown to him) forwarding new mail so she could log onto the dating site to respond. Then I’d get a reply which I’d forward to her, and off we’d go again. It was a perfect set-up for miscommunication.

They met for coffee. Jeanne explained to Ron the unusual circumstances involved. I can only surmise that it all sounded fishy to him. Was she married, or something?

My profile talked about by being a tomboy (she’s not,) born into a family of boys (she has all sisters,) a love of hardware stores (not her,). You get the drift.

They dated a bit although he seemed particularly cautious according to Jeanne. Ya think? It never really sunk in to him that it was her photo but my words. Come to think of it, I never actually met him. He took her to Home Depot one afternoon for a lengthy browse of the store, (absolute torture for her and an especially humorous visual to me. Did she feign interest in the merchandise? Rich.)

Moral: There are whacky stories out there. Some of them are true. 


Comments

Janice said…
Ha! That is a funny tale. I've never been brave enough to try internet dating.
Fri Feb 01, 09:54:00 PM
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