Ellen Greene

Match.com sent my “Daily 5” every morning and I looked forward to finding the profiles in my inbox. This time I had limited the criteria to men aged 63-72 who lived within 100 miles of San Jose. More realistic, I thought, in terms of who would be interested in me and how far we’d be willing to travel to check each other out.

By this time, I realized how superficial this online dating process was.  In fairness to Match.com , they didn’t hide the fact that they weren’t plumbing our emotional depths in search of matches.  “Like you,” a box next to one man’s photo would exclaim, “he’s not a smoker, he’s the middle child, and he digs dining out.”  Or “like you, he enjoys movies, likes to lift weights, and has a graduate degree.”

Then again, no matter how detailed and honest we try to be in describing ourselves, they’re just words. Some wag compared the self-portraits we provide on dating sites to the list of ingredients on a box of food: Reading the list won’t tell us how the food will taste.

At least this dating service was less controlling than eharmony in that I wasn’t expected to explain why I wasn’t interested in its choices for me. And if I were interested, I could  “wink” or go directly to email.

No way would I wink, regardless of the yellow smiley face and message from Match: “He just winked at you! Out of millions of members, he picked you! Flirt right back with a wink, or even better, an intriguing email!”

“Intriguing” sounded like code for coy and wasn’t my style either.  Instead I sent friendly opening gambits similar to ones I had received, in which the writer highlights a few things in the other person’s profile that struck a cord or that we have in common, followed by a suggestion that we meet or at least chat on the phone.

So how did I decide on whom to contact? What got my attention?

For starters, I immediately discounted men who didn’t include a photo and who had never been married. Not having kids made them suspect but still in the running, while being shorter than I automatically eliminated them. A profile full of tired buzz words like “easy going” and “laid back” and “what you see is what you get,” often accompanied by the faintly misogynistic dislike of “drama,” usually ended up in the slush pile.  A snappy opening could make me receptive to whatever else followed (a personal favorite: “ ‘I went to Stanford, and I want to get married.’ This line worked for me thirty years ago so I’m trying it out again now.“)

Of course it was unfair of me to judge someone on such shallow criteria as his height or creative writing skills. Which is the problem with this process. It reminded me of my Human Resources days and reading resumes. I had to whittle down the stack, so looked for reasons to reject rather than accept. It was a process of elimination, just like reading personal profiles, that resulted in perfectly nice strangers being designated as winners and losers.

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In the privacy of my studio apartment in San Jose, I stared at men’s photos, read what they had to say about themselves, and ruthlessly weeded them out. “Fresh meat” like me was matched with scores of men in the first month of online dating and my subscription to eharmony.com.

Maybe even more than for some other newcomers, given how non-discriminatory I declared myself to be. Any race or nationality is fine by me, I had said. Height is unimportant, too, as are location, education level, and age.

That didn’t last long. I “closed” the match with a 5’7″ man of Arab descent the same day I received it. Ditto the 77 year old who reminded me of my Grandpa Ed and the retired salesman with no college. Facing one’s prejudices is humbling, especially for us mouthy political liberals. But not humbling enough to make me consider meeting these guys for a cup of coffee.

It cut both ways. Men my age often closed matches, too, before we’d even begun to communicate. I figured they were holding out for someone younger, per the opinion of my friend, Katie, a sixty-something veteran of online dating.

“Men can find partners who are ten, twenty years younger. We don’t get as much as a wink from a lot of guys our own age,” she said.

Not that any of us is honest about why we’re not interested in the matches appearing in our inbox each morning. From the list of possible rejections provided by eharmony, we pick innocuous ones like “I’m pursuing another relationship” or “I think the distance between us is too great.” Even from a total stranger, it stings to  receive “I’d rather not say” or “Other” as the reason for lack of pursuit.

The first man to follow up on a match was Larry, a 69-year old psychologist. Experienced on eharmony, he considered the next steps in the process  to be a waste of time (a series of questions  to both, e.g. “Your idea of a romantic get-away would be a week (a) in Paris, (b) in a cottage by the sea, (c) white water rafting, or (d) in the mountains.”). I agreed with him. So we went directly to open communication. And man, did he communicate. Weeks of torrential longing, heavy on what he wanted to do if he ever got his hands on me, and psychobabble so intense that it made me scoff before finally scaring me off.

My book scared off the next man after a month of emails(I wrote about him in a 7/24/2009 post). My house in Mexico gave another man pause, after we’d written back and forth for several weeks and met for dinner in San Francisco.

“I’m too embarrassed to invite you to my house after checking out the photos of yours,” he said. Turns out he lived in semi-finished rooms, was about to declare bankruptcy for the second time in his career as an architect, and had suffered a stroke not long before. “Nurse with a purse” flashed through my mind, and I put an end to us. With brutal speed, via email. I’m ashamed of myself for that cowardice.

I learned a valuable lesson from these first encounters: Don’t spend a lot of time with email banter, and do as my friend Priscilla advised.

“Show and tell sooner rather than later,” she said. “Show your  house in Mexico(www.quintaelena.com) and talk about your book. Let these men know who you are. See how they react. If they can’t deal with a house and a happy marriage, they shouldn’t be dealing with you.”

In November, after a handful of coffee and dinner dates, my subscription expired. I was undaunted, however. Trying my wings had been fun. But eharmony was too restrictive, I thought.

“You can shop for yourself on match.com,” said friend Katie. “Plus there are twice as many subscribers.”

Another one hundred fifty dollars and I was ready for round two.

Online dating II

“Match.com is for dating; eharmony.com is for marriage.” So said my senior pop culture advisor, daughter Jennifer. It was June 2009, and I was ready. Not ready for marriage—why would I ever give up my all-but-free military health insurance and two widow’s pensions (thanks again, Marsh). But definitely ready for a long-term relationship.  I chose eharmony, paid $150 for a six-month subscription, and went to work on my profile.

Stock questions came first: age, height, body type (e.g. slender, regular, stocky, heavy set) eye and hair color, education level, number of children, marital status, income, ethnicity, smoking/drinking habits.  I answered honestly. Why not? Everyone posts under assumed names.

I was naïve and therefore astounded to learn later that men routinely lie about their height and income, women lie about their age and body type, and, according to my nurse practitioner stepdaughter, all of us lie about our smoking and drinking.

“Whatever number of cigarettes and drinks you tell us you have every day, we multiply by three,” she said.

The heart of the profile is a series of incomplete statements. Eharmony offers help to the verbally challenged in the form of checklists to use when filling in some of the blanks. For example, “Ellen’s friends describe her as___________” can be completed with suggestions like creative, perceptive, genuine, thoughtful, intelligent, funny, romantic, and so on. Limit: four. Fair enough; more than that might strain credulity.

“Three of Ellen’s best life skills are ____________,” also includes prompts: “finding pleasure and contentment in simple things; making art and culture an ongoing part of her life; creating romance in a relationship; looking for adventures and unique experiences; achieving personal goals.” This is good news for the computer looking for matches, but bad news for bored profile readers wading through all the self-described culture-seeking,romantic, adventurous high achievers.

For other statements, I was on my own and therefore forced to be more inventive:

-       “The one thing Ellen is most passionate about is _____________”

-       “The three things Ellen is most thankful for are ______________”

-       ‘Other than her parents, the most influential person in Ellen’s life has been                       _____________”

-       “The most important thing Ellen is looking for in a person is _______________”

-       “Ellen typically spends her leisure time _____________”

-       “The things Ellen can’t live without are _____________”

-       “Other than appearance, the first thing you’ll probably notice about Ellen when you meet her is ___________”

-       “The last book Ellen read and enjoyed was _________”

I gave my answers careful thought. Best to choose earnest over clever, I figured; it’s so easy for humor to come up lame. My pop culture advisor agreed.

“Plus truly funny women are a threat,” she added. This from someone who once considered standup comedy as a career. “Men want women to be their audience, not their competition on stage.” She spoke from experience.

After the profile came the highly recommended photos. I put on my best jeans and we headed for the backyard. “Bring Lola,” said Jennifer. “Who can resist an old golden Lab?”

We picked a couple of photos of Lola and me to go with my book jacket “glam shot,” I clicked send, and my package was posted. Ready for perusal by someone I hoped would turn out to be The One. I felt excited, optimistic, and sure of myself. Back in the game, I thought. This will be great.

My first year of online dating ends next week. What do I have to show for it? you might ask.

For starters, not the long-term relationship I seek. The longest relationship I managed so far lasted three months. It crashed and burned when, over the course of 72 hours, my DoD contractor friend moved from talk of his assets and what his kids should inherit to complaints that we “never laugh until we can’t stop.” This from an angst-ridden engineer with a long history of failed relationships and a face no less dour for the $20,000-worth of plastic surgery he had done. But, hey, I’m not bitter.

Another lasted two months; this time I pulled the plug. My financial analyst friend was the strong, silent type all right, but a non-reader as well. I did the heavy lifting conversationally and it wore me out. “The loneliness of monologues,” I’ve heard it described, and I now know how it feels.

Overall, however, I think I have fared quite well. Of the dozen or so men I dated more than once, all came across as considerate good guys. Which made it all the more poignant whenever I closed the door on them.  Mostly for reasons of attitude, I think. They seemed settled in their routines, not open to change or risk, their taste for adventure  much blander than mine. Silicon Valley/Santa Cruz guys for whom an evening in San Francisco was a big deal and best avoided altogether.

A few men quickly checked me off soon after meeting, too. My book scared at least one of them willing to admit it. “I don’t want and am not capable of that level of commitment,” he said. Two others, not as keen on me as I was on them, just disappeared. Both happened to be lawyers, for whatever that’s worth. Sample humor from one of them:

“As a registered Republican, New York Jew, living in San Francisco, I’m probably eligible for a federal protection program,” he said. Ergo the disappearance?

It’s easy to keep hope alive, however. Prospects continue to pop up almost daily. Recent dinners with articulate, thoughtful men have gone well.  Hikes and sails, even with a sworn bachelor obsessing about his sex life, have really been fun. Bottom line: I’ll renew my subscription and stay the course.