Operation Online Dating Profiles: Part II

 

First, again with the disclaimer: I'm not looking for romance. But Judy from the Upward and Onward blog and I have a new hobby worth writing about a second time---checking out profiles at a dating site for seniors. I know what you’re thinking. We both live in Michigan, both viewing the same pool of guys and sooner or later we’re going to have a cat fight over a guy who intrigues us both enough to actually sign up and send that poor unsuspecting fellow a ‘flirt.’ That's not going to happen and I'll tell you why. She’s a feline person, I’m a dog person. She smokes, I don’t. She’s a church goer, I’m allergic to churches. These areas of incompatibility are deal breakers on my side of the state. Therefore, guys who smoke and love going on church mission trips and/or have cats won’t get a second look from me which means Judy’s pool of candidates is much larger than mine. Although when I told her about the guy with the 15 cats, she didn’t seem all that interested. I wonder why. But I found out that even dog loving guys can be prejudice against me bringing sweet Levi the schnauzer into a relationship. Profile guy Exhibit A has two dogs of his own and thinks traveling with anymore pets than that would be too much trouble. So, he has a ‘no pets’ clause in his profile. The jerk.

I strongly suspect I’m also not compatible with a guy who is looking for a woman into AFHV. I don’t even know what that means and I’m afraid to do a Google search for fear I’ll land on an X-rated site that will send me pop-up ads for the next two years. Decoding the dating profiles is getting easier though. “Very loving” equals “I’m horny.” “Love long walks on the beach” means “I will do romantic things until I get you in the sack.” “Seeking a woman who likes to hug, kiss and hold hands as much as I do” equates to “I’m very horny. Did I mention horny?” Some guys have sweet ways of saying they are horny, like: “Falling in love is like riding a bike. You never forget how. I have a bicycle built for two with a vacant seat.” Ladies, can we all do a collective sigh right now? That's a great line, internet profile guy. Much better than a guy who, in his profile photo, is holding a sign that reads, “Wish this was still America!” No decoding necessary here. He is saying: “I’m a Tea Party guy who hates Obama. Stay away, liberal ladies!” He doesn’t have to ask me twice. I back-buttoned off his profile at warp speed. Maybe I should have bookmarked him for Judy? NASCAR guys and those looking for spontaneity can count me out, too. My neck gets too tired when it has to spin around and around, following the action on the track and being spontaneous left my DNA during those seventeen years I was a caregiver to my dad, then to my husband. Now, I reside in the land of lists and schedules and I’m happy with that. And speaking of decoding, I’m beginning to wonder if “willing to move” isn’t code for “I live in a run-down shack and would like to upgrade to your place.” Aren’t I the skeptical one!

Profile guys can be just as picky as we women, though. One guy doesn’t want a ‘flirt’ from any woman who doesn’t post a photo. Oops! I think did that once quite by accident. Another guy---Mr. Kind he calls himself---doesn’t want a woman over 150 pounds. A guy with one leg, who claims he's never had a serious relationship in his entire life, doesn’t want a woman who will try to change him. Okay. Back button to you, too, Mr. Happy-To-Me who probably loses women because he won't give up midnight runs to the liquor store even though he's already too drunk to find his prosthetic leg in his hoarder's house. I am not making this up. This guy exists and I doubt he could be trained to put the toilet seat back down, another deal breaker for me. Correction/confession: I did make up the part about the hoarder's house. He was a "rolling stone" so probably he doesn't own much of anything, what with his traveling all over the world with the job that he lost with the leg. My widow friend who is into fixer-uppers would love this guy.

Finding a travel partner is a big requirement for a lot of profile guys as is finding a women who like motorcycles and boats. (I don’t even like to get into cars with women in my age bracket unless I know they’ve had their eyes checked recently and I can see that their cars don't look like they've been used to play bumper cars at an amusement park. Getting on a motorcycle with an old guy when I don’t have access to his DMV records isn’t going to happen.) One sweet guy was looking for a woman to take fishing and “she doesn’t have to bait the hooks or handle the fish” so long as she "pretends she is having fun on the water." How cute is that? If he didn’t have a cat, I would have bookmarked the guy for someday, maybe. (I don't hate cats, but they've been known to make me break out in hives and have trouble breathing.) I nearly bookmarked another guy who was just looking for a pen pal but a fellow blogger in the comment section over at Judy’s blog pointed out that pen pal guy is probably in prison. Oh gosh, I am so naive! That thought never crossed my mind.

Judy and I lost our husbands in the same month of the same year and I have to wonder why we are both, now, drawn to spending time looking at old-duffers' on-line dating profiles. We both tell ourselves it’s just something amusing to do with our time but is there something deeper going on in our subconscious minds? Are we opening up to the possibility of finding love again? She says she compares everyone to her beloved Fred. For me, I don’t so much compare profile guys to my husband---he was truly unique---I compare their likes and wants to my likes and wants and it seems like an impossible task to find compatibility. I was twenty-seven when I met Don after a lot of years of looking for Mr. Right. If I started looking for Mr. Right: The Second Edition, I’d probably find him in time for one or the other of us to help our family pick out a casket, so why even bother with the process? And then I look at my older brother. Widowed a few years before me, he is now in the best relationship of his life. Behold the wonders of senior dating! ©