9 years ago today, I wrote a post about why internet dating didn’t work on my old blog, Soul2Soul. It’s funny looking back.
I’ve tried internet dating SO many times. So far, I haven’t met Mr Right but I did meet my best mate Rob and several other male friends through Match.com. I even have a female friend who I met through internet dating – she was a friend of someone I dated for a while and I met her at his birthday party.
But I think internet dating has one HUGE flaw. My main objection to it is that it’s about box-ticking. I have to specify how tall my ideal man should be, whether or not he smokes, how much he drinks a week, whether he can already have children and whether he wants children in the future. I can choose his ethnicity, choose his job, choose his religion…But human relationships don’t work like that. We don’t form connections on the basis of what boxes on our tick list somebody else ticks.
If I formed friendships using the same criteria that internet dating encourages me to use, I would not be friends with several of my closest friends…. My point is – we don’t choose our friends on the basis of their height, looks, job, wealth or so why would we think we could choose our life partner that way?
I had forgotten all about that blog post until this morning when I checked my “memories” section on Facebook. I was convinced at the time that internet dating did not work, yet I persisted, as I didn’t know how else to meet anyone. It seems strange looking back: 9 years later, I am happily married to someone I met on internet dating.
But actually, there was a lot of truth in that old blog post. It was strangely prophetic. My soulmate doesn’t tick many of my boxes: I wanted someone taller than me, for example, and he isn’t. When I first saw him, there wasn’t immediate attraction, but half an hour later, when the conversation was really flowing and he was making me laugh, I realised that I really liked this man. By the end of our date, I really liked him. I wasn’t bothered that he was an inch or too shorter.
Back in that first blog post of 2012, I suggested choosing a partner the way you’d choose a friend and that’s exactly what I ended up doing and it’s working out very well indeed.
So pleased you found happiness and love. I’ve given up as I can’t imagine ever meet he right one when I see so many quite awful people!!
Anyway enough of that I was keen to touch base as you had recently followed us Share and Repair and you are running a fab lending scheme – brilliant! I hope it’s going well. We now have a fab shop in the centre of Bath and people are sooooo enthusiastic about it. When it’s all over come and visit! Lorna
Thanks Lorna! I would love to come and visit! My husband proposed to me in Bath – in the Roman Baths, in fact, at about 9 o’clock at night when there was no-one else around. Completely unexpected too! I don’t think even he knew he was going to do it. Anyway, we have been saying since then that we would love to return to Bath so we will definitely come and see you when we do! I think there’s a lot of links with lending schemes and repair schemes – in fact, I’ve just made contact with the local repair cafes here. Hoping we could foster links with them too once the pandemic is over!