Rethinking online dating

I’ve had a profile up for a few months now.  At first I was hesitant to try online dating, thinking that setting up a profile was admitting that there wasn’t any other way for me to meet someone.  After all, I’m still young and I’d like to think that I’m not terrible to look at.  I tend to make people laugh, although it’s not by using jokes so much as they tend to be amused by how completely oblivious I am. 

My other big concern was what kinds of people I would run into online.  I wasn’t sure what I would see, but I worried that all the guys online would be the stereotypical 30-something living in his mom’s basement who never showers, with no job and no prospects, but could claim success in life because he is the DM for a Dungeons and Dragons game every Sunday.  Although, to be fair, I totally did date a guy who prided himself on his extensive knowledge of D&D and he ran a number of games throughout our two-plus year relationship.  It wouldn’t be all that bad, but I didn’t want to end up with a bunch of creepy guys with no social skills messaging me.

Now that I’ve had time to get used to the online dating thing, I’ve discovered that there are far more guys that irritate me for one reason or another than those that I am attracted to.  I’m really not sure if I’m just being too picky or what.   I mean, people tell me that I should stay true to myself and have some standards, but then I tell people what some of the basics are that I’m looking for and they balk and say I’m asking for too much.

Is it really all that bad to want to see guys put up pictures of themselves smiling?  Or what if I want to ask that they use correct grammar and punctuation?  How about proper use of capitalization?  Once people hear that I’ve totally ignored people just because they write poorly, they give me The Look.  You know what I’m talking about: the expression that says, “You are crazy, but I really don’t know how to tell you without you going berserk.” 

I’m so conflicted.  If they can’t take the time to write a decent profile for themselves that is aimed, theoretically, at their future significant other, what does that mean for the effort that they will put into a relationship?  If they don’t even bother to write correctly, what makes me think that they are going to bother putting in any significant time in a relationship?

I often see the profile pictures of the guys messaging me and think, “Is this it? Is this the best I can do?”  On one hand, I like to think that means that I have some modicum of self-esteem, but I also wonder if I am being too judgmental.  I feel like I’m being reasonable, but I just don’t know.  After all, how can you be objective about your own opinion?

I recognize that I can be incredibly vain sometimes.  However, I also like to think that I can do better than a guy with nothing beyond a high school education and a minimum wage job.  I understand that for some people that can be incredibly fulfilling because it might be exactly what they want to do with their lives.  However, even though they can support themselves now with jobs like that, if they are thinking of the future and what they want, minimum wage really isn’t going to let them do much in the long run.  One of my long-term dreams is to have a house and a dog.  If my significant other is only working a minimum wage job, that won’t really let them contribute much towards that goal.

A lot of the guys who message me seem genuinely nice and like they could be fun to hang out with, but I’m just not attracted to them for one reason or another.  Then I end up second-guessing myself because those are the only guys messaging me.  Maybe my opinion of what I should be looking for is too high.  To use an example from college, I think that I’m about a 6 on a 1-10 scale with 1 being “PLEASE wear a bag over your head” and 10 being “HOLYCRAPYOUAREAGODDESS!”  When I told my friends that I thought that I was around a 6, they said that they agreed.

We later decided that people generally end up with someone around their own number, give or take 1-2.  That means that I could end up with someone who is anywhere from a 4-8.  I think that I’d like to end up with a 7.  That’s typically the kind of guy I end up going for, but I end up getting messaged by guys that I think are more of a 2-3.  They aren’t tragic, exactly, but they also aren’t exactly the kinds of guys I picture girls tripping over themselves for.

Is this typical of everyone’s experience?  Old Man Sharrett has also run into these issues, so it isn’t just on the girl’s side of things.  Perhaps we should stop trying so hard.  Take things less seriously.  Regardless, this probably means that I should take a hiatus from the world of online dating.