A Pro at Online Dating with no Success

In early Spring of 2004, I reluctantly came back to Virginia after my tour oversea. My three year tour on Okinawa was fabulous. I have many fond memories of Okinawa, to include quite a few romantically related memories. I had my share of island romances—not with Okinawans, but with other Marines (of my rank) who were on deployments to Okinawa.

I was certainly used to dating Marines. My high school sweetheart joined the Marine Corps and frankly, prior to 2004, I had dated only Marines. My last island romance left me with a broken heart, and the sense that, it was time to date outside of Marines.

When I arrived to Northern Virginia and was semi-settled in, I began to consider my options for meeting men outside of the Marine Corps. My friends and I went out often…however, we also all went out as a big group of Marines. It became obvious that no man alive would dare infiltrate a group like what we had. I would need some other means.

Out of boredom, I turned to the Internet and came across some adds for online dating sites and decided to try it out. I joined Tickle and later down the road I also joined Yahoo Personals. Again, this was over three years ago…I peeked at the Yahoo Personal Ads the other day and saw pictures of guys from when I was active on the site. Just one of those things that makes you wonder about online activities.

Anyway, my friends all thought I was a little crazy for doing the online dating thing. I figured I had nothing to lose. I wrote a very specific profile of what I was looking for and who I was. I wish I still had my profile information—of what I can recall, it was quite candid and direct. I know I had something written in there about not being interested in men with spaghetti arms and beer guts…

I rapidly learned the pitfalls of online dating and the necessary methods to make the process more efficient. We’ll discuss what those are in future posts and our upcoming Blog Talk Radio Show.

For now, we’ll just say that I went on many, many, many first dates and barely any second dates. Out of probably a hundred or so men I had some sort of contact with, I ended up meeting no one I wanted to date regularly.

I did the online dating thing for probably 6-9 months, along with setting-up a MySpace profile. I stopped for about two years, and a little while ago, I started dabbling with meeting men online through Craigslist’s Personals. Actually, I also tried eHarmony for a few weeks

The last few months have confirmed what I had deduced…online dating is NOT for me. I’ve become a pro at it…I believe it’s an effective way to date and I know it works for many people, just not for me. I’m simply way too, into, having real physical chemistry with someone I date. I’ve met many wonderful, nice, smart, sweet and great guys that I’ve had to turn away because they just didn’t ‘do it’ for me and there was no chemistry. No amount of personality tests or looking at pictures, emailing or even talking on the phone guarantees in-person chemistry.

Here is something interesting though, I still email and chat with men I’ve met online three years ago, but actually never met in real life. They are all mostly in NY…which isn’t that far from here. I often ask myself what’s the point in maintaining contact with them and I never can come up with anything that makes sense, but at the same time—I enjoy the sporadic contact. Who knows!?!

The compilation of the last three years and a few things I’ve noticed and observed is what lead me to develop Why Go Solo. If the solution you’re looking for isn’t there—CREATE IT.