On the other hand....

Not so sure about online dating any more, but then, I'm the one who's actually been doing it. There's no disputing the advantages Bob listed in his post, after all, many of them led me to the dating sites myself. And yet....

These days, when I log on, and I do still log on, I can't escape the feeling that I'm looking at shelves full of ipods: this one has 80GB, this one has a nice screen, this one costs less. Since when do we 'find love' based on features? Or maybe a better way to put it: since when do we really know what we are looking for?

For ages we've assumed that love was the most non-rational thing we did: there was no accounting for it, it just happened. Think of Romeo and Juliet. Now imagine them meeting on a dating site. Romeo would have taken one look at the profile, seen she was from the family of his enemies, and that would have been that. Arguably he would have been better off, but he also would not have fallen in love and, worse still, we wouldn't have much of a play.

Online dating sites would have us believe that love is more rational, more a matter of choice. Something we size up through comparison shopping before making a purchase.

And then there is the attitude of many of the people on the sites. Read the profiles. One after another talks about finding Mr. right, about only wanting serious relationships, not being interested in 'time wasters'. That last one is a favourite of mine. What is a 'time waster'? Presumably someone who dates you for a while and then doesn't make a commitment. But who can know? We may all start out with 'good' (read: serious) intentions. But as you get to know someone, things don't work out. So are you now a time waster?

Think about the mentality that is behind such profiles. You look at each person through one single binary prism: are they partner material?

Don't we lose something here? Aren't there other kinds of relationships that are also possible? And to the extent that one does want a partner, does it really increase the odds if we segment ourselves in one area and zero in on that one thing?

Full disclosure here: I used to think more or less that way myself. The results were painful at the time, though they strike me as kind of funny now. I remember a conversation I had with a woman I met on a site whom I ended up dating for about 6 months. Early in the relationship she asked me what I was looking for. Turned out we were both looking for the same thing: a partner. Hey great, we thought. There's a lot of work done. Now all we have to do is sit back and let nature take its course. Six months later we broke up. If we hadn't had that conversation, we probably wouldn't even have lasted that long.