At the risk of exposing myself to all kinds of potential ridicule, I’d like to broach the subject of dating on the internet.

These days I’m meeting more and more people who have met their current girlfriend/hook-up/husband/life partner/whatever online. Since these folks are all well-adjusted individuals (near as I can tell), why shouldn’t this very eligible bachelor enjoy the same romantic success as them? With this as my mantra, I took a deep breath and pointed my web browser to the uncharted territory of eHarmony’s home page.

Short answer: It’s not for me.

Long answer: New registrants on eHarmony get a free personality profile before they’re asked to fork over a hundred and something dollars to continue using the service. I wasn’t really paying attention to my results, due to my growing annoyance at the smarmy words of encouragement on each new screen:

“Don’t think too hard about your answers… It’s meant to be fun!”
“We know it’s hard to rate yourself… You’re doing great!”
“Keep it up, you’re on your way to meeting highly compatible matches!”

Jesus, what is this, Dianetics?!

Anyway, at the end of this ordeal you’re presented with a list of potential suitors (suitresses?) and invited to enter your credit card info for the privilege of contacting them. It was at this point that I removed myself from the eHarmony database.

Call me old fashioned, but given the choice between that visceral thrill that you get when you realize there’s mutual interest from some attractive stranger and the cold, clinical match of x and y values on a database somewhere, well…

It also didn’t help that the matches I got were all too old and sounded entirely too dull for me. Even after I quit some woman still tried to contact me through my expired account. Sorry to disappoint you, “Diane from Moncton”, but that’s not the way I roll…

Coming up in Part II: Lavalife and more!