This is the fifth and final installment of my Match.com Dating Chronicles. For the First, Second, Third, and Fourth chapters, click on the links.
At dinner one evening, my friend Jackie, the gal who urged me to try Match.com, told me she had the perfect Match man for me. “You’re smart, and he’s a professor at Harvard. I think you two would hit it off,” she said, instructing me to go straight home and leave a message on his profile, which was cunningly titled “Harvardprof.”
She went on to say that her friend had dated Harvardprof, who apparently earned that moniker by teaching an online business course for Harvard. “I love her, but she’s not that smart, y’all,” Jackie said. The friend and Harvardprof were on vacation in Florida and her friend caught the man trolling Match.com while she was taking a shower. And the friend was heartbroken because Harvardprof had dumped her. Hmmm.
Nice guy, huh? And Jackie was right — the friend wasn’t too smart, I think, if she waited around for the jerk to dump her. I went straight home and left this message on Harvardprof’s site:
“I’m the divorced mother of three teenagers, and I run an program for international students, which means I play Mom to another ten teenage boys. I have a crazy Bengal cat and four dysfunctional dogs – a blind dachshund, a three-legged Australian Shepherd, a dachshund with hyperthyroidism, and a neurotic 8-pound dachshund suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. And a Chinese Water Dragon. The python my son used to own escaped.
“My friend said we’d be great together, since you’re a professor and I’m smart. Give me a call.”
Hehe. I never heard from the professor. I think it had something to do with him going back to Gilligan’s Island.
I described my Match.com dating debacles to my therapist, Donna, and said, “I’m not sure why, but online dating is just not for me.”
She tilted her head sideways and gave me a look, a “you’re clearly never going to be a Harvard prof” look, and said, “What is it about Match.com that makes you uneasy?”
So many things bothered me, but the conclusion Donna and I came to that day is pretty much the theme of this blog and what my life has been about since I ditched the addiction to perfection that caused me so much trouble in my marriage. The tag line on the right hand side of this page, about halfway down, says it best:
“You look great naked when you have nothing to hide, when you accept yourself exactly the way you are — right here, right now, flaws, wrinkles, knots, bumps, lumps, bad attitude and all. Be yourself. Who you are is gorgeous; trying to be what you’re not isn’t.
To my way of thinking, online dating makes it very easy to manipulate the image and be what you’re not. “It’s not for you,” Donna said. And she’s right.
That was a year ago. Match.com still tries to tempt me. “It’s okay to look,” the ads taunt. But look at what? A guy who seems smart because he’s a professor at Harvard but is stupid enough to get caught looking while his girlfriend’s in the shower?
I’d rather date Gilligan.