by Heather Foster

Created on: February 23, 2010

We see and hear commercials every day from online dating sites that claim you can find your soul mate through their site, for a price. Just join up and meet ‘scientifically chosen’ matches that fit your personality profile. You have a great chance of finding the perfect mate.

Taken in by the hype and trying their ‘services’ on a free weekend turned up a great many potential matches. However, just when the guided communications got halfway finished the majority of potential matches cancelled contact for lack of a picture not being posted. When you don’t have a picture to post it makes things rather difficult, but having a picture to show them potential matches can also present problems.

The lesson learned from the adventures in attempted online dating varied, widely. Contact initiated with one match resulted in a very interesting phone call. Interesting might be a tame term for the information presented during that contact, bizarre might fit the bill better. It seems the contact was backpedaling at light speeds and thinking of every possible weird scenario he could to test my tolerance for the strange ‘history’ presented. Being a writer with a finely tuned sense of the bizarre, playing along to see how far the stories would go became a game. The weirder the scenario the more interesting the game became. After that one phone call and a couple of emails the contact stopped. One last email to him told him I understood his reticence and held no hard feelings, saying nothing about the veracity of his tales.

The second contact actually started out quite pleasantly and the common experiences and interests were intriguing. There was more conversation with this potential match and things were humming along quite well until he got the photo emailed to him. Since that time there has been no further contact, making it crystal clear that honesty only went just so far. It seems that, like most men I’ve met, he was looking for someone closer to a pinup girl than a real person. The cutting of contact stung just a bit but then people are often shallow when seeking companionship and end up looking for great looks and ignoring personality and intelligence.

After those experiences I’ve decided that I’ll get a cat. Searching online for companionship and a possible long-term relationship is for the birds. Cats don’t hold a person’s physical appearance against them. In that aspect they are much more honest than humans since a person’s outward looks don’t matter. Personality means much more to a cat because how you treat them is much more appealing than your clothes or features. They are more concerned with affection, food, a clean litter box and pleasant company. Yes, cats are much better at honesty than people and easier to housebreak too.

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