Making a fool of oneself ...

When my wife moved out, I suddenly felt very lonely. Like many men, I had much fewer friends than my wife has. I had let her handle our social life, and "our" friends were really *her* friends, and I was uncertain how many of them it was appropriate for me to contact. Of course, I had colleagues at work (although that was a very small circle, given that our business is quite literally "3 guys in a garage"), and I am a very active member in my church. But I had always put my marriage ahead of any outside friendships, and never been attracted to such "manly" pursuits as barcrawling or attending football games. Like the old jazz song says: "Don't get around much anymore". How does one "get back in circulation"?




So far, I have been expanding my church activities, going to the buddhist meditation circle and the men's group. Both of these have the potential to work towards building a circle of friends, but are unlikely to lead to meeting women to date.

Applying the engineer's mode of thinking, I have joined Match.com, a "social networking" website designed to introduce you to a pool of people interested in meeting new people to date. I feel like I have barely dipped my toes in that pool, so it is far too early to form any opinions on its effectiveness.

I did earlier try another such site, called Chemistry.com, which was a complete loss. It seemed designed to accommodate very fearful women, and provided no way to take active control and meet people. They would give you introductions to 5 other members of the appropriate gender, most of which lived at least an hour's driving away, and none of which ever responded to contact that I initiated, other than to say "No thanks". And in this system, that was the end of any opportunity to reach them. There was no way to search their database. So I got out of there. The Match.com system is much better designed. There are actually hundreds of people in the appropriate age range within the local area, and a good search function.

This moves you to the next hurdle: You have to put yourself out there, and be willing to face rejection. For those of us who have never been employed in a sales job, it takes some time to adjust to the 95%+ odds of rejection. I was never any good at this when I was young, and I must confess that it does not seem a whole lot easier at age 59 than it did at age 19 or 29.

I have observed that it is quite challenging to write a good personal profile. It should be truthful, and at the same time "put one's best foot forward". It is a great opportunity for self-examination: If I were the person I want to meet, and I saw this profile page, would I want to meet this person? And if the answer is "probably not", is that a problem with the person or with the description? Am am finding many parts of myself that seem in need of improvement. And ultimately, I think there is a great deal of hope in being able to see that.

I have also noticed that many people are doing obviously stupid things:

- One woman who gave her age as 50+ had pictures that portrayed a Russian blonde apparently no more than 25 years old. It would seem obvious that this can go nowhere: Any man attracted by the youthful portrayal would run away when discovering that the reality is different from the advertisement.
- I think the same applies to people who post no photos at all. I expect immediately that if they won't show themselves, they must have something to hide. In fact, I tend to study the pictures carefully and try to discern personality traits from the clothing people are wearing, or from the situations depicted in the photos: Vacation photos from Tahiti, or family pictures with their grown children.
- One woman (who also had no photo) had a main profile that said "I really do not believe in the idea of trying to describe myself in 200 words or less. And it should be fewer, not less." That was all she said. She must be wondering why nobody contacts her.