Expectations (and mismatch thereof)

I have noticed that there is a very wide range of what expectations people have for what they will get out of "advertizing themselves" on a site such as match.com, ranging from people who expect to find "the one and only" and hope that each contact is "it", to people who expect to receive a stream of contacts from which they can pick the ones they want to have sex with.

For my part, I am not on match.com to look for sex partners. Although I am male, and therefore supposed to be "thinking with the other head", I am also old enough to have picked up some of the traditionally female wisdom that unless you have a relationship and an attraction on a wider basis, there is no point in engaging in ways that are likely to give you hurt as well as hopefully some satisfaction. I experience the world and the people in it through my intellect, and I need to be around people with intelligence and wit and some perspective that is different enough from mine that I learn from the interactions. Among the people I meet who meet those intial qualifications, some will become friends. And maybe, if I am very lucky, one of those friends will be a "soul mate".

I hope to remain open with each person I meet, that this MAY be "the one", although that is not very likely, but it will take a long time of learning to find out whether that is in fact the case, and I hope that even if that level of compatibility turns out not to be mutual, a friendship may still be beneficial to both.

Hey, that sounds like a good thing to add to my Match profile!