Match.com, eHarmony, Zoosk, Chemistry.com, and PerfectMatch.com are ranked as the top five dating sites on the Internet. Many of us look askance at sites like these; what kind of desperate person goes to these sites to find a date? How often do those situations work out anyway?
In a sense, these are a form of a blind date, right? And we all know how those turn out.
Most people would look at a blind date as either you are being set up with someone undesirable to others or that you agreeing to this smacks of desperation on your part. Many times, both parties go into a blind date this way, and it puts a damper on a potential relationship. Both people just want to get it over with and move on to more reliable ways of finding a mate, like bar hopping. Oh, wait.
Think about your dating history. When I was in high school, my dating pool was basically the girls in my school.
We didn’t have social networking back then, and interaction with kids in other schools was very limited. Since all these girls knew me from my horrid middle school years, I really had zero chance at anything meaningful.
In college, the horizons expanded dramatically. Here was a fresh batch of women (not girls…WOMEN!) who knew nothing about that terrible moment in 8th grade or that horrible outfit my mom made me wear in 10th grade for pictures or the legendary zit from 11th grade. There were so many WOMEN in college that the odds were favorable to find someone who might like you.
But how would you meet these WOMEN? Sometimes you would know somebody who would know somebody else who could set you up on a… blind date.
Or you would head out for a night on the town to meet WOMEN, which essentially was like speed dating. If you met a WOMAN who deigned to speak to you, you didn’t have much time to impress her before she moved on.
Once you get a job out of college, you are now in a new position: possibly a new town where you know nobody. How will you meet people?
You certainly can’t date someone from work. Will you get set up with someone’s sister? The tragic possibilities are endless.
So many of these situations are just different forms of a blind date. Why are we so petrified of them? I speak from experience since that’s how I met Michelle.
My cousin Marlys went to college with my mother-in-law Mary. She wrote Mary in her Christmas letter way back in 1996 (my first year at NRHEG) that she had a young cousin who had just gotten a teaching job nearby, and if one of Mary’s daughters (apparently, it didn’t matter which one) was available, here was my phone number and address in New Richland.
We were able to get together on December 30, 1996, for our first date, and the rest is history. I freely admit I was intimidated when I first saw Michelle. She had this black leather jacket and flowing blonde hair, and I figured that here was a woman who was way too good looking for a guy whose face is made for radio.
We went to George’s for supper and then watched a movie. Something really clicked, and I knew that here was a WOMAN that could be my lobster (sorry, Friends reference).
I know it’s cliché, but I really knew on that first date that Michelle and I were a perfect match. After all, she had really good grammar when she spoke; who wouldn’t fall in love with that?
They say that love is blind, so a blind date would seem an appropriate mechanism for finding love. Seventeen years later, I would have to agree!
Word of the Week: This week’s word is ugsome, which means dreadful or loathsome, as in, “He thought for sure his blind date would be ugsome until he saw the ravishing beauty step through the door.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!