Profiling March 6, 2007
Posted by charmingbutsingle in Tales of Online Dating.trackback
Three times recently I have seen men out and about and recognized them from their profiles on online dating sites.
And I’m not alone – Saturday night while I waited for Single Girl to order a drink, she pointed out a man who regularly came up in her own searches.
Two of the men I’ve seen at the cigar bar, proving that perhaps the world is quite too small. Neither of the men were guys I’d spoken with or e-mailed, but one of them I’d saved as “favorite” profile. (I hadn’t opted to message him because his profile indicated that we didn’t have similar socializing habits, and I learned with The Nurse that I needed a guy who wasn’t opposed to occasionally putting on something nicer than jeans to accompany me somewhere with drinks that don’t come in cans and/or cost more than $5. Perhaps his presence at a regular bar of mine reveals that we’d have more in common than I thought.)
The third guy was in front of me in line while I picked up my coffee this morning. I was at my favorite out-of-my-neighborhood coffee place and when he turned to speak to the barista, I thought, “Hey, that looks like the guy I e-mailed with. The one who never e-mailed me when I told him my actual e-mail address.” (Possibly because Match.com blocked it out.)
Did I say hello? Introduce myself? Say something impossibly witty that caused him to scoop me up in his arms and say, “I have been WISHING I could contact you!”
Heavens no.
Instead I checked my e-mail and fidgeted with my PDA, more evidence that I am badly in need of an intervention. I shot him a sideways glance or two, confirmed that he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. I wasn’t feeling too sharp, with my hair pulled back in a bun and wearing a less then ideal amount of make-up. I also hadn’t had my coffee yet and I know few people who’d want their first in-person conversation with me to be decaf.
I felt like he looked at me, but I couldn’t be sure if this was just my mind playing crazy paranoid tricks on me. I don’t remember his name – just his nickname on Match.
It’s a shame because I kind of liked e-mailing him; he was warm and friendly on the screen. Something about his tone in person seemed a bit too formal for me. I like men who are older than I am, but he acted a bit too old for me. Like he might not put up with my Night Owl ways, like he might find me silly.
Too much to tell from listening to him order coffee before my own senses had been sharpened by the brew? Perhaps. I wonder if he’s a regular at the shop, if I might see him there again to get a better look.
All of this makes me groan about the number of men who have recognized me from my own profile and silently analyzed my habits while I pumped gas or went about my day, unaware of that they were contrasting me with my Match.com profile.
If that comparison’s going to be made – and Lord knows it has been already – I want to KNOW about it and/or get a drink out of the deal.
I can’t even imagine what that would be like, honestly. lol Especially someone I tried, but didn’t quite hit it off with.
It is a small world though, and it seems to get smaller every day. If you see the gent at the coffee shop again, though, maybe just say hello. Make a flirty comment or something and just see if he recognizes you. Don’t count him out yet, because you were both decaf and possibly grumpy.
I went to a speed dating event the other week, walked into the room and did a quick scan for talent only to realise (to my horror) that one of the eight ’sexy single men’ in the room was someone I’d been on one semi-painful date with and who I turned down for a second trip round the block because I couldn’t possibly see myself swooning over a short, kinda weedy accountant with a high-pitched voice and glasses.
The next guy my eyes fell on was someone I recognised from both sites I’ve belonged to, a guy who had tried to engage me in conversation by email several times, but who I just had zero interest in.
New Zealand is just too damn small - and I live in the biggest city!
Follow your own advice, then and go up to him next time! Or send him an email and say “hey, I think I saw you at X Coffee shop the other day. Was that you? I would’ve said hi but I wasn’t sure it was you, and was feeling a bit shy…”
I know my husband lowers his voice when he talks in public sometimes, like hen ordering, say, coffee at a coffee bar. His persona during that 5 second interaction with a store clerk says practically nothing of what he’s actually like in person with friends, let alone with his girlfriend.
I can definitely relate to it being a small world or at least in the dating world. The ones that leave me feeling slightly awkward are when I run across a match in the work environment, wondering if I should act like I don’t know them or not.
If you ever have an intervention that actually works on making you better in the dating game please share, as I can’t seem to stop my bad habits!
I can’t e-mail him because my Match subscription expired and I’m not resubbing just to e-mail this guy. Sigh.
And I don’t need a dating intervention, I need a Blackberry intervention.
I recently started looking around at some dating websites to make a decision as to whether or not I should join one. I was suprised to see that, over the past 10 years, I have previously gone out several of the men I saw. Sometimes, being single is a small world!
Maybe Match.com should give you a free pass since they did quote your blog.
Hey Charming, I once picked up a hitchiker on my way home. When he was in the car, I realized he looked familiar. He told me where he was going (work) & it dawned on me that he was someone who contacted me on Yahoo Personals. He didn’t recognize me but I clued him in. It was a funny ride.
Oh, even in big ole NYC, I *always* worry someone will recognize me from my profile! Like, when I’m at the gym with no makeup and bad hair, yikes.
I was at a party very soon after I joined Jdate, and I saw this guy that I recognized, and I was sure it was from Jdate. I had hotlisted him and probably would have emailed him at some point. Our eyes met…there was recognition…and oh dip. I had gone to college with the guy! I actually knew him in real life! And…we would not have made a good match. I’m very, very, very glad I didn’t email him, because that would have been just too embarrassing.
The longer one stays in dating cyberspace, the more often these types of sighting occur. It still weirds me out when I meet a guy at some random event and realize that I’ve seen his profile online. Sometimes I think I should date only people who live at least 15 miles away so that I can’t run into them later.
No Match.com subscription excuses… since you recognize them and are curious, why not just walk up to them and say you remember them from their profile? As long as you know they’re still single and active in the dating world, it seems like a good opportunity.
Charming, your blog always entertain me at work :). It’s funny girls and guys have the same imaginery fear.. “she/he’s too cute to be single; she/he is too good for me; let me work up my courage first…etc.”
Anyways, I say just talk to him. He might have also recognized you from match.com, he’s just too shy to talk to you, or in the worst case he has no interest at you, or vice versa you find out he’s only a butter face. But you won’t know unless you give him the chance to buy you that drink. Besides do you really care what someone who has no influence in your life might think about you?
Baibai
It’s all fun and games until you start seeing that same person (someone you exchanged a few harmless emails through an online dating site with) everywhere you go… That’s when you get a dead bolt for your door and a baseball bat to keep under the bed… True story… Not even kidding… He said it was love at first sight… ( did he mean first look at the online profile???)
This has happened to me a couple of times before. Just say, “hey, you look familiar, do I know you from somewhere?” then you go through and try to figure it out, sometimes the online service comes out and sometimes it doesn’t. usually when it does come out, the guy and i will laugh about it. if he can’t laugh about it, i don’t want him anyways.
This chat up technique also works if I don’t recognize the guy and just want a reason to talk to him. If you’ve never seen him before, then after a couple of minutes of trying to figure out how you know each other, change the subject and just chat him up, “oh well, i guess we will never figure it out, so who are you here with/come here often/etc.”
in both cases, if the guy is interested he will take the bait and chat with you. if he isn’t he’ll look uncomfortable and make up an excuse to go away or something. and if that happens, who cares? win some lose some, but at least you tried.
I haven’t signed up for match.com yet, but I remembered that a few years ago my friend told me that she saw a guy that I was thinking about hooking up with on match.com. It was almost a deal breaker cause I didn’t know if I wanted to date someone that did online dating. Fast forward a few years, I just broke up with that guy recently and I was bored. I went on to Match.com and found his profile almost immediately. He sure didn’t waste anytime did he?
Now, I’m thinking about joining too
You know, I don’t think men would recognize a person they’ve e-mailed in real life. Maybe a few would, but in general, they don’t seem to be a very observant lot. (Unless, its in regards to vehicles, beer, or tech gadgets.)
Hey! I resemble that remarl, MOB!!!
Oh yeah… heh…
bleh - give up match.com. If you see someone interesting, talk to them! Of course, that is easy for me to say since I really could talk to nearly anyone of any age and come away having had a meaningful conversation. So if you are a shy person (I think you are more shy than you might be admitting to yourself), maybe come up with some openers etc that work for you and practice them with your Dad or friends: good open ended greetings, open ended questions that make the other person do all the talking.
You know the Dale Carnegie quote is so true: “People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing”. Are you having fun Charming? I mean, are you happy being just you living in the moment wherever you are? If the answer is yes, then hello world, guess what? Sometimes a happy Charming has on makeup, sometimes she doesn’t. THE WORLD CAN JUST GET USED TO IT. If anyone is judging you on that basis alone in 5.2 nanoseconds, that would be incredibly shallow, wouldn’t it?
I agree with Deannie. Makeup or no shouldn’t make too much difference. In my experience most women look better without it anyways. Perhaps my own personal preference.
Also, she is right again, that you need to be comfortable in your skin, completely. I figured out that nobody wants to be with someone who’s miserable, so how could I expect anyone to want to be with me, since I’m pretty miserable.
Yoga helps. Just gives me 45 minutes a day where I just breathe and don’t think about anything else, really. I think the brain needs that kind of downtime. Of course, I do fall on my head alot, but that’s kind of funny.
I kinda like seeing the others from match out in the world. Of course I don’t say anything to them…but it makes me think that at least I’m not alone in the quest.
The thing I don’t like is when my students found it…Middle School kids can be so mean! Can we get a site that has a “locked” profile like myspace?
I know 11-13 year old kids don’t have a clue what it’s like to be 28 and single, and they don’t know that those comments like “my teacher is such a loser! he can’t get a date, so he’s got to use a dating service” I want to be the cool teacher.
It just takes all my power away as a teacher! Need something different.
girl, you frustrate me. you’re as bad as me w/hot neighbor and letting him get away w/o asking me out.
why do we not seize these opportunities??? because when we don’t have one, we bitch about not having them!!!
grrr.
ok, i’m going to go bang my head against a wall now.