Like everyone else who's thirty and single, I'm still looking to find that "fly me to the moon" type of love that Frank Sinatra likes to sing about. But working full time and being a mother doesn't allow much opportunity for meeting new people. Still, I felt optimistic and felt the enticement to return to the dating scene. With my busy schedule online dating seemed a good option.
I looked into the much-touted sites like Match.com, Asianavenue.com and Yahoo Personals. I was particularly intrigued by Match.com's scientific compatibility test. Taking a leap of faith with my heart and credit card, I posted my profile hoping to make a love connection: I was swimming again in this big blue sea to fish me that one true love.
It took me hours to comprise a comfortable advertisement of myself within thee confines of 500 words or less. As succinctly as possible, I described myself as a young mom mellowed out from clubs and daybreak partying. My profile emphasized independence, professional goals and creative ambitions, hoping to pair up with someone of similarly minded interests. I quickly realized that my words did not weigh nearly as much as a picture. As the saying goes, pictures, in my case JPEG photos, spoke much louder than words. After uploading a few decent pictures of myself on Match.com, I got about 1000 hits, over 50 winks, and countless emails a month: It was almost frightening.
The guys I attracted were mostly divorced white men in their 50s with grown up kids, black men in their early 20s, and Asian men in their forties. Where are all the 30 something sexy Asians with dynamic personalities? The most aggravating thing was that these responses from guys kept ignoring the part about me being a mom.
After weeks of engaging in my new hobby of browsing for men, every profile began to look the same. In the vast Sea of Singles, sorting through all the virile and eligible fish in search of "the one" was a bigger headache than I ever imagined. In my dream world, my one and only would be taller than the typical 5'6" Asian male, have some meat on his arms, and be the perfect combination of an athlete and a metrosexual.
This second time in the dating scene however, I wasn't willing to go very far to fish. Instead of seeking someone with everything I desired I have now broadened my search in hopes of finding someone that gives great hugs and with whom I can carry on a meaningful conversation.
With much anticipation, I decided to meet with Steve who caught my attention because he worked in non-profit, same as me. Our profiles seemed compatible and on a gorgeous mid-summer afternoon we had our first meeting with plans to go for lunch and then a hike. It was the most discouraging first date I ever had. Steve turned out to be a short-necked Chinese man who confessed to me, "I only upped the ante on my salary to see if it would elicit more responses." With five hours of silence between us, the agony was broken intermittently with conversation that consisted only of, "Didn't we pass this tree already?" By sunset, our misguided selves and misguided profiles finally made it out alive and we returned home as strangers once again.
Thinking maybe the next one would be different, I settled on a coffee date with Terry. He was a thirty-five-year-old business consultant, tall and Chinese. He was handsome until he opened his mouth to say, "I make an excellent salary and have great taste." Midway into my latte, I still found myself nodding to his lengthy monologue about his lavish lifestyle and his fondness for fine furniture. When I finally had a chance to speak, I was dumbfounded when he said, "Oh yeah, I like kids. I just don't like them in my house touching everything." My lunch break was over that very moment.
I later met an adorable graphic designer with a great set of abs. He was the perfect gentleman: charming, witty, opinionated. Our debates didn't bother me until I caught a whiff of his repulsive body odor; a gentle blend of old mothballs in authentic Chinese trading goods stores. I could forgive the stench but I what really couldn't forgive was that he took me to the Cheesecake Factory and refused to anything because of his strict adherence to the Weight Watchers points diet.
One Filipino mechanic caught my inbox-eye with his friendly yet romantic email. Since Match.com profiles were so detailed, we pretty much knew everything about each other by the time we met. He turned out to be really shy and barely spoke a word. It was impossible to converse with him but every now and then he would stare at me with this "come hither" bedroom-eyes. It weirded me out.
Soon it started to irk me every time I saw the subject lines in my email relating to dating. Feeling discouraged, I decided to give up and went online to delete my profiles one by one. Right before I hit "delete" on Asianavenue.com, I checked my inbox to find a message from a Cambodian Bakery Supervisor. We exchanged detailed emails for about a month and I finally decided to give him a chance. He wasn't very attractive but had a heart of gold and was not at all intimidating despite the fact he was a reformed gang banger. I thought we could work on being friends but I had to cut that idea out of my mind when his psychotic wife called and cussed me out in the nastiest ghetto slang.
If these are the kind of fish that's out there for me I was surely doomed. Will I ever find that special guy to hug me in the way I wanted to be hugged?
I tried the Single Asian Bachelors speed-dating event but still there was no love connection even though the guys had good looks, master's degrees and their own condos. But even after meeting thirty guys, many who were doctors, lawyers and dentists, I still felt unfulfilled and was once again left in the Singles Sea to search for my one special fish. Why was it so difficult to find a man that I can just be myself with? A man that finds me intriguing without me having to reveal what I can with a push up bra.
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