My friend, who is going through a divorce, recently tried online dating and had the usual reaction we all do at first: horror -- complete and utterly mesmerized horror. He would message me in reactive despair after taking brief peeks inside the online-dating big tent, a Pandora's box of human desire that lays bare an embarrassing mixture of clueless bravado, breathtaking superficiality, weary optimism, quiet revelation, and a deep yearning to connect that will break your heart.
This is the same friend who will quote lines from T.S. Eliot's Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock at times when life seems almost unbearable. Well, who would have thunk it? My Prufrockian friend is horrified by online dating. Hmmm... who put the chocolate in my peanut butter?
I suggested he should take down his profile and replace it with the online dating profile that J. Alfred Prufrock would have posted, had he been real and middle-aged now. Can you imagine the reaction he'll get to a profile explicitly filled with regret, thwarted desire, disillusionment, sexual frustration, and social isolation due to an inability to act? In a world that richly rewards self-confidence (warranted or not), is there a less likely candidate for cyber-dating success than J. Alfred? When you're a sensitive, thoughtful person devoted more to the life of the mind, instead of how hot you look in that photo, online dating seems as likely a place to find a soul mate as standing in line at the DMV. Posting J. Alfred Prufrock's dating profile is a snarky way to laugh at the huge limitations of internet dating.
I admit I may have been too hasty in dismissing the possibility of finding someone on a dating website. The problem might lie in using a gigantic dating website that really is the match-making equivalent of waiting in line at the DMV. Perhaps I need to find the dating website that is the equivalent of browsing in the literary section of an upscale bookstore. And if it's not out there, maybe I need to create it. I'll call it "Measuring out my Love Life with Coffee Spoons: a Dating Website for the J. Alfred Prufrocks of the World and Other Sensitive, Creative Types."
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