Cupid Has It in for Me

I haven't been having much luck with online dating lately. For example, recently I was contacted by a guy on chemistry.com. Here is an excerpt from his profile:  I am a virgin and am 18 I wont lie, ladies it is up to you if you want to break that or I am very wiling to wait until I am married so that she knows that I waited for her fully.

I am also becoming more and more irritated every time I see a profile without any pictures; I've stated before that at least a third (if not more) of the matches that have been sent to me don't have any pictures in their profiles. It's not necessarily chemistry.com's fault, because they can't exactly force members to post pictures; I just don't understand why any guy thinks he's going to get a lot of girls (or any girl) to respond to him if he doesn't post any pictures.

I don't get to see any of the women's profiles on chemistry.com, only the ones of the matches who are sent to me by the site. So I don't know if this is an issue with women's profiles. I do know that on eharmony this was an issue too, though.

I think that a guy who doesn't post any pictures is probably refraining from doing so for one of the following reasons: 1) He is self-conscious about how he looks; 2) He doesn't want anyone to find out that he's on an online dating site, which is totally lame because online dating is socially acceptable now; a lot of people do it, so GET OVER YOURSELVES, GUYS; 3) He thinks that he can simply win women over with lines like "Even if you're not at the ideal weight, I can work with you on an exercise plan until you lose enough weight to look good" and "I'm not interested in girls who play games, unless you're buying dinner"; 4) He's an alien from a different planet and the flash from the camera would make him spontaneously combust.

Disappearing acts are something else I've had to deal with. One of the reasons I didn't renew my membership with eharmony was because at least ten or twelve guys disappeared with no explanation after the first or second e-mail. On chemistry.com this has happened at least six times. One guy e-mailed me, and then the next week he blocked off communication with me (similar to eharmony, you can actually see on chemistry.com which guys have decided to reject you).

Last Sunday, three guys e-mailed me, and then I never heard from them again. I know that one of them didn't actually sign up for a membership; he just signed up for the free communication weekend, so the other two might have signed up for free communication too and didn't bother to pay for a regular membership.

There were at least six disappearing acts when I was on okcupid, so in total this has happened to me almost TWENTY-FOUR TIMES! I've reread a few of the e-mails I've sent to these guys, and I don't think I wrote anything that would have scared them off. It's not like I wrote anything like, "I've attached pictures of my top three choices for wedding dresses to this e-mail. Let me know which ones you like best."

One of the worst cases was a guy on okcupid who sent me ten or twelve e-mails, but never agreed to set up a date where we could meet in person. He said stuff like, "I'm sure we'll meet eventually; in the meantime we can just chat online." He didn't seem to get that the whole point of online dating is to find someone you can actually date in real life; most people don't join the sites just to get online pen pals.

Then, after a month of communication, the guy disappeared; I tried sending him one or two e-mails, but he ignored them. I think that he must have stopped communicating because he thought one of the following things: 1) Oh no, I should stop e-mailing her because I forgot to tell her that I'm married, not to mention my wife might find out; 2) Why should I meet her in person when I can stay at home with my action figures for company? 3) It's much easier to deceive women if I never meet them in person; 4) Why should I e-mail a girl who's interested in dating me when I just know that Heidi Klum is going to answer one of my letters any day now? 5) Maybe I should go see the Wizard of Oz and get some courage. Or at the very least he could give me a brain.

I also think that several of the matches that I've been sent on chemistry.com are no longer active on the site. On chemistry.com, it'll indicate whether the person was active in the last 24 hours, but it won't give any information beyond that. So you don't know if the person was active last week or three months ago.

So I haven't been dating. I'm starting to think that I either just have bad luck or Cupid is exacting revenge on me, maybe because I laughed about the fact that he never wears any clothes (except for the diaper).