So, in the midst of job hunting, Facebook updating, and avoiding running, I've been checking my Match.com account quite frequently.
It may be because one of my good friends recently had her first baby (she met her husband on eHarmony, and they are SWELL together); or it may be that my other good friend found her husband on Match.com (after a frightening occurrence where she and another friend BOTH dated the same guy with a goiter); or it may be that I'm in complete and total avoidance mode.
(Oh shut up, I know it's number three, but it's kind of fun.)
Anyway, what I started wondering is this: if I'm a well-educated, unemployed woman who can put together a sentence AND manage her finances AND occasionally (though not always) be a good human being, and I can't get an email a month, who the heck IS getting noticed by these guys?
So I found a way to scope out my competition. After all, Match keeps saying "It's okay to look."
I devised a search. Female. 30-40. Anything over 5 feet. Any body type. Any hair color. Any eye color. Income and education equal to mine. Living in Chicago. No roommates, no kids, wants kids, never married. Exercises regularly, doesn't smoke, drinks occasionally, any religion.
Chicago has 2.5 million people living in the city, 9.5 in the metropolitan area.
There are EIGHT women on Match.com who meet the criteria outlined above.
EIGHT??? EIGHT???
So much for the excuse that there are "millions" of women in the city who are just like me. There are EIGHT of us. Apparently, eight IS enough. And heck, even the cute girls are still out there, searching for love in all the wrong places - telling me that even THEY have trouble.
I'm trying to be an optimist here, but I'm not sure what to take away from the Ocho (points if you get that reference). How about this: I have eight new friends. Maybe we could form an Ocho SWAT team. Date all the guys who meet our criteria, then swap stories? Rank them like an annual performance review? Line them up and make them play HORSE?
Or maybe we'll just wait for each other's leftovers. Sounds like a plan to me. Bartender? Oh bartender????
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7 comments:
Hey- hang in there. At work I know of one woman who found her husband and married in her mid/late 40s. And she has two friends that did the same. I realize you are a long ways from here but wanted to let you know they're out there. Do not give up hope!
Glad I found your website. Don't think I had noticed it before but will be checking regularly since I can't get my Sallie fix from phone calls :-)
Hope springs eternal :)
I couldn't help but smile that the cute, blond, straight 30-something girl finds only eight guy-matches in all of Chicago. Try being a 60ish gay guy with thinning hair, sagging jowls and skinny biceps in Madison.
Your post did trigger the thought, however, that we gay guys have one advantage - we don't have to go undercover and pretend to be the competition to find out how many guys are out there. The guys we're looking for are the same guys who are our competition. We're looking for each other - or ourselves.
Well, that's not quite true. We're really looking for our equivalent selves 20 years ago when we had dark, thick hair, unlined faces, single-focus lenses (if any), irresistibly white toothy grins, and visible abs (not to mention a 20-minute refractory period).
Of course, our 20-year-ago equivalents are looking for themselves as they were 10 years ago, and those guys are looking for themselves 5 years ago, and so on. It's kind of amazing that there's such a thing as long-term gay couples, come to think of it.
After hitting "send" I reread my post and realized that I'd forgotten the gist of yours (another sign of advancing age) and can't figure out how to retrieve it. Obviously, the point of your post was there are only 8 women like you out there, not 8 men. (But isn't that a good thing? Isn't it comforting to know that the competition is so limited?)
Clearly, there are the makings of a great murder mystery here. And now that you have time on your hands, you should write it.
"Chicago is stunned by the discovery of 8 mutilated corpses, all single females in their 30's. Police are struggling to find a common theme. The victims don't share hair color, eye color, body type, or religion."
"However, the lead detective did note that all 8 of them have no roommates or kids, don't smoke, drink occasionally, and exercise regularly."
"Could there be a clue hidden in these common factors? Police are conducting a house-to-house search for a man with a bizarre fetish for childless but kid-friendly, non-smoking, occasional-drinking, regular-exercising women with no particular religious affiliation."
"Detectives have also been looking frantically for the next potential victim and have turned up only one woman who matches all the demographics of the 8 decedents. Her name is being withheld to protect her, but they do reveal that she seems remarkably unconcerned about the likelihood she'll become the next victim."
"The police also noted that she seems to have an incredible social life, dating a different guy every week. They have interviewed these men, thinking one of them could be the killer, but all of them just say that they can't find another single woman like her in the entire metropolitan area."
"The police are completely baffled."
Hey, Sallie, I'm sure I've outworn my welcome as a commentator on your original post, but as an overly-analytical, left-brained accountant, it did occur to me that in your stealth search of Match.com, you may have forgotten to change your own sex to male. If that's the case, then Match.com's impeccable logic would have displayed the eight lesbians in Chicago who are just like you. Did you happen to notice whether they were all wearing flannel shirts and had multiple piercings?
Oh my goodness - I just caught up with these posts and I'm now laughing out loud.
I hadn't realized the outlook could be more bleak until I saw my friend's posts about the likelihood of me taking out the competition - and the unlikelihood of finding someone if you're a 60ish gay man in the midwest.
Seriously, it's a good thing we all have active social lives (and imaginations). The pen would be filled with us otherwise!
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