Let's hope I can hold out a bit longer

Yesterday I got in touch with my friend Jaime after much too much phone tag. The conversation turned to dating and dating websites. She actually met her husband through LDSPlanet.com after her family badgered her into giving it a try. She agreed to give it one month and by the end of the month she had met someone.

Anyway, she was saying that she was glad it worked out for her because with her life/work/living situation, she just wasn't meeting people she could date. However, she says that she still doesn't think she could wholeheartedly recommend the online dating thing to people, because, in her words, there are a lot of freaks on there. And if you're not savvy you could put yourself in some bad situations.

I've had a few encounters already with the kind of guys who hang out on these sites. In fact, last year I got an email through LDSLinkup from someone who, at first glance, I took to be an old bishop of mine. (Not that bishops are on there to pick up on young girls, because they're not. I hope. But sometimes they get on just to keep in touch with the members of the ward.) Anyway, he was not my old bishop. He was a 50-yr-old man in Washington. And he thought I could be his soul mate.

I was so annoyed that I actually did write him back to say that while I was flattered, the age difference of 25 years made us unlikely to be compatible and that I wished him luck as he searches for a more age-appropriate companion. Well. That put him in a right snit and he emailed back this long, rambling thing about how true love knows no age and I'm so judgmental and I've probably missed out on what could have been the greatest thing ever. Yeah, because in my head, "the greatest thing ever" translates to "changing my husband's and children's diapers at the same time."

Anyway. After hanging up with the lovely Jaime I got on the LDSPlanet site to take a look around. Fifteen minutes later I was still sitting there with a dropped jaw and sure-to-be-permanent eyebrow furrows. She wasn't kidding when she mentioned the freaks. Also, the site itself is just kind of clunky and basic and amateur-looking. The search features are really lame and don't let you do any kind of keyword search of people's profiles. So if I wanted to look for someone who mentions travel in his profile then I'm out of luck. Also if I wanted to weed out all profiles with the words "hook up," or "truck." Or if I wanted to avoid the profiles where the young (or not-so) men choose the "stunningly good-looking" option to describe themselves.

I don't know if this is the cool new thing in online dating, but I noticed a lot of pics like this one, taken while the subject is lying shirtless in bed. What exactly is that about? Are they already trying to fan the flames of my desire or something? Is that the setting in which they plan for us to spend a lot of our getting-to-know-you time? Do they think that women find anything remotely attractive about the male armpit? Because believe me, we don't.


There are also the shirtless-while-posing with ex in hot tub shots. What is that meant to convey, exactly? (Hey, this chick was willing to get in a hot tub with me. You should want to, too.) This gentleman also included pictures of his car, his friend's cars, and the hotel bathroom from his latest trip the Vegas. Don't ask me what that's about.


This one, though, this one was my favorite:



There are just no words.