After I got divorced back in 1988, I figured it would be nice to get married again. I really didn’t mind the marital lifestyle so much; the problem was mostly with the person that I married. She turned out to be, well, less than an ideal companion for such a lifestyle (with me, anyway). So I decided to get back out there and try again.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a truckload of good looks and smooth manners about me. And I was working in a place where there weren’t a whole lot of eligible women my age (as in my former job, where I had met my ex-wife; darn, I had my choice and I picked the wrong one!). Furthermore, I don’t possess a very common mix of interests, values and temperaments; finding another “bird of a feather” wouldn’t be easy. So I decided to turn to the personal ads. It seemed like a good way to jump-start my romantic life.

By 1995 or so, it was pretty apparent that the personal ad thing just wasn’t working for me (and neither was real-life, i.e. meeting someone at a job or at a volunteer activity or at church — back when I was involved with such things). I felt kind-of bad about it. I figured that perhaps I’m just a freak, maybe I’m just not meant to find romantic involvement.

Well, I’m still rather pessimistic about the whole romantic fulfillment thing. But as to being a freak just because I bombed out with the personal ads, I’ve since learned that bombing out is quite common. So I guess that I’m not such a freak after all. A recent article in Scientific American Mind about on-line dating indicates that dating-via-advertising is NOT a highly successful means of establishing long-term relationships. I myself did most of my personal ad dating via newspapers or newsletters; I only dabbled in internet dating towards the end. But there really isn’t much difference. In fact, you’d think that the ease of communication via e-mail would be an advantage over the old method of answering printed ads and exchanging letters and then talking on the phone. With e-mail, you can easily and quickly exchange photos to see if the all-important “body chemistry” factor works out. (But, as the SciAm article points out, a whole lot of people send pictures that mis-represent what they currently look like.)

However, recent studies show that internet dating has a terrible track record. The Scientific American article cites a professional analysis of some statistics released by eHarmony.com, which indicates that if a person dated 1 new person every 3 weeks via the site, it would take 19 years of effort to raise their chance of getting married to the 50-50 level. A phone survey of users of other popular dating sites showed that only about 1 in 4 users were satisfied with the site.

Another study, posted at sciencedaily.com, showed that about 90% of people using dating sites had at least one date with “a significant partner”, and of those people, 94% got a second date. Sounds great, but do the multiplication: about 85% get a second date, and 15% don’t. Furthermore, a second date does not a marriage make. The drop-off continues from there. Only about 18% of the 90% who found “significant partners” have a relationship that lasts a year (so we’re down to 16% of the grand total, or 1 in 6). Another source indicates that only about 10% of people using internet dating sites establish a “long-term relationship” via them. Sounds about right.

So, if internet dating is such a train wreck for most people, my negative experiences with its direct predecessor (newspaper ads) aren’t very surprising either. Romance is still a hit or miss thing, despite a lot of modern research and technology. You can’t just make it happen (although, as the shrinks point out, you can make it NOT happen with neurotic attitudes). You might get lucky with the internet ads; just don’t count on it. I’ll be the first to admit that my experiences were interesting, even if not always edifying. They included a long train ride to and from Minneapolis to meet a woman who turned out to be more-or-less crippled, a couple of late-night airplane trips to Florida, a break-up at the end of a Thanksgiving family gathering in South Carolina, a seemingly “hot date” in Arlington, VA, where the girl in effect said “oh, you’re not what I had pictured” . . . . still, it was all probably better than just staying home. It’s worth a chuckle!

After reading these reports, I feel a little more like a normal human being. Although I’m not 100% sure now that I want to be human, after all of the trouble that normal humans need to go thru!