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Setting the Bar Too High Are you sabotaging your dating options? By Evan Marc Katz Special to Yahoo! Personals Updated: Oct 11, 2007 
Last year, I met two women at a Halloween party. Both were in
their mid-30s and were kind, passionate and intelligent. And yet I fear
that they will remain single for a lot longer than they desire. Why?
Because of all the arbitrary rules they've set up for what Mr. Right is
supposed to be like. I asked one woman for further clarification.
"Of course, he has to be attractive, thoughtful and successful, but
there are a few other things that are really important to me, which are
kind of hard to find."
I leaned in, wanting to hear more.
"Well, first of all, I'm Jewish, so that's a deal breaker right there."
OK, I thought. Jews only make up 2 percent of the U.S. population, but
preserving a religious tradition is a very common desire.
I asked her what else she was looking for.
"He needs to be as passionate about animals as I am," she said. "I own
two dogs, I volunteer for the Humane Society, and I want a guy who feels
the same as I do. If there is a stray dog at the side of the freeway, I
want him to stop whatever he's doing to pick the dog up and bring it to
an animal shelter."
A cute, kind, ambitious, Jewish animal activist. Of course. There have
to be at least...six of those in the greater Los Angeles area. But five
of them are women. And the one man is already married. So I've got two
women dressed as French maids who are wondering when Prince
Charmingstein will arrive with three leashes and a 4 karat ring in hand.
Talk about a fairy tale.
Limiting our options with a narrow search
We all have dreams. We all have standards. We all have ideas about how
it's supposed to look. But when we remain trapped in our fantasies,
reality suffers. And nowhere is this more apparent than in the online
dating space.
Because of the perception of choice -- just pop in some search criteria
and dial up a spouse! -- we think we're being open to lots of people.
In fact, we're narrowing our search far greater than we do in "real" life.
In real life, if you start talking to someone at a party who is
intriguing, you'll probably get a phone number and set up a date. You
may not find out until later that he's a different religion, or
political party. This is exactly what happened to me. I set my online
search criteria for a 25- to 36-year-old Jewish liberal with a graduate
degree. I remained single for the greater part of eight years. Then I
went to a party eight months ago and met a woman who is 37, Catholic and
Republican. We've been together ever since.
The moral of the story is that none of us knows anything.
What we think we want merely serves in limiting our options. For example, I've got a male dating-coaching client who is 24 and runs a multimillion-dollar corporation. He never got a college degree, so he wouldn't appear in many women's educational searches. Too bad for them. I've got a female client who is 64 and still goes hiking, fishing and skiing. She's beautiful, youthful and vibrant, and completely off the radar for most men. It's a shame, isn't it? Are you too picky? Take the test.
Look through 100 profiles on Yahoo! Personals and ask yourself the
following questions:
Multiply all of those numbers together and you'll see that the number of
people who meet your requirements is probably less than 5 percent.
That's right. Out of 100 people online, only five are even dateable.
So out of those five, how many of them will love your family and
appreciate your quirks? How many of them have the same long-term
relationship goals as you? Most importantly, how many of the five think
that you are cute enough, thin enough, young enough, rich enough, smart
enough, kind enough and interesting enough? Probably not too many.
So what does all this mean? Are we doomed to a life of solitude and
loneliness? No. We might have to adjust our perspective a bit, though.
First of all, it reminds us how hard it is to find somebody special.
Signing up for online dating for a month in hopes of falling in love is
pretty much the equivalent of signing up for the gym for a month in
hopes of becoming Mr. Universe.
Second, it reminds us not to be so narrow-minded in our searches. In
order to expand our options beyond, say, 1 in 100 people, we need to
open up our age range, our height range, our body types, to people we
might not have considered otherwise. Until we give others a chance, what
hope do we have that they will give us a chance?
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Evan Marc Katz is a dating coach and the author of two books: "I Can't Believe I'm Buying This Book - A Commonsense Guide to Successful Internet Dating" and "Why You're Still Single: Things Your Friends Would Tell You If You Promised Not to Get Mad." Reach him directly at evanmarckatz.com. |
