Bea's dating adventures: chapter 8

I'm not sure what prompted my desire to return to the world of dating, but returned I have. Albeit with a twist.

I turn thirtyhundred this month and while I don't feel even remotely this old, apparently age is more than a number for many of the men on various online dating sites. A girlfriend of mine was the first to notice that once she turned thirtyninetynine, communications on said sites seemed to slow down to a trickle, at best. Like, one day, she was chugging along, able to pick and choose who she would respond to because there were so many and the next...the day of her birthday, where her age went up by one year on her profile...nothing.

I thought my friend was exxagerating, but when the time came for my age to creep up by one number, the exact same thing happened. Apparently there is such a thing as "too old" when you're online dating. Boo.

My friend tried an experiment. She deleted her profile and then lowered her age by a year. Bringing her to the age she had been but the day before. And the results were amazing. She was back to receiving message after message after message. But the results were also disheartening. I mean, a year. One stinking year. But it was enough to be screened out from all but a few searches. I swore that I wouldn't ever do that. That it was about quality and not quantity. But you can't even discuss quality when there is no quantity. Like, literally.

And so, I did it. Yesterday. I'm not lying when I say that I have had more guys write me in the last day than wrote me in the last year. Wow.

I know, it's wrong. Bad karma and all that stuff. But here's the catch which I am hoping will offset that teensy modification of the truth:

I'm going to be more open about who I go out with.

If you ever followed my adventures in dating from a few years ago, you may remember that I was quite particular about who I would meet. Not this time around. With VERY few exceptions, I am committed to responding to and then meeting pretty much anyone who wants to meet me. I'm not lowering my standards by any stretch of the imagination. That would be doing myself a huge disservice. It's more that I'm not sure that I'm in a position to judge someone soley based on their picture/profile. And so I'm going to take it to the next step and judge for myself--in person.

Will it lead to success? Um. I'm not sure. I'm hoping to expand my horizons and possibly meet some really nice people. And at the very least, I'm hoping to have some zany adventures which I can blog about for the amusement of all.

Wish me luck!