For a while, when I called my mother and asked what she was up to, she would say, Oh, just looking for men on the internet.  Since she found her current husband that way, she’s a great believer in online dating and has been urging me to have a go for a long time.

I’m trying to get over my sneaking suspicion that only losers need to find dates that way.  I’ve been separated, and then divorced, for seven years and in that time I think I have met just one new, single, heterosexual man of appropriate age (soon known as my Stalker to the friend who introduced us).  I keep reading about skyrocketing divorce rates, and assume that for every divorced woman there must be a divorced man, so I don’t know how it works out that the world is full of single women and attached men.

Anyway, a year or two ago I set up a “profile” on a dating site, and then I immediately made my profile invisible.  I guess they have that option especially for nuts like me.  Now and again I logged in and edited my invisible profile.  When I got to the US this spring I edited it to change my location and to update what I last read.  (Often Trollope these days, since you ask; I need comfort food.)  Visible or not, you don’t have to pay money for this.  You can lurk, edit and update forever for free. 

Very late one night recently, when I had had a wee bit too much red wine, I clicked the button that said Visible to All.

About seven am the next day, I logged on to toggle it back to invisible.  I was full of remorse of the morning.  I had drunk too much and been foolish.  I wasn’t ready.  Internet dating wasn’t for me.  I would only meet creeps and losers.

Because of the way these sites work I knew for sure that no one Looking for Women within 30 miles of me was on line when I made myself visible late that previous night, and I reasoned that only a sex maniac would be Looking for Women at seven in the morning.  If I made myself invisible really fast I would be safe and I could go back to lurking for another year or two.

I logged on and in big red letters a message popped up that said You’ve Caught His Eye!

Oh great.  I have caught the eye of a sex maniac, Looking for Women at seven am.  I panicked and made myself invisible.  Then I thought, what if I like the sex maniac?  I made myself visible again.  And then I thought, what am I thinking?  I made myself invisible.  Finally I decided that these sex maniacs are going to think they are in an episode of Bewitched (at best) or (worst) that their potential date is a psychotic, the way she’s popping in and out.  I gave myself a lecture: this is Internet Dating.  You are meant to Be Visible.  That’s how you Get Dates.

Anyway, I reasoned, it was too late.  I had already put myself on view. I made my profile visible again and kept it that way. 

But then I didn’t check my email for a whole week, in case someone had sent me a message.  I know that makes no sense.  I know I am supposed to want to get emailed.  In a funny way the possibility of not being chosen feels easy – in that case they are idiots, who wants them?  But I can barely stand the idea of men looking at me and picking me as if I were some object.

When I finally checked I saw that several someones had emailed, and here’s where the next catch is.  You don’t know if it’s the hairy guy in a hat who is looking for a woman who can heat with wood and is willing to toil in the garden (it was) or the skinny bicyclist who doesn’t like fish (it was) or the screenplay writer who really did win Cannes a long, long time ago (it was) or the good ol boy looking for a good ol gal and he might mention what size of foot she should have but he doesn’t like to say in advance  (it was). Oh, and Dancing Man emailed too.

You know you’ve got emails, but you can’t read them or reply to them and don’t even know who they’re from until you pay.

My lurking days were over.  I paid.  I had decided to try this probably stupid idea, and if I was going to do it I had better find out who those messages were from and what they said.

So now I am a full fledged member for three months.  Not only does my (visible) picture have a big red border whenever I sign in that says Online Now! when I go off line it says Active Within 3 Days (or, worse, Active Within 24 Hours).  Now, that’s just gross, isn’t it? 

Meanwhile I have two dates, which I confessed to the Lawyer Sis who was visiting the other day.  I logged on to the site to show her my matches (oh damn, now it says Active Within One Hour).  She took a quick look and noted that the first one was missing a tooth and the second was a lot older than the 60 he was claiming.

I pulled off my specs, stuck my face an inch or so from the screen, and studied their pictures. 

Damn! I would never have agreed to date a guy missing a front tooth, if I didn’t have such poor eyesight.