This is the final part of a 6 part series about my personal experience with online dating. Click here to see other parts to this series.

So here we are at the big finale. I had set out to give online dating a test drive for one month. My time was almost up (this was in June, and I was leaving for Japan in July).

Let’s take a quick review. The bad: frustration at the difficulty of getting responses from girls. The good: the hilarious light-saber story, the fun of being an attention getting girl online, and of course, the prospect of a real life date. Things were looking more good than bad. However, let me warn you that the ending is rather anti-climactic.

Finale

So let me tell you a bit more about this girl I had planned a real-life date with. We’ll call her L. Her cute profile picture and nice profile description caught my eye on Lavalife, so I sent her a smile. After she smiled back, I sent her a short polite message with some casual pleasantries, to which she responded in a similar manner. Shortly after, we added each other on Facebook and chatted on MSN before arranging a date.

L seemed like a very sweet and positive girl. Among her Facebook quotations are idealistic and inspirational lines like “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” A little cheesy? Probably. But I still thought it was cute. L had just graduated from the University of Waterloo. She seemed smart, fun, and adventurous. It was around the time of the ROM opening, and we talked about our separate plans to attend the overnight opening event.

So, for the first date, I suggested this lovely little tea salon on Queen St. W. called Red Tea Box. I had just discovered the place a few months ago and absolutely loved taking people there. It’s a very cozy place with delicious tea and delectable snacks. In the summer, the courtyard opens up and offers a beautiful sun-splashed piece of heaven. We set the date for Sunday June 16th.

I was looking forward to it and even a little excited to have my first real-life date that resulted from an online dating site. Sunday rolls around and I roll out of bed around noon. The date was sometime in the afternoon around tea time, maybe 2 or 3 pm. Soon after getting out of bed and about 2 hours before our date, I receive a message on my cell.

Hi JP, I forgot today is fathers day. I have to spend it with my fam. Can we go meet up next time? *L

So that, ladies and gentlemen, was the anti-climactic ending to my online dating story. Hey, I did warn you!

I think the excuse for cancelling the date was borderline acceptable. I can understand the importance of family. One day, when I’m a father, I’d love it if my daughter cancelled her date to spend father’s day with me. But still, did she honestly only realize it was Father’s Day 2 hours before our date?

My reaction went something like this:

Self Doubt: WTF. Did I say something to screw this up? I put in too many smileys in our last MSN chat didn’t I? Damn it!! I should have know.
Voice of Reason: Dude, it sounds like a pretty valid reason to cancel. It probably has nothing to do with you. Don’t beat yourself up about it.
Cynicism: Hahaha, I bet she found a hotter guy on Lavalife. Hey, why don’t we play for the gay team? Maybe we’d actually get some action now and then.
Voice of Reason: Yeah… real funny!
Idealism: Now, now, let’s not look at this too negatively. She’ll probably suggest another date. She did mention “next time” right?
Cynicism: Shut up you dumb ass. What do you know about women anyway? The last time you saw ass, it was the first three letters of “assignment”.
Pragmatism: Hey guys, what are we gonna have for lunch. Hunger’s calling here.
Hunger: Hello? … Hi. Hunger here. … No, I won’t please hold!

Anyway, I don’t remember what I had for lunch that day and this brings us to the end of my online dating story. Why did my online dating adventure end here you ask? I guess I could have tried to arrange another date, or hit on more girls, but I was leaving for Japan in two weeks and I had a lot of stuff on my hands. Plus, I really didn’t feel like throwing more time and effort into online dating. The effort to return ratio worked out rather poorly for me.

Epilogue

So what did I learn from my one month of online dating?

Online dating actually requires quite a bit of time and effort: clicking through profiles, thinking of thing to say, sending messages… it starts getting tedious after a while. In the end, I find it’s easier for me to talk to strangers in a social setting and strike up a connection than it is to jump through the hoops of online dating to get a real date. But this is very much a personal preference. In real life, I’m not particularly shy, I enjoy going out, and I’m fairly comfortable with hitting on strangers. Online, I probably don’t get much attention because I’m not dashingly handsome. I can imagine how online dating would work out quite well for the guys who are smart, nice, good looking, but a little shy (which applies to quite a few of my friends in engineering). If that sounds like you, I’d suggest giving it a try. It’s actually quite fun for the first few days due to the novelty of it all.

As for girls, it’s quite a different story. Girls get way more attention than guys in online dating. It might seem like a good thing at first, but it gets rather tiring very quickly… especially if the guys messaging you don’t really stand out from one another. I actually thought of a good solution to this. First, I suggest girls take off the pictures in their profile and write up a good description about themselves. Sure, you’ll get a lot fewer messages, but you’ll be sure that the guys who message you are not simply interested in your looks. Second, browse through men’s profiles and send messages and pictures to the ones you’re interested in. Be sure to include a photo with your first message so they know you’ve got nothing to hide. I think guys will be flattered by the attention. Plus, why be the fish when you can go fishing?

Ending Notes

As for L, I’ve exchanged a few messages with her since then. I think she’s in Taiwan now, so I doubt that we’ll be going on a date anytime soon.

As for me, I’m still single. I won’t be doing any more online dating. Personally, I’m more interested in fun ways of meeting new people in real life. So far, I’ve found salsa dancing to be a great avenue.

As for the readers who read this series, I’d love it if you left a brief comment. Let me know what you think of the articles. Perhaps you have an interesting online dating story to share?

This is part 5 of a 6 part series about my personal experience with online dating. Click here to see other parts to this series. Stay tuned for more!

So despairing at my success rate (or rather failure rate) with online dating, I decided to get some help. Now, I didn’t really expect a CD to reveal the “Tao” of online dating to me. I mean, how could it? Would I suddenly transcend the laws of attraction and have girls messaging me lustily, telling me that they want and need me, more than Michael Jackson needs a good nose job… even more than Lindsay Lohan wants crack cocaine? Yeah, I didn’t think so either.

But you know, the claims of these dating guides are always like “Read this guide, and you’ll be able to pick up girls faster than you can find the normalized eigen-vectors of a 2×2 matrix!”… or something to that effect. Anyway, I tried to keep an open mind as I opened up this CD guide to online dating.

Well, I must admit, there’s one aspect of the CD that was very impressive: it was really comprehensive. It covered everything from making an online profile, to how to send messages, to making a phone call, to setting up a date… with not just audio instructions, but videos as well! Wow, with this, I bet even my 5 year old cousin could have tried to pick up girls online. But the thing is, none of the content was really extraordinary. From the sample profile to the sample messages, I didn’t think any of it was that great. If anything, the profile, messages, and advice all came off as a little contrived and uninspired.

There was one suggestion, however, that caught my attention. It suggested I create a fake female profile. This way, I would able to find out exactly what it feels like to be a girl on online dating.

The curiosity was overwhelming. Yes, M answered a few questions for me, but I wanted more details. Now, what about my moral qualms? I decided that I would only put up a profile and not take any action on behalf of my sexy female self. I wouldn’t be leading anyone on. For the guys, my female profile would just be another 1 of the 50 or 100 girls that they message but never hear back from. No harm done.

So with that, I made my female profile. As for the photo, I got my friend to pull it from some Chinese message board where people post pictures of random pretty girls. I got a photo that was attractive, but not ridiculously good looking. The profile description, I wrote up in 20 minutes. I tried to paint a picture of a smart girl with a fun side and a dash of attitude. The result? Take a look for yourself. (Now, if by any freak coincidence a reader here actually hit on my fake female profile, I’m sorry to say she’s not real. Yeah, I’d date her too if she were.)

From a male perspective, I’d say this profile is fairly attractive without being too over-the-top attention grabbing. Apparently, other people found it attractive as well… quite a few people. Within 3 minutes of signing up on Plenty of Fish, I’d already received 5 messages! And they kept on flowing in pretty consistently. After a few days, I had gotten around 30 or more messages. I also put up the profile on Lavalife. It seems that people on there are more given to smiling than messaging (smiling is free after all, and saves the effort of typing, or constructing a sentence for that matter). I received around 20 smiles and a few messages within a few days on Lavalife.

What did these messages consist of?

Most of them included some sort of compliment, a comment on my profile description, or some other expression of interest, plus a “message me back if interested” or “tell me more about yourself.”

A few messages really stood out though. Oh no, not because they were well written or witty… they stood out because they were COPIED LINE BY LINE from that guide to online dating CD!! And I didn’t get just one message like this. I got quite a few! Most of them had changed some of the wording around, but it was still pretty obvious the messages were from the same template. This one guy, though, had copied it word for word. I had half a mind to reply to this poor sap and tell him to smarten up… but I had already decided I wouldn’t take any action on behalf of my female online identity. We can only hope that since then, he has learned the error of his ways. Or who knows, maybe those lines worked really well for him, and he’s getting more dates than I get spam emails offering to enlarge my manhood.

Anyway, it soon became obvious that getting an attractive girl’s attention in online dating is no easy feat. My sexy female self was one of them, after all, and I soon found myself to be rather dismissive when reading the pile of messages I get. An attractive girl simply gets too much traffic to be able to process it all. Unless the message is very nice and the guy looks very attractive, chances of a reply are low. Honestly, if girl-me had received a message from boy-me, chances are I’d probably blow myself off due to the availability of better looking prospects. (Which would have been a mistake, because I would have missed out on an awesome date with myself.)

So, what causes this unfortunate situation? Why is it so hard for guys to get some attention online? After some deep thinking, I came up with a reasonable explanation.

In online dating, it’s very easy for guys to approach girls. Unlike in real life, the fear of rejection and embarrassment is simply not there. All guys have to do is send messages and smiles. Everyone can do this, even if they have the social charms of a cactus and are too shy to talk to their own little sister. The usual bit of courage it takes to approach a stranger and strike up a conversation in real life is no longer required. This may seen like a good thing, since it gives the shy guys a chance.

What ends up happening, however, is that every guy in online dating does indeed message unreservedly. Now imagine if every guy sends out 50 messages. Assuming there is an equal number of guys and girls on a dating site (which is untrue… there are usually more guys than girls), the girls would get a lot of incoming messages. Of course, the attractive girls are going to get a higher percentage of incoming messages. The end result: attractive girls are flooded by messages from a rag tag army of willing men. She has no choice but to mercilessly cut them down to a handful of knights in shining armour.

I imagine it goes something like this:

Too short… CUT!
Misspelled something… CUT!
Seems too full of himself… CUT!
Eww, ugly haircut… CUT!
Just plain ugly… CUT!
Conservative… CUT!
His head is too tilted in that photo… CUT!
I think his left eye is slightly bigger than his right eye… CUT!
His knees look too sharp to me… CUT!
He looks like he wants to be cut… CUT!
The rest of them look okay… except for him, him and him… they’re CUT!

After creating a female profile online, I was really wishing I could switch over and play for the other team. Everytime I log into my female profile, there’d be messages and smiles. When I log into my guy profile, there’s nothing but an empty inbox.

But readers, hold your warms tears of kindness and commiseration for a second. If you recall, I did receive 3 “smile-backs” on Lavalife. Well, I went on to message those girls. Two of them didn’t respond, and the one who did seemed genuinely nice, smart, adventurous, and fun. We exchanged a few messages, added each other on Facebook, chatted on MSN, exchanged phone numbers and … wait for it… arranged for a real-life date! Excited? So was I!

(to be continued…) Go to Part 6 >>

This is part 4 of a 6 part series about my personal experience with online dating. Click here to see other parts to this series. Stay tuned for more!

H&M are the model couple. They’re a ridiculously cute and yes, almost envy-inducing, because that’s just how great they are together. H has infinite indie rock boy charm and though I’ve only met M a few times, she’s super nice and bakes tasty things. They met on Lavalife, chatted online, went on a first date together and have been dating ever since.

But you’re probably pondering… “if they’re so great, did they really need to go online to look for a date?” Good question.

Paraphrasing my friend H: “It makes sense if you think about it. People spend $30 and a night at a bar in hopes of meeting someone. Compared to that, online dating is a pretty good alternative, especially for those who are a little shy.”

I talked to H about his online dating experience, and he said it was much the same as mine: lots of messages sent, not so many replies. “Just keep at it and give it a chance,” encouraged H. Mind you, H is much better looking than I am. He’s got way cool hair plus well, you just can’t compete with indie rock boy charms. (M if you’re reading this, don’t worry, I’m not trying to steal him.)

I was also curious about M’s online dating experience. What’s online dating like from the female perspective? Turns out it’s quite a different story! The following is an excerpt from our MSN conversation.

[first I asked for some feedback on my profile]
M: … the vocabulary is good, as you are likely to attract girls who of the more intellegent/well read variety… which are ultimately more fun to converse with. Overall I think its very sweet and such and makes it sound like you have quite a bit going on… not like you are all “I sit at home in my dark basement… if you talk to me I will construct a creepy shrine”
JP: HAHAHA… good, cutting down the creepiness factor is key, I believe
M: which is always a secret girl fear I think when she enters online dating. I made H tell me his last name and address before our first date in case one of my friends had to avenge my death. Luckily, no vigilante justice was required.
JP: HAHAHA… It’s good to be smart, haha. It’s good that women are usually wise about these things
M: yeah, its a shame because honestly the internet is an amazing resource, especially for the nice kind of people who are a little shy or would rather not hit on everybody when they go out with their friends, but do want to find someone. But you also get quite a few jerks who abuse it, so it never hurts to be safe…
JP: Oh yeah, tell me about your online dating experience! Girls must get so much attention online!
M: like I went on one date from plenty of fish actually, and this guy took me on a tour of his house, then turned off the lights in his room and was all “Want to see my lightsaber?” and I was thinking… this is either a horrible euphemism… or he’s actually going to show me a lightsaber… I don’t know which outcome I prefer.
JP: HAHAHAHAHA.
M: it was the latter…. I left shortly after hahah
JP: you made laugh so hard!!! HAHAHA
M: yeah thats probably the funniest. I dunno, mostly my biggest problem was all these old guys kept messaging me and stuff. Guys 40+… guys that could be my dad. It was vaguely creepy. But then again, i would have never met H without it and H is everything i could ask/hope for in a guy… so I guess its hit and miss. H almost didn’t message me back I guess… as I lived so far away [M lives in a good drive outside of Toronto]
JP: awwww, you guys should be the lavalife cover-couple.
…
JP: Yeah, how many messages would you get in a day? And what did they mainly consist of?
M: 2-3
JP: sorry, don’t mean to make this an interrogation! haha, just doing some research
M: sometimes they were like “You seem super cute and sweet, we should talk more.”… and others were like “You’re cute, whats the weirdest thing you’ve done in bed?”
JP: …ugh.
M: or the ever classy “Let’s fuck.”
JP: haha, I’m going to guess you didn’t reply to those!
M: Really makes a girl feel special hahah… and no sirrrr hahah. Yeah in total I probably sent out 3-4 messages to guys, and got about 40ish in the month I belonged to lavalife… I would give as basic totals (not including creepy old guys, but actually dateable guys)
JP: Ah, I see. Cool, thanks so much for the inside scoop! Hehehe

And there you have it ladies and gentlemen! The female side of the story, and wow, what a different story it is.

I think that lightsaber story is probably the funniest dating story I’ve ever heard. I love how M said “a horrible euphemism.” This is the mental picture I get:

[Setting: dark room in space ship somewhere in a galaxy far away...]
[Enter, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia]
Luke Skywalker: Hey, Princess Leigha… ugh…. you wanna see my light-saber?
Princess Leia: What do you mean? I’ve seen it lots of times… you were just battling some storm troopers with it this morning, remember?…. …. OH…. …. THAT light-saber…Oh no, put it away!
[exeunt Princess Leia, Luke. Leia running, Luke pursues]
…
…
Yoda: Twisted by the Dark Side, young Skywalker has become.

… *AHEM* Anyway. Faith restored in online dating by H&M’s inspirational relationship, I continued my virtual flirting anew. I should make a mention here of Lavalife’s “smile” system here. Lavalife lets you send as many “smiles” as you want for free. (You have to get a paid account to message. Replying to messages is free though). Basically, a smile works the same way as a Facebook poke: you can send smiles, receive smiles, and smile back. Except on Lavalife it suggests anything from “Hi there, I think you’re interesting.” to “Nice to meet ya, I’d like to get with ya.” (on that note, I have no idea what Facebook pokes connote… maybe it’s an euphemism, but I’ll hold my imagination in check this time)

So this time, I was more inclusive in sending messages and smiles. I expanded my range to people who seemed promising rather than people who seemed perfect (or almost too perfect). This included girls with well written profiles who did not post photos and cute girls instead of drop-dead-gorgeous girls. Lo and behold, my efforts were rewarded with 3 “smile-backs” on Lavalife and a courteous rejection on PlentyOfFish. Nothing to write home about, but much better than nothing!

Still, I couldn’t help but feel that the response rate left something to be desired. Over 50 messages and over 50 smiles and only a few responses. “Have wiser and more charming men before me figured out how to put on the smooth moves online?” I found myself wondering. Maybe I needed some guidance. I looked online for something to the effect of “online dating for dummies”. Failing that exact title, I found something along a similar vein. Well, I doubt I could be doing any worse, so any advice has got to be an improvement right? So, I decided to see what I could glean from Mr. iMack’s insights. (To be continued …) Go to Part 5 >>

This is part 3 of a 6 part series about my personal experience with online dating. Click here to see other parts to this series. Stay tuned for more!

I have to admit, signing up for an account and browsing the profiles for the first time was pretty exciting. It was like… how can I make a comparison? Let’s see, it was like I just discovered a bunch of new blogs, some of which were really cool, and some of the bloggers were hot, and there was the potential of hooking up with them! (Seriously, blog readers, don’t you wish you could hook up with all the interesting & hot bloggers out there? You know where to find me. )

Well, that was the feeling at first anyway.

But after a few days, it felt like… let’s find an appropriate simile. It felt like it was elementary school all over again, and we’re picking teams for the next game during recess, and I’m the last to get picked…. again. Except, instead of one team getting stuck with me, the meanies decide they should just play without me, and I’m left to cry silently by the wall while trying to hide my gushing river of tears. That’s exactly what it felt like.

No replies. After putting my heart and soul into those witty, brief, and charmingly written messages, I received nothing! Not even a “No thanks!” It was like sending messages into the void. Honestly, I think if I had built a radio transceiver out of toothpaste, pre-chewed gum, and a paperclip, MacGyver style, and tried to contact possible extra-terrestrial life forms in Alpha Centauri to get a date, I might have gotten more replies.

What’s the problem? Was I going at it all wrong?

I put some thought into it and came up with a possible explanation. All of the girls I contacted were extremely attractive. They all had well written profiles AND very good pictures. See, with online dating, it takes the same amount of effort to click on any profile and they’re all in front of you on the computer screen. So why click on Ms. Pretty Cute when you can set your cursor on Ms. Ultimate Perfection and Ms. Too Good To Be True (and since this is online dating, it very well may be too good to be true).

So what should I do? Should I lower my standards?

Well, before getting into a whole dilemma about that, I decided to find out something else. Just how attractive am I? I figured it’s a good idea to have a sense of the market value of the merchandise so I can fetch the best price, right? I mean, that’s just good business practise.

While I was pretty happy with my profile and felt that it aptly reflected my awesome personality, I didn’t really have an idea of how my looks rated. I knew I wasn’t hideously deranged. I mean, all the stuff that’s supposed to be there is there, and there are no extra protrusions, cavities, horns, or snakes instead of hair. But I needed a numerical assessment (being the engineer that I am). I needed a score from 1 to 10. Logically, I put my photos on hotornot.com. The result? I present you my hotornot.com badge*! Think it’s too high/low? You can go rate me!

*Actually, I put up a few photos and got a range of scores from 3.5 to almost 8, averaging around 7. This is one of the better photos.

So I wasn’t too surprised by my hotornot rating. It’s not an A score, but at least I’m not failing in the looks department. I was, however, starting to lose faith in the online dating thing. About the same time I was feeling all dejected from getting no love online, I found out my friend and his current girlfriend met over Lavalife. We will call them H&M, because they’re just that cool. Their story totally restored my faith in online dating. So, let’s save that story for next time, shall we? Go to Part 4 >>

This is part 2 of a 6 part series about my personal experience with online dating. Click here to see other parts to this series. Stay tuned for more!

When I started this online dating adventure, I ran the idea over with a few of my friends and got a mix of reactions.

There was “Oh, I think this will be a very interesting scientific experiment. You should try to separate the variables and see how each one affects the success rate. For example, change your profile picture around or alter your height and tally the ratio of messages sent to messages received.” (Did I tell you all my friends are engineers?)

Of course, there was also “Ugh, I don’t know man… think about it: how many hot, intelligent, attractive, non-serial-killer chicks do you know who are single? Do you think they need to resort to online dating to find a date? You’re going to meet lots of ugly chick and freaks.” (Yeah, thanks a lot dude. Let’s see, if I did know a ton of hot, intelligent, attractive, non-serial-killer chicks who are single, we wouldn’t be having this unfortunate conversation right now. I’d be on a date.)

Actually, what my friend said above got me a little worried. I had no idea of what kind of people were on online dating, so I turned to Google, my go to guy when I “just need to know”. I looked up some blogs on online dating, to get the inside story, the personal account. I didn’t find much, but I did find this golden nugget of insight on Quigley’s Online Dating Blog (reproduced below, with full credit to Quigley):

Online dating body type translation table:

I must admit, when putting down personal details in a profile, there’s a strong temptation to… err on the side of flattery, if you will. This Scientific American Mind article cites a study that found “online height is exaggerated by only an inch or so for both men and women but women appear to understate their weight more and more as they get older: by five pounds when they are in their 20s, 17 pounds in their 30s and 19 pounds in their 40s.” Well, I wasn’t really looking to date women in their 30s or 40s, so I figured I’d manage the 5 pound handicap somehow.

Off I went to browse the list of profiles. And much to my surprise, there were quite a few really great profiles. Take a look for yourself: pretty girl in short hair (I think women who look great in short hair are extra attractive), just plain gorgeous, great profile,
great opening line “I’ll steal your heart like I stole this internet connection!”. (sorry, I think you have to be logged in for the Lavalife links to work)

So, using my sentence construction skillz and my keyboarding skillz, I proceeded to hit on these eligible members of the fairer sex with my most magnificent messages. See below:

To: MISHA1121

Hi there odd girl

Your profile is really quaint and charming. Did you throw it together in a few minutes, or did it take careful contemplation to achieve such simplicity?

It definitely caught my interest and I’d love to hear more from you.

Either way, gorgeously written profile! It has eccentric literary charm down to a T.

Just my 3 cents. =)

To: STOLENCONNECTION

Hands above your heads

=) wicked witty opening line.

“I’ll steal your heart like I stole this internet connection!”

… and I’ll catch you like I caught that terrible cold last week.

I think it’s really cool that you’re in school to become a professional chef. Sometimes, I seriously contemplate the possibility of becoming a chef (chef or architect, actually). Hm… I’m curious, are there exams at school? If so, what are they like? (are they cook-offs a la iron chef?)

Your brief profile definitely caught my interest. I’d love to know more.

And the result of my smooth online macking? Find out next week on iDate! Go to Part 3 >>

Let’s see… I’ve been single for exactly… ah, we’d better not get into that. Let’s just say it’s been a while. Okay, a long while.

Why? I probably shouldn’t touch this one with a ten foot stick, but… I’m feeling reckless. Sure, I don’t have Brad Pitt’s chiseled jaw line, or Brad Pitt’s picturesque pecs, or Brad Pitt’s fame and fortune. But all that means is that I’m not Brad Pitt… how many people are anyway? (One. And the last time I checked, he was getting it on with none other than Angelina Jolie… but back to me.) I think I’m pretty datable. I have a face. The mirror doesn’t crack when I look at myself in the morning. I have hobbies (other than blogging). All in all, a fine catch, if I do say so myself.

I think the main problem is my line of work. Big surprise, graduate school in Electrical Engineering isn’t the cornucopia of women I imagined it to be. (And dear reader, if you are a female in grad school in electrical engineering, you’re either taken, or you should send me a note. You know where to find me). Outside of school, I do go to bars and clubs. And then there are house parties and friends of friends. But so far, I’m still a veteran MVP of Team Single.

So, anyway, since I’ve always been curious about online dating, I figured I’d give it a try. Sure, it still had a bit of “oh, are you that desperate?” taboo… but come on, what do I have to lose?

After some research, and checking Alexa for traffic rankings, I decided on Lavalife and Plenty of Fish, two dating sites with the highest traffic in Canada. Plenty of Fish is the largest free online dating site, started by a Canadian guy none the less. As for Lavalife, I’m sure you’ve all seen the ubiquitous ads. Well, I was going to find out if I could actually hook up with one of them snazzy looking cartoon people. Anyway, putting up a profile is free for both sites, so after some careful wordsmithery, I bravely put up my first online dating profile.

Below is my profile on Lavalife. Click to englarge. This is part 1 of a 6 part series about my personal experience with online dating. Stay tuned for more! For other parts of the series, click here. Go to Part 2 >>