I had a bare-bones profile on PolyMatchmaker for a few months in 2003 or 2004, back when Parker and I still lived in California. In it, I explicitly stated that I was interested only in meeting new friends, not dating, and I didn't include a photo of myself. No one wrote me, except for someone who wanted to let me know about a local poly discussion group, but that was fine with me: I was mainly interested in reading other people's profiles, and following what seemed to be a soap opera of sorts going on in the lives of the site's moderators. In fact, I created another “fake” profile on PolyMatchmaker a couple of years ago specifically for the purpose of finding out what had happened with the moderators' complicated relationship groupings & re-groupings, and was gratified to discover several interesting plot twists: the original MF couple had split, with the woman forming a monogamous relationship with someone outside the original group; meanwhile, more than one of the couple's original OSO's (several of whom they had brought on board to help with the site) had also gone their merry ways.
Overall, I can't say I recommend PolyMatchmaker. It's too bad, as it's the only site I know of that caters specifically to people who identify as poly. There were an awful lot of couples on that site advertising for the elusive single bi babe, a woman with no significant attachments of her own, who would be interested in joining their already existing family, spicing up their stale marriage by putting out for both husband and wife, helping out with household duties, possibly even helping raise existing children, kind of like a nanny-with-benefits. Ew.
I frankly don't even know if their site still exists, and I'm too lazy to check just now.
The only other site I know much about is OKCupid, which I do recommend. It's pretty poly-friendly, too, for an all-purpose site.
I put a profile up on OKC in the summer of 2007, because Parker, Lilianna, Rick, and Robin – not to mention my single friends Erika, Cate, and Georgia – had all recently joined the site, and it sounded like fun. I was pregnant with Sienna at the time, and had no interest in dating, but I was also home alone a lot, and – quite frankly – bored. So I put up a fairly detailed profile, with the caveat that I was not really in the market for anything but pen pals. After a couple of months, I had more pen pals than I could keep up with, so I removed the profile. I continued my correspondence with three or four of my most interesting online friends for some time afterward; one of them still writes me occasionally to recommend books and movies.
I did try internet dating “for real” a little later: I had an updated profile on OKCupid from November 2008 through June 2009. Why did I feel the need to date? That's a question with a complicated answer, so I will just stick to cataloging my experiences for now.
It was kind of bizarre, as I'd really never “dated” before. Parker and I were high school sweethearts, which meant that I married without ever having been part of the adult dating scene.
On OKC, I didn't do much work in terms of checking out other people's profiles; I basically waited for men to write me, a pretty common strategy for women on dating sites. However, I did make an effort to answer every halfway thoughtful message I got, which is somewhat unusual – or so I gather from the complaints I hear from the men I know, who claim that they're lucky to get responses from half of the women they write.
Once I'd determined that someone was at least possibly friend material, I was motivated to meet him pretty quickly, because I didn't want to devote a lot of time to developing a correspondence with anyone whose company I would turn out not to enjoy. I looked at the whole exercise of meeting people as a big experiment, and I quite enjoyed myself in the process, even though some of the individual dates were not all that.
In all, I ended up meeting nine people over the eight months I was on OKCupid.
Here's what happened with each, in approximate chronological order:
Casey: Turned out to be a worthwhile sort, but I had doubts about him from the beginning. First of all, he was single, and after Scott, I was wary of getting involved with anyone single. (Casey's response to this concern: “But that isn't fair – it's the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer!”) Secondly, I just wasn't physically attracted to him. We went out probably a dozen times over the course of several months, and we never exchanged so much as a real kiss. Finally, after canceling a date because of a sore throat and getting a comment from him along the lines of, “This is one time, at least, that I'm glad we haven't been making out,” I told him I wasn't interested in anything but platonic friendship. He pretty much dropped out of my life after that.
Bob: Like me, Bob was in an open marriage (it has since ended); they'd had some experience in the swinging community, but Bob said he thought that form of relating was somewhat artificial. We realized very early on that he'd actually dated my friend Erika for a while, and, although he was a very likable person, this meant that I knew too much about his sexual proclivities to be interested in a relationship. Specifically, Erika had complained that he wouldn't go down on her unless she shaved (or, better yet, waxed) off all of her pubic hair. In my view, preferences are one thing, but an absolute requirement that someone alter his or her natural appearance – especially when it's something like pubic hair, or male facial hair, just a fact of being an adult – is simply not cool. So, Bob hung out at our house a few times, and came to a few parties, and helped us recover our data when our Mac crashed, but nothing sexual ever happened between us.
Guy: I wrote about him in “Photographers I Have Known” – he was my one experiment in casual sex. He fit all the criteria on my checklist (he was attractive and intelligent; in a stable – but open! – relationship of his own, with kids to boot; and he didn't seem likely to be a drama queen), and I slept with him on date #4 – which, for me, was moving very quickly. We had our first date in December 2008, and our last in May 2009 (unless you count the time, several months later, when we met for a friendly catch-up-on-the-news dinner).
Drew: We first met in person on March 1, 2009, and had an absolutely crazy ride together for several months; our romantic relationship ended in September, largely because Drew was jealous of Travis, but also because he'd met a woman who wanted sexual exclusivity. There's a lot more to say about this relationship, and the role Drew has played in my life, and I intend to address this topic at greater length some other time.
Travis: As my devoted readers already know, Travis is my current boyfriend. Yes, we met on OKCupid, in June 2009. Sort of. (Again, more on the how-we-met-story some other time.) Coincidentally, the day I met Travis was the day I removed my dating profile from OKC.
Now, if you've been counting, you'll no doubt have noticed that there are FOUR people not yet accounted for. I haven't forgotten them, but they were One Date Wonders. One of them was an absolute nut case – I had been pretty sure he was psycho before I met him, but he was such an oddball that the clinical psychologist in me just had to have her curiosity appeased. Another was older than my father, and I told him straight up that there was no way I was interested in any kind of romantic involvement, but he insisted that it would be just a friendly lunch date, so I agreed to meet him – then, much to my chagrin, he spent the entire time telling me way too much about his non-existent sex life, and then had the temerity to complain that the only women interested in him were in their fifties, or – horrors! – sixties. “You're sixty-five years old,” I said reprovingly, “Are you implying that there's something wrong with women your own age?” The other two men were in their thirties, and not wacko, but I was disappointed to discover that they were pretty immature, both of them, and clueless in similar ways. Neither had ever been a long-term relationship, and each spent our hour together bitching and moaning about how hard it is to date, how inexplicable women are, and how so few of them are intelligent and attractive enough to bother with, anyway. Needless to say, I was not charmed. I gave each of these whiners some practical advice and a friendly but perfunctory hug, and ended our involvement right there.
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