I Love You, Let's Meet: Adventures in Online Dating

I Love You, Let’s Meet: Adventures in Online Dating, by Virginia Vietzthum was never boring. I’ve never formally used an online dating site, but my beloved and I did meet through a proprietary, Lotus Notes database back in 1998. We met, much as online daters do, but e-mailing and talking on the phone for weeks before we met in person. So it was with a lot of curiosity that I approached this book.

Vietzthum is a former sex columnist for Salon.com. I’ve never read her column, but there are many moments in which she writes like a sex columnist and others when she writes like a sociologist or anthropologist and still others in which she writes like a college student trying to find herself in Rhetoric III. Her book is a combination of interviews with online daters and stories of her own forays into the world of eHarmony, True, Match, Nerve and other dating sites.

The book was at times hopeful and at times depressing. Some memorable quotes:

Self-definition is hard for anyone who isn’t ‘spouse,’ or ‘parent’ or strongly career-identified.” While discussing why it’s hard to write a profile for an online dating site, Vietzthum nailed for me why my twenties sucked so much. I’m not saying I only identify myself as spouse or parent, but she’s right – it does make it easier to define yourself if you hold roles that society at least think it understands.

“You’re seeking balance amid paradoxes such as, ‘Don’t sell yourself short or lower your standards,’ yet ‘Stop expecting so much and you’ll be happy’; and ‘Keep it casual; it’s just beer and a taco,’ even though you’ve checked the Serious Relationship box." No wonder dating is so hard.

"People I know in Real Life have probably committed all my ‘deal-breakers’ [that would result in the author not contacting someone] at some point, but this system normalizes discrimination.”

“I’ve heard online daters allude to that underlying threat: If you lie to me, I feel more free to use you.”

The book includes a tongue-in-cheek review of several top dating sites and a few match-made-in-Ethernet-heaven success stories. Overall, an entertaining read, and I’m not even doing any online dating.

Comments

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