Excuse me, your scars are showing

So I'm continuing along on the online dating trail for now, watching the days tick away until my self-imposed break.  I'm not talking to anyone noteworthy at the moment, and am still wondering if the Bass Player (aka the one I kindly referred to as boring) will still be interested in going out again after I get back from being out of town.  In the meantime, I spend a few minutes here and there wandering the sites, perusing the options.

Some profiles are nearly thoughtless, just throwing in the requisite amount of words to get by the dating site minions.  They put two sentences that tell you nothing and then tell you to just ask if you're interested.  Seriously?  That's fiercely lazy.  If you can't bother to put together a single thoughtful paragraph about yourself, why would I expect you to make an effort in anything else?  Unfortunately online dating does require one to sell themselves, at least a little bit.  If you're too good for that, then you're not meant for online dating.

Other profiles are so long and winding and rambling that it's hard to get through.  It's one thing to read a lengthy, well-written, humorous and charming profile.  It's another to read some person's run on thoughts.  The worst are the ranters.  The ones who rant about how fake most of the people are on the site, and how looking for anyone of substance is basically a joke.  Way to show that chip on your shoulder!  I steer way clear of those people. 

My own profile lists a couple of things, but not in a ranting way.  I tell people that I will want to meet them sooner than later, and that I'm not interested in an only online dynamic.  I ask for people who say what they mean and mean what they say, people who have their lives together and are not looking for someone to complete them, but to complement them.  I feel like that is wholly different than going on there and bitching out the entire online dating community about how everyone lies, and how everyone is broken and ridiculous.  I certainly may think those things sometimes, and write them here, but I don't put them on my profile. 

This morning I read a profile that hit me differently.  The main content was fairly non-exceptional, not spectacular writing, pretty basic information.  But at the end he was talking about what he was looking for, and he said, "Someone who will smile not frown and mostly someone who won't cheat ......"

That made me so sad for some reason. I guess I felt like that one little addendum on his profile, that closing sentence, showed me this guy's dating scars.  Clearly he's been cheated on.  And that made me sad. 

We all have our baggage.  No one gets to their 30s without having something to show for it, some past wrong, some hurt we've worked through, some way we've been betrayed.  Sometimes these things show through on people's profiles, and sometimes they come off as desperate or bitter.  Other times they just cause a little twinge of sympathy, of compassion.

It made me think also of an episode of Girls where Shoshanna and Hannah are watching that game show "Baggage" and subsequently discussing their own respective small, medium and large baggage.  I wonder what my baggage would be, and how interesting it would be if everyone had to disclose something similar on their dating profile.  Many people would lie or dodge it, that's for sure.  It's like the people in interviews who say their worst qualities are being TOO organized or TOO detail oriented [DISCLAIMER: I probably did this myself in the past, LOL.].  It's all about the spin.  But some people would tell the truth, and sometimes that would scare people off.  But maybe sometimes having it all laid out there would help.  You'd know what you're getting into.  If only truth were mandated on these sites!

For now I'm left catching glimpses of this baggage through random, unintentional moments like the one I read this morning.  At least that feels honest, which is more than I can say for a lot of the things I've encountered since beginning my online dating adventures.

This guy is probably not my match.  But I sent him a message, anyway, just to say hi.  Because the honesty matters, and it's nice, and it struck a chord.  That merits a hi today.