Capella has a post on what she looks for in a man. I’ve got some thoughts on such lists, but I want to mull it over before writing anything more extensive about it. Reading over the first bullet point, which is a thirst for intelligence, the thought occurred to me: There’s got to be a dating service that focuses on people with high IQs. It’s not always easy for these people to meet each other and a relationship with too high an intelligence differential can be problematic. Plus, people with more intelligence often have money. Not super amounts, but perhaps enough to fund a dating service.
Turns out that there is something called IQ Cuties. Obviously I’m not in a position to check out how worthwhile it is. I think that such a service would be better off the internet. I once enrolled in a specialty dating service a while back and got fleeced pretty good. It was of a religious nature. I probably would have been better off going to church. In any case, it’s a lot easier to get sums of money out of people (like me) when you’re brick-and-mortar-plus-Internet rather than potentially some fly-by-night Internet operation.
The specialty operation that I enrolled in went out of business shortly after my term expired. So maybe Lavalife is the way to go, business-wise.
Has anyone seen those ads for Chemistry.com that rib on eHarmony? The gay ones I understand, but I didn’t quite understand why “We accept everybody!” is a great selling point for a dating service. I signed up with the aforementioned fleecing agency in part because they did cull the herd, so to speak. Then again, they were probably rejecting people that were more up my alley than the ones I actually dated (except one who was absolutely marvelous though of course I failed to recognize that at the time), so maybe that’s where Chemistry.com would have come in. But while I wouldn’t refuse to date someone that was rejected by eHarmony, I don’t know that I’d jump in the pool with a bunch of rejects. I did that enough in junior high, thankyouverymuch.
A while back Unfogged clued me in to something called CrazyBlindDate, where basically you set something up on short notice and in stark contrast to the aforementioned dating services is indiscriminate in nature. Even though it’s completely out of my nature, I might have done something like this when I was single. It’s sort of like the old apartment complex I lived in out in Deseret. It was $300 a month with all bills paid, filled with ex-cons and miscreants, and the most interesting place one could ever ask to live for a little while. Particularly when you’re writing a blog, as I was at the time. CrazyBlindDate probably provides excellent blogfodder.
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18 Responses to Matchmakers, Matchmakers, Give’em a Match
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Isn’t Capella like 30 and past marriageable age anyway?
The best way to meet girls is in university campuses and places close to preferably all girl highschools, like a McDonald or an Applebees. Online dating seems to rather suck. Girls who put their profiles up usually have some kind of definitive deal breaker.
Capella is younger than thirty, but whether you agree with it or not, 30 is not past marriageable in the United States.
I’m aware of that. But even in the US for a woman at around 30 the last train is leaving the station. It’s her last chance to get on the train. Best age for females to marry is 15-25. For men, 20-40 years of age.
By the way, in Ranma 1/2, Shoun, father of Akane (16), Nabiki (17), and Kasumi (19), is actively trying to engage in marry them, because he is a good father and knows his dauthers are in their nubile years.
Does someone hear a dog barking off in the distance somewhere? Maybe it’s just me.
I notice Capella mentions upfront the guy must be Jewish or at least Jewish-compatible. I guess that means, to her, that he doesn’t care if she’s Jewish? It’s nice to get that out front right away, but I would still think by adding that caveat it might still invite problems down the road if they marry and have kids, even if the (say) Methodist guy doesn’t mind dating or even marrying a Jewish girl, he might not want his kids brought up in the faith. Oops. Conflict. Sounds like if it’s important enough to be a relationship criteria, it’s important enough to be firm about. Jewish or nothing.
I also find it interesting where she says she and most women don’t really care how a guy looks. I simply find it almost laughably hard to believe a guys looks are not that important to a girl’s attraction, any more than the basic lie that size does not really matter to women when it comes right down to being brutally honest. A good-looking guy is going to have a major competitive advantage when competing on a level playing field with other average or less-than-stellar looking guys, no matter what women might so humbly and selflessly attest – it’s subconscious and they just don’t even realize it.
It’s the same for guys, sometimes, although we have a different wild card – a good body can make up for a less-than-attractive face.
Isn’t Capella like 30 and past marriageable age anyway?
28.
Online dating seems to rather suck. Girls who put their profiles up usually have some kind of definitive deal breaker.
Only in the sense that a highly desirable woman will have no need for online dating because men will be approaching her all the time. That’s only true for the women at the top end of the spectrum, 8’s and above mostly, and I doubt they account for more than a small percentage of all women. What this means is that most women might find online dating useful, and enough of them actually enroll that the “deal breaker” stereotype doesn’t really apply.
Gannon, we’ve already had the “nubile years” discussion (in three parts, no less). We’re moving on now.
“I also find it interesting where she says she and most women don’t really care how a guy looks.”
Women care about looks, no doubt about it. There a few differences though: men only care about looks, and for a man while it is possible to enjoy riding a fattie he will never fall in love with her. Women can fall in love with ugly man, probably because the most important women look for in men is status. In general, the younger the woman the more she cares ablout looks. That’s why it is rather difficult to date teen girls: they will judge by your coolnes and degree of being exciting and dangerous. Older, more mature women like Capella are thinking about having babies so the size of a man’s wallet is the most important thing. The older the woman, the less she cares about looks and coolness and the more she cares about money.
@Peter: checking out the local MSN dating service, you mainly will find desperate single mothers or divorced women who are looking for what Americans call Captian save a Hoe.
By the way, tennis is really an excellent sport. It’s high class but still affordable, healthy (on clay, not on cement), and it’s sociable, meeting new partners.
I guess that means, to her, that he doesn’t care if she’s Jewish?
Actually, I’d imagine that it means that he doesn’t care that she’s Jewish and that he wouldn’t mind raising their kids to be Jewish. Or perhaps introducing the kid to both religions and letting them decide when they’re older. Not sure, but she’s a pretty thoughtful person and has probably considered the child-rearing angle.
I simply find it almost laughably hard to believe a guys looks are not that important to a girl’s attraction, any more than the basic lie that size does not really matter to women when it comes right down to being brutally honest.
I think that for women looks account for a binary 1 or 0 value. Either he meets some minimum threshold required or he doesn’t and if he meets the physical appearance threshold he’s given the thumbs up or down on different criteria. He might get bonus points he’s particularly good looking, but I don’t think that we’re appraised remotely as thoroughly as women are. Men are more likely to go according to a scale or more attractive and less attractive (such as the 1-10 scale that Peter uses). Which makes sense since broadly speaking we decide which women to approach and ask out and they decide whether or not to go out with us. I’m oversimplifying, but I do think that can account for different approaches.
I did online dating for years and Peter is more right than Gannon is. There are a lot of quality singles online. The problem with online dating is more procedural. It’s difficult for a relationship to bloom naturally when two people meet solely for the sake of starting a relationship.
The problem with the dating service that I mentioned above wasn’t that the girls were of low quality (some were remarkably attractive and none had been married or had kids). Rather, they were people that I was incompatible with personality-wise and because of the barriers to join there wasn’t a lot of selection. I ran out of prospects a few months in.
I think that for women looks account for a binary 1 or 0 value. Either he meets some minimum threshold required or he doesn’t and if he meets the physical appearance threshold he’s given the thumbs up or down on different criteria. He might get bonus points he’s particularly good looking, but I don’t think that we’re appraised remotely as thoroughly as women are.
IINM, the expression is that a man’s looks have to be very good to help him or very bad to hurt him. In the great majority of cases they are largely irrelevant.
That being so, I am somewhat surprised that Capella didn’t mention any physical fitness standards, other than that the man not be excessively obese. She is very athletic, having run a marathon not long ago, somehow I don’t see her being too satisfied with a couch potato.
I know we have debated this subject endlessly. However, I found a paragraph which probably explains why our views differ so much:
What really bothers parents about their teenage kids having sex? Their dislike of the idea is so visceral it’s probably inborn. But if it’s inborn it should be universal, and there are plenty of societies where parents don’t mind if their teenage kids have sex—indeed, where it’s normal for 14 year olds to become mothers. So what’s going on? There does seem to be a universal taboo against sex with prepubescent children. One can imagine evolutionary reasons for that. And I think this is the main reason parents in industrialized societies dislike teenage kids having sex. They still think of them as children, even though biologically they’re not, so the taboo against child sex still has force.
If you have something to add to that debate, add it to the posts where we are debating that subject. I do not want all of my relationship posts to become referenda on child sex. In fact, I wrote posts directly addressing the subject precisely to prevent that from happening.
I’ve provided you a forum to present your point of view in three different posts. I don’t want any and every post I have about relationships to devolve into that particular debate.
No problem at all. It is your blog after all, and I appreciated the discussion. By the way, I never talked about child sex. Only about teen girls, which are not children but essentially young adults. Thanks for your space and time.
It’s as simple as this: American parents – myself being one – consider our offspring to be “children” until they are of legal age (i.e. 17 or 18 depending on the definition of legal. 17 to serve in the military, 18 to consent legally to sex, vote, etc.)
It has absolutely nothing to do with biology, as no one denies kids in their mid-teens could physically father or mother a child (is “mother a child” a real phrase?). But an athletic 15-yr-old might be able to physically overpower his father, or beat him at a race. That doesn’t make him an “adult” any more than the other does. It all has to do with emotional maturity.
That’s it, that’s all. There’s no denying that that’s how things are in America and I don’t care if every single country in the globe does it otherwise, to tell an American that you approve of sex with girls 12-16 years old or so, to them you’re approving of child sex. Period. No pun intended.
Alright folks, let’s move on. This post is about online dating between legal adults 🙂
I know, I know…. *sigh*
I promised Trumwill not to post anymorte, but you leave me no choice. Even in half of the US sex with 16 year olds is legal, and in Hawai 14 is still legal.
-{The rest of this comment has been deleted. I left this part up because it had a factual correction. I’ll also add that instead of saying “child sex” I should have said “teen sex”. But please, no more discussion on this topic unless the post actually involves the issue.}-