Online Dating

In this day and age, if you are single, people’s default response is to urge you to go online. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, everyone does it and it actually works! For some people that is. I myself have two friends who met their respective fiancé’s online and another friend who is about to move in with their partner who they also met online. But what is online dating like for someone like me? Well, in a nutshell an unpleasant experience that I won’t be in a hurry to repeat.

I spent six months on popular dating website Plenty of Fish or for those in the know POF. I chose it for a variety of reasons, firstly it was free, secondly one of my best friend’s had a very positive experience and thirdly the site is pretty accessible for a screen reader user. The app is also ok, but not as good as the main site on a desktop computer.

In six months of being online, I managed to go on let me just count them up, zero dates. There were a couple of males who suggested going out ‘some time’, but then they would simply vanish from the face of the earth one day. This was a common theme. You will have a conversation with someone for a week or so, then they just stop speaking to you for no apparent reason. The irritating thing is that you can see when they are online and blatantly blanking you. It seems to be acceptable to be rude online.

A good feature on POF is the block button. This was used frequently to block guys who were just after one thing and had no shame in asking up front. This made me question whether ‘honesty’ was really an admirable characteristic or not.

I’m not sure if my downfall was my profile. Do you drink? No. Do you smoke? No. Do you drive? No. Do you have children? No. What is your religion? Muslim. This is all before I reveal I have a disability. I chose not to state I was visually impaired in my profile. However, I did give little hints, such as ‘I enjoy walking my Guide Dog’ and had a picture of me with Calvin. I’m lucky that in photos I can hide my blindness. Generally, most people didn’t read your profile and messaged you based on your profile photo. For me this meant I received lots of messages from Asian men, which is fine, but when you’ve grown-up in a predominantly white area and your cousins call you a coconut (brown on the outside, white on the in) it means you struggle to connect with the majority of Asian males. Tecnically, I’m not even Asian as my Mum is from Mauritius and my Dad is from Kenya. Geographically that makes me African.

I tried to be open minded when talking to people and reading their profiles. Obviously, I couldn’t see their profile pictures, but POF tells you their hair, eye and skin colour, as well as their height and age. This enables you to create some sort of image in your head for evaluation. I wish it told me attributes like facial hair, piercings and tattoos, but you can’t have everything.

I spoke to hundreds of males online. Some messaged me first, others I messaged first. I was very careful, which was another thing that went against me. When people asked for my number I politely told them that I would prefer to keep chatting via POF until I got to know them better. Lots of guys didn’t like this and would move on to their next victim. My friends and family all knew I was online and if I did go on a date it was agreed that someone would be watching nearby. At the end of the day, I am a vulnerable individual no matter how independent I try to be.

Overall, online dating left me feeling deflated and undesirable. Therefore, I deleted my account and plan to explore other avenues in my quest for love. I’m glad I tried it and it is great that it works for some people, it just wasn’t designed for someone as unique as me. If you do try online dating, please stay safe.