I had been told by an online dating veteran not to bother emailing men – if they hadn’t already winked or emailed me, chances were they were not interested based on my photo and it was a waste of time. It made sense to me (guys are very visual) and so when I got the weekly “Your Matches” email from Match.com I would glance at it but did nothing with the suggested matches.

The email contains 12 short profiles in a row, starting with the highest percentage match and ending with the least. One week, the very last profile, just about to fall off the page, was the following:

zzug

44, Cranberry Township, PA
81% match
6’5″ (195.0cm),
Seeks: Women 42-46

He is currently separated
His faith is Spiritual but not religious
He probably will not want to have kids

I glanced, and then went back and read it again. “Seeks: Women 42-46.” My experience is that most men have a very wide age range – it is not uncommon to a 50-year old man open to dating women between 35 to 55, or even harder on the female ego, between 35 and 49, and I had never seen such a narrow range before. I was within his age range, and I was intrigued so I clicked on the portrait.

Here it went from bad to worse:

I spend the weekends with my Kids, 7 and 8, (and my 20 year old when he is not working), about 4 hours away in Toronto (Mississauga), a nice drive for a weekend getaway.

Its hard to imagine working in Pittsburgh during the week and spending weekends in Toronto, makes it hard to have a relationship let alone start one online! I guess it will be a special someone who can put up with my schedule and hopefully we would be the richer for it.

Now I was really interested, but in a friendly, feeling-sorry-for-the-man sort of way. This man seemed nice, but his situation was impossible – who would date a guy who was gone on the week-end? Plus who knew how long he’d be around – he was Canadian, down here on a temporary “L-1″ visa. I laughed, and shot him my first ever match email. I don’t have a copy of it, but he says I made it very clear in the email I was being friendly and wanted nothing more.

Much to my surprise, after we emailed for a bit, and then met for a drink (a pity date on my part), I ended up really liking him, and we dated for a short time, and then became just “very good friends” (more about this in another post). But while we were dating I would tease him about his impossible profile. He would laugh and say, “It worked, didn’t it? It’s called target marketing.” and I could not disagree.

One thing I learned in Marketing 101 was that if you try to appeal to everyone, you will appeal to no one. How many profile have you read that say, “I like to do anything my date wants to do.” It’s generic and boring. The more specific you are, the more color and flavor you give to your profile. The “Seeks: Women 42-46″ is what caught my eye to click and read further.

 

 

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