Flirting for fun and profit and SCIENTIFIC PROOF

Because I have no social life, and because work is a less than ideal environment for meeting potential romantic interests, my only real hope on the score comes in the form of women working in the service industry.
This means waitresses (though I seldom dine out, so I might as well cross them off the list), cosmetologists, bank tellers, cashiers, receptionists, and so on.
The last person I pursued (the one who made the sexual assault comment about my Axe), in fact, worked for my optometrist, which is where I met her. Because I was getting contacts that had to be specially made and sent away for, and because there were some questions about a cataract forming in my eye, I had to make several trips to the office, and thus there was a great deal of opportunity for pursuing my interest in her.
And of course the most recent potential nibble of interest has come in the form of one of the employees in the rental office at my apartment complex.
The biggest problem with pursuing women encountered in the service industry, though, is that they encounter so many people in the course of a day it’s hard to make yourself stand out from the crowd, especially if, like me, you’ve spent most of your life trying to avoid being noticed.
There’s also the problem of flirting. In general, most women flirt for a variety of reasons, and it’s entirely possible that the majority of those reasons have no basis in any sort of attraction.
Women will flirt because they want to get something, because they feel like messing with someone, because they’re bored, and for a whole host of other reasons.
This isn’t an indictment, or really even a complaint; it’s merely an observation. I'm sure that men flirt meaninglessly just as often, or even more often, but since I have no interest in men, I really don't care what they do.
The point is that the fact that a woman flirts with you could mean anything, or it could mean absolutely nothing.
This is particularly true when it’s in a service industry setting, in which a waitress might flirt with you for a tip, or at a bank that doesn’t see much business and the teller flirts with you just because she’s bored.
I know from my own experience that when I worked in tech support I often flirted (over the phone), with female customers who sounded even remotely attractive because it helped to pass the time and to put them at ease.
Since these people were calling from all across the country, there was no way that this flirting could lead to anything, and thus it was devoid of meaning. It was just something to do to make an otherwise unpleasant situation a little more bearable.
And that’s often the way it is when a waitress, or a cashier, or a receptionist flirts with you.
The fact that there often is no clear indicator as to what the basis of flirtation is can lead to confusion, an embarrassing faux pas, anger, and humiliation.
Is she flirting with you because she likes you, or because she wants a big tip? Would you look foolish if you tried to pursue the flirtation and ask her out? Would you be missing the opportunity of a lifetime if you didn't?
Then there’s the question of whether she’s even flirting at all. Are you just misconstruing her natural friendliness? Are you reshaping the situation to accommodate your own desires in your mind? Does she have some bizarre variant of Tourette’s syndrome that causes her to randomly blurt out that people smell REALLY good?
Personally, I tend to err on the side of caution and not only assume that women aren’t flirting with me due to some actual interest in me, but rather, I assume that they are never flirting with me at all.
To put it simply, I have difficulty believing that a woman flirting with me is something that can occur in nature.
Obviously this is a defense mechanism designed to keep me from making foolish mistakes, though I really rather doubt that it’s led me to miss out on much in the way of opportunity.
In any case, in order for me to notice, a woman has to lay it on pretty thick (like, say, suggesting that the scent of my deodorant body spray could cause women to sexually assault the men who are wearing it), and even then I’ll be extremely suspicious of her motivation and will assume that it doesn’t actually mean anything.
On those occasions when a woman has, apparently, been flirting with me and I have actually attempted to act on it, I’ve pretty much only done so because other people were urging me to.
And with every failure that has resulted, I’ve become increasingly reluctant to even bother trying.
So as we begin to rule out even more potential sources of romance, we are inexorably drawn to the shadowy realm of online personals.
When I lived in Michigan I had no reason to even bother looking at the online personals, since the population was so small that, locally, nobody used the personals, particularly the online variety.
It was much the same situation when I lived in Minnesota, though the larger areas were near enough to where I lived that it was worth at least looking, and, in fact, I did go on two dates that resulted from online personals.
The first went fairly well, but the girl actually lived pretty far away (and was about to move even further), and she was really only looking for friends, not romance.
The second did not go well at all. For one thing, I had spent the 8 hours preceding the date getting utterly shitfaced as a guest at a picnic being held by a local beer brewing club, so I wasn't in the best frame of mind when the time came.
For another, my date was roughly twice my size. Beyond the physical problems, though, she didn’t have a personality that I would want to be around. She talked endlessly about her (abusive) previous relationships, and seldom gave me the opportunity to speak.
Ordinarily that wouldn’t be a problem, as I tend to be more of a listener anyway, but when I do talk, I like to be able to finish what I’m saying. She would frequently interrupt me, focusing on some keyword in what I was saying in order to launch off on some utterly unrelated topic. For example, if I were in the midst or relating some anecdote in which I mentioned my dad, she would key in on the word “dad,” cut me off, and say, “Well MY dad is…”
No matter what topic she started on, though, it inevitably led her back to talking about how her last two boyfriends used to beat her up.
Obviously I’m sorry that she suffered abuse, and I’m extremely sympathetic to the fact that such abuse would have a serious impact on her psyche, but do you really want to talk about that on your first date?
Also, while it smacks of the famous Groucho line about not joining any club that would have you as a member, how desperate does a woman have to be to NOT lose interest in a guy who comes to the date drunk off his ass because he’s been drinking all day?
In any case, I gave up on the whole online personals thing shortly after that.
However, due to the aforementioned factors that limit my potential for romance, I’ve begun to investigate online personals once more.
In the time since I last made use of them, most of the formerly free online personals have been swallowed up by match.com and other pay services. It’s now free to post a profile and to browse other profiles, but in order to actually contact someone, or be contacted yourself, you have to pay a subscription fee.
The typical fee is around $25.
I’m reluctant to shell out that much money on the off-chance that I might find someone I’d like to contact.
Besides, as I browse through the profiles I really am not seeing much to encourage me to shell out my money.
Some of the sites I’ve been to e-mail me profiles of people who match my search criteria. When I receive them, I’m usually grateful that with the security features of SP 2, Windows XP prevents Outlook Express from automatically displaying images that are included in an e-mail…
Again, we might be venturing into “picky” territory, but there are certain things that are just red flags for me when I read a profile.
(And I want to say one thing about my so-called “pickiness.” Bear this in mind the next time you consider accusing me of being too picky: I married the first girl I ever dated. Look how well that particular lack of pickiness worked out for me.)
For example, if a woman mentions her pet within the first two sentences, she is instantly and irrevocably removed from consideration. No exceptions on that one.
If a woman is hot enough to be a model and her pictures look to have been taken professionally, she is clearly NOT looking for someone like me. In fact, a quick check of her “About my Match” section will usually show that she’s looking for someone with an income of $100,000+.
Extremely religious women (Sorry honey, but we’re NOT going to “come together in Christ,” even if that does sound sort of dirty), women who mention how much they love sports in the first paragraph of their information about themselves (What is up with this? This particularly annoying example of how women often change the rules in the middle of the game will be fodder for another lengthy entry someday.), and women who are looking for “dynamic,” “outgoing,” “adventurous,” or tall men are instantly weeded out as well.
On the physical side of things, I’m really not all THAT particular, but when a woman lists her age as 26 and she looks 46, that’s sort of a red flag, as are the pictures of women (who describe their body type as “a few extra pounds”) that are cropped to ONLY show their faces, and which show that their heads alone must be carrying almost as much weight as I’m carrying in my whole body.
I’m not a believer of the “big is beautiful” philosophy. A few extra pounds is one thing, but when you’re carrying the equivalent of a second, full-grown human being, you’ve got a problem. And yes, real women do have curves, but that’s curves, with an “S,” not one great big overall curve that’s comparable to the curvature of the Earth.
I’ve checked out some of the other services as well. Some are nothing more than mail-order bride services, while others are just extended ads for porn sites. If I ever choose to get married again one day I would prefer that there be no substantial language barriers, and that I actually have some opportunity to get to know whether I even like her before I so much as consider saying “I do.”
And there’s enough free porn out there that I have no need to pay attention to ads for porn that I have to pay for.
One other site, eHarmony.com, goes beyond the simple approach of merely browsing profiles, created by members, and brought up by a search based on extremely limited criteria.
This particular dating site has you take a personality inventory for free (A $40 value!), which is then used to create a profile of your personality that is more in-depth than a simple listing of your likes an dislikes and a statement of “who you are” written in your own words.
Being unusually self-aware (This, by the way, has been suggested by two of my friends, in response to my post “Why am I not a TOTAL nutjob?” as being the answer to my question. They suggest that I’m essentially too fixated on myself to be able to fixate on anyone else to a degree that would allow for me to go off the deep end and abduct a woman and engage in any subsequent nuttiness. There could be a lot of truth in that, but I think that it ultimately boils down to me just being too lazy.), I can say with a fair degree of certainty that the resulting personality profile is surprisingly accurate.
At the very least, I definitely recognized the guy they were talking about.
Ah, but that’s only the first part. Next, eHarmony.com goes through all of its existing personality profiles, and, using a patented (or at least “Patent Pending”) matching system to find a personality that would be most compatible with your own.
So, this possibly patented system took the puzzle piece that is my psyche and sifted through a nationwide jigsaw puzzle box to find a matching piece.
…
….
…..
“There are 0 matches.”
So.
Thanks to eHarmony.com, I can say that it’s been scientifically proven that I am completely incompatible with other human beings.
In some ways, I suppose, it was sort of nice to have my feelings of utter hopelessness in that regard be so thoroughly vindicated. I mean, at the very least I can take comfort in knowing that when I think “I’m going to be alone forever,” I’m absolutely right.
Yep, nothing better than being right.
I think that it's time for me to get started on dinner so that my smug sense of self-satisfaction at being right and I can sit down to enjoy a cozy, intimate meal together...