It was a few months after my divorce in 2001 and I’d recently moved into my new "bachelors apartment." Friends were dropping by to check on me and see how I was adapting to single life.
Well, since I was miserable in my marriage, I was adapting quite well. I missed my kids terribly but otherwise, life was really good and I was getting back to doing some of the things I had missed for nearly 20 years. Cooking. Entertaining. Hiking. Camping. Endurance racing on my horse. A few ski trips to Colorado. A few stand-up open mic nights. Just a single guy living his best life.
On one particular afternoon as I was prepping for a dinner party, my ex stopped by (I don’t remember why) but as she was leaving she said something that struck me as odd. She said "I now know that no prince on a white horse is gonna come save me." I was truly confused. We were married for 17 years and I didn’t know she needed saving or from what. I shrugged and went back to my dinner preparations.
When the guests arrived, the table was set, wine glasses out, dinner was perfectly timed so that everything would come out together. I was in a great mood.
After some socializing I started to put the food on the table and we all took our seats. One of my friends is a real "horse woman" meaning a good career plus a life in the barn had made her very practical and filled with "horse sense." She’d cut straight through the bs and tell it like it was and she wasn’t wrong. It was refreshing.
I began the dinner conversation by telling her about my visitor earlier in the day and that she’d said something that made no sense whatsoever. My horse friend asked, "What’d she say?" I repeated,"I now know that no prince on a white horse is going to come and save me." My friend got this smirk on her face and said "Well, you’re only half prince, the other half is ALLLLL frog!" and we all laughed at that observation. (That little anecdote becomes quite relevant shortly.)
Another of my guests, a client, shifted the conversation by asking if I had started dating, I hadn’t. Actually, I hadn’t even given it any thought. He suggested I try "online dating" and since the rest of the table was also single, the questions started flying and we all got a primer on dating websites.
It was a few weeks after that dinner when Bill, my friend and business partner, and I decided that we’d both give online dating a try. We both opted to try Match and Yahoo Dating as those seemed to be the most popular at the time. With the decision to try those came the inevitable "agonizing" over a screen name and photos. After a funny quip from Bill, my screen name became obvious: HalfFrogHalfPrince. Bill chose: The Real Bill (a play on ‘the real deal’).
Finding photos was a bit harder. My friend (an Ivy Leaguer) chose some professional photos, while I chose more activity photos (me on horseback), me at a podium giving a lecture, me on stage at an open mic night, etc. After giving each other’s profiles a once-over for typos, etc., we went live.
After about a month, we were both over it. He’d had dozens of emails (about 2 per day) but had not been on a single date. I’d had about half as many emails but had been on three dates, and it was the last of those that became the straw that broke the camel's back…
I recognized the number when it rang but I’m not sure why I didn’t answer the phone with my normal "Hi Beautiful," but something held me back, maybe it was the unexpected time of day or maybe I subconsciously had detected something was off with her. Anyway, it was a male voice calling and said he’d been out of town and upon his return, he’d noticed my number repeatedly in his caller id and wanted to know who I was and what kind of work I did. I told him I was in computers, we had a brief chat, he mentioned something about his wife having computer problems, he thanked me and hung up.
As soon as the call disconnected, I walked over to my computer and deleted my Yahoo and Match accounts. I really wasn’t ready to date, and I certainly wasn’t ready for all the craziness I was encountering.
A few days later, I got a survey email, they wanted to know "why I had left their dating site and would I mind giving them 5 minutes of my time." Sure, why not?
I took the survey, and I really wasn’t kind. In the areas for my comments, as a tech CEO, I crucified them over their bad design and poor feature set. In the box where they ask if you’ll leave your contact information in case they want to follow up, I did. Well, guess what! Three days later, I was on the phone with a couple of executives. A few phone calls later, and I had a nice consulting contract.
A part of this consulting contract led me to have dating profiles on every dating site in existence. All of the big ones, 
including Match and Yahoo, JDate, eHarmony (don’t get me started on that one), and a slew of upstarts… I think I was on around 15 dating sites. What was I doing on all those sites? Checking out feature sets, chatting with "potential" dates, and asking them "how they liked that site and how they liked online dating."
News flash! Even back then, people thought it was a miserable experience, and virtually all the complaints we hear today are the exact same complaints I heard back then!
During that time, I read 1000s of dating profiles of both genders, and I developed one crucial observation: How the dating profile was written told you exactly where they were relative to their past relationships.
Here are the three core types of dating profiles:
I Don’t Want!
This profile lists everything they don’t want in a partner. I don’t want a messy person. I don’t want someone who is always late. I don’t want… The list goes on forever.
These are the people who have just broken up, and they’re listing every bad quality their former partner/date had. They’re hurting and expressing their pain.
I Want!
This profile lists all the things they want in a partner. I want a partner who can cook. I want a partner with goals. I want a partner who wears green socks… the list goes on forever.
These are the people who started with the "I Don’t Want" list and have put some time and distance between them and their ex, but not quite enough time and distance. I say that because other than knowing what they want, they still haven’t told us anything about who they are.
Here’s Who I am!
This is the profile you want. This person doesn’t talk about what they don’t want or what they want; they talk about who they are. They like cats or dogs. They like to travel. They like to read.
You’ll see statements like:
"My dog and I visit the park every Saturday."
"I try to read one book a week."
"I do eat out, but I prefer to cook at home."
"My favorite Friday nights are spent with a good Malbec and a scary movie (yes, my couch has wine stains)."
There is no judgment about who or what you are; they are simply letting you decide if who you are meshes with who they are. Expect these people to be more discerning… as they should be.
In Closing:
I’ll leave you with this thought: The dating sites have no interest in you finding a match. If they did, they’d price their service based on when you get married and not charge you by the month.
As Valentine's Day approaches, be careful out there, and I hope you find your forever person!