Woo hoo! And good luck, sj.

Then how do you online date?

I didn't do much of it and what I did do came from people I met on listservs and usenet groups. DH and I met in '98, and everyone else I dated prior was someone I met IRL.

I mean, you've got to cut them down somehow.

If the entire profile wasn't appealing, then out the door it goes. If the overall picture is of someone I'd like to get to know, but he's missing something that I love to do, then that's not necessarily a deal breaker.

Or what you said in the next paragraph. My dating style was based more on feeling rather than a checklist of requirements.

But there are definitely things a guy says he wants that I can't be--boom eliminated because of online profile. And there are things a guy can say he is that I don't want (like, if a guy is only into chicks my race or size, I get the skeevies and I'm out). But that would count for meatspace too.

I have to respect that if a guy says he wants a 5'10" blonde supermodel, that's not going to be me, and move on. If he has requirements, there's nothing I can do about that. Doesn't matter if I can't meet them or they weird me out.

My point was more of the things that I can control and not what others do.

The SO didn't read when I met him, but he both reads and writes now. I make that sound like it's basic literacy, but y'all understand I mean for pleasure. Now I follow hockey. We both started archery. It's a relationship.

Oddly enough, while I don't like to just eliminate people for things like diet, I know there are some things I throw right up front in my OKC profile that I know will be deal-breakers for lots of women (like the fact that I live in LA and don't own a car). I've still managed to get a few dates.

If the entire profile wasn't appealing, then out the door it goes. If the overall picture is of someone I'd like to get to know, but he's missing something that I love to do, then that's not necessarily a deal breaker.

That is it exactly --I've tried to figure out how to some of the single women I know -there are things that sound like deal breakers until you look know the whole package the reading thing comes from dating non-readers that didn't want me to have time to read

I hate when people think they are being funny by not writing a profile.

erika, did you see this? [link]

That's so cool, Maria. Thanks.

I am delurking in here to share that my mom LOVED Ayn Rand because of the ill-fated romances. Like, she had no idea they were political at all.

Fountainhead was recommended to me for the architecture and while I saw the political, it wasn't why I was happily reading the book and still have fond thoughts of it though not of the author herself. But I don't rec it to others because I know I went in with specific blinders.

I've read and enjoyed The Count of Monte Cristo. But there are two versions.

Dumas wrote one of those thousand-page 19th-century novels of the type that I love to get lost in. But the unabridged version had a lot of content that wouldn't pass muster in the English-speaking countries of the era. So the publisher severely abridged the book for UK and US audiences. For example, the thinly veiled lesbian relationship was cut out.

So if someone says they like CoMC, I ask which one.