Can I Get a Refund?

On a whim, I wasted over $70. I signed up for Match.com after too many convincing convos and glasses of wine with friends. I call it a waste because after a week with it I have done NOTHING with it. I glance through the ‘daily matches’ they email me. Log in when someone has sent me a message or a wink to check them out. So far it’s been a bunch of men that are just not doing it for me. Maybe they are some other girl’s prince charming, but I’ll pass.

Now here’s where my online dating naivety comes into play. When you get the little wink-face, and it gives you the option of winking back or letting them know you aren’t interested, is it a Match.com faux pas to actually click the second option? I mean, I only assumed that match must do it in a way to ‘let him down easy.’ After clicking the ‘no, thanks’ option a few times, I received an seemingly angry message from one of the guys. With the deceiving subject line ‘haha,’ the guy in so many words (17 without any punctuation) called me ugly.

Now, first off, I am aware that I am a relatively attractive girl so my feelings went unscathed. Secondly, this dude JUST SENT ME A WINK. Obviously Match doesn’t let let these men down nearly as easily as I had hoped if in 10 seconds I went from wink-worthy cute to “Really don’t flatter yourself your face is not your best asset if you know what I mean” … I am assuming this is sort of a backhanded compliment to my pretty stellar cleavage? The REAL kick-in-the-pants irony here is his little tag line on his profile: “Being male is a matter of birth, being a man is a matter of age, but being a gentleman is a matter of choice.” Clearly in this go-around he did not choose to be a gentleman.

So if this is what I have to expect from online dating I might as well have burned the $70. Or better yet, gone to a bar where I would have not only kept the money, but I would have had free drinks and gotten at least 1 phone number. Granted the quality of the man behind that phone number would probably be seriously lacking, but it’s better than paying for the lack of quality I’m seeing now.

Maybe the real issue here is the ‘gentlemen’ of today, and not the $70 thrown away, but damn it, I could have bought a new pair of flats.

Read more from Christa Gonsalves here.

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