Assign Him a Number

After I had joined a couple of sites and posted my profile, I had trouble moving forward. I waited for men to contact me. . . . 

Not hearing from droves of men or hearing from those who didn't seem right for me felt like a  measure of my worth in the dating market (I must be too old, too set in my ways). I was looking for a sign that I should quit.

Then I heard some advice from the friend of a friend. She had met her husband through Internet dating. In her early seventies, she was at least ten years my senior, and she hadn't been too old! This woman had been a marketing consultant and used what she knew about output and projected returns to come up with her rule of twenty-five.

She said, "Sure, it's stressful, but it's a worthy goal. Plan to interact on some level with twenty-five men before you come up with one who suits you." By interaction she meant all stages of contact--emails, telephone interviews, and face-to-face meetings.

Of course, twenty-five is an arbitrary number. I liked it because it seemed possible to achieve, but I would have raised it if I hadn't found my guy by then. When I told another friend about this "rule," she grew thoughtful and started counting on her fingers. "Let's see," she said. "Alan was number twenty-six." She hadn't been keeping count at all. Nor had another Internet-mated friend who shrugged and replied, "Who knows?" when I asked her, adding "If someone doesn't suit you, tell him, and cut the meeting short!"

I suppose being business-like means different things to different women. I would have had trouble being that direct. Likewise, thinking in bulk numbers isn't for everyone. It worked for me, because I tend to get bogged down with individual details, no matter what I'm doing. So having an overview of this process made each contact feel less critical to me. After all he was just one out of twenty-five. Big deal if we weren't clicking! I'd say to myself, This one's not for me. Assign him a number and move on.