Here is my two little red hearts’ worth for Valentine’s Day.

A friend of mine, whose wife has left him after 25 years of marriage, suddenly finds himself middle-aged, available, and…well, we won’t go into that. Friends, wanting to offer easy, quick palliatives, have told him to try on-line dating. Sure he’s on the rebound, and worried about his sex appeal, as we all are when we go through breakups and divorces. And all the more so when the last time you were openly on the meat market you didn’t have crow’s feet or gray hair. So let’s assume he subscribed to a free trial, browsed through profiles, maybe even sent a few messages or winks. If he’s met any ladies he’s not saying. But the other night he met a couple, through some mutual friends, who themselves “met” through match.com. That’s no big deal either; we’ve all heard those wonder-stories of couples who fall madly in love via the internet…yadda yadda yawn.
My friend then went on to refer to the emotional state of the match.com couple as they caressed each other and sighed and gazed: “How I would like to feel like that! how wonderful it must be!” he exclaimed wistfully, or something to that effect. I sighed too, for other reasons, somewhat jaded that I am; personally I cannot believe in the bliss promised by the online dating sites. As if a computer program could improve on nature. But since we trust in technology for everything else nowadays, why not throw our most intimate hopes, our reason for living if we’re honest, into the all-powerful semiconductor, and let Intel and Bill Gates do what Cupid has done so badly for countless millennia. And then some.

I exaggerate; of course I do. I’m a cynic, but I have some scientific method, having tried match.com myself on more than one occasion—is a cynic not just a disappointed romantic? First of all, it would seem that there are far more women out there looking than men—just like in yoga, or Italian class, places where hopeful single ladies go to meet men without having to reveal all on a web page profile (pronunciation or downward dog should suffice), only to find there are very few men, and they’re usually gay or married. A class action suit was brought against match.com last year for posting fake profiles of desirable men, in their effort to have gender-equal numbers of …candidates? hopefuls? fools easily parted with their money? Ah, stupid me, no wonder those doctors with a taste for French wine never replied to my winks!

Match.com is eBay with hormones, that’s all it is. You flip through the profiles, click on the promising ones (romantic dinners, bay sailing, hiking in the Sierras, vegan, yellow labs, Springsteen, whatever), and you bid. It might cost you an email, a phone call, eventually an embarrassing tryst at Caffe Trieste. So you put Mr. Wonderful in the recycling bin for the next trip to the thrift shop. And God knows what he’s telling his mates in the proverbial locker room about you! (My autobiography is attached, so shut up).

Or you might get further, a few dates and dinners, by which time you might know how far to pursue the thing, or let yourself be pursued. Then it becomes like ordinary dating, some of the pressure is off, you hope, but the foundation being what it was…is it just me, or do we not judge our fellow lonely-hearts for being on the shelf? One tries not to—after all, we’re both in the same situation—but there must be reasons. Alas. I won’t go into them. They’re often called “baggage,” for lack of a better word. REI or Vuitton, the result is the same, you still got there. Destination: shelf.

Above all, if I’ve learned anything in this messy business of love in thirty years, it’s that men and women are just totally different. We don’t really want the same things. We should all be gay to get the most out of match.com. No, I didn’t mean that, or maybe I did. But basically when you put your vulnerability out there for all and sundry to see, and possibly use, it’s not at all the same as a spontaneous brief encounter in a café or on a plane or in Italian class or through friends. Why is it so awkward when you meet your online date at that café table? Because you’re both thinking: could I sleep with this person? (Or at least women think, maybe the guys have a more reliable indicator). That pressure is off when the meeting is spontaneous—even if you do still wonder about the sleeping part.

Then there’s the looks issue: in the early days, when uploading a photo onto a website required a Ph.D. in quantum physics, some of us dodo-brains had no photo on our profile. We were warned: there would not be as many “hits”. I got a message one day from a gentleman who inquired outright, Are you pretty? Well, hey, I’m okay, but I’m not young and I’m not pin-up material, let’s put it bluntly. (Photos are available somewhere on this site, boringly decent ones. No, I’m not the parrot). I guess I was too idealistic, or feminist, to be a good match.com candidate. I told the guy off and he wrote back sorry but that it was a “jungle” out there. Buy a machete and a ticket to Belize, puh-leeze.

And anyway, in subsequent years where I grew more techy and, in all honesty, used a recent photo on my profile, I met a few guys who had clearly used photos that were at least ten years old (i.e., young).

I guess my point is, to get back to my friend’s wistfulness, you can’t order these things. You can’t even want them, the way you can want something that is not available in an ordinary shop. You can buy everything in the world, even endangered wild animals and for all I know pieces of the Titanic, on eBay, and you can probably see every imaginable hunk or nerd or quantum physicist or bimbo or Wiccan priestess or Beatrix Potter look-alike on match.com, but the one thing you cannot find is that mysterious feeling, that inexpressible state.

That couple my friend met, if indeed they were so in love, were very lucky indeed; or perhaps it was just his wistfulness that made them appear that way. And maybe, just maybe, if he believes hard enough, he can run home and order some up, thanks to semiconductors and Bill Gates and Intel.

Happy Valentine’s day, to all wistful souls!

Heart photograph courtesy Leya Evelyn.