The Relationship Guru

The Relationship Guru

The number of people without profile pics on these dating sites is surprisingly high. When I first joined Match, I would delete without reading any messages I received from persons without profile pics. Then one day I received a message on POF from a woman with no profile pic, and for some reason I opened and replied.

“Care to share a photo of yourself?”

“Sure.”

And she did.

OMG.

I sent it around to friends and family.

Everyone’s reaction was the same.

Jaw dropped, mouth opened.

Then I looked at Aniston’s biography. It was a little flakey, talking about scientific theory of this and economic theory of that. “Ah,” I said to myself, “I think I have this figured out.” On Match I was a favorite target of 28-year-old beauties. Only they weren’t 28 and they weren’t beauties. I’m not even sure they were female. They were simply persons with bogus profiles using a pretty picture to perpetrate some kind of fraud against an unsuspecting huck (I’ll talk more about this phenomenon in a different post).  So I figured I’d try to smoke out Aniston and see if we could get her to give up the goods and confess her true identity.

It didn’t work. Whatever question I asked, she had an acceptable response. Better yet, there was even an appropriate level of “noise” in the background. “Noise” is that stuff we have going on in the background of our lives - - work, kids, grocery shopping, running errands. We all have it, and sooner or later it makes an appearance in our conversations with others on these sites, except for some reason the truly fake profiles are silent in this regard. There is no noise.

The conversations with the bogus members almost never changes. Typically, they are students and that is all they talk about, going to school. If you ask them what they like to do, they simply repeat what they wrote in their profile – walking, hiking, going to museums. Aniston wasn’t like this. While she did say she had a law degree, she then went into detail where she went to school and where she worked after graduation.

Eventually I told her of my suspicion.

“Well, I guess the only way I can quell your concerns is by meeting in person.”

Whoa!

The bogus member wanted to meet me!

I agreed, and though she was late and wasn’t quite as pretty or young as her picture, it was definitely the same woman. The conversation we had was also quite memorable. On the one hand, she was so well versed in dating and relationships that I now call her my “relationship guru.” This usually gets a giggle out of her, which I like because it makes her nose crinkle.

The other interesting thing about her is why she has no profile pic.

“Because I want to be the one choosing my partner and not vice versa.”

Hmm.

This was the second time I’d heard this response, and it makes sense.

Successful and accomplished business professionals who are in the driver’s seat of their careers want nothing less for their love lives. So men will see who they are when these women want them to and no sooner. At the end of the day, you have to respect this. It’s also added a bit of mystery to the emails I receive from pictureless members on these dating sites.

You never know when the next one you open might leave you breathless.