Back in my North Carolina days, my friend Nicole told me that she wanted to perform a little experiment. She wanted to sign me up on e-Harmony just to see what would happen. At the time, she had predicted that I would be getting married on a certain date. That prediction was based on little more than a whim, I’m pretty sure. So I think her sudden interest in getting me involve in online dating was strictly based on the fact that her predicted wedding date was fast approaching and I had yet to meet that special someone. Not that Nicole was the kind of person to do anything to keep from being wrong about something.

I’m really not on board with the online dating thing. I wasn’t then, I’m still not to this day. I don’t look down on it. More and more people are giving it a shot, and hey, good for them if they make it work. But for some reason, I have the feeling that if I were to go on there, I’d feel like I was giving up. I know that as soon as that’s out there, I’ll have all those people who have found love on the internet complaining with me.But then again, what would I be giving up? It’s not that I’ve ever really put myself out there and given this whole dating thing a try. So I guess signing onto e-Harmony wouldn’t really be giving up. It would actually be more of an effort than I’ve put forth in recent years. Possibly ever.

I get the feeling that, if I were to fill out their psychological profile, I’d eventually get an email from the people running the site. Not a happy email showing me who my matches are, no. I’d get an email informing me that I broke their system.“Mr. Peck, we regret to inform you that we were unable to find a match for you among the 3.5 billion women in the world. In fact, your psychological profile was so screwed up, you crashed our entire website. It will take us at least six months to get things back up and running. In that time, the thousands of matches that we could have made will continue to live their lives miserable and alone. It’s because of you that they will never find love. Good job, loser.”

I just don’t want that kind of pressure.