Green Dating

For awhile now friends have been recommending that I check out a green dating site. Quite logical, since I find myself looking through profiles for any hint of environmental consciousness. Why not start with a pool narrowed down to these folks? Efficiency! Huzzah!

First I did my homework and compared green dating sites. Since I’m not over 50 or living in the Bay Area, really my only choice was a site I’ll call Green Shmingles. So to Green Shmingles I went.

Almost immediately after setting up my username and the basic questions of age, rank and serial number, I was asked, “Do you have kids?” followed by “Do you want kids?”

Squeeee!! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you for asking this upfront! Thank you for making this as prominent a question as it really is! After so many awkward conversations, both online and in person, over how I don’t want kids, it was absolutely relieving to have this up front and out of the way. I was liking this site already.

So onto the diet section. My first thought was that this was the green way of asking what kind of body type I was. Instead I found a long checklist of diet options, including vegetarian, vegan, macrobiotic, and gluten free. It even had an option for organic. “This,” I thought while checking off organic, “may be the only time I will get a checkbox for organic on a dating site!”

Unless, of course, I start dating nitrogen-based beings. But I’ll leave daydream meanderings of being a dating ambassador to an alien race to myself.

Where was I? Right. Green dating. With my profile complete I jumped right into doing a search to see what kind of people were on here. Just wanting to do a wide gander at the Madison folks, I specified my city, upped the matches per page to be displayed from 15 to 50, hit search, aaaaaaaaaaand.......got one match. One! The guy looks nice and all, but seriously? One?

I went back and double-checked. Did I accidentally search for a narrow age range? Did it automatically search for people who also don’t want kids? No and no. Wait! I only did a search for men. Let’s try women. (And why can’t I search for both at the same time, Green Schmingles? Bisexuals: not just in porn anymore.) And my search for women came up wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiith....none. Goose egg. Zilch.

Well, that was fun. But perhaps I’ve answered why I’ve had such trouble finding other environmentally-minded singles. They’re not there. Really, Madison? I expected better from you!

To add insult to injury, my welcome email from Green Shmingles included this: We expect you to respond to all messages you receive, even if only to say "thank you, but I'm not interested at this time." It's just the polite thing to do.

Thanks for the lesson in manners, Green Shmingles. I don’t think I’ll need it.