With each advance in technology and communication comes the broadening of romantic opportunity. Neighborhood couples share the ups and downs of seeking love, courtesy of contemporary innovations.
But seriously
Photo by Danny Fulgencio
Lakewood neighbor Karina Riedle wasn’t taking the whole online dating thing even a little bit seriously.
“To me, online dating still had that 38-year-old virgin living in the basement of mama’s house while protecting the world from zombies via an Xbox feeling to it,” she explains.
And who doesn’t hate awkward first dates?
But one night while alone and bored in her apartment with “too much cheap champagne and too little Lifetime movies,” Riedle decided to give the online dating site OKCupid a shot and began filling out the questionnaire:
On a typical Friday night I am:
Reliving my parents’ divorce.
What I’m doing with my life:
Whiskey
So, she was shocked when dozens of messages began rolling in, she remembers.
“In that moment, online dating became a man buffet for me,” she jokes. “I could browse as long as I wanted. I could go back for seconds. I could actually go out with some of these guys while keeping the internet as my very own sneeze guard.”
She’d already come this far, so she started arranging drink dates. She didn’t commit to dinner, and she always paid for her share. Although she was an active participant, she still wasn’t totally sold on the practice.
“I was just fascinated by the idea of selling yourself on a screen to live up to your own words in person,” Riedle says.
“I had some terrible dates and some not-so-terrible dates. I never heard from some boys again, and a few turned into lifelong friends. But three months in, I was finally tired of talking about myself and having to identify strangers in bars by the length of their beards and/or pompadours.”
But before shutting down her account, there was one last guy she wanted to meet — Jeremy Siler. They’d been messaging but had yet to meet because he’d been away on business in Nuremberg, Germany, which Riedle points out, is only 90 miles from her hometown of Augsburg.
Siler also lives in East Dallas, so he invited Riedle to a concert at the Granada Theater. Riedle suggested they meet up for drinks the week before, and she says she was neither nervous nor hopeful driving over.
Riedle recognized Siler instantly from his long, curly, dark hair and beard down to his chest. The sleeves on his bright cerulean blue, button-down cotton shirt were rolled up just enough for a feather tattoo on his forearm to peek out, Riedle noted. She, too, has a feather tattooed on her forearm.
“Nervousness swept over me as we exchanged pleasantries and ordered drinks,” she recalls. “The next few hours are a blur because the more we spoke, the more nervous I became. I could tell he was nervous, too. We eventually tabbed out and made plans for the concert.”
Unlike with her previous dates, Riedle looked forward to seeing Siler again, and they hung out a couple more times before the concert.
“He was charming, genuine, funny, smart and gorgeous, and completely unaware of it all,” she says. “By the time we were dancing and laughing at the Granada, it was all over for me. I’ve never had so much fun with anyone in my life. That was the best and hopefully last first official date I’ll ever have.”
Less than four months later they were living together in a 1937 red brick house in the middle of Lakewood. A year and a half after that, they now are talking about what adventures the next five years will hold, including possible marriage.
“I’m so glad there was nothing good on television the night I signed up for internet dating,” Riedle concludes.
A Rose among thorns
Photo by Danny Fulgencio
In 2002 Lakewood neighbor Rose Villasana signed up for a three-day trial on match.com because it was free, and why not?
She’d just gotten out of a two-year relationship, and her friends were always talking about their online dating experiences — albeit not always positively.
“I wasn’t really looking hard, but I figured, ‘Eh, what the heck?’ ” Villasana remembers.
She filled out as little of the questionnaire as possible and didn’t even add a photo to her profile, but soon enough requests began coming in anyway.
She knew what she was looking for: an intellectual liberal who likes the arts. When Harry Ingram contacted her, he seemed to fit the bill. And as a bonus, he lived nearby in the M Streets.
Ingram had been using match.com for a while and had taken the time to fill out a well-rounded profile, so he typically ignored those without sufficient information and photos, but Villasana lived so close by, he figured it was worth a shot.
They met for coffee at the Lakewood Starbucks and hit it off. It wasn’t exactly sparks, but it was comfortable. They shared common interests and discovered they knew some of the same people.
“And that was the end of it,” Villasana says.
That is, the end of Ingram’s online dating run and Villasana’s practically non-existent online dating run.
A couple of days later, Villasana shut down her profile without having talked to any other potential partners. She called a couple of their mutual friends and grilled them about Ingram — just to be safe. Everyone confirmed he was a good guy.
They started a friendship, which turned into a romantic relationship, which continued for eight years. In January 2010 they married in Washington, D.C.
They still live in the Lakewood area, and they continue to tell the story of how they met whenever they can.
“We love our story,” Villasana says.
Mismatched
Photo by Danny Fulgencio
Neighbor Laurie Lynn Lindemeier has sworn off online dating for good.
“Internet dating is kind of like LASIK,” she says. “It doesn’t work for everybody.”
Of course Lindemeier has had LASIK three times in each eye (and cataract surgery), but she doesn’t plan to find out if the timeworn adage “third time’s the charm” is true when it comes to internet dating.
Twice was enough.
Lindemeier first started online dating somewhat by accident. She signed up for match.com in 2006 to check something on a friend’s profile. While she was snooping around, a curious search revealed a profile for her ex-husband, whom she’d recently divorced.
“I thought, ‘If he can do it, I can do it,’ ” she remembers with a laugh.
She went on a couple of dates, but overall she wasn’t impressed. Then she found a guy who piqued her interest, and they dated for two years before she determined they had nothing substantial in common.
She stopped dating altogether for a couple of years to deal with the aftermath of her divorce before deciding to try again. This time Lindemeier signed up for eHarmony, hoping she’d have better luck finding a good match since “a scientific approach to compatibility” is eHarmony’s big selling point. She filled out the detailed questionnaire required of new members and soon enough found a match. Kind of.
Lindemeier and eHarmony Guy were different in all the ways that really mattered, as she eventually found out. Lindemeier is an extroverted creative type who thrives on color, warmth and communication, and she uses all those things to express herself via music, painting and writing. eHarmony Guy was a tad too emotionally unavailable for Lindemeier, who never could breach his walls, although she tried — for four years.
Lindemeier was determined to make it work. The couple broke up and got back together once, but after four years Lindemeier finally admitted her “internet match was a mismatch.”
In the end, however, Lindemeier doesn’t see the failed relationship as a total waste of time. She learned an important lesson: Sometimes the checklist comes up short.
“I think it’s a nice concept, but it doesn’t really work,” she says.
“In the end, when I meet somebody and I look them in the eyes, I can tell a whole lot more than a bunch of checkmarks on a list. They can check anything they want off, and it doesn’t have to be true. But you can’t lie to me eye to eye.”
Obviously online dating works for some people, Lindemeier points out, but it has yet to convince her.
“I’m never going to trust it,” she says. “I don’t think it’s as good as face-to-face human interaction.”
