Dating? Try Not to Be Shallow

Dating, as we all know, can be tricky. There are so many unwritten rules and we aren't all reading from the same playbook so we don't even know what all the rules are.  Here's a rule that I think most people will agree with, even if we're not always capable of following it:  when "judging" a prospective date, look below the surface and try not to get too hung up on the outside packaging.  This is much easier said than done.  I write about this in my new book, The Spinsterlicious Life: 20 Life Lessons for Living Happily Single and Childfree.


Excerpted from The Spinsterlicious Life: 20 Life Lessons for Living Happily Single and Childfree.  Copyright 2011.  All rights reserved.

Lesson 10:  Try not to be shallow.
I would really like to say here that I’ve learned to always look past the outer surface and focus on the person within. Let’s just say I’m still working on this one.




The event that created Lesson 10

As a single woman in these modern times, of course I’ve done online dating. Lots of it.  It’s an opportunity to meet the widest range of men imaginable, go out with men I might not ever have met, try out some I might never have considered in ordinary circumstances, and a way to make sure I could have a date whenever I wanted.


Nowadays, most people who are doing online dating post a picture of themselves. All the matchmaking sites tell you that you get 10 times more “hits” if you post a picture. But in the early days, we didn’t do that. We more or less described ourselves in our profiles and took it from there. Internet dating was too new and it felt kind of creepy to post a picture for the whole world to see. One evening, I was contacted by what seemed like a very nice man. We chatted online for a couple of weeks, eventually talking just about every day; there was some real interest there and it seemed like there might be some potential for something interesting to happen.  We made plans to finally meet one Friday evening on the

It was the hottest day of the year. We decided to meet for dinner at a restaurant in my neighborhood.
As we talked about how we would recognize each other, we realized that we were both wearing fairly nondescript outfits: jeans and a white T-shirt.  Rather than change clothes, we tried to think of what we could do to make ourselves recognizable to a stranger in a crowded restaurant. He suggested I put a flower in my hair. My hair was really short so that wouldn’t work. I had the brilliant idea to tie a bright pink sweater around my neck. It was a pretty sweater but I felt a little foolish in 100 degree heat with a sweater.

When I got to the restaurant, I couldn’t really pick him out of the crowd because half the men in the place were wearing jeans and a T-shirt. He recognized me, though, by my sweater and approached me. In an instant, I started to feel like a real ass and wondered if I was really shallow. I’m afraid I was. He had neglected to tell me he was an albino.




I was confused: should I have expected him to mention that to me at some point during our weeks of conversation?  Should it have mattered?   I was annoyed at myself for feeling this way and I was annoyed at him for leaving out this detail.  Plus, why was I walking around in the scorching heat with a sweater?   During the “how will we recognize each other” phase of our conversation, he could have easily said “I’ll be the albino at the bar.”   We had a pleasant enough dinner, but I wasn't that interested.  We didn’t go out again.

Then, this story started to take on a life of its own. The first few people I told this story to agreed they would probably have reacted the same way I did.  I felt like a real heel, though, after talking to my friend, Pat. She thought I was disgustingly small-minded and that I was just plain wrong. How dare I think he should have told me ahead of time, and how dare I have the audacity to lose interest over something like this in a man I originally found (somewhat) interesting. 

The first part of the statement was the most intriguing. How much information -–and what kind—do you owe your blind date? Should he have been expected to tell me of his albinism?  What are the parameters?




I quickly learned that this is a great question to pose at a dinner party because it always generates lively discussion with a range of responses.  Albinism is not a disease; it doesn’t affect a person’s health or personality.  It doesn’t impact anything, in fact, except a person’s melanin level, so makes one look different from most of us.  But is that a valid reason for not going out with someone?  How should the albino treat it? Like it’s a fact of life and of no real consequence? Or should he “warn” the person he’s meeting? 


Oh, don’t give me that look; what would you have done? 

NOTE: The Spinsterlicious Life: 20 Life Lessons for Living Happily Single and Childfree-- has been published and is available here and  here, and on Amazon.

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