I have one friend who refuses to acknowledge that we met on JDate. We’ve known each other for almost four years now, but a while back he made the executive decision to rewrite the history of how we met. So all of his friends have the new truth, while all of my friends have the original story from our first JDate. I even had a nickname for him based on his “About Me” section that I still refer to him as to my friends. I have total respect for his privacy on the subject, because I realize that for most people (myself excluded), online dating is a personal choice. However, I do believe that you can’t decide how you meet the love of your life. That’s going to happen when and where it’s going to happen. Unlike most things in my life, that’s one thing I can’t schedule.

The thing that I find so funny about is that I know of so many couples who met online. It’s like everywhere I look I see online dating success stories standing as tangible proof that it works. And yet when they are asked, “How’d you meet?” They lower their voices and say, “JDate” or say it so quickly that we don’t fixate on that part of the story.  I just don’t get the stigma about it. I’d much rather claim JDate, as opposed to telling my kids the story of how I met their father at a frat boy filled dive bar. “Well, hunny. One night I was out with some friends at Brother Jimmy’s. Daddy saw me standing at the bar when I was going to buy a drink, we started talking and before I know it we were flirting and he bought me my next vodka soda. At the end of the night he asked me for my phone number. We texted for a couple of weeks and then he asked me out! Isn’t that, like, so romantic?!” (Disclaimer: I do not go to Brother Jimmy’s).

Don’t get me wrong, I’d really like to meet the great love of my life in person, and have a great story to go along with it. My parents had the kind of story that just makes you smile and laugh and you can even feel your heart just warm. I can’t help but want the same. But like I said, you can’t schedule the where and when. That’s why we so often turn to online sites – it can make it happen, even if it’s not spontaneous. I just know that if I ever meet a guy at Brother Jimmy’s, Central Bar, Bar None, or any bar like that, and things get serious between us, please sit me down and have an intervention about which bars I frequent and my recent life choices. And then please help me figure out how to rewrite the How We Met story. Because that’s a story that just won’t be pretty.