Turned On...Line

Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match. Or twenty of them :p And make it fast. These days it's as much about who we woo, as how we do it. In dating. we're rapidly moving towards a world where people no longer distinguish between online and offline.

love it or hate it, online dating is here to stay.

Today, an estimated 30 to 40 million North Americans use one of 1500 internet dating platforms. Site options and pricing vary: dive into an open pool of profiles, or narrow your search by age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, and personality match; sign up for free or dish out upwards of 60 dollars a month.

Tinder, the swipe left for no, swipe right for yes mobile app, has 24 million user in just its third year. Vancouver-based Plenty of Fish, a free global dating site, boasts over 90 million members. And on the opposite end of the pricing spectrum, paid site eHarmony still had 762,000 as of last year.

Turns out that, when it comes to putting a price on love, a few of us are still willing to open up our wallets. Not surprisingly, the web matchmaking industry is worth over $1.5 billion.

These days, a quarter of Canadians admit to having tried online dating, and 16 percent have even taken those relationships from the chat room to the bedroom. People can meet, date and start the rest of their lives together with a fated swipe, tap, or click. But for online daters with disabilities, the process of finding love virtually presents its own unique challenges: choosing between disabled and non-disabled sites, spotting online deception, and navigating the when-to-reveal-my-disability conundrum. Just setting up an eye-catching profile can take a degree in public relations :D :D :D

Kristina Shelden (30) now will tell you her experience being the disabled in online dating.

interview-style questions make me feel awkward and uncomfortable.

Online dating. Whew... that's a subject. One that comes up a lot over wine and lady-driven chatter. Sure, I've tried online dating, but I'm not a fan of it.

So, I start off scrolling through the pictures. I giggle to myself because I feel like I'm online shopping for men. Scroll, scroll, scroll. Oh! He's cute! I might try him on! Okay, but what about my own profile? What do I say about myself? "I'm an ambulatory quad..." No, that won't do. I don't want it to be the thing that defines me. Besides, how easy is it to judge a book by its cover? I already did it myself just ten seconds ago. (That guy likes rap? Heck, no. He's not for me.)

Okay, how about, "I try to keep active, but an injury keeps me away from a lot of sports." Hmm... technically a lie. There are a ton of adaptive sports. What about, "Let's just skip to the getting coffee part, shall we? It's the only way to really get a taste of each other." Hmm.. kinda flirtatiously witty, yes?

I've sporadically tried online dating for a few years now. But I find it difficult to make a real connection through text-based messaging, and for some reason I find it even more difficult to make the leap from on-screen to in-person. Even though I want to go straight to the coffee date, getting there is tough—so much time passes in what I feel is inadequate communication.

By the time we commit to meeting, it doesn't feel natural to me. I feel like we both know we're there to check out if this person in front of us has the potential to be our new mate, even if we try to cover it with nervous and often unsuccessful attempts at wit and flirtation. I suppose that's dating in general, but because we've found each other specifically on a dating site, it seems to strip-down the experience, at least for me. Interview-style questions are not the way to my love—they just make me awkward and uncomfortable.

Then there's how disability plays into the scenario. How much do I say prior to meeting? How much do I say when we meet? I've found it's impossible to know what's best. And I've had girlfriends with disabilities say the same thing. Some men are afraid of disability. It seems "too big" for them. Others become a little too fixated on it: "Oh wow. You're absolutely amazing! Look what you've been through!" Nothing like being perched uncomfortably up on a decorated pedestal.

Throw in the challenge of figuring out that perfectly witty first message and the whole situation reeks of awkwardness. On top of that, I've found a profile can completely misrepresent someone. I met a guy once at a bar and really hit it off with him. It turned out he had a girlfriend :( so that fizzled out pretty quickly. But a few months later—and I hope after he finished things with his girlfriend—I saw his profile pop up. Curious, I checked it out, and laughed-had I seen it first, I would never have considered spending any time with him.

In my experience, the thing that really drives genuine first attractions is in the nuances of physical conversation. The way the sounds tumble from a man's mouth, the way his lip quirks into a smile, the tenor of his voice and the crinkle of his eyes shining with laughter. That's what gets me. I've yet to have a natural conversation develop from an online experience.

Loneliness and curiosity may periodically drive me to visit the online fishbowl now and again, but so far I still haven't found someone that actually connects with me. Despite the direct proof that it can work, one of my best friends found her husband in that same fishbowl, I fear online dating is a lost cause for me. I guess I'm old-fashioned that way.