SWF seeks SM with low copays, low deductible

I’ve always admired women who know what they want and aren’t afraid to go after it.  Here is the website of one such woman.  While I admit that Terri is thinking way outside of the box, and also calling attention to a huge political debate right now, she knows what she’s looking for in a man… and it’s health insurance.

There are so many things that can be said about this blatant attempt to find health insurance in America, but it’s not my intention to start a healthcare debate.  There are plenty of places where one can go and debate that political side of the issue.  I’m more interested in what this says about being single. 

It should come as no surprise to anyone that there are many perks afforded to married couples that singles are simply not eligible for.  Health insurance is one of them.  There are many people in this world who I love dearly and would do anything for them, but I could not add anyone onto my employer-based healthcare insurance unless they’re a dependent or spouse.  So, this woman has removed any connection between love and marriage and is seeking a complete stranger to marry her.  I guess if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!

I can appreciate this attempt because it does show how backward things are, and it makes it so much clearer now that she is working on starting a dating site.  Her intention is to bring together people like herself who are unable to get insurance because of pre-existing conditions, with people who “…are compassionate, caring and willing to share their health insurance…”  (or, let’s face it, people who are desperate and don’t want to be alone even if it means an arranged marriage to someone with a terminal illness.)  Apparently Terri had so many offers and so many people with similar stories, she’s starting a dating site to get these people together.

If there’s one thing I appreciate more than a woman who knows who she wants, it’s someone who is not a boy-hog!  It’s nice of her to help these folks network, and I’m interested to see how this endeavor turns out in the end.  I don’t think it’s the best-laid plan to enter into a legal marriage with someone for their health insurance.  Where does that leave them if the spouse loses their coverage?  Is this written into their vows?  “in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, as long as we both shall live… or until COBRA benefits are exhausted.  Whichever comes first.” 

When you read this story and have your debates about how badly we need healthcare reform in this country, please consider another flaw that is exposed by Terri’s plea for health insurance.  We also need to reform the way we look at marriage and relationships.  It is shameful that someone in the U.S. so desperately needs expensive medical coverage (and not just one person, but enough to warrant starting a dating site!)  But what does it say for the country when someone’s pre-existing condition no longer disqualifies her once she becomes someone’s spouse?  Marrying a stranger is one of her few options to be eligible for insurance that will save her own life.  In the opinion of this blogger, that puts far too little value on someone’s life, and far too much value on the institution of marriage.

First date

I put my profile on cougarlife.com a little over a month ago and I’ve corresponded with quite a few ”cubs” from the site.  Most have been a fair distance away; lots of guys from New York and New Jersey.  I’ve talked to one person who is near the DC Metro area for a couple of weeks now.  None of our conversations were terribly in-depth, but we exchanged brief messages regularly.  His profile picture was very good-looking.  Almost too good-looking.  Suspiciously good-looking!  Like – the guy who comes with the picture frame when you buy it.  The one whose picture you take out to insert your own pictures of the far-less-attractive people in your life.  It could have been that guy!  That felt like a bit of a red flag.

He was very polite, almost passive in saying he’d like to get together for a drink.  It always makes me suspicious when someone is that interested in getting together right off the bat, add that to the suspicion that he may have pulled his photo out of a picture frame.  I’ve corresponded with him for a couple of weeks & talked about getting together, but I always felt uneasy about it.  I didn’t feel any sense of threat or danger, just an eery feeling like I’m being tricked.  Like, when I show up to meet him, one of my ex-boyfriends will jump out and say, “Aha!  I thought you wouldn’t come if you knew it was me, so I put up a picture of that guy from the picture frame!”  Maybe it just seemed strange that someone that attractive signed up on the site, threw a dart and pursued a date with a girl when he doesn’t know what she looks like.  None of the pictures I have on my profile have a clear shot of my face.  Most guys would want to know what I look like and reassure themselves that I’m not hideous.  This guy didn’t even know my name!

I have to give him credit, he has been such a good sport through everything.  I tend to be distant with guys.  Not because I’m deliberately trying to be an asshole, but I am happily single and I don’t want a relationship, so I don’t want to give mixed signals when I tell them I’m not looking for anything long-term.  I like to go out and meet people and have fun.  But I want to make sure that anyone I go out with doesn’t have expectations, so I have to keep it casual.  He hinted around that he’d like to see what I look like, but he never pushed the issue.  He asked if I ever intended to tell him my name and I answered, “Not if I can get away with it.” and he just took it in stride and never asked again.  He really was a good sport and there was a lot of mystery in the whole meetup for both of us.  Of course, I eventually told him my name.  Via text message when I was two Metro stops away from meeting him. 

We met up outside Metro and walked to a bar to grab a drink, watch a game and chat.  He was an all-around good sport and it was a fun date.  I gave him due credit for standing out from so many other guys in not demanding pictures and for being so willing to go with the flow.  He said he’s met people on other dating sites before and only when he met up with them did he find out that their profile picture was taken 100 pounds ago.  I guess after a couple of experiences like that, the meetup is more important than whatever flattering picture people use to sell themselves on the internet.

It was a fun night and a successful first date, but we definitely weren’t living the cougar life.  He’s only 5 years younger than me but no one would ever guess it by seeing the two of us together.  There are a lot of guys on that site who are in their early thirties and are not necessarily looking for an older woman, they’re just tired of dating young girls.  Also, for some reason there seems to be a lot of military guys on the site.  I can’t explain why that is, but I have seen enough profiles to identify a pattern. 

For those of you who stumbled upon this blog with the question, “Is cougarlife legit?” I hope this offers you some insight.  It is a legit dating site, and I can confirm that you can meet fun people and have a good time.  I can also confirm from the guys I’ve talked to that it seems to be much easier for the women on there than for the men.  I don’t think that the guys get nearly as much attention as the ladies do on the site.  But then, it is called cougarlife, not cublife.  At any rate, it’s fun, and I recommend that if you are an attractive man, you purchase a membership and start talking to cougars a.s.a.p.!  If you are a cougar or even if you’re in your thirties and looking to meet someone within a few years of your age, get your free profile up there, ladies!  There are a whole lot of guys on there, and they are not all ridiculously young, either.  In my experience, the guys aren’t all 22-year olds who want to shag older women, most of them are guys in their late 20s, early 30s.  Some are definitely just looking for sex, others are looking for something more, but what they all seem to have in common is in trying to find someone they can have a conversation with who isn’t interested in playing games.  But “Mature, Sophisticated woman Life” doesn’t sell quite as well as “Cougar Life.”

Online dating woes, volume I

I’ve decided I’m not a huge fan of online dating.  I like dating in general, but maybe I’m just not good at online dating. 

For me, the hardest part of dating is always feeling like I’m hurting someone’s feelings.  Life is full of rejection anyway and I don’t like to be the person dishing it out.  But when you’re a person who is happy being single and not looking for a relationship, there will inevitably be someone else who wants more.  If someone is looking for a relationship, the best thing to do is to stay friends and keep things uncomplicated.  There have been times when I’ve gone out with guys and been up-front about not wanting a relationship, but they either don’t believe me or else they change their mind.  At any rate, the most uncomfortable situation for me to be in is to tell a guy I’m not interested in more than just casually dating.  I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings and it’s nothing personal, I’m just not interested.  It’s hard to tell someone that.  Of all the bullshit that comes with dating, feeling like I’m hurting someone’s feelings is the hardest. 

Okay, I realize that no one is going to eat a bullet because a girl on a dating site did not respond to their message, but I’ve gotten a number of messages since I signed up and I can’t even read most of them because I’m not a member.  Actually, I don’t feel much guilt about not responding to the ones I can’t read because they either don’t know how the site works, or haven’t looked at my profile.  But some of the guys who have a paid membership have sent me messages that I can read, and I still don’t respond to all of them.  At first I responded to more, but then one of the guys got a bit… carried away.  I was polite, straightforward, and never told him my real name or shared any information with him other than the pics on the site.  I explained that I read his profile where he talks about the kind of girl he’s looking for, and I told him that I am not what he’s looking for.  I am not looking for a relationship, I’m just checking out the site and not looking for anything in particular .  I don’t know if this person took that as a challenge or where things went downhill, but what followed was a barrage of messages, “What makes you think you’re not the girl for me without even giving me a chance?”  and I explain that he has a very nice explanation of what he wants in a girl in his profile.  It’s very nice and I’m sure many girls are looking for the same thing.  I am not one of them.  But the guy wouldn’t let it go.  “I wish you would just take a chance and see what happens.  All I am asking is just a chance to know you better.  I really think we would get along great.”  He said this same message in no less than twelve different ways.  The “let’s see what happens” line was a red flag.  Obviously he thinks something will change if we hang out and I’m not interested in pursuing any of this but the more I say I’m not interested, the more intense he becomes with his protests.  After a while he began to sound angry and it was very intimidating. 

The conversation devolved and for a few days I was afraid to talk to anyone for fear of having to justify everything.  Another guy sent me a message and I checked out his profile but did not respond.  He then sent another message, “I saw you looking at my profile, why not say hello?”  and this message reached me at the height of my frustration, so I actually did respond to this one by saying, “No, I’m not going to respond to you because then I’ll tell you that I’m not interested in a relationship and you’ll ask me why not and then I’ll say that it’s not going to work out and then you’ll argue with me and then you’ll get mad and then seventeen messages later I’ll be afraid of you and frustrated and considering  blocking you because of your irate messages.  So no, I’m not going to respond to you.”  Which, was supposed to be funny because, obviously, I did respond to him with the words, “I’m not going to respond to you.”  Well, he replied lightheartedly and he clearly saw the humor in it.  However, he then went on to tell me that he lives with his girlfriend and his two children and was not interested in a relationship either, just sex.  Oy!  What have I gotten myself into?

Well, it turned out that the baby daddy did not take no for an answer any easier than his predecessor.  This was a few weeks ago, and I took some time off from visiting the site because it got way too intense.  I have no interest in flirting with another woman’s boyfriend.  I have no interest in arguing with someone all the reasons why he should not go out with me.  These things are not fun.  I don’t like turning guys down and I’m not a rude person, but it seemed like every time I looked at someone’s profile, they would send a message, “Hey, I saw you checking out my profile, now you have to say hello!”  and then it got to the point where I didn’t even want to look at anyone’s profile because apparently if someone looks at their profile, they are entitled to acknowledgement of some sort?  It got kinda crazy. 

I’ve grown more apprehensive about talking to people on the site, but I still get screwball messages from guys and they are starting to all sound alike after a while.  I think this must be inevitable with online dating.  If you read enough profiles and messages, it gets harder to find ones that stand out?  I don’t know.  This is actually the most exposure I’ve had to online dating, and I think I’m on a site that has far more guys than girls.  I think I need some help, ladies!!

This is interesting…

Hands down, the top search terms that bring people to this blog over the last month have had something to do with cougars.  They are directed toward my explanation of how I ended up experimenting on the cougarlife.com website.  Hopefully they stay a while and are interested in what else the blog has to say. 

Of course there are no stats that tell whether the blog was helpful or not, but one deduction we can make is that people are intrigued by the idea of cougars.  The dating site that brings cougars together with young men seems to have piqued the interest of many.  Enough so that I’m motivated to continue investigating this phenomenon on my own.  (Of course I don’t do this because it’s fun, it is simply a public service to you folks.  You’re welcome.) 

The website is fun for when you’re winding down for the night.  Not quite ready to fall asleep, but not wanting to get into anything that requires the commitment of an attention span or anything.  Saturday night the website appears to be down, so I went to google to look it up and stumbled across another site promising the same service as cougarlife.  I won’t offer the name, nor will I sign up for a profile Although a good friend recommended I should post a profile with the same text, but a frumpy pic of myself – just to see the difference in reactions.

I find her idea intriguing, but it seems dishonest or unfair.  I don’t want to try and trick people.  Also, I’m a bit overwhelmed by some of the activity that goes on in the cougarlife world alone.  I don’t think I’m up for juggling two cougar sites.  I did, however, try to do something I can’t do on cougarlife – I tried to check out the cougars. 

Since I’m signed up on the cougarlife website, I have no access to any of the female photos or profiles.  I don’t know anything about the other women on there other than what I can persuade the cubs to tell me.  On the other site, I tried to do a search as if I were a young man looking for a cougar.  The criteria:  “I am a cub, looking for a cougar, age range of 30 to 60, in Washington DC”  The next page confirms, “Your search turned up over 754 cougar singles in your area!”  (Then it asks me to sign up, which I do not do.)

Then, just to get an idea of how these things work, I turn the tables and change the search criteria.  I am now me, and I’m looking for cubs.  “I am a cougar, looking for a cub, age range of 18 to 40, in Washington DC”  The next page confirms, “Your search turned up over 11351 cougar singles in your area.” 

Now wait a minute.  This bears repeating.  A search of women between the ages of 30 to 60 nets 754 cougars.  That’s less than a thousand women within the entire thirty-year age range.  A search of men between the ages of 18 and 40 nets 11,351.  Is there an extra number in there somewhere?  Over ten thousand cubs for 754 cougars?  That means over 15 cubs for every cougar.  Surely that can’t be right.  It’s either incorrect or it’s utopia.  It’s raining men, ladies!  Hallelujah it’s raining men! 

I truly do not think that there are over eleven thousand guys between the ages of 18 and 40 in the DC area that have their profile up on this “other” cougar site.  It can’t be that much of a sausage-fest on these sites, can it? 

But maybe it can… I’ve talked to a few guys on cougarlife who have said they probably won’t renew their membership because there just haven’t been that many women who they’ve been interested in meeting.  I had one of them tweak the search criteria to see how many women between the ages of 30 and 39 are in the area and he said it came up with only 27 matches.  That’s not much to choose from.  In fact, you could probably go to a bar and check out 27 available women.  Of course, this also assumes that the guys I’m asking questions to are being honest with me about their experiences.  This is an online dating site, after all.  

It’s not exactly a scientific experiment, but I’d say that there are far more young men looking to be hunted by cougars than there are women who are actually hunting them.  This is good news to me, I am not a very aggressive hunter.  I’m much happier to have someone drag my meal home and feed it to me than I am a huntress going out to kill my prey and drag it home by the scruff of his neck.  I’m starting to think this may be the biggest myth of cougardom.  The cougar may be an insatiable temptress, but she doesn’t have to work very hard with all of these sacrificial cubs around.  God bless all eleven thousand of them!

Cougar training

It has been exactly one week since I signed up to be a cougar.  I mentioned last week that I put up my profile on an online site for older women to meet younger men and I promised you details.  This website is so rich with potential, I don’t even know where to start.  Many of my observations are not unique to this site, but observations about online dating in general.  I will save those for later and get to the stuff you really want to hear about.  (Getting right down to business = classic cougar move!) 

For starters:  The way the site works.  You can sign up for a free profile but you can’t correspond freely unless you pay the $30 to $40 monthly fee.  So, if a non-paying member contacts me, I can not read it.  When I try to open the message, I’ll get an “Upgrade now” link that takes to me somewhere I can add my credit card number.  I am not tempted by paid membership benefits because I don’t think I’m going to get my full $40 worth for the following benefits: Unlimited messaging, 100 credits to use for sending gifts, Listed at top of search results, premium member badge for your profile, appear highlighted in search results, and (my favorites!) 6 hour exclusive access to new boy toys and recommended to new boy toys.  This explains why I was only getting messages from members in the beginning.  They must have had 6 hour exclusive access to me too. 

Since I haven’t paid any membership fees and I am still considered a “guest” member on the site, I can’t correspond with other guests, but the guys (actually, they are called ”cubs”) who have paid memberships can communicate with anyone.  So if they send me a message, I can answer.  I think this is a really nice feature because I still have been able to talk back and forth with anyone who has a paid membership.  It’s easy to tell who I can talk to when I go into my inbox.  I just skip through the messages and look for the pawprint icon next to their name so I’ll know it’s a message I can actually read.  I have been completely ignoring everyone else, so if anyone is thinking about getting a membership on this particular site, it’s definitely going to put you at the front of the list if you want to have free rein throughout cougardom.  I rarely even look at the profiles of non-members because I know I can’t correspond with them anyway. 

Now that you know the circumstances under which I’ve conducted my extensive research.  Here are my observations on cougarlife.com. 

I have to begin by saying - I don’t think the site delivers what it promises.  This is not a complaint, because I like what it has to offer and I still think it’s a lot of fun, but they promote it as a matchup between attractive young men and attractive older women.  I haven’t seen a lot of this.  To be fair, that could be because the young cubs aren’t shelling out the cash to become paying members so they’re flying under my radar.  But the guys I have talked to are generally not that young and from what they’ve told me, they haven’t exactly had Cameron Diaz knocking down their door either. 

While I haven’t found everything the website promised me, I am pretty pleased with what I have found.  And more than a little surprised.  I would estimate the average age of the guys who have contacted me to be around 28.  I’ve had a couple real young ones, and some that were 40+ but for the most part, the mean and median has been around 28.  I think dating a 28-year-old would not be classified as cougar territory, but I get the impression from the guys I’ve talked to that they don’t necessarily have a thing for older women, they just want to meet women they can have a conversation with.  Almost none of the guys (sorry, I mean cubs!) I have spoken with live in the DC Metro area.  They have been from New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island.  Even Ontario!  Technically, that could mean this cougar is going international! 

What seems to be happening most of the time is not a Demi/Ashton relationship, but women are buying memberships on the site because they don’t have to compete with the young, fresh-faced gals.  The guys who are buying memberships also seem to be looking for someone more mature than the average 20-something they meet online.  I never would have guessed it, but it looks to me like this is not a cougar site as much as a “No young girls allowed” site.  Which is very strange considering our society’s obsession with beauty and youth.  Keeping young women off of a dating site seems like keeping white men out of a country club.  Yet somehow, it still seems to work.  New cubs sign up every day.  Maybe some of them just want to bang desperate old broads, but most that I have talked to just seem like they put more value on conversation than on youth.  I will admit though, this observation is biased because I’m going by the people I have corresponded with.  And I have not responded to messages like, “Nice tits.” or “U R Hott”  Also, if a guy has a name like BigBallz69, I do not engage with them.  So these are my observations, but I am stepping over the low hanging fruit.  There’s plenty of fruit for the picking, too ladies!  I have not even had to go out “hunting” or proactively look through profiles, I’ve kept quite busy just reading the messages initiated by cubs with memberships. 

Most of the “about me” and profiles I have seen have statements like, “No bullshit” or “No games.”  I don’t get the impression they are all looking for sex either, they just seem to be genuinely trying to avoid the silly games that we all play when we’re young.  Which I think is pretty cool.  It’s not quite what the website promotes itself to be, but it still seems to be bringing people together who appreciate things that may be overlooked on a mainstream dating site. 

I think I’ll leave it there for now and keep you updated on my new life as an international cougar.

It’s a cougar’s life for me

Did you ever have a few drinks and then decide to put up a profile on a dating website that you would otherwise find embarrassing?  I have!  Apparently having a few drinks with friends, coming home and seeing a commercial for a website for “cougars” to meet young men is a reckless combination.  I didn’t take the time to really think about what I was doing or what I expected to happen by signing up, but I never would’ve predicted things to happen as they have…

 This adventure is going to have to take place through a series of blog entries, but if I don’t start now, I’m going to end up with thousands of words in one post.  It’s just too funny.  I’ll start with the basics and keep you up to date as I go. 

 The basics:  I’m going to assume everyone can figure out what this website is all about.  Cougars are older women who date younger men.  I have had this debate with friends about what age or circumstances determine whether or not someone is a cougar.  I say if you’re in your mid thirties and you date guys in their early to mid twenties, you qualify.  That is to say: I qualify.  Despite my friends arguments that anyone in their mid thirties who looks 24 it doesn’t count.  That’s all open for debate and not nearly as entertaining as the rest of the story.  Moving on…

 So, this website markets itself as a place for cougars to find their prey.  If you buy into what they are selling, you will expect to find a website full of Demi Moore types looking to find their Ashton Kutchers.  Perhaps where a local Cameron Diaz would go in search of her… whoever it is Cameron Diaz is dating now.  This all sounds too much fun to pass up.  Embarrassing, yes.  But fun nonetheless! 

I didn’t hesitate to sign up.  I can not bring myself to pay for an internet dating site, but I was able to create a guest membership for free so I put up a couple of pictures that I would normally be too modest to share.  I threw caution to the wind.  What the hell.  I decided to go for it and see what happens.  I received my confirmation email, explaining to me that the site was created “so that women like you could meet young, attractive men.”  It continues: 

Whether you’re recently divorced, never married or just one yummy mummy; I promise you will find what you’re looking for at CougarLife.com. Just think, it’s your personal playground where you can lose your inhibitions, play the field or even find someone special.

My own personal internet playground!  That sounds so wonderful, I can look past the “yummy mummy” part.  (yummy mummy?  Seriously?)  So, I signed up on a whim, knowing full well that when I woke up the next morning and was sober, I would be embarrassed and take the pictures down. 

 Well, that was Tuesday evening.  Now it is Thursday afternoon and I have not taken it down.  In fact, I’ve been having a lot of fun.  Of course there’s the usual ridiculousness of any dating site.  For example, when you log into your email and find messages with the subject line, “You have new mail from CougarBait27” or “Muffdvr69 is flirting with you.”  You have to laugh at them.  Those are the embarrassing things that make you say, “What the hell was I thinking?”  But there were other “cubs” beyond the muff diver or the cougar bait.

 The site stands out to me over other dating sites because I’m intrigued by the power dynamic.  I’m a single woman in my thirties.  I know what I want, I don’t have time to play games, and I’m not interested in a long-term relationship.  This site cuts to the chase in a way that would take much more communication on a mainstream site.  There’s no “What are you looking for?  What do you want in a mate?”  Nope.  With Cougar Life, it’s pretty cut and dry.  Or so you would think… 

 I will elaborate more about my adventures in another entry.  For now I will leave you with this question:  Why are guys in their 40s contacting me?  Do they think that they are the cougars?  Older guys who prey on young girls are not called cougars, they’re usually just called creeps.  Or maybe they do understand but are actually looking for women in their sixties?  I have no idea.  This is just one of many wonderfully silly things about this dating site.  I hope to share more with you in the coming days.

Single girl’s observation

Have you ever noticed that whenever someone tells you about how much success they have had with online dating, it’s always someone you would never go out with?