Les hommes français - Internet dating en français

Now that I am back in Paris, am no longer homeless and have settled back into daily life, I decided it was time to get out there and meet more people. Whilst I have met loads of people with work, it is a very transient industry and as soon as I become close to someone they tend to leave (quelle dommage). So in order to meet more people I have signed up to a couple of sites on the Internet like meetup.com and in the interest of meeting more men I signed up to a French Internet dating website.

I am not a huge fan of Internet dating but I respect the place it now has in modern society. When I was living in Australia I basically lived at work and although I loved my job it was hardly that place to meet the man of my dreams (unless you go for the middle aged married doctor type or the rich business man currently having a heart attack) When I finally had the time to go out, I would want to spend time with my girl friends and not have the energy to meet new people. So, I tried my hand at Internet dating once in Australia and it was a huge failure. I decided that eHarmony was my best bet and after completing the insanely long questionnaire (which was a great insight into my personality itself) I signed on for a month and convinced my flatmate to do so too. Every day, the website would match you with 6 or so matches according to your questionnaire and you were supposed to go from there. I kept seeing all these ads on television with all these women who had found their 'soul-mate' on the website and although, it did provide a few hours of entertainment, after the month I decided it wasn't for me and deleted the account.

I had no intention to try it again, until a couple months ago a fellow Parisian blogger Mary Kay wrote a blog post about a French Internet dating website opening up a pop up dating boutique in Paris. Now I had heard of this website before through the lovely Ella Coquine but had not really thought about trying it, until now.

For anyone who has moved to Paris, you will understand how incredibly hard it is to meet new people. Before I moved here I had visions of sitting in cafes drinking coffee having French men approaching me and sweeping me off my feet. Now I partly blame my French teacher in Melbourne and partly romantic French movies as this is certainly not the case. Add in the factor that my French still sux, it makes it near impossible to meet French people and break into their famously tight cliques.

So after hearing about this pop up boutique where men were actually in giant barbie-like boxes (See Mary Kay's post above) and knowing Ella's success, I figured - bugger it, why not?! What do I have to lose?! At least this website has an entertaining and original concept. So I signed up. My first Internet dating website in France and obviously completely in French.

The idea of the website is the women are in control (I like it already) and they basically get to browse through a 'supermarket of men' allowing the men to talk to them by 'putting them in their shopping cart' (ridiculous AND genius!) So, I stumbled through a whole new vocabulary of French and delved head first into the world of French Internet dating. It has provided me with not only hours of entertainment, but shown me the best AND worst of what Paris has to offer.

The first guy I was talking to seemed really nice, was a sweet talker and wanted to help me with my French. From his photos he looked alright, so I was impressed I was onto what seemed to be a winner so early. He asked if he could add me to Facebook  so I agreed and went on over to accept him as a friend. No more then 30 seconds after accepting him as a friend, I noticed that he had already deleted me and about a minute later I got a message saying he didn't feel the 'coup de coeur' (or otherwise had looked at a couple Facebook photos and deleted me). Ouch. Straight off the bat rejection, from a guy I probably wouldn't look twice at in a bar too. Feeling a huge dent in my confidence I decided all I could do was proceed. The second one seemed more promising, but after Mr Judgemental I couldn't be too sure. We talked for a while and he seemed really keen to get to know me, a little too well. He started to get personal. VERY personal and needless to say homme nombre deux, otherwise known 'Mr French Pervert' was crossed off the list. And so it continued over the next few days, it definitely gave me an insight into French men.

From there it just got worse and worse, I thought I had seen it all until I started talking to one guy, who again seemed a little mysterious but normal enough for me to give him my number. This is what I received in return...

A guy that wanted to be my dog, my slave & massage my feet. Seemingly nice, but oh so creepy. It seemed like he had read '50 Shades of Grey' and got the roles confused.

I figured from this point that the site would be more of a source of entertainment then actually help me meet people and just when I was about to pull the plug a few nice French men came out of nowhere and just like that I seemed to make a couple of friends. I even gathered together the courage to go on my first 'date' and you know what?! He turned out to be totally normal. Go figure?!

The conclusion?! It has been an interesting learning process and I am glad I put myself out of my comfort zone to try something different if not slightly bizarre. If I walk away from this with even just a new friend, I will deem it a success and cross it off my list of things to do in Paris.

So... Internet dating. What do you think?!