Online Dating Part 1: Just when I thought I'd developed all my social skills

Talking to people one on one. Talking to large groups of people. Talking to people on the phone. Sending email. Chatting. Mingling. Talking to people in other languages. Talking to strangers. Hanging out with strangers.

These are all things I do pretty well, now (OK, except the mingling). Not consistently well, but let's not get into that. Just suffice it to say that I am a relatively competent socializer. This was not always the case, though. I was a shy kid, and I remember in excruciating detail all the stress and mishap I went through trying to add each of these forms of communication to my skill set. My current job in communications is undoubtedly related to this. I've been thinking about how people contact one another for as long as I can remember. One of my first memories is telling a lie, and weighing out the benefit I gained versus the anxiety I felt. I was still in diapers.

So, after 25 years + of studying the subject, I'd finally begun to feel that I could handle just about any format. Social media? Ha! I work in social media. Just try me.

Then I moved back to the States and found out that online dating isn't just OK now, it's absolutely mainstream.

For the first month or so, I held out. My roommate went through a brief fling with a guy she met online, and so the topic was often on the table. My roommate, though, is the kind of unflappable person who not only never becomes embarrassed herself, she actively puts people around her at ease. If I needed someone to negotiate a hostage situation, this is who I'd call. So seeing her, if not finding a lasting relationship at least having fun, really didn't do much to convince me that I should give it a try myself.

It was everyone else's reactions that made me start to feel like a technophobe. Whenever the topic came up around new people, they'd all tried it. People even thought my reticence was a bit strange. The consensus was pretty simple: once you're out of school, meeting people is a pretty random game. If you'd be OK with meeting someone in the produce aisle, why not meet them online?

The issue is that I wouldn't meet someone in a produce aisle. Not that I'd be afraid for my safety. I would just freeze and have no idea what to say. I once sat next to a guy I found extremely attractive for 12 hours on a plane. He actually made me blush, I thought he was that cute. I exchanged only 2 or 3 sentences with him the entire time. 12 hours and less than a half page of dialogue.

Once, my friend from Brazil asked me to clarify the word "flustered." When I started explaining, she said, "Oh, I know! It's like how you feel when someone is attracted to you."

Yep. She was dead on. For some of us, that is exactly what flustered is.

So, the topic of online dating has made abundantly clear something that I had been able to ignore about myself: my social skill set is not at all complete. I haven't the slightest idea how to date.

The one time that I ended up really falling in love, I had a crush on the guy for three years before I was able to make a(n incredibly sloppy and impulsive) move. It then took another six months of a casual relationship before I felt confident that yes, I really did want him to be my boyfriend.

The other side of my passivity is that over the years I've had more than one Accidental Boyfriend, situations that spun out of control before I really knew what was going on. About a year and a half ago I swore those off and have been trying to be more careful ever since.

So, whichever way you slice it, dating sounds terrifying to me. I'm extremely defensive about who I'll consider an emotional attachment to these days. And even when I like a person, it may take me, oh, three and a half years to be sure.

Not only do I not know how to date, it seems like my personality is at odds with it. It's terrifying and I seem destined to fail. So I signed up for OKCupid and started talking to people.

Someday I'll be able to look at my shiny, pretty box of intact social skills and say to my kids, "It was a long campaign, but eventually I took 'em all."