Continued

My search for a husband online lasted four years and consumed every waking hour outside my other job. Relatively few of the prospects interested me, maybe one in 20 men. The hopeless procrastinator in me filed away these potentials so I could waste time rejecting the rest. What fun! I embroiled myself sadistically, or possibly masochistically (still not sure which), with men I had no intention of meeting. The contentious ones thrilled me, particularly those who objected to preferences I had clearly stated in my personal ad.

"Let's keep it under 46 and over 38," read my ad from SJF, 38. I wanted a guy within my own generation. Why so many men in their 50s and 60s responded, I can only guess. As my ads aged with me, ("Age 40 1/2, but I look 40!"), I drew even more men from the dark side of my age specs.

To early retirees and seniors, I was still a young babe. Never married. Willing to relocate. No children. No desire to have them.

Boy, was I in demand.

I posted a photo with my ad. I heard it would generate five times as many replies. The photo changed with my age and moods over the four years. The depressed photo, released after a breakup, was my personal favorite. "Haunting," one man replied.

I insisted that replies include a recent photo. Who doesn't have a photo of themselves that's less than 10 years old? Well, they found me, those camera-shy guys. "I still look like that," they insisted. "Really!"

I was frank. "Look, I'd love to send you a photo of me at 30 because I was really hot back then. But it's just not me anymore."

Another shortcut to the delete key: "What's a nice Jewish girl like you doing in a place like Texas?" Staying far away from you, I thought. I love Texas!!

If I gained anything from this experience, it was a new feeling of empowerment. My mother always told me it's a man's world in romance and that good Jewish men are scarce. So don't expect too much, she warned.

The quantity of responses changed that thinking. Most important, sorting through hundreds of ads forced me to keep clarifying what I wanted and not back down. Having no set of clear standards was what kept me in lousy relationships all these years.

I received 800 responses over four years. A lot in the late 1990s. Now a pittance. Of those 800, I responded positively to 15. I got to know them better via phone. I crisscrossed the country to date them. From that point, the experience was no different than off-line dating, a roller-coaster ride of hope and disappointment.

Smarting after a rejection, I'd always get back on the computer, more obsessed each time. She's man crazy, my girlfriends thought. "Sit back, relax," said a younger friend, whose husband proposed two weeks after they met. "Learn to be alone."

By my mid-30s, my mother had abandoned all hopes for a Jewish son-in-law, having seen enough of what was out there. By the start of my search, she was holding out for anything in pants. Near the end, she decided I was better off being single.

I did benefit from a coach, Lisa Bentsen, a professional matchmaker who met her husband the old-fashioned way, through a newspaper ad that drew 400 responses. I interviewed her for a newspaper article in July 1999 for the Corpus Christi Caller Times.

An interview on deadline turned into an hour-long therapy session. I was going crazy, I told her. I had gone through so many men on the Internet. Nobody worth downloading. Maybe I was too picky.

Keep going, she advised. "On the Internet, you can get very close to what you want and deserve, and you owe yourself the opportunity to try and not sell out because this is a life commitment."

Little did I know I had already met the man. (And here's where my Courtship Story begins)

Mark, a 41-year-old musician and violin dealer, had e-mailed me five months earlier. Not hearing back, he followed with a second letter. Twice I ignored his intelligent and thoughtful letters from Toronto. By then I was burnt out on cross-country dating. I was working on my Texas pile.

I don't remember my first phone call with Mark. And I broke an appointment for our second conversation. I was too busy writing and calling men who weren't interested in me. Occasionally, Mark would pop on my computer screen, annoying me with instant messages: "Hi!"

He just wanted to talk.

One night, I was ending a two-month affair with a Houston man. I was crying as I typed instant messages, saying how much he had hurt me.

And there was Mark again, instant-messaging in the corner of my screen. "Can't talk," I pecked. "In tears. Am breaking up with someone."

"Online?" he wrote back. "Do you need someone to talk to?"

Well, I should have reread my personal ad. Because buried between "an old 38 is okay" and "You don't have to tell me your whole life story. A few talking points will do" was something about wanting a man with "best-friend potential."

Mark was it: a great listener, and he had accepted me at my worst — right away.

Everything after that went as smoothly as my mother said it would when Mr. Right comes along. We met the following month, got engaged in nine months and married five months later.

But of course, you haven't heard his side of the story.