I did Internet dating for a while, and that is rife with horrible

A wry confession becomes a small oracle: “I did Internet dating for a while, and that is rife with horrible dating stories.” Do not hear only laughter in this line; hear the gravel of pilgrimage. The road of dating has always been strewn with mismatched hopes and missed signals, but the Internet makes the road wider, faster, and strangely fogged. Profiles gleam like temple icons; meetings dissolve like mist. From this comes the proverb’s weight: when the marketplace of hearts expands without guardrails of patience and presence, the harvest includes a great many stories—comic, aching, and cautionary all at once.

The ancients knew this pattern, though they lacked our screens. In every age the heart projects a golden image upon a stranger and then stumbles when the living person arrives. What we call Internet dating is simply the latest mask-room, where avatars dance before we do. The phrase “rife with horrible dating stories” is not a sneer at romance but an alarm about expectation. Words and pictures promise a citadel; the meeting reveals a cottage in need of sweeping. It is not that people mean to deceive; it is that desire is a generous painter—and the algorithm supplies an endless canvas.

Consider a tale from long ago: the poet Catullus adored Lesbia in lyrics bright as hammered bronze, but in the daylight of Rome he found jealousy, games, and splinters of truth that verses could not lacquer over. His scrolls were the profiles of his age; his laments, the horrible dating stories of a man who trusted the poem more than the person. Or think of Cyrano de Bergerac, who lent his eloquence to another face; when letters met flesh, sorrow walked between them. In both stories the medium was faultless; the mismatch between projection and presence was the wound.

There is also a civic wisdom inside the jest. When a bazaar promises infinite choice, the buyer often learns fickleness; when attention moves by swipes and pings, patience erodes. Many horrible dating stories begin not in malice but in hurry: plans made carelessly, boundaries mumbled, exits improvised. The old virtues—steadiness, clarity, accountability—do not come bundled with bandwidth. They must be chosen, rehearsed, and defended, or else the city of love becomes a carnival where no one stays for the second act.

Yet the proverb is not despair. It is a gate that opens to craft. Even a chaotic bazaar can be walked with a wise stride. The same networks that propagate blunders can also teach discernment: patterns seen, red flags named, kindness standardized. The teller of the line has paid tuition in awkward coin; we may inherit the lesson without re-suffering each scene. For every misadventure, there was a boundary not set, a question not asked, a pace not honored. Wisdom is the art of noticing these hinges before they creak.

Let us then translate the saying into a rule of life: design your encounters so that truth has the advantage. Let the profile be a doorway, not a mural; let the first date be short and bright, a test of listening rather than a theater of performance; let the next step be earned by coherence, not chemistry alone. In this way you turn a field notorious for horrible dating stories into a school where grace and prudence sit on the same bench.

Rites for the road: (1) In your Internet dating profile, offer one specific habit, one value, and one question—hooks that invite conversation rather than fantasy. (2) Before meeting, agree on time, place, and purpose; name your boundaries aloud. (3) During the meeting, measure by reciprocity: do curiosity and courtesy travel both directions? (4) Afterward, send a clear close—either a kind no or a concrete yes—so no ghost must tell the tale for you. Practice these, and even the inevitable missteps will become parables of growth rather than entries in the ledger of horrible dating stories. In this way, the modern maze will teach an ancient art: to seek honestly, to part gently, and to keep the heart both brave and wise.