By Jennifer Vanasco

The other day, a gay man I met told me a very sad story.

He lived year-round in the gay mecca of Provincetown for a good long time. On the off-season, he said, locals and the few visitors would hang out together in bars and coffee shops. These small bands, over time, became a community. Partners and lovers met each other, as did people who were destined to become old friends.

But then something happened.

And that something is called “The Internet.”

Locals stopped coming out to socialize, he said, and instead huddled in their rooms in front of their computers, looking for love online instead of in person.

I wish this phenomenon was limited to this one city, but I think it isn’t. And I also think it’s a mistake—although it’s a mistake most of us are making because it’s so seductive.

The idea of Internet dating seems so promising when you first become single. It’s so much easier than actually dragging yourself out to meet friends of friends, or to a gay bar, or to a gay movie, lecture or other event where you might come across singles.

Instead, you pull out your credit card, fill out your profile and instantly have access to dozens of gay men and lesbians, all single, all looking for someone “down to earth, fun, who likes movies and dinner with friends”—in other words, you!

It’s like a gay buffet! And when you’re newly single, you can’t wait to try every dish.

But after a few months of sampling, you realize that you’re tired. There are too many choices. And one is only so hungry.

So maybe you swear off dating forever. Or maybe you turn into a one-person admissions committee, automatically saying “no” after one coffee date/interview, unless you fall in love with your date at first sight.

You don’t really know the person you’ve just met. You’ve only talked with them for 45 minutes.

You have no idea about their character, about their hidden nuances, about what makes their friends love them or what traits their siblings hate. You don’t know what makes them laugh or what moves them to action, what quirky strengths they have and what strange pet peeves.

If upon meeting them, they don’t seem quite smart enough, don’t like the same TV shows or have ears that are too big, we count them out. Because we know that back at home are 100 other possibilities on our computers and we want to keep our options open.

And, of course, they feel free to quickly say no to us as well.

It is a wonder anyone ever finds anyone online.

But there’s always a better person waiting on the next page, right?

Well, maybe. But maybe not.

Maybe we’re just losing sight of what we actually want—a girlfriend, a boyfriend, a partner—because we are desperately trying to keep our other options (no matter how distant or mythic) open. (If what you’re looking for online is exclusively sex, you can stop reading. If all you want is the buffet, then the Internet is definitely for you).

My current favorite pop economist Dan Ariely, in his book “Predictably Irrational,” calls his chapter on this  “Keeping Doors Open—Why options distract us from our main objective.”

Ariely conducted an experiment among MIT students that literally dealt with closing doors in a computer game. He learned that students would lose time and money just to prevent doors that they didn’t want from closing and disappearing on screen.

Ariely says that instead of trying to keep doors open in our romantic lives (as well as in other aspects), we should forcibly close them. We should not keep our options open, but keep our options limited. Because we will be happier in the long run, and more successful, if we work at one thing instead of putting energy into multiple possibilities.

“We have an irrational compulsion to keep doors open. It’s just the way we’re wired,” Ariely said in his book. But this “will wear out our emotions.”

Many of us can’t help but be tempted to keep our options open if we’re sampling that online gay buffet. So don’t. Terminate your membership. Stop cruising online. Go out and meet actual people if you’re in Provincetown, for heaven’s sake—or New York or Chicago or even Oklahoma City.

The choices will be more limited—but maybe that’s exactly what we need.

Jennifer Vansco is an award-winning, syndicated columnist. She edits and blogs at the gay political site VisibleVote08.com. Email her at jennifer.vanasco@gmail.com.