Hello everyone, I know it’s 2018 and online dating is a lot more accepted than it used to be 10 years ago. I’m still a little bit hesitant to try it out as I feel like I’m giving up on true love or romance or something stupid like that. If any of you guys have any online dating stories or tips for me it would be much appreciated. Other any specific sites that you recommend? I think I’m too old to use tinder haha but was thinking more along the lines of match or eharmony? Honestly I have no idea
I was on Match many years ago after my divorce. Say, around 1998-2001 or so.
Overall I found it to be a good experience, but in more of a “practice dating” type of way. I didn’t end up meeting my wife (since 2005) on Match but the dating experience helped me figure out what I wanted, and more importantly, what I didn’t want.
Here is a previous thread on best online dating sites:
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=831479
I’m over 40, have almost exclusively dated people I met online, and am married to a person I met on okCupid.
I can’t give you recommendations for sites. They change year by year and their popularity varies wildly by region. But here’s what worked best for me:
- Try to balance presenting what you think are your most attractive qualities with presenting the qualities you feel define you. You don’t want to just maximize your hits, you want to maximize good hits. And also trying to appeal to everyone will prevent you from standing out.
- Be choosy, but not too choosy, on who to contact. I preferred to exchange a handful of messages, just to get a basic feel of the accuracy of someone’s profile and start establishing a connection, and then arrange a meet up fairly quickly. You can get a whole lot more done on a 30 minutes “date” (v0.5 beta) than in weeks of tepid message exchange.
- Figure out what works for you. I made a lot of mistakes and never really knew what I was looking for until I found it.
Moderator Action
Since this is more of an opinion and advice type of topic, let’s move this to IMHO (from GQ).
Online dating was rather widely accepted ten years ago. Ten year before that, it was unusual.
By definition, if you are making an effort online to find true love, you are doing the exact opposite of giving up on true love or romance.
Use eHarmony. It absolutely works better than the other options. It is worth the money.
I did it for years until I met my current SO. I had the best luck with Match.com by far. Bumble also works. It is controlled by women and you only have 24 hours to respond before they disappear for good. That is a lot of highly successful women on it.
Online dating isn’t some creepy thing. It is more the norm than not these days and allows you to cast a really wide net.
My SIL met her husband on eHarmony. They’re still married years later with a couple little kids, but from what I’ve heard I don’t exactly envy their marriage. Must be working for them though.
Hmm, that thread seems to have ended in August 2017. Since December 2017 OkCupid, which used to be decent enough, went to a swipe-like system of mutual messaging, of which I won’t go into here.
That has been mocked as ‘Tinderization’ of OkCupid for good reasons, but be aware that the Pareto Principle seems to be in full effect nowadays.
Never done it myself. Always thought the idea of online dating was kind of odd. But my brother met someone through a dating site and they happily married. They are both rather… um… “unique” individuals and there is no chance their paths would have ever crossed otherwise, so I am glad it worked out for them.
And of course you should continue with the traditional methods of meeting potential mates–via friends, clubs, churches…
Only 10 views so far. Are the Gen X and baby boomers hiding the fact that they tried out “computer dating” in the '70s-'80s?
I think online dating is much more of a crapshoot than its reputation would indicate. What I mean is that I believe most of the people who judge their experience to have been a success, succeeded by chance, and not by their choice of site or their approach to using said site. And they look back on their experience and they figure they got something right that time that they had gotten wrong before.
I say, do online dating if online dating ITSELF is what you like. And that if you don’t actually like online dating in itself for itself, then quit it, and go do something you really like to do. Because SOME other people also like to do the same things you do, and that’s where you’re going to find them.
I can say with absolute confidence that this approach works a lot worse if all the things you like to do are done in the privacy of your own home.
You might also have more luck getting out and meeting people through meetup.com. Don’t approach it from the point of view of “gonna find a date,” however… that’s probably more than a little bit creepy. Just get out more and do more stuff that you’re interested in (possibly finding a new hobby or pursuit), and you’ll have fun, meet people, and maybe end up dating some of them.
if the whole reason you’re doing it is to find somebody, isn’t it deceptive to pretend that’s not the goal?
(I ask partly because I like to argue on the internet 
and partly because, where relationships are concerned, I have a personal problem with being anything but completely upfront about bad things about myself. Which is one reason I’ll never try online dating…or offline dating.)
I’m from the tail end of the Boomers, and I did check out early dating sites back in the mid nineties. I saw that there were way more men than women, so I didn’t like my odds and gave up without trying. I had more success going to a party and standing by the keg. I assume that the ratios are more friendly to men now, otherwise people would stop using them.
Don’t have it be the goal, then. If somebody’s having trouble finding that connection because they never get out, or they know all the people in their usual stomping grounds aren’t interested, the first step is to get out and try something new. If I join a D&D group, it’s because I want to play D&D. If I end up with a 20th level character, that’s great, but the goal is to play D&D.
That bumble dating service absolutely sounds interesting. It seems like I might get a lot less pestered on the website like that haha so maybe that is a decent option for me.
Wow, thanks a lot for all of the detailed advice everyone. I definitely need to take some new recent pictures as I don’t want to be lying to anybody on the dating website that I choose hahaha I don’t want to be one of those people lying on the profiles 
I hear a lot of mixed opinions when it comes to eHarmony. I know some couples that have been married for quite some time that met on eHarmony. One of the things that was a pain in the butt is I cannot find reasonable pricing for some of the big websites. For example the pricing cannot be found anywhere on the eHarmony website. This article talks about the supposed costs of eHarmony but after going all the way to the checkout screen on eHarmony I realized that the prices were not nearly as low as were stated from that site.
I do not want to pay an arm and a leg and that sentencing at seven dollars per month which it definitely is not. Anyways I think I’m going to try to check out match like you guys recommended I tried plenty of fish a while back and it seemed like I kept on getting spammed. Maybe it’s worth its try again though Talk to you all soon and any other device that you guys have for me is fantastic.
I love hearing about all of you guys and stories whether they be successes or failures with online dating!
Not highly successful at finding partners. Or do you mean rich? Or do you mean has a good job?