Not to side track much, but when did you get divorced? I never even noticed on Facebook.
Since I’m not a woman either I can’t really help, but I can say that it sucks to read that women want messages that say guys have read their profile, but then say they get too many crap ones and don’t respond to the better written messages.
MeanOldLady, you could also be outside the ‘norm’ and that scares guys off. I don’t know if you have kids, but I’ve known guys who don’t want to date a woman with kids. I have a friend who’s 6 foot tall and she says she has a hard time dating because she’s taller then most guys.
Here’s a article/blog about ‘clicking’ with people that was interesting. In one of those books mentioned there too one of the studies showed that women did better if they had a guy write their profile, but interestingly enough it didn’t help if a women helped write the man’s.
Hire a battle-axe secretary to vet your inbox and filter out the shitty messages for you. Come to think of it, several someones could definitely make that into a full-time job.
OK how about this. I went on Match. There were a couple of women I messaged back and forth a bit. Then I went on one date. Two and a half years later we now live together. It was her first date from Match too.
I’m not shilling for a company but I get the impression that the crazies and scammers are multiplied exponentially on free sites.
I think I fall right within the norm. A little too normal, maybe. I’m in the normal age range, no kids, not tall, not short, average weight, decently fit, moderately cute, but not super gorgeous, not ugly, no religious beliefs to speak of, not vegan or vegetarian, no face tattoos (yet). I’m boring as all hell, apparently.
Ha, truth! I’m sure there are teenagers in need of a summer job.
Sweet! I think? I suppose there might be something to getting what you pay for, but I shall try revisiting my OKC approach, and if that still doesn’t work, then screw it!
I haven’t got a husband or even a boyfriend out of it, but I’ve certainly had the best of times with the people I contacted first. And I’ve shot for guys who I thought were a bit out of my league thinking, well, I’ve nothing to lose and if they don’t like me they can just not reply. But mostly they have. So yay.
When I was on Match and OKC in my profile I put that if the subject to a response didn’t have a certain word in it I wouldn’t read it; more often than not they’d put that word in the subject but still ask for nekkid pics or think that finding that word meant they ‘won’ me in some fashion. That didn’t make them any less crap b/c they’d paid a little attention. And if someone who my profile made clear I didn’t want to meet wrote me a great message, it was still an indication they didn’t care what I wanted anyway (smoker, married, older than my dad, outside the state, etc.). Those are perhaps the most frustrating. “Give it a chance! Step outside your comfort zone! You never know what sparks might fly!” - the desperate cry of the person who’s uninterested in what I am as a person.
Do the messages forward to your regular e-mail account (or could they?) If you forward them to a Gmail account you could create a filter that would automatically delete messages with certain words (ur, naked, lol, shit like that).
I am following a friend’s dating travails and she regularly gives me updates on what is going on. She got a wink yesterday from someone with the user name licklick694u. Stay classy!
I met my fiance online after dating a lot of duds. This is my advice, for what it’s worth:
Take the time to send a message to any guy who isn’t an immediate “no” when you see his profile. Personalize the notes you send. This will take a lot of time, but it is the only way to meet people. Don’t wait for the right guys to contact you. It will NEVER happen. Most of my friends who met their SOs as adults did it through eHarmony, Match, or OKC. They were always the one to contact the guy they wound up with. Same with me.
Put up a lot of good, recent pictures of yourself, including full-length. Let the guy know what you actually look like.
Anyone who responds, exchange a few quick messages, and if they seem like a possibility, meet them very soon for coffee or a drink. This should be a short, no pressure, easy escape meeting.
Anyone who isn’t an immediate “no” after you meet them once, have another date. Preferably, set it up at the end of the current date.
If they aren’t a “hell yes” by the third date, politely dump them.
I probably sent out 50 emails, went on 10 first dates, had 4 guys make it to date #3, and had one serious relationship before finding my guy. And when I first contacted my fiance, I did not think he was “the one” because his profile kind of sucked, he had only one flattering picture, and his messages were always sort of superficial, sticking to small talk. I saw him walking into the bar for our first date and thought “ugh” because he was wearing very casual clothes and I didn’t think he was taking it seriously. But once I walked in and sat down with him, we clicked immediately.
Took 2 years. It can be a grind. I had to take periodic breaks because it was a lot of work.
I like all of those, the only thing I would add is that if you don’t like someone at least tell them. None of this, “Sure we can go out again”, or at least send an email saying as much. I can get the hint of no further contact, but if you’re up front then I don’t have to worry about sending you emails or texts after.
I take the super direct approach. I tell them face-to-face at the end of the date, “I’m sorry, you are a nice person, but you are not what I’m looking for.” (I have never been on a date with an asshole.) If a person sincerely approaches me online and I’m not interested, I politely tell them why, thank them for their interest, and wish them good luck. They generally take it well. A couple didn’t. It was no big deal to block those guys.
In addition to my earlier post: You say you’re “moderately cute”. But I think on a dating site you’re cuteness levels automatically go up 10 points from what they actually are - I’m not sure exactly why but to me it feels that way. Perhaps it’s just a function of everyone actively looking to date. On top of that, you’re seriously awesome as a person (or are as an online character anyway - and that’s what matters for now anyway). So I think what you should do is find the guys whose profile really makes you go “wow!” and message them. From the ones who message you, I would cherrypick the ones you really like. It’s not nice to say, but you can always go back to the “second tier” with a “I was busy working…blah blah”.
My friend just asked me today about going on a date with a girl on OKC who didn’t have a profile pic at all. Her profile certainly sounded great, she came across really well.
I said he should do it, because I think she may have taken down the picture for the reason in the OP. Of course, she could also have the wart disease that slowly turns you into a tree… ETA: this is what I mean. And [why](Epidermodysplasia verruciformis
Epidermodysplasia verruciformis Epidermodysplasia verruciformis - Wikipedia) I couldn’t remember the name.
But I thought: she messaged him, and he’s a good looking guy. She wouldn’t do that if he were waaay out of her league,* that would just be embarrassing once on the date. And he is really interested in her profile.
So maybe that’s an idea? Maybe have an interesting profile, and no picture at all. At least there will be fewer “hi ur cute” messages.
I’ll report back if she is a tree-wart-person.
*I hate saying “out of their league”, but there you have it.
I am sorry for the hijack but I am tired of reading this on this message board. I know that things can be skewed in Doperland but this is very far from my experience and that of my real life friends.
I have done the on-line dating thing on and off for a while. Granted I am reasonably picky and only write to women with whom I have a few things in common but my rate of return is something like 60-70%. I assume by rate of return you mean that I get a positive reply email. I don’t end up meeting all of them after a few email exchanges.
When I have an active profile, I get one or two non-spam contacts a week. Half of those are emails and the other half winks or the equivalent. I pretty much never respond to winks or “hi. nice pictures” emails and always respond to the thoughtful ones even it it’s just to say, “Thanks for writing but I don’t think that we’re a good match.”
I know from my real life female friends that attractive women do get overwhelmed with an insane amount of ridiculous emails. I get that it’s frustrating but it shouldn’t be that hard to weed out the obvious losers and choose from the best ones. It’s difficult as hell of find that great connection but I think of it as a project and a numbers game.
I have met a few woman without a picture and they’ve all ended up being good looking and a couple of them were downright gorgeous. What’s the worst thing that can happen? You end up having a two hour coffee conversation with a person that you don’t find attractive.
Yeah, you know, I never really messaged anyone. It just felt like work to search through profiles when my inbox was being flooded. But I guess I should look for people first, then go over the messages I’ve received.
Gwuh? My friends in meatspace often complain about getting a response from maybe 1 in 10. This guy I used to know would complain all the time about women never responding. He’s not ugly or anything, so I assumed he was sending out lame ass messages, but he insisted that he wasn’t, and knowing what kind of person he is, I believe him. There’s another guy who whined to me about not getting responses, and this guy is totally cute and someone I would date if I were 10 years younger. I dunno, this might vary depending on age and location.
I prefer to say ‘punching out of your weight class’, it sounds a tiny sliver nicer to my ear.
Having an appearance that’s at all attractive can backfire in a strange way; there’ll be confusion as to why you ‘need’ a dating site at all and then a presumption there must be something wrong w/ you that isn’t in the profile and isn’t worth meeting you to find out.
This reminds me. A friend of mine (actually, the one I was talking to about the suckage of OKC and how to improve our experiences, which prompted this thread… anyway) who is very pretty who tried speed dating. Everyone she spoke with, she says, quizzed her on why she was at something like this, and they all pretty much spent their 5 minutes, or whatever, unloading their baggage. Yikes!
Edit: Also, just for the record, I’m not pretty enough to be intimidating or so lovely that anyone would wonder why I don’t have guys waiting outside of my door? I’m not bad looking, but I’m not suspiciously pretty, and won’t set off anyone’s “What’s she doing here?” alarm.
Age might be the difference. The tables turn right around the time we hit 40 or so. I am in my late 40s and men my age are the ones getting chased assuming that they’re fit and make a good living. If you have a big beer gut and have a crappy career at my age, you can forget it. I also don’t send out all that many messages so the fact that I’m selective might play into it as well.
This is mindblowing to me. I barely wasted any time with the guys who messaged me. For the most part, they were a total mismatch. Use the filters to sort people by criteria you want, and go after the guys you find most interesting. I got a 90+% response rate doing that.
