What have your online dating experiences been like? I want to hear the good and the bad.
Mostly all kinds of fun. Only one kind of scary stalker. One three year relationship. Lots of shorter relationships. More than a few FWBs. Made some friends too. Highly recommended.
I have to say my experience was pretty good, as I am engaged to the 4th man I met through okCupid. 
I really like OkCupid’s ability to match you with someone based on criteria you set. Match.com, on the other hand, doesn’t do that and was a complete waste for me.
I did have one glitch with online dating, though. In an introductory email, I told this guy that I am a psychologist. He replied that he was a paranoid schizophrenic. I thought he was kidding. Turns out not so much.
I’ll share my most recent one, which was about two years ago. I dated a girl who had borderline personality disorder (BPD). One minute she would be Jekyll, and the next minute she would be Hyde. I only dated her for about a month, and I have to say that it was the most exhausting month of my life.
However, I met my current girlfriend through her. It’s funny because I caught myself checking her out when I was dating the BPD girl.
Online dating never worked for me. I’ve met too many crazies.
I tried match.com and got one date with a nice guy who just wasn’t my cup of tea… then a lot of trashy half-filled-out, inactive matches. I was only on it for a week or two.
Then I bit the bullet and signed up with eHarmony. I had one date with another nice guy who wasn’t my cup of tea, a date in which neither of us liked the other, a date with a guy who I hung out with a few more times… and then I met my husband after about six weeks of membership.
My OKCupid find just wandered into the bedroom of our new apartment and offered to make me breakfast and a cup of coffee…so I’d say my experiences have been pretty good!
I approached it systematically, sending messages daily and arranging 3-6 dates a week. In my thinking, the more people you meet, the more likely that one of them is likely to be a compatible partner. I think it’s also important with online dates to avoid placing too much hope in any one person until you’ve had some time to get to know them, and it’s easier to do that when you have a lot of balls in the air. What I found was:
- A handful of awkward/weird/boring dates
- A lot of “nice, but no sparks” dates where I had fun and had good conversation, but didn’t feel much attraction
- A few sustained dating partners that didn’t evolve into relationships for various reasons
- One awesome guy I’ve been seeing for a year
I had a lot of fun going new places, doing fun activities and meeting random, often interesting people. It was sometimes exhausting, but sometimes you have to just keep on at it. I found my guy within two months, but of course a lot of that is just luck.
I met my boyfriend on Match.com, we’ve been together almost three years now so I’d say it worked out well for me.
There were a few interesting experiences on Match before I met my boyfriend:
One nice but boring guy who I went out with a few times before we decided it wasn’t going anywhere.
A handful of guys who I emailed regularly but never actually met.
One guy who I tried to meet in person but he had to cancel once, I had to cancel the next time, and we never tried the third time.
One guy who wanted me to move in with him and raise his kids before we had even met.
A seriously psycho nutbag who emailed me 10-15 times a day begging to call/meet him.
Modern Master, I’d encourage you to keep trying. You just never know. Gotta kiss a few frogs sometimes.
Only did it once. It was good for awhile, but it was 12 years ago and I was far too young to approach the physical nature of our relationship in anything resembling a measured, calm and mature fashion.
I’ve only ever had horrible experiences with it that have never made any sense to me. I do so well when I meet people the old fashioned way and had utterly no luck with traditional online dating sites. I’ve actually tried a few casual sex sites and been so annoyed that women looking for meaningless sex are so much better at having an online conversation than supposedly normal women on regular sites are.
Since I never really have had a problem meeting women off-line I decided to swear it off forever.
For what it’s worth, I acknowledge my experience is atypical.
I went on Match.com. Was on for a little more than a month. Had a few contacts that went nowhere. Then went on one date. Seemed to hit it off. It was her first Match date too. We have been dating for about 2 years now and I don’t plan on dating anyone else ever.
I’m a guy btw. I think the experiences will be different between men and women.
If you’re very picky like I am, the online sites are very effective in eliminating whole categories of women you’re never going to get along with. I’ve advertised myself as being extremely intolerant of pets, religion, children under 18, women from New Jersey, women who don’t appreciate modern art, women who don’t drive, Republicans, and several other qualities, and so I’ve gotten few inquiries from women in these categories. (Those few I have gotten tend to be rather colorful, typically beginning “You have some nerve…”) I am currently (the past ten months) been dating a woman who conforms to my rather specific needs, whom I met on OK Cupid.
Last month I married the first guy I went out with after reactivating my OKCupid profile after a six year relationship. (Of course, said failed relationship was also from OKCupid.) So, you know, YMMV.
This describes 100% of my OK Cupid experiences, minus the good conversation part. I met men who were technically okay, that is, good looking, smart and kind, but there was no real connection in person. I met one guy who was so effing funny (fwiw, the fastest way to make me like you is to be hilarious) that I was looking forward to our date --and I never look forward to online dates-- yet face to face, whatever chemistry we had via e-mail had evaporated in person. I really don’t get what people have against meeting people in real life. I hate to seem like your grandmother with her Jitterbug cell phone, yelling about how in the old days the trolley used to cost a nickel, but can’t we agree that in-person chemistry matters 100x more than some website’s compatibility score or if you have the same favorite bands in common? None of that shit actually matters when it comes down to how you feel about each other when you’re having actual face time. My current boy I met in person, and it was easy to know if I’d like him by hanging out, because I met him by hanging out.
I had one mild but negative experience, several neutral experiences and one very successful experience. We probably should have given our son the middle name “Ok Cupid” (but we liked him, so that never came up).
Met one nice woman, got together with her twice, fun but nothing more due at least partly to distance.
Met another extremely nice woman and am utterly besotted, and she with me. Only 7 months so far, but I’m anticipating it being much longer. I still find it amazing that a dating site was able to match me with someone so right.
I always assumed online dating was an admission of failure. I recoiled when others suggested it. I actually had no idea it wasn’t stigmatized.
I eventually gave it a try, because I was sick of being dateless for years at a time. I was sorely disappointed when I sent out a bunch of messages to women, and got no responses. They often looked at my profile, and decided not to respond. That still happens.
Eventually I rewrote my profile, and I’ve at least gotten better responses and a handful of dates that way. I’m trying to date online again, because I’m once again single after a loving relationship ended due to her desire to possibly rear a child (she’s 32) and my staunch unwillingness to do so.
So, I’m back to OKCupid. I want to conclude (and not for the first time) that I’m just not very appealing, but my recent lover, among others, disagrees vehemently.
I’m not sure. It takes a great deal of effort to just get one date online, but even that’s more efficient than offline. In contrast, the only two “relationships” I’ve ever had (not girlfriends due to technicalities, but whatever) were initiated offline. Ten years apart.
The jury is still out. And with that, I’m going over to OK Cupid.
It’s pretty fun, I guess. I like being able to quickly winnow out the dealbreakers that it normally would take a few dates to find out, but on the other hand, as people have said above, the chemistry’s elusive. At least it has been for me as well.
As an aside, though, a lot of women look nothing like their photos. That’s not accusatory; if that’s her best photo and it’s recent, well, she’s gotta pick it. I’m just amazed at how it happens. It’s more than just a good hair day or the good side of her face; a couple of times I’ve thought, “Is this even the same person?”
Funniest story from my BF of 7+ years,who I met on-line. He picked up a first date, and she wanted to run to the store. Nice guy, he said sure. Parked and stayed in the car, so as not to get trapped into buying her groceries. AN HOUR later, she come out with a whole cart load of stuff, and now he needs to take her home, haul it up to her second story apt. Now apparently, she was ready to go out. Luckily for me, he wasn’t
I think my weirdest online experience was a couple who asked me to participate in a threesome and oh, would I like to breed my cat with their cat? I replied that I was flattered but not ready for such an experience just yet (and also that my cat had been spayed, hah).