I have been divorced for a while now and have been going to several Meet-Up groups and thought I’d also give online dating a try just to see what it had to offer. So far, I’m not impressed. My 6 month membership to Match.com is about to expire and I don’t think I’ll renew.
I think my profile is ok. Not overly long or short and I tried to keep it honest. I also keep it updated and change wording or delete or add information to hopefully make it more interesting.
The types of replies I get are:
Women who are 25-30 years younger, live in other states and don’t seem to have actually read my profile.
Women who English is definitely not their first language and who state their goal is to get married.
The replies I get from women from my initial messages, if any are usually brief and we correspond a few times, then they usually stop. I don’t think I’m that dull, but I do admit to being a bit of a nerd.
Just curious if people have much luck with such sites? Has anyone submitted their profile to their “experts” for $50.00 to look at it and fix it up?
A lot of those “young women” are probably fakers looking to scam you. They send messages to as many men as possible. (Assuming you’re a man.)
I’m in a long-term non-exclusive relationship with someone I met on OKCupid, so I have to say that Internet dating worked well for me. But the fact is, I usually find dating sites depressing and discouraging.
I took the (very long) quiz for an eHarmony profile after reading a Dope thread about how a large percentage of people are “unmatchable” by their standards. Turns out I wasn’t one of those. I let the account go fallow for two years.
Until I decided it was time to get serious. Fired up the profile–quiz already taken–paid my membership fee. I married the fourth guy I went on a date with.
So their long quiz was worth it to me, and twice over. Once for sheer entertainment value, once for utility.
The different dating sites sort of have different niches or “cultures” – eHarmony targets “serious” long-term relationships with an emphasis on Christianity, Match and Tinder are for hookups (basically classier versions of Craigslist), OkCupid targets a more lighthearted crowd with a good mix of pictures and profile questions, etc.
I personally found OkCupid to be the best among them. Tried Match, eHarmony, Plenty of Fish, and a few other sites and never found anybody on them worth meeting. Met a bunch of people on OkCupid, became friends with a few of them, and eventually found my current girlfriend, the love of my life, there.
The trick for me was to really fill out my profile, answer enough of their questions to get a good match percentage (100 to 500, depending on how specific/non-mainstream your tastes are), and then to be selective with who you message and to write meaningful first contacts. You’ll usually never get a second chance – women (especially attractive ones) are inundated with messages, mostly from spammy idiots, so it’s difficult for men.
OkCupid has a whole site dedicated to data-mining their userbase and messages, compiling statistics and occasional tips: http://oktrends.okcupid.com/ (examples: online dating is very racist, the better you look, the better people will think your personality is, women should smile and men should not, grammar is an indicator of religion, etc.)
Don’t pay an expert $50. Just get a few of your friends (of the opposite sex) to look at your profile and ask them if it looks date-able while still being genuine. You’ll also get a lot of opinions here if you post a profile link, but the SDMB can be quite a judgmental bunch.
If you are “going back and forth” for a while, you are doing it wrong. Online dating is a means of arranging real dates. Once you have confirmed mutual attraction, you need to move on to an invitation to meet in person pretty much immediately.
It’s all about numbers. If you write to X number of people, you will get Y number of replies. Out of Y number of replies, you will get Z dates. Out of Z dates, A will lead to second dates.
I met my wife on Match, we’re about to celebrate our 2nd wedding anniversary. I showed my profile to friends that I trust and they gave me good feedback on some things, but there weren’t many big changes needed from what I wrote initially. As a guy I was pretty good about messaging women whose profiles I liked (no winking) but my wife was actually the first to initiate contact with me.
As others have said, after a few exchanges of conversation you need to move to a phone call or in face meeting or else the connection will be lost. No one uses Match to find pen pals.
I had quite a bit of success with Match.com a few years ago but my understanding is Tinder and the free dating sites have basically up ended the market. I am single again (I had been in a long relationship that had actually started on Match) and was thinking of jumping back into online dating and will be curious to see what people say here.
This. I tried match in the past, had terrible results. I tried it again recently, and I got inundated with obviously fake profiles. Hell, many of them I was quickly able to find where they stole the images from. Some of them I’d string along just to see what their endgame was, and it wouldn’t be that long before they’d confess their undying love and want money to buy a cell phone so we could chat, or get a plane ticket to come visit, or need help with their mother’s medical bills. I guess there’s enough guys out there willing to throw money at what they think is a gorgeous woman after a couple emails.
That said, usually the fake profiles are easy to figure out once you’ve seen a few. And, obviously, don’t send any one money, especially if you haven’t met them face to face.
More or less, this. You have to find the site that fits you and what you’re looking for. That’s probably why I had no luck with match, since it did seem to mostly be hookups. I think one of the biggest points to help with success if figuring out which one fits you best, otherwise you’ll be fighting an uphill battle, looking for the other people in the mismatched community.
That said, even if you do fit with one of the paid sites, the free ones seem to be a good catch-all and have the largest communities, so probably no reason not to try one or more of those. Either way, I would definitely suggest trying more than one. You might see some of the same people, but there might be some interesting people you miss on one but get matched on another.
In the end, it’s still a numbers game. As someone said upthread, you get so many X matches, Y conversations, which leads to Z dates and N potential relationships. A site might be able to either give you a larger X (mostly the free ones) or a better conversion from one stage to the next (better X:Y ratio, like eHarmony), but in the end, you still have to meet a lot of people.
I think you need to try several, and see what works for you. One site for older singles (Our Time) I had really good success with getting replies to my messages around 80% I’d say. I was at the bottom end of the allowable age range, so I think that helped. Also, it was strictly pay-to-play.
At the other end of the range was Zoosk. Horrible. They promote “free accounts” but the free accounts can’t see or reply to any messages, so they just serve as bait for the paid clients, and you can’t tell which is which. They send lots of “helpful” flirt messages on your behalf without letting you know it happened…so more fake “action”. I did meet a couple of women through zoosk, but had to cast a very wide net. I’d say the reply rate was maybe 5% or worse.
And always remember…if it seems to good to be true, then this must be the one time a runway model is hot for a pudgy middle aged nerd.
Thanks for the info. I would have thought since Match.com was the older and established site, it wouldn’t have as much of the nonsense as some of the newer free sites.
I may give some of the other sites a try. Any other comments on sites that are worth trying would be appreciated.
Yes, but if there are W number of people on the site, then there’s X number that you want to write to.
I’ve tried Match and OKCupid off-and-on for some time. Met someone on Match about a year ago and we dated for a while. I was starting to fall for her, but she put a stop to things.
I’ve got as much reason as anyone to be discouraged, but I still try. There are people out there worth meeting, and I think the risk/reward would be worth it.
I disagree. I met my current GF, on OK Cupid. We did exchange phone numbers right off the bat, but we were texting each other on a daily basis for a month before we met up. And boy, was it ever so intense when we did! We didn’t even go out. We just hung out at my place.
And not to sound full of myself or anything, this girl that I speak of, is the first and only girl I’ve gone out with via a dating site. And if I have my way, I’m going to grow old and grey with this wonderful woman.
It kind of leaves me with the impression if people would just take their time to get to know each other before they went out, they might have more success. Or at the very least, avoid becoming so cynical over the process because so many previous dates went south.
ETA: To be clear, I’ve TALKED to plenty of women on OKC, I just never bothered to meet up with any of them except the one I’m currently with.
Obviously if you are exceptionally picky, and especially if you are picky in a place with limited options, finding a mate through any process is going to be difficult.
Online dating is a tool that helps you efficiently meet a large number of single people who are pre-screened for major dealbreakers. That’s it. It’s not magic. It does that one thing exceptionally well, but if that isn’t part your dating strategy, it will be of limited use.
QFT, but that is a HUGE improvement over what came before.
I had been in a committed relationship for 23 years. So in my previous experience with dating, there basically wasn’t an internet, and we wouldn’t have known what the prefix “online” meant.
I didn’t go to church. Bars sucked. I was in a male dominated field, and dating a coworker is seldom a good idea even if I was gay. I would meet a single woman I was attracted to that wanted to go on a date with me about every 18 mos. on average.
So first dates were super high stakes, if this didn’t work out, it was going to be a year or two before I had another one. And yes, her voice is like Fran Drescher’s , and she really should wash her hair, or at least bathe more often, but hey, who’s perfect? And sure, I guess I could wear three piece suits (or sweater vests) all the time, if that is what she likes.
With online dating I can go out with someone else next week if this one isn’t right, or I’m not right for her. That lack of pressure has made a huge improvement in my ability to relate to women, and willingness to be myself. And no, I don’t expect them to live up to some ideal, but it is a lot easier not to compromise myself into deal breakers.
This. No more than 10 messages over the span of 2 interactions before asking her out. Many are just there for text buddies and ego-inflation. You gotta weed them out first.
I vehemently disagree with the poster who said you should text for weeks on end. That is a 0.001% situation to work out. People need to see and interact in person if you want a real relationship.
The best is the iPhone app Coffee Meets Bagel, fyi. I’ve been on 4 dates in the past couple weeks using that. The women there are actually interested in meeting.
That, or they are actually looking to date someone.
When I was online dating, I was going on maybe six dates a week. If any one date started to develop potential to become a relationship, great. I might slow down or pause the others. If not, there were plenty of options down the pipeline. It took about two months of that to meet my now-husband.
So while you are dithering around waiting for the stars to align, she is likely interacting with dozens of guys. And if one of those guys starts to have potential, she is going to drop off the map. Why would she wait around for someone who apparently doesn’t even feel particularly strongly about meeting her?
I met my wife through traditional means, but after my first divorce I tried the online sites. The only one that I had any luck with was Plenty Of Fish and by luck I mean I got laid a bunch of times. I found it pretty much useless for long for a lifetime romance. I used the shotgun approach, sent out hundreds of queries to the woman and got a reply back, maybe, 15% of the time. From there maybe 10% of those led to a date.
But, all the dates either ended up with me in the sack or they didn’t work out from the beginning. I won’t say that they’re a waste of time, but you have to go through a lot of garbage to get to something worth keeping.
The one thing that annoyed the piss out of me with eHarmony was that it made me fill out a lengthy questionnaire and didn’t tell me till the end that it does not allowed married but separated. My divorce was finalized years ago by now but it soured me on the experience.
I was on Match and met my long term girlfriend on my first date. That has taken a turn for the worse and I’m not sure when I’ll be ready to start again if ever. If I do I’ll go back on line. I really have no idea where else I could meet someone.
