I haven’t even looked at my account in weeks. I got tired of being the one to start communication every single time. But then I got a little email that someone had started communication with me. How nice!
We got through the first exchange, which is five multiple choice questions apiece just fine. He’s answering back in under 12 hours, but it’s the weekend, and probably he’s just on his computer. Then we get to the second exchange, which is the “Must have/Can’t stand” list. Mine has fuzzy wuzzy stuff like “I must have someone who is a good communicator,” and “I can’t stand someone who is belittling, impatient or hateful to people in any situation.”
Him? Down on his list of “Can’t Stand” is “I can’t stand someone who is overweight”.
And that’s fine. Everyone has their taste, attraction cannot be dictated, etcetera etcetera. Except for the part where right in my profile I put: “My picture doesn’t show it, but I am overweight. It’s something I’ve battled all my adult life. I wear flattering clothes and do my best to take care of myself.” (Yes, it’s a little defensive. So sue me.)
So either, this guy didn’t read my profile at all, or read it, shrugged his shoulders and sent his stuff on without pausing to consider whether the inclusion of “I can’t stand someone who is overweight” might be the least bit helpful. And, to add a little lemon juice to that romantic paper cut, four of his “Must Haves” specifically have to do with intelligence.
You know, I just…grrrrr…why is it…gah!..is it too much to ask…rrrrrrrrr…
Here’s what I’d like: would all the men out there complaining about how women don’t like nice guys and only go for bad boys please go and find this man and give him a great big wedgie? I would really appreciate it.
Overweight means different things to different people. Although this guy was thoughtless in his response, maybe his overweight threshhold is waaay higher than you think it is. He still should have kept his comment to himself, but…water under the bridge. Good luck. I’m sure you’ll find someone who is right for you.
It’s been a while, but can you look at other people’s profiles before you’ve gotten a through a few ‘levels’? I remember e-harmony setting me up with a few decent women but those did have pictures weren’t anything like the women I was attracted to. It really turned me off to that site.
Yup, that’s thoughtless alright. People really are clueless, you know. Looking on the bright side, you were able to weed this incompatible guy out very quickly.
I thought you couldn’t browse on eHarmony; that you are dealt profiles of those people Dr. Neil Clark Warren thought were the best match for you, and you have to make best with what’s given to you.
Was your profile sent as a match to the guy who contacted you, but turned out to say they couldn’t stand overweight people? I’d chalk that up to a common phenomenon with online dating services; people just taking a scattershot approach towards contacting people, without actually reading the profiles. For instance, my match.com profile includes:
“You aren’t kountry kitschy, hoping to get back with the ex, coiffed with short soccer mom hair, a parent of more than one great child, or someone with a BROKEN CAPS LOCK KEY.”
Who makes first contact with me? More times than not, it’s women with short, poofy, all-above-the-ears helmet-style hair that have two or three kids.
I know some variables in profiles may be flexible; for instance, if someone is looking for somebody athletic, but everything else seems to be a match, I’ll write, even though I’m a klutz with an average build. If they say they don’t want someone with a trait I possess, for instance “No white men!”, I don’t write.
What he said. There’s a lot of weight inflation in online dating, and I’m very reluctant to respond to profiles from women that claim an “average” build that have either only face shots, and/or only photos where they are standing behind objects.
I think the match.com “average” = real world “overweight” scenario happens because:
A woman hears a statistic that “the average woman in the US is a size 16.” She used the fact that she’s statistically “average” to justify her body classification, even though most men interpret “average” as “weight proportional to height,” and not overweight.
A woman knows she’s overweight, but classifies herself as “average” to attract a larger dating pool. Sure, most men will be upset when she meets them, feeling that she misrepresented herself, but she persists in the hope that “someone will see my inner beauty.”
You take a personality test, and they use the results to put up matching personalities from the geographic radius you designate. On your account homepage, there are two lists, one of fresh matches with the option to contact or close, and the second of matches that you are corresponding with.
When you set up your account, you have the option of putting your picture right there so any of your matches can see it, or saving it for one of the info exchanges during communication. You can also post extra pictures on a side page with the same settings.
At this point, I’m pretty tired of eharmony. Whatever the personality profiles do, they’re not doing a good job of matching me and the guys up. The reason I’ve stayed with it is because the men who sign up seem to be looking for long term relationships, as opposed to random hook-ups.
Lord Ashtar, elmwood, did you get the part where I wasn’t unhappy with him for not liking fat chicks? I was honest, which a lot of people aren’t when it comes to online dating profiles. So, I’m damned if I do (whoa, if she says she’s overweight, she must be Orca!) or damned if I don’t. Yes, I’ll post a head to toe shot, but honestly, I don’t think it’ll prevent something like this from happening again.
I imagine him saying to himself, “I don’t usually like “bigger” girls, but I’m going to contact her anyway. Why not? This super scientifically-designed system says we’d be good together. Who knows?”
Maybe he just hasn’t checked his Must Haves/Can’t Stands in a while and forgot he put it on there. Maybe he checked the wrong box. Maybe you should have continued the comminication and not gotten flustered because you’re so sure he didn’t read your profile.
I don’t think I said that; the way I read it, you felt frustrated because he didn’t really read your profile to see that you carried a trait he found offensive. I should have made that clearer in my post.
The easiest way around the weight issue is to simply post your height and weight. It will be up to the man to determine if you’re “fat” or not. Lots of men wouldn’t consider going out with a thin woman. Just give them the facts and they can interpret them as being what they like or not.
Not to hijack, but this sounds like such a scam. A “personality test” can determine who you’re compatible with? Yeah, I’m sure science is the answer to finding a mate. Somebody should do a study comparing the results of eharmony and other “scientific matching” sites to random chance. They could set up a website that asks people a bunch of personal questions, and then matches them up with complete disregard for their answers. I bet you’d see simliar rates of success.
I have a complex procedure that determines my compatability better than these ‘personality tests’. It’s called dating.
Sheesh, I just use the sites to find more people than I normally would, selecting the ones that are attractive to me with out the few criteria I dislike, such as smoking and drug use. The rest I can find out on my own.
I don’t know how eharmony works, and this is no excuse for this guy’s behavior, but maybe he had an experience similar to mine when I was trying a dating website. Many of the women’s profiles would be pretty adamant about reading very carefully and putting a lot of thought into your response, which seems reasonable. That is, until you come to find that women get an unbelievably higher number of responses than men do. I’ve talked to women who were just deluged with responses, to the point that they barely had time to sift through them all.
But my experience was that after about 50 carefully thought out, well-considered emails to women, I had received exactly one response, which didn’t end up working out. As you can imagine, it was pretty physically and emotionally draining to put that much effort into each inquiry, only to have a dismally low response rate. So my choice was to either give up, or just start carpet-bombing, i.e. sending out tons of emails with the hope that someone would respond. So maybe the guy got frustrated and just started mass-mailing the responses without reading really carefully. “She looks cute - click.” Maybe he missed the part that said you were overweight.
Then again, it sounds like eharmony works differently, so probably not.
Flustered? No, not flustered. Annoyed, irritated, a little “well, what else should I expect” dismay, but not flustered. And I didn’t close out his profile. I’ve been sitting on it, trying to decide what to do.
What a fabulous concept! Oh my gosh! Have you thought about getting your idea patented? Or would it be trademarked? I’m so impressed by your creative approach. I would never in a thousand years have thought of something like that. Dating, huh? I bet it’ll be really big in a couple of years. It’ll answer everyone’s needs. No one will ever try this idea of yours and not find the mate of their dreams.
[QUOTE=Kalhoun]
The easiest way around the weight issue is to simply post your height and weight. It will be up to the man to determine if you’re “fat” or not. Lots of men wouldn’t consider going out with a thin woman. Just give them the facts and they can interpret them as being what they like or not.[/Kalhoun]
You have a point, Kalhoun, but there’s a small, very bitter voice inside my head that starts a nearly incoherent rant when the topic of posting numbers related to my physical size comes up. It goes something like this…
And see, I don’t like that voice. I don’t want to have to listen to that voice or spend half my day telling that voice to shut the hell up. Also, I know that posting those numbers would cause even more men to dismiss me than would possibly decide to be interested in me because of them. Maybe that’s fine. Maybe those men who wouldn’t consider me based on a few numbers would never have considered me at all, once they saw me. That thought just depresses the hell out of me, though.
Besides, it’s Valentine’s Day, and I hate Valentine’s Day with the burning passion of a thousand degree fried cheese stick that just exploded in someone’s mouth and completely seared away their hard palate.
No, my patent attorney is expensive and demanding. And this concept does not meet the criteria for a patent, trademark or copyright.
Hey, you don’t like it, don’t use it. You seem to be enjoying the results of e-harmony soooooo much. :rolleyes:
Hey, you can get an arranged marriage for all I care, but it sure as hell ain’t for me.
You’re reading waaaaaaay too much into the fact that I don’t like ‘personality matches’. Again, you can look to the stars for all I care, it isn’t for me.
Deflation is more like it from what I’ve seen! But then, we’ve had this discussion, haven’t we? Like 8 pages worth or something two years ago?? I suppose the hamsters ate it, though, more like as not.
Ten to one, the OP’s respondant just didn’t read her whole profile. I’ve had third Match dates where a guy admitted he’d gone back and read my profile all the way through AFTER the first date or two. “You’re divorced? I didn’t know that.” Blink blink. shakes fist To blazes with you skimmers! To blazes with you all!