No teasing–a comment about your photos, though. (Don’t worry–you far surpass my “cuteness quotient”.) They’re too much of the same thing–try one shot showing your torso or your whole body, maybe try a photo in a different light. Doing good on answering questions (I’m exactly 900 ahead of you, though) which I found helpful. (I actually had to re-up on OKC to read your profile, as I’m currently dating someone I met on here, and I took my profile down last week. Apparently, they don’t let you take it down again for a whole week, so I hope I don['t have any 'splaining to do–I just told my current squeeze that I took my profile down and she seemed pleased.) But yours looks fine to me–good luck with that!
I agree about the photos all looking too similar. I also recommend she date the photos.
I recently heard the fact you can’t disable your account for a week after you reactivate is a lie to discourage people from too frequent reactivating/deactivating.
Thank you Chimp and PRR for the advice, you’re absolutely right. Now I need to somehow get some better pics… I will see what I can do and post back for your opinions!
Well, it’s official: this morning I changed my Facebook relationship status to “in a relationship,” and I just disabled my OKC account. There are not enough smiley emoticons. 
If it’s ok with y’all, though, I plan to continue to lurk in this thread and maybe comment every now and then: I want to find out what happens with hermette’s ginger-beardy-doesn’t-want-kids man, Green Cymbeline’s profile (which I totally forgot to look at before disabling my account :smack: ), etc.!
Congratulations! And I hope you work out the allergy issues 
blush
I was hoping no one would ask. Poor beardy-man discovered the real peril of dating a woman with kids - 5 minutes before I was due to meet him, my baby got stood on by another mother in the softplay the babysitter had taken her to, so I basically ran up to him, babbled in a panic at him, then hurried off to the local accident & emergency department with the kid.
She’s fine thankfully, nothing broken. I think he may have thought it was just an excuse to get out of the date, but hopefully the fact I have texted & emailed him since in grovelling apology have convinced him that I didn’t take one look at him and change my mind.
We’ve yet to rearrange. :smack:
Oh, and I’m still getting mixed message from Mr-My-Ex-Is-Back. It could just be that he’s trying to stay friends, and I’m reading too much into it, but text messages at midnight saying “Oh, I would have asked you round tonight but I didn’t realise the time” are very confusing. And irritating.
Oh, and lurk away Misnomer. Speaking for myself, I need the advice 
Yay!
I always wonder when it’s appropriate to change the FB status…
Any developments on that front?
Wow. At this point, I think I would seriously be telling him to go away…
I’d been wondering, too, but on Saturday night we wound up talking about “us” after he casually referred to me as his girlfriend: we agreed that the gf/bf labels seem appropriate, and that things are feeling relationship-y*. He’s on Facebook but hardly ever uses it, so I gave him a heads up that I’d probably change my status soon and that whenever he confirmed the relationship** his friends would see it on his wall, too. And then I changed it yesterday morning.
After three years of being quite single it’s a bit of an adjustment to suddenly be thinking in “boyfriend/relationship” terms, but it’s one that I’m happy to make!
*Though we’re definitely both aware that it’s still early days. As I put it to a friend the other day: it’s only been a month, but it’s been a really good month. 
**If he wanted to: I told him that I totally would have been ok with changing my relationship status and just not naming him/linking to his profile, if that’s what he preferred.
Thanks for checking that out Hermette. If you can remember back that far! (I’m getting really slack on the correspondance at the moment!) At some stage I will give it a try. I’m a guy by the way - what did you think of NZ guys? 
So the general consensus is that OK cupid is the best site, at least from the user quality point of view? Thats the vibe I get from this thread anyway.
The best site as far as quality, IME, was Match. OKC had some pretty great people on it too, though…just a larger proportion of, shall we say, ‘lower quality’ users.
Funny, for me I got all of one date off of Match in the year I was on it. OkCupid has been much better. However, I have gotten a lot better responses off of eHarmony the past two months. The biggest thing I’ve found for eHarmony is that there are not a lot of people near me, which coming from outside of DC is confusing to say the least.
I probably had more dates from OKC, but I think the overall quality of the women on Match was higher, that’s all.
Probably one evening next week, I just need to make sure whatever night he can do works with my babysitter too.
Here’s the latest from him though:
“I’ll be honest I was quite anxious about meeting you because I hadn’t been on a first date for a while and I’m not the sort of person who brims with confidence but although our brief meeting wasn’t under the ideal circumstances you seem like a nice person and I’ll be actually be looking forward to it this time!”
So apparently running up to a guy semi-hysterically babbling about hospitals then literally running away *does *make a good impression
Yeah, I’m trying to. I’ve not been in touch with him since Monday now, though I’m still obsessing over WTF is going on with him, but I think I need to stay well away from him till he’s less confused & less confusing. Who knows, I might find Mr Right in the meantime though, so I could end up being his The One That Got Away 
Awwwwww
And your story gives me hope, thanks!
You’re welcome! They were looking good to me, and I loved Auckland when I was there in 2008 too
I’m a cheapskate - does Match have a free option, or is it subscription only?
Excellent.
I think it’s more likely that you’ll end up being The One Who Dodged a Bullet.
You can’t do anything worthwhile without a subscription. But it only costs the price of a date or two, and I feel it was completely worth it.
It depends on how good you are. I am starting to believe my best friend when he says that a cost of an exclusive stripper in the Champagne room is the most cost effective thing a man can do in terms of bang for the buck.
Match.com has certainly been good to me when it comes to keeping the dates flowing with women I wouldn’t normally have the courage to ask out but the cost of the subscription is only the start. I have spent way more money than I care to think about on first and second dates without much to show for it. They were all gorgeous and good matches plus good company for the evening but I sometimes think I am paying for a freelance escort service without the benefits.
I almost feel the same way. I gone out on a ton of dates, but I can usually only get one or two. I think part of the reason, at least in our case, is our age and that we both have kids. I haven’t seen a whole lot of single mothers around and the other women either want kids or don’t want them at all. While I’m not opposed to having another child, I’m not sure I want to go through what I’ve already been through the past couple of years yet again.
True. My daughters always come first. If I wanted to be perfectly honest with these women, I would just tell them straight out that the absolute best the can ever do is 3rd place and I don’t think many of them want to hear that. I am playing them the same time they are playing me. My preferred game table is 33 -36 year olds and either they already have kids that I don’t want to be responsible for or they want kids and I already have all I want. I keep hoping I will luck out with a hot infertile one that wants to be a good hands-off proxy mother but I know that isn’t realistic.
And I’m meeting Ginger-beardy-doesn’t-want-kids on Tuesday for dinner. I’m curious as to *why *he doesn’t want kids, he’s mentioned babysitting his nephews over Easter, so he’s obviously not one of the child-haters of the world.
As you may have guessed, it’s the kind of thing that could be a deal breaker in the long run for me, but in the short term, he seems like a nice genuine guy and I’d like to get to know him better!
So, I call on the your collective wisdom. My profile pic is getting a bit long in the tooth. Do I post these 1, 2, 3) instead? It’s not the most flattering angle, or lighting, or…
IMO #3 is your only option, because it’s the only one that shows your face. The others are useless (for a dating site).