Completely agree!!! I abhor those “good luck in your search” messages!
I feel bad about ignoring someone who’s actually taken the time to read my profile and construct a thoughtful message. I ignore all messages along the lines of “Hi,” “ur cute,” and “Nice pictures. Wanna chat?” without feeling even a little bad. I actually feel slightly annoyed that they even bothered me with that nonsense in the first place. Some guys who I’m not interested in have appreciated a response, and written back with things like “I appreciate your candor,” some have taken it as an invitation for further conversation (which I ignore), and apparently some people hate it and would rather I had ignored them.
Fuck it, can’t please 'em all. I try to do what I think is the nice thing to do. Moving on.
I used to be in the tell me thanks but no thanks crowd. But now after a couple of months, I am leaning towards being ignored is better. The switch for me was because of the in between girls…
I read a profile, send a well worded response talking about things in common and asking a couple of questions to actually start a conversation. 3 days later I get a one or two word response: “Thanks” or “u 2” or “you’re silly”.
Are these polite “I read your message now go away” responses, or are these people that don’t have anything to say? I take it as option 3: someone clearing their inbox as fast as possible and is not really wanting to talk to me.
Does anybody else have this problem?
Also, if anyone is still willing to critique my profile PM me and I would welcome some feedback.
I’m not your target market, but since no one else has replied I thought this question shouldn’t die.
I would look for a better answer there. It’s just a little bit out of left field, to me, and avoids the question. It might be funnier in the flow of a conversation, but these profiles (despite the leading questions) are a one-way communication. I think it’s possible to be clever and candid at the same time.
On the other hand, there’s a case to be made that the goal of this process is to find the right person for you. If some woman reads your original answer and laughs, you’ve really got something.
I thought it was quite funny, but whether I would write to you would depend on the rest of your profile. I don’t personally like it when all the answers are funny. But if you have made some more sincere attempts describing who you are in other parts of your profile, then that answer wouldn’t throw me at all.
So, got a problem, and it has me messed enough in the head that I’m not real sure how to deal with it.
About 10 months ago, I started chatting online with a woman who lived at the other end of the country from me. We hit it off quite well, and planned on meeting in July, face-to-face, about mid-way between us.
We met, and had a decent time of things, hanging out at a renfaire, doing dinner, watching a movie, that sort-of stuff. We had a talk towards the end of things, and, as we’re both really gunshy about dating, we’re still ‘good friends’ with the possibility of that growing into something else, given time.
Before the trip, we talked via text or email or what-have-you pretty much every day, or every other day at the worst. Now… It’s been a few days. And before that it was a few days. And before that…
Our discussions are still mostly the same- we enjoy each others’ company, and we geek out about similar things. I just know that, at the moment, I’m feeling really insecure, and I don’t know how to, or even if I should, tell her that. I suspect it’d be a bad idea. My therapist tells me I just need to make myself available, and I’m doing so, but… I’ve had other relationships fail this way. Women who’ve not wanted to seem mean or not wanted to face up to things not working just letting things drift apart, and I’m worried about that being the case here.
Not at all sure what to do at this point. I could use some advice.
I’m confused on one of the points. Do you want it to work with her or not? If you do, you’ve got a long distance relationship and you’d have to work with that (for one, you’ll have to actually make an attempt to go and see her face to face). If you don’t actually want it to work (for whatever reason), then I’d probably just let her drift away for both of your sakes.
Yes, exactly. I think you need to be working towards the next face to face meet-up. Even if it is not possibly for you to do that short-term, you need to be planning for it long term. I think I would bring this up and if she kind of avoids it, I would come out with a straighter talk along the lines of “where do you envisage this going?”.
Unless it is more of a long distance chat friend/friend with benefits when it happens to suit both of you, but with no further commitment or future plans. I have one of those and though I get the occasional melancholy longing for that to be more (whinged about upthread), I know it isn’t and I do see other people.
I know this might not be easy but you (and her) need to decide what this is, how invested you are and then act accordingly.
Sounds like good advice, though I have to ask, how do I approach that? I don’t want her to feel like I’m making some sort-of ultimatum about all this. I can’t imagine that would engender much positive feeling towards the process.
So, how do you feel about meeting up again some time in the next few weeks?
Make your next email to her short and kind of empty (nothing lofty, no other questions for her to answer and conveniently ignore this one) and tack that onto the end of it.
Maybe mention something about missing her? Like, you used to be in touch way more often and you miss that, especially now that you know you click in real life too, and you know it’s just life (or something else that doesn’t lay the lack of communication on her) but you’re wondering when you can meet again?
(You should definitely wait for the others to see this, in case it’s horrible advice!)
Also, to clarify, this is specific to this situation, if this was just two people that lived, like, 5 miles apart, I would have said “some time in the next few days” instead of next few weeks.
Furthermore, if she’s game, you need to get in the right headspace to move forward with it and meet her again and really decide what you want out of this. Are you willing to move across the country to be with her, is she willing to move for you? Are the two of you willing to do the long distance thing and see each other a few times a year or do a FWB thing and be okay to stop when one of you finds someone that lives nearby?
What you should do is absolutely nothing.
First, it’s clear you don’t want to be “just friends” with her; you’ve skipped straight to the “something else” part. Nothing wrong with that except it doesn’t seem like she feels the same way.
When someone’s drifting away from you, there’s not really anything you can say or do to change that. Smothering her or signaling neediness or insecurity will only hasten her departure. If you’re the one always initiating conversations, step back and let her fill the silence for once. Or she might not, and then you know where you stand.
I think what **ReticulatingSplines ** said works, too but me personally, I tend to prefer to know explicitly, so (perhaps after suggesting a meet-up, as per above posts) I would go with a very honest “So where do you see this going?”. If she’s sincerely interested that won’t scare her off. If she isn’t, you’re not changing anything but at least you know for sure and can move on. Now, if you’re like me you’re probably not asking because you’re afraid of the answer - which to me is a sure sign you need to ask. If she tells you something you didn’t want to hear, you can give yourself some time to mooch and then onwards. It really is better than this creeping insecurity.
So, a friend just popped up on Match. Trying to decide what to do there. Normally when I see friends I just hide them (normally I’m not trying to decide if I’m interested in them either), that way they don’t show up in my Daily Matches (which would force me to look at them, or rather would make me show up on their visitors list), but she showed up in my Daily Matches before I even realized she was on the site.
There’s a part of me that wants to send her an email, but a bigger part of me (ha) that thinks that would be all kinds of awkward. I should probably mention that I haven’t seen her (on a regular basis) in a few years, but when I was married she was in my ‘circle of friends’. Whether or not she’s still part of that circle (that my ex wife is part of) I have no idea. I do still bump into her here and there though. We say hi, exchange some small talk, that’s it. The last time that happened, the person I was standing with said “OMG GET HER NUMBER SHE’S HAWT!!!”
Anyways…about a year ago she was on Match and sent me an email, just typical small talk stuff (nothing match related), but now I’m looking back and kicking myself, wondering if I missed my chance. And the reason I’m thinking that is because now I’m sitting here thinking “I should just send her an email with some small talk in it and see where it goes…I wonder if that’s what she was doing”. Part of me says “I’m overthinking this way to much, just let it go and move on” the other half says “I’m overthinking this way too much, just email her”.
Let me add one more thing, I never had ‘feelings’ for her, never had a crush on her, nothing like that, she was just one of the people in our group of friends and one of my ex’s best friends for a while (don’t know if she still is though).
I feel kind of weird even posting this. For the last year or so I’ve tried not to post about my current situations because I’d hate to have that person stumble upon it if they’d google me and this person is a lot more then just ‘pixels on a screen’. Not only that, if feels weird to even be doing more then just thinking about emailing her.
Joey P, were I in your shoes I would send an email along the lines of “I see you are on this site too, any luck?”. It is a good way to acknowledge her, acknowledge you are both on the same site, and it is a great way to get some free advice on your profile from someone in your target demographic.
Don’t feel too awkward. My ex wife popped up on my Match.com Daily Matches three times before I blocked her profile. I never mentioned it to her and she never mentioned it to me either but I was thinking that is one flawed algorithm they are using. This isn’t an area with a small subscriber base either. It has tens of not hundreds of thousands of people in my search demographic and yet the evil computer keeps trying to screw up my life again. That is one reason I switched over to other sites.
That’s almost exactly the message she sent me about a year ago. When I thought about sending her something like that now I realized that, hey, maybe she was trying to do more then just make small talk. :smack::smack::smack:. It takes a lot for me to notice that kind of thing. Back when I was in college and dating my now ex wife, I swear, someone would literally (and I mean literally) have had to have been kissing me or put their hand down my pants for me to notice them in a way beyond friendship…even if I liked them.
I was going to send her a message saying something like “Hey, you popped up in my Daily Matches and you keep showing up right near the top of my Match Picks list (she comes up as a 95% match)…so how are you…” But I figure I’m better off not mentioning the DM thing, because that means I said I’m not interested, then it’s over before it started. I was actually thinking of ‘liking’ one of her pictures and then sending her a ‘small talk’ email. The small talk can break the ice and liking the picture can get something started…maybe. I figure a good ice breaker is something along the lines of “I thought you were dating someone, I didn’t expect to see you back so soon, blah blah blah”
I say go for it, Joey. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Well, kinda went nowhere (more or less what I expected). I emailed her with some ‘small talk’ but made sure to toss a sentence in at the end that was a bit more then small talk. One of those boring ‘just to prove I read your profile’/‘jump start the conversation’ sentences. She replied a little while later with some more small talk. I replied back again. Then her most recent reply ended with ‘Good luck to you, hang in there’. I’m going to take that as a sign that I shouldn’t push it anymore. If she had even the smallest bit of interest she wouldn’t have said that.
Oh well. I’ll always be able to say I tried. OTOH, who knows, maybe I’ll get another email from her in the morning or there’ll be more then just small talk the next time I bump into her (but I’m not holding my breath).