Things were a lot more simple before computer dating. A fellow would ask a woman to a dance. That led to one of only two outcomes: either he could rhumba and the relationship would blossom, or he could not rhumba and the relationship would not get off the ground.
Now with computer dating, there is all this intrawebs back and forth that the parties have to go through (witness this thread), before learning if the fellow can rhumba.
I miss the days when people were courted by letter and didn’t touch each other till after marriage.
Sigh. A girl can dream.
I tried that once in highschool, when I was working out of town for the summer. I courted a young lady by correspondence. The bad part was that my letters were challenging for her to read, given that they were written in Russian, despite neither of us knowing a word of Russian (bear in mind that this was before the intrawebs with their online translation). The good part was that once the summer was over and I was back in town, we had a terrific time dating.
De gustibus non disputandum est, but *nooooooooooooooo *thank you.
Don’t even pretend you don’t miss the stonings.
That’s true. There really is nothing quite like a good Sunday night stoning.
Quick EH technical question. I was in the middle of guided communication with someone on EH and sent her a regular type email. I just checked and instead of the normal “See her answers” or “See her Questions” or “Waiting for communication” it said “Send her and Email” and on her profile on the mailbox tab it says "Congratulations! ____ has accepted your eHarmony Mail request. You can now freely write email messages to ___. "
I assume that means she received the message I sent to begin with, right? As opposed to "Hey, she’s okay with you sending her an email so we threw out the first one and we want you to start over, think of that as a test run. I mean, it’s listed there, it appears to have sent (stupid missing words and all), I just want to make sure because of things like “Send her and Email” instead of “Send her another Email”
Also, I just double checked all the numbers I’d been spewing out upthread.
My membership ends in two days, so unless something changes drastically between now and then…
4 Months (that was a 3 + 1 month free special)
120 Days
$135.80
234 matches delivered to me
Approx 2 per day at a cost of 58¢ each.
Of those 234, I’d guess (since I’m not going back to look) less then 75 had pictures. Of those 75 I’d guess that less then 40 had filled out their profile with any kind of effort. In my 4 months on EH, I’d guess that maybe 30 people actually looked at my profile, which implies the other 204 were defunct accounts…a MAJOR complaint of EH if you nose around online.
Anyways, only a very small handful caught my eye, of those only one returned my communications and she’s got my email. Barring an incredible deal (like 50% off) I’m not planning to return. Maybe someday, but not anytime soon. Between Match and OKC, there’s 3-5 new people in my age and distance each day which is more then EH was giving me.
One of the things I plan to do when I leave EH is to turn matching off. The problem is, if I decide to go back in a few months all the people I’ve been matched with during the interim will likely have closed me and I’ll lose out on them forever.
Honestly, I’m not sure. I’d give her a day or so to reply (or however long it would normally take her in between steps) and if she doesn’t reply by then, send her a quick follow up to find out if the first one was lost. Or right before your account expires if she hasn’t replied by then.
I finally joined back up with EH on Tuesday, but only because they sent me a 3 months at $15/month offer and I haven’t found OKC to be that beneficial for me.
In the past, she’s typically responded right away. Like, I’d send her my questions, she’d respond and send me hers 15 minutes later. I’d respond and send her the next questions right away and then there would be about a day before anything happened again.
She accepted open communication yesterday. It’s possible that the questions stalled because she lost interest and the only reason she accepted the open communication was to read the email. I assume your choices are “Accept and read the email” or “Reject, don’t read email, continue with guided communication” but at this point, you’d think she would just close the match and get me to stop pestering her.
BTW, I know myself well enough to know that as soon as a good deal comes along I’ll re-up my sub. Part of what I’m doing is keeping auto-renew off hoping that EH will offer me a great deal.
Oddly enough I get more emails from OKCupid then Match. As a matter of fact in the last month I’ve sent out 20+ at match and none have responded. I’ve gotten 3 in the last week from OKC out of 6 that I’ve sent out. And one or two of those have not been on in the last week. I don’t think I’d spend that much on EHarmony if that’s how it’s been working out.
I just re-read that. That’s about half of what I paid with my month free. If I can find that deal, I’ll take another stab at it. For $45, that’s not a big deal.
Could take awhile. I let my membership lapse in August, and this was the first offer I felt was “good enough” to get me to re-up.
As for the girl - if I’m not interested, I’ll definitely close the match. Though sometimes I feel guilty doing so after reaching open communication stage, which is silly, I know. I’d wait, emails take longer to read/compose than any of the steps before, even the open-ended questions. But definitely send her a quick email before your membership ends and give her a way to contact you outside of EH if she so desires.
I have no advice on the EH technical aspects, but…
It seems dating sites operate like cable companies: if you leave or downgrade your service, they jump on you like crazy for a special deal. So long as the time passing is relatively short, you can assume you’ll still be matched with the people who joined/returned during your absence.
That’s what the email was. We were in the middle of guided communication, she sent me three open questions. I replied and sent her three open questions back. Haven’t heard from her in a few days (but she has read the questions, or at least look at my profile since). So I sent her an email saying, more or less, “Hey, my membership ends in 3 days, here’s my email address”
I guess part of what you said, WRT emails taking longer to read/compose then the other steps is part of why I find guided communication so freakin tedious. Don’t get me wrong, when I send an email out, I take my time on it, sometimes as long as a day for the first one, but I’ve spent the last year on OKC and Match, so signing up for EH was a very different experiences. It’s like trying to teach the Foxtrot at an old folks home. I’m used to writing three paragraphs as a first message and now I have to ask questions like “How many books did you read last year?” or “What best describes your attitude towards work?” The first few times I received them I used them blank line at the end to fill in my own answer because I couldn’t stand any of the canned answers.
But there’s a fundamental difference between EH and the other sites. Most other sites say “Okay, you’re (me, in this example) looking for Girls, 25-34, within 30 miles, with pictures, hmmmm, let’s see, okay, here’s 1700 of them to look through, have fun, there’s some options on the left side to sort them out if you want”
EH, says “Okay, you’re (me, in this example) looking for Girls, 25-34, within 30 miles, hmmmm, let’s see, okay, here’s 1. Maybe I’ll give you another one in a few days. Oh, she has to have a picture, I’ll need another week to find one with a picture, hang tight”
So yeah, with most other sites, re-upping just get’s you more time to look at the same basic people. But with EH, it actually would be new people.
Well if it rain it pours. I’ve gotten four out of six emails back and three of them have continued with conversations. I may have a date tomorrow, she’s given me her phone number and we’re going to talk about it. I’ve also asked another one out, but she doesn’t get on very often. I’m about to ask the third one out as well.
Things are starting to look up. 
Edward, niiiiice! I hope you don’t like all 3…that could be hard to see them all down the road!
Yikes. I hope future MIL has a better experience with Eharmony. Match sounds like online shopping.
I, on the other hand, sent a second email to what is probably a dead match. Yay me.
You mean you got as far as a second e-mail? I aspire to such lofty heights.
Well it seems that I have a date with one of the women tomorrow. Go me! It seems that I need to get a couple of emails, 2-3 and then just ask for a date. And while I have to drive an hour, it will be worth it for me to just get some confidence in my ability to date after 7 years.