I signed up for this a couple of months ago, because you can’t even look at the site until you sign up.
But you can’t look at any messages until you pay them money and
cost = ouch!
They want a credit card.
I want to go out on a date or two, just to see if I’m ready to date. But I figure that even with their software, there’s maybe a 1% chance that I’m compatible with any given person that shows as a match. And most of that is going to be interacting somehow with the people that I think might be a match.
I miss my husband, but I also miss having someone to eat supper with, someone to hug at night, someone to bounce ideas off of.
I concur with Joey P. My experience is that sites that require money are no better than sites that require money to unlock some features, but don’t stop you from looking and making connections. Plenty of Fish might be ok, but I left it because there were too many scammers and bots. Zoosk is ok.
Chances are, it’s going to take a long time on a dating site before you get to that point of being that close with someone. You can meet someone, but it will take a while to weed through a lot of people.
Before jumping into a dating site, work on expanding your social circle. This can help by making you more comfortable with meeting new people, but also you may meet someone or be introduced to someone and end up dating them. There are many ways to interact with people in very casual environments, so you only have to be as engaged as you want to be. For example, take exercise classes where people tend to socialize (like Zumba). Go to presentations on interesting topics at your local university, library, cultural center, etc. and mingle with the attendees. Go to art openings. Many of those kinds of things will be filled with other single people and it’s really easy to strike up conversations when you’re already at a place with a common interest. Don’t go in looking to hook up with someone, but it’s not going to be unusual to start chatting and then it leads to coffee and other things.
After I was widowed, about 2 years later, I signed up. Quickly realized the guys contacting me were scammers or players. Fuck that.
I started initiating contact with men whose profiles I like. My deal, not theirs. Better. Met a fellow eventually that lived not 2 miles from me. I’d have never met him-work & all, you know?
16 years later-happily unseeded bliss.
It can be good and fun, but make it on YOUR terms.
Ok, it’s been about a dozen years, but I had very good luck with match.com myself. I met my wife there, and we have two children together, married for eight years now. But my other dates went very well there as well. I don’t know what the scene there is like now, but at the time, I found paying weeded out a lot of people. Before that I tried Yahoo and OK Cupid with very little luck. Maybe two dates in the six months or so I was on it. With Match, I had no issue finding interesting women who would actually go on a date with me. My experience may be anamolous, but it was a dramatic difference. One week I had four dates four nights in a row with different women, all whom I liked and found attractive and enjoyed the company of. If you knew me, that is not a typical experience for me.
But that all was twelve or thirteen years ago. No idea how it is now. Meanwhile, some of my friends had no luck there, but did at Plenty of Fish or OK Cupid. I think the different sites may attract different personalities and different expectations, so it’s worth trying a couple to see what works for you.
^^ this is very true, at least in my area. POF, Zoosk, and OKCupid do draw different “types” of women, I don’t know what sorts of men though. OKCupid seems to draw liberal non smoking well educated women, Zoosk seems to draw conservative non smoking well educated women and POF seems to collect the smokers of all political types and education levels.
I tried Match for a few months a few years ago, and went on a dozen first dates, two second dates, and a third date. I noticed after a while that it was mostly matching me with women who were looking for something else–somebody taller, or better paid, or younger, or black, and I figured I couldn’t change those things too much, so why was it even bothering? Then I turned off my ad blocker… if you spend an hour a day looking at profiles, you look at A LOT of ads. So, their business model seems to be to help people find somebody pretty close to what they’re looking for, but not quite right, so they’ll come back again and again to look at more ads.
OK Cupid worked pretty much the same, but it’s free, and there aren’t ads, so I’m not sure what their model is there.
My PCP suggested I go to ballroom dance classes like her and her husband, but that was so the widows would be drawn away from her husband and she could have some dances with him.
I dated a few women I met on computer dating sites, but really I did better just going out and meeting people without trying. Go see a band, join a meetup for an activity you enjoy, take a dog to the dog park (a friend used to “borrow” my dog for this), etc.
Y’all - this advice to “just go out and meet people” might work for extroverted 20 somethings who are fairly new to dating outside of a school environment. But for this 57-year old introvert - I don’t have the energy or the social skills to meet random people and make connections, and I have the experience to know just how unlikely meeting someone I’m compatible with at random groupings.
Frankly, the only group of people that I’ve ever connected with reliably were dopers.
So, are there any male dopers who live in the middle of the DFW area who are interested in dating?
I’m 49 and have had great luck in making friends and finding enjoyable dates by going to meetups through Meetup.com. Over the years I’ve used Match, OKCupid and SciConnect; Meetup beats them all to bits.
I dunno, I bet there are a lot of other people in your same boat on match.com, more than OK Cupid. Widowers who want someone to go to dinner with. Willing to pay the match.com fee to find that someone.
EHarmony might be a good choice too. But they are fairly Christian-centric aren’t they? They do give you your money back if you can’t make it through their profile wizard or something.
I think a pay dating site would be useful for you. If you were my aunt and asked me for advice, I’d say yeah girl try it out!
I’ve spent more time on these sites, Match included, than I care to think about. I have the occasional date, and met someone a few years ago that I was completely crazy about. They can work.
My advice would be to try it out, for a short time at least, and see if it’s worth continuing. If you’re going to do it, put some thought and effort into it. Figure out what kind of person you’re really looking for. Don’t just sit back and expect someone else to do all the work; reach out to guys whose profiles look interesting. I know how difficult that is, but try. And don’t shut yourself off from other social avenues. You can do Match and Meetup at the same time.
It’s trite advice but for me it is true - I have always found the next relationship through social interactions; hanging out with friends, meeting friends-of-friends, group events (Meet Up is great for finding groups of people with an interest in a particular activity or hobby), and generally just going out and living my life to make me happy and not actively looking for someone else. I found when I’m living my life to be happy, it attracts others. I have tried Match.com but honestly it has been 10+ years now and although I had quite a few first dates, some second dates, and one very intense (fun sexy-sex party time!) but short lived fling. I was never able to find a person I really connected with longer term. Part of that is me - On one hand, socially I appear to be very outgoing and extroverted but put me in a small group where I don’t know people or it is outside my comfort zone (like on a first date) and I struggle a bit. My wife would say I act like an awkward and shy teenager. Haha.
I realize these sites are also a very different game for women vs. men. I had certain strategies when I used Match.com or other sites but I don’t think that it really translates well to advice for you and your situation. My advice is give it a try. If you don’t like it, cancel the membership. It is a good way for you to test the dating waters but don’t take any of it personally - online dating can be a bit of an emotional rollercoaster.
I chose to go with OurTime.com since it was targeted for people in my age group (I was 56 at the time). I felt like Match.com was primarily focused on the 30-something +/- crowd and didn’t want to weed through so much chaff. It worked for me. I agree that paying for the service helps with the signal-to-noise ratio, but even with that there were a lot of profiles to wade through to find the ones that I was interested in. That said, I met a variety of very nice people and had multiple dates with several of them before finding the right one for me. We have been together for three years now and life is good!
I sometimes think that computers do for dating the same things they do for everything; they make it faster and more efficient, but don’t really alter it in any fundamental way. If you find dating to be exciting and enjoyable, a website can give you many more opportunities for excitement and enjoyment than you would have without it. If dating is a source of frustration, a dating website can deliver frustration to you at levels that were previously unattainable.
That said, I’ve been to a couple events that were organized on Match[sup]*[/sup], and I’m going to another one this weekend. Wish me luck.
One of them was supposed to be a scavenger hunt. I couldn’t find it.
I had a thought: Several good people in this thread have expressed disappointment that they don’t live in your area. How about you PM them and start a conversation?
