Prompted by this thread, though I’ve been pondering starting a thread on this for a while.
One of the new issues that comes from the popularity of online dating is the question of when you should take your profile down and the meanings and implications of doing so.
So how do you feel about this? What have your experiences been.
(I’m specifically excluding relationships that are acknowledged by both parties to be non-exclusive)
I waited a really long time, but I think that’s just because I’m a space cadet. I’ve been in a steady relationship since December, but just hadn’t bothered taking down my OKCupid profile because…well, I have no good reason, honestly. I’d edited my account to show that I was in a relationship now, but I hadn’t done anything beyond that. And this wasn’t a secret from the person I’m dating (whom I met here, and not on OKCupid). I was just getting a weekly email from them suggesting new people, and I’d just sort of delete them automatically without any further thought.
However, last week, someone sent me an “Icebreaker,” which struck me as odd. So I actually signed into OKCupid and saw that there was an option to disable the account. I guess that means it took me about eight months.
It feels good to take it down, honestly. I already felt completely secure in my current relationship, but I guess this was just one more visible sign of it. I didn’t have any hesitation about disabling it. It just means less junk mail. 
Oh, God, Green Bean. This was perhaps the signal issue in my recently-ended relationship (which ended exactly as you so wisely predicted, with me being dumped unceremoniously for the 5th time in 10 months, after two weeks of intense dating.) Our first night together (since the last breakup), I pulled out the old laptop (and no that’s not a euphemism) and in front of her deleted all my online dating-site profiles, and then turned the laptop over to her. (We had discussed while I was negotiating this time around how lovely it would be to take our profiles down, and stop this time-consuming, tedious, painful dating process) Instead she suggested we go into the bedroom, and I thought “Who can turn down that invitation?”
As it turned out, anyone with a shred of sense. For the next few days, I tried hinting gently that she had yet to fulfill her end of the deal, but gently didn’t accomplish anything, and I thought (since she had emailed me that she was committing for the long haul, and that she intended to yank her profiles down) that she’ll get around to it in her sweet time, but of course, she pulled the proverbial plug before she got around to it.
It was purely symbolic of course (it took me all of fifteen minutes to re-install my profiles on the websites) but I should have taken that moment to say “Ho-hohohohold on here–let’s be clear? Are you EAGER to take your profile down or not? Cuz if not, we have nothing further to discuss.”
I’m coming up on my first wedding anniversary, and I haven’t bothered, mostly because I don’t even know where the hell my login info is anymore because I haven’t used it in, oh, 4+ years. I hope I’m not popping up in searches anymore!
I’m in a similar situation. I’m married now but I don’t think I ever took my stuff down, I just stopped logging in to the site. I did the same thing with monster.com and other job searching sites too, actually. My resume is still out there somewhere even though I’ve been here for 2 years now.
I only delete the profiles if I’m unsatisfied with the site itself. If I become more seriously involved with a girl I simply stop signing in to the dating profile.
After a few months.
I got an e-mail update that had a girl I had dated a few years earlier (non-internet related) and told my girlfriend(<— thanx to the internet). She gave me a ration of crap, good heatedly and I actively spent time to pull them all down, and she said she would do the same.
AND THEN a few days later… she hadn’t pulled hers down and she got a nice e-mail from some guy, who was nowhere near the stud I am and always was, but wasn’t a jerk and seemed sincere and she told me she had to reply because he didn’t seem like a dick and sent an honest e-mail and she would feel like a stuck up bitch if she didn’t reply to a guy that wasn’t being a jerk.
Now the facebook think, I don’t use it much, hardly ever, but an X of mine wanted to be “friends”(where’s the pukey smiley?). Called the AWESOME girlfriend (of the same name(pukey smiley again??)). She said do it, so I clicked ‘friend’ --> ‘in relationship’ --> with ‘AWESOME girlfriend’.
Tommorow will be 18 months with “AWESOME internet girlfriend”, been living together for 4-7 months (I took a 3 month notice to move out). I couldn’t be happier.
I’d be careful, those internet chicks are psychic, they know the second you had that hard earned date, and the second you got laid and the second you realized you found the one, because they just come out of the woodwork wanting a piece of you, tons of 'em.
Been married 4 months now to the man I met on OKCupid and I haven’t taken my profile down. Just never thought about it, I guess. I don’t think I’ve logged in since early 2009! Maybe I should go delete that thing. I did change it to “in a relationship” quite a while ago and changed my profile to reflect that, but never got around to deleting it completely.
I don’t say you have to take it down, but if you don’t indicate you are not available, you are merely wasting people’s time.
I personally am not in a place where I can take a relationship (I’ve explained why at length on here.) So my profile just flat out says I’m not really looking. When people contact me, I don’t even see anything wrong with responding (as messages are forwarded to my email), since I’ve flat out said I’m not looking. I assume that they are trying to make friends–something many people on dating sites seem to forget is an option.
I still have mine up but haven’t checked it in ages. The emails I get from the site, I just automatically delete. I remember I did change my status to “in a relationship” at some point (years ago, even prior to my current relationship). It’s just sheer laziness on my part.
I’m the one who started the original thread that prompted **Green Bean **to start this one. I just posted an update to that other thread, but part of that update related to this one.
The man I’m dating who’s so enthusiastic still disagrees with me about leaving the profile up. I told him that I didn’t want to lose my “if you don’t find someone in six months, you get six months free” option by taking it down (that voids the free six month offer), in case we dated for two months and then it ended. He said he doesn’t care about the money, and I said that I do care. He offered to put the cost of six months’ membership in a sealed envelope and give it to me; then if it didn’t work out, I could use that to pay for the other six months - and if it did, we’d use the money to go out to dinner I had to laugh at that one.
I still am unwilling to take it down, and I told him I might change my mind later in the six months (I’m still in month #1 of the six), but if I did, it would be because I chose to do it myself, not at his prompting.
I deleted mine the day after I realized I wasn’t just casually “seeing” a friend of mine anymore. It was rather satisfying.
I just got married July 20, and deleted all my online dating profiles about a week ago when I got an email from eHarmony that a guy I had sent questions to in Feb of **2008 **had responded to them. (2008!?! I mean really dude, why bother?) I let my account lapse after a month and never gave it another thought. That prompted me to delete it and go check other sites I had profiles on and make sure they were deleted as well.
That reminds me of a guy who wrote to me a couple of years after I wrote to him. I didn’t write to very many guys, but this one wrote the funniest profile I had ever read and I just had to write to him.
A couple of years pass and I get married and he writes back to say that he hadn’t seen my message and I wrote just about a week after he had given up on internet dating because he hadn’t gotten a single response to his profile. He found the email when he was cleaning out his inbox.
My girlfriend and I both have accounts. We like to send each other dirty messages like “YO GURL YOU SO FINE WANNA SUCK MY COCK? HIT ME UP” since that’s the appropriate syntax for the website. It’s a harmless distraction.
I took mine down a couple weeks after I started dating my now-boyfriend. He did the same (he actually did it first.) I figure: when you know, you know. It was very satisfying.
Meh. I’m on innumerable dating/social sites. And a good number of them don’t make a hard distinction between the two. Certainly every single one has the ‘already involved, interested in friends only’ option.
If I’m dating someone, I’ll probably just stop bothering to check the sites, unless they are specifically bothered, in which case we’ll discuss options…