Over the past few years, I’ve tried online dating off and on, with no success. I usually can’t get a date, but my question here is about the phenomenon of seeing someone on the site whom you already know. This has happened to me (at least) five times, and there’s not really a pattern, in that my prior relationships with each woman were often very different.
It’s just happened again. She’s someone I met in a graduate school class a few years ago, and I do indeed find her attractive. I’m intrigued to see that she’s single, and while there may be a couple of deal-breakers between us, I’d like to at least explore the possibility, as there are points of commonality as well. What is the etiquette here? I’m inclined to send her a message, with the (truthful) attitude that I find this phenomenon pretty funny. One concern I have is that this might make it impossible for us to be friends in the future (which I would like regardless) if she’s not interested in anything like dating (awkwardness, and all that).
I did an ice-breaker message joking “I’ll pretend I didn’t see you if you pretend you didn’t see me here” and ended up going on a few dates with the guy I knew in real life.
Personally, I like to work on the theory that you don’t contact anyone on a dating site that you wouldn’t like to go out on a date with. That is, if you see someone you know, that you might actually like, go ahead and send them a message, even if it’s ‘small talk’ that you might be able to steer into a ‘OKC says we’re a 97% match’ or ‘we should go out for a drink one of these nights’ etc. But if I don’t have that kind of interest in them, I wouldn’t send them anything, if I felt I must, I’d probably send them something on facebook, just to acknowledge it. On OKC, if I saw them as soon as they signed up, I’d probably hide them (on OKC, they wouldn’t be able to see me either) if I really had no interest in them.
Having said that, if they contacted me first (and I had no interest), I probably just make a polite reply but kill the conversation as quickly as I could. Like I said, I work on the theory that you don’t communicate with anyone on a dating site unless you want to date them, but I know not everyone has that same theory.
Since it sounds like you might be interested in dating her, I see nothing wrong with sending her a message that doesn’t put any pressure on her - something like “Hey, fancy seeing you here…if you ever want to go grab a friendly drink and catch up, let me know.” Her response will tell you if she’s interested or not.
FTR, if it ends in “Good luck with your search”, she’s not and that should be the last time you make any kind of contact at all with her (including looking at her profile) on that site. In fact, I’d advise hiding her page just to avoid even accidentally clicking on it. If this is on Match, if you hide her, she can still see you so if she wants to contact you someday down the line she’ll still be able to.
Well, before you found her on that dating site, you had no relationship with her other than some memories. So, if you send her an “ice-breaker” message and she shoots you down, what’s the harm? You’ll be pretty much in the same place with her as you were before. So, I’d say a somewhat humorous ice breaker might be a good idea.
Single women are exquisitely aware of who among their male acquaintances is also single, and have no doubt given each of the single ones a thought or two. People are generally not in the habit of ignoring people they are deeply attracted to, and then trolling for strangers instead.
It doesn’t hurt to say “hi”, but don’t become too invested in the outcome.
Which is part of the reason why I didn’t know her relationship status, nor she mine. We’ve been in touch periodically over the past few years, but not regularly. She had told me about a pretty significant breakup, but that was a long time ago now, and I had no idea she was still single.
Well, we are acquaintances, so it’s slightly more than some memories, but I get the point.
Why not? I had a friend do that to me. We were making small talk on OKC and she used almost that exact line. I just ignored it and kept on with the rest of the conversation. When we later met at our HS reunion, we just hung out like regular friends, but from my end, I could tell she was sort of feeling me out (this conversation had very recently taken place) but in that 'what are your hobbies?, why did you and your wife split up? kind of way. Lots of plausible deniablity.
Had I had any interest in her, that statement would have been a great jumping off point for me to make some other comment like ‘Yeah, maybe we should grab a drink and see if it’s right’ or ‘[keeping in mind that we converse quite often on facebook]I didn’t think we were that much alike, but clearly OKC thinks we should be dating!’.
If she had zero interest in me, she wouldn’t have mentioned our match percentage, but it was just that one thing that one time and it’ll never impact our friendship.
TLDR, if you’re interested in a friend that you bump into, I don’t see anything wrong with mentioning your match percentage. It’s perfect because they can ignore it or talk about it too. Hell, they could even say ‘weird, huh, we’re nothing alike.’
I said the same thing to a friend of mine (that I like), she just replied to everything else (all small talk). Again, it’ll never impact our relationship as friends. OTOH, with this specific friend if she asked me if I like her (or if any of her other friends asked), I’d be honest about it, but that’s different since I’m not really ‘on the fence’ about that one.
Also, just in case it’s what you mean, I’m not talking about using that number specifically, but using the actual number OKC/match has, assuming it’s a high number. Basically, some way to give the other person something to riff on that’s not the normal ‘I’m hitting on you’ or generic ice breakers that you send to everyone else.
One of my other friends who I had never really explored my feelings on, I think my email included the line 'haven’t seen you in a while, how’s Match/OKC treating you etc". It gave her the opportunity to say something like 'it’s [fun/awful/full of losers/etc] we should get together and talk about it some night". Instead she just told me one or two stories and left me with ‘good luck on your search’ and I got the hint.
One other thing. IMO, the perfect situation to bump into a friend that you might want to go on date with, is on Tinder. You click Like and if they do too you know they feel the same way. It’s much less ambiguous.
I didn’t think it was creepy when my female friend did it to me it just seemed like a very subtle flirt that I just sort of ignored. I mean, the whole point of dating sites is trying to show people of the (typically) opposite sex reasons why they might be interested in you.
My friend that said that to me, I had never thought about that way, but when it was clear that she was showing some kind of interest it made me evaluate my feelings about her in that light. Similarly, when I said something similar to one of my friends there was the chance that she had never thought about me like that and this was to hopefully get her to think to herself, even for a second 'hmm, I think Joey might like me, I wonder if…". In both cases if the other party wasn’t interested and it was pretty easy to ‘overlook’ the statement (or even make a joke about it) and move on.
It’s not like anyone outright asked anyone out it was just a “The site says we’re a 97% match, funny huh”, which IMO, doesn’t put the receiver in the awkward position that it would if the person had said, for example “The site says we’re a 97% match, maybe we should go out and see if it’s right” which is something more in line with what you might say to random person you stumbled across (that you’ve never met), a person that ignore it and you’ll likely never meet them or anyone they know IRL.
And just to be clear, I certainly wasn’t trying to prove to this girl that she should be interested in me, but a friend had recently sent me a message containing the same line and it seemed like a perfect one. If they’re not interested and never thought about you in that light it’s meaningless, but if they do like you it’s a great jumping off point.
I dunno, if you’re going to get offended by someone mentioning the match percentage that the site shows right there on your profile, dating sites might not be for you because there’s a whole lot more to get offended over.
So let me ask you this. If you see a friend on a dating site. You’re interested in him/her, what do you say? You send a messaged with some small talk, but IMO, you need to put some kind of something in there to give them something to work with, something that, if they’re interested they can read as a flirt, if they’re not interested they can ignore it (or might not even notice it like the match percentage thing). And, again, IMO, it should be more than just ‘let’s meet for drinks one of these nights’ because I go out for drinks with friends all the time. I suppose you could just go for it and ask them out, but that creates awkwardness if they’re not interested.
Did OKC get rid of the thing they had like this? Back when I was separated, they had some picture rating deal- If you rated someone 4 or 5 stars, and they rated you 4 or 5 stars you got a “match.” I rated every picture 4 stars.
