I started writing back a lot of people since reading this thread. I’ve extended it to people whose email or phone calls I’ve been putting of returning. Looking for love anyway you do it kind of blows and almost never works. Best of luck.
I would suggest that you no longer invest 30+ minutes into your first reply to someone. Use the time to reply to three people instead of just one. IMO, you shouldn’t invest more than 5-10 minutes in a reply to someone you don’t know well enough to expect an answer from. Even if she does reply, there’s no guarantee that she will really be as good as she sounded in the ad, so your time writing The Ultimate Personal Response is just going to be wasted more often than not.
Sure, put in enough detail so that it’s obvious that you ACTUALLY READ her ad and offer some basic details about yourself, but don’t pour your heart and soul into a reply until there’s some assurance it will be read.
Okay, I admit it. At one point I did put up a personal ad. I DID read every reply. I didn’t trash anyone’s note unread.
However, I didn’t reply to everyone who wrote me.
Why?
#1: While not all of them were using form letters (it was obvious some WERE, but not all), surely the majority of these guys were writing to quite a few women.
It doesn’t make any sense to put all the eggs in one basket, and I doubt my ad was so incredibly special to them that it moved them to make a reply to me alone.
So if they were writing tons fo people, I figured they wouldn’t even notice if I didn’t reply to them. If everyone who was uninterested wrote back just to say “no thanks”, it would only be a distraction from the positive replies.
#2: TO ME, a non-response is easier to take than “I don’t want to talk to you. Have a nice life.” As you gradually come to the realization the person won’t be answering you, you’re also gradually forgetting about them to the point where it doesn’t really matter by the time that it’s obvious they will not be replying.
Also, for those who don’t take rejection well, there is the consolation that maybe the person didn’t mean to ignore you; maybe they just accidentally deleted your reply or something. A “No thanks” reply leaves no room for such comfort.
Example: I read an ad from some guy who sounded extremely lonely. Since I had some common interests with him, I decided to offer to be his online friend even though I didn’t live in his area.
He replied only to say that he had ENOUGH online friends. I thought that was a bit rude (now, based on what you’ve said, I realize he may have been trying to be polite by acknowledging me, but that isn’t how it first came across). I have forgotten most of the guys that I wrote who never replied, but I haven’t forgotten that one guy who outright rejected me.
#3: Why burn the bridge? Sometimes when my initial reaction was that a guy wasn’t compatible, I ended up reconsidering and replying after all. Sometimes you see things in a different light when you go back and read an e-mail a second time. Obviously telling someone you don’t want to talk anymore is not going to allow the potential for further communication.
Just some attempt to explain why this happens. Good luck finding someone.