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Online Dating Advice?
frankgod asks: "I'm a 25/M/US geek who managed to get through school with my singleness intact. I plan on staying single for a while into the future, but I am considering online dating in addition to other methods of meeting local women for casual dating. Any advice on particular sites and tweaking profiles or search results? I've looked at eHarmony , Lavalife (sparse local results) and Match.com (seems to be best of the bunch.)"
I already posted that I don't think eHarmony is right for this particular person, but perhaps it'll work for someone else. So here's my experience with it, so far.
:)
First, you fill out a *very* long questionare. Once that was done ( over an hour ), it came back and said it had no matches for me. That's pretty depressing. I gradually expanded the search parameters (there are a few things, such as location, that you can control)... before long I had eHarmony telling me there was no one anywhere in the world for me! I had always suspected it, but you hate to have a computer confirm it.
About three or four days later, it got a hit. The next day, it got four more hits. I've yet to figure out the algorithm.... it's not rate limiting, but the hits seem to come in batches. Some people just signed up, but others seem to have been there for awhile.
Anyway, I've been a member since June, and have gotten over 50 hits with it. Of those 50, only 5 have I dismissed right away. Most of the rest never respond to me (if you take the questionaire, you show up as a match, but can't communicate unless you pay the money. No doubt a lot of the never-responders are people who aren't interested enough to pay).
I've actually communicated with only four people from the system, and only gone on any dates with one of them. It's too early to say how that's going...
For me, it works. I'm not the sort of person who wants to date casually... I'm not going to go out with someone just to have a date on Saturday night. If I'm going out with someone, it's because I'm really interested in them, or at least interested in becoming more interested.
I'm not sure I agree with all the tenants of eHarmony... I think they are more interested in creating "stable" relationships then they are in "good" relationships. Their argument would probably be that they can do the "stable" with statistics, and it's up to the people to decide on the "good". Maybe that's fair.
Consider the type of guys who usually hit on women in public. It's often times not a pretty site. I know several girls that are moderately to extremely good looking who use online dating. It's not that they can't get a date otherwise, but they want to find a better guy than they would typically meet in a bar. Not to mention they have a lot more control over the process, like being able to get to know someone over a period of time before meeting up with them. Some chicks do the online dating thing for the same reason as most guys (to get laid), but most of them are probably looking for quality, which is hard to find in bars, malls, or what have you.
Online dating has been one of the most dehumanizing processes I've ever been through. And I used to be in the military.
First things first -- unless you look like a movie star and are super rich, and spend your time jet setting around the world, resign yourself to spending a good deal of money on online dating now. Most dating sites are "controlled" by a subset of women who don't need to spend any money because every Tom, Dick, and Harry is using their credits to contact them. They won't spend a whole lot of time looking for you, because they don't need to. You'll be in a darwinian struggle with a pile of other guys, and if you're not picture-perfect, your not going to get that date you need to show them your personality.
Also remember there are sometimes very good reasons why some of the women you'll meet online are single. I've wound up dating two women who were out patients from psychiatric institions. Now I'm not the kind of guy who stigmatizes people with mental illness, and I think they diserve love and support too -- but these women were too unstable to support any form of relationship, and had serious problems they needed to deal with before they could consider any form of stable relationship.
Also remember that the women you do wind up getting in touch with online often feel like they have a lot of other choices, so if you don't wow them and fill their hearts with desire on the very first date, your chances of a second date are virtually nil. Very, very, very few of the women you meet online are going to take the time to really get to know you -- if you don't immediately fit their expectations, most (in my experience at least) aren't going to invest the time to get to know you.
And if you hold any tenents outside societal norm, you're probably already out of the race. Online dating sites give people the ability to search on specific qualities, and if you don't show up in the average search, you're not going to get anywhere. I'm an athiest and a non-drinker (neither of which I enforce on or expect of others, BTW). My profile doesn't tend to get too many hits (more for the latter than the former, sad to say). I actually had one woman walk out on a date with me when I told her I was an athiest (the site I use doesn't have a selection in their religion combo box for "athiest" -- the closest is "non religious").
(I really hate to pick on so many women as I seem to have done so in this post. I can only guess that many men on online dating sites are the same -- but I don't date men, so I have no experience with their foibles. What few dates I have been on over the years I've been on online dating sites have usually shared their previous experiences, and one common theme with them is meeting men who are nothing like they claim, especially in the looks department).
Remember as well that you're going to be competing with a lot of people who are lying about themselves to make themselves sound better than they are. You can do the same thing -- but most women aren't going to date you again if/when they discover your dishonesty. Still, you're competing with the geekoid down the street who claims he looks like Mel Gibson and Tom Cuise combined, and that makes it exceedingly difficult for you to compete if you're truuthful (and, presumably, don't look like Mel Gibson and/or Tom Cruise).
Yeah, I'm a bit bitter over my experiences. I quit online dating for a long time, but after leaving the military recently signed back on, just to see if things had changed. I'm sad to say that, based on my experience these past few months, they haven't. Now I'm just a bitter old coot nobody would want to date anyway who hangs around /. telling whomever will listen him sad and loney online dating tale :).
Yaz.