What's the deal with dating sites?

It seems like an artificial way of meeting people. I’m sure there are successes but mostly the idea of an Internet blind date sounds dicey at the very least.

My ex has met several women through dating sites – none of which was a good fit. It didn’t matter how many questions they answered and how high their compatibility quotient was, it has never worked out. I keep telling him that getting out and living a life is the best way to meet his one true love but he isn’t convinced so he keeps messing around with these sites.

I don’t want to date myself, I’m attracted to someone who is a complete opposite.
but that’s just me.

You have to be careful. There are a LOT of Nigerian scammers that pose as men or women to try to get you in a relationship so that you send them money. There’s no guarantee of the gender of the person.

@SuperMouse
I did eharmony and that was like doing homework to meet someone. My latest is free and much more fun and I’ve had more success in weeks than others I’ve done for months.

@Quagmire
I wouldn’t suggest anyone send money sight unseen unless it’s for one of my eBay sales. :)
@The_Compassionate_Heretic
No never blind. At least one or two pictures and a phone call first.

@SeventhSense of all the ones my ex has tried his favorite is www.plentyoffish.com, a free site.

@SuperMouse
Bingo

My one and only venture into the dating site was odd. I started emailing a guy and we emailed a few times and seemed compatable. Then I get an email from him just small talking and then he cuts it off in mid sentence. Then comes back on and says friends of his has come to the door to tell him his son has committed suicide. This is in an email. He could have/should have just not finished it. He gets back to me in a few days, but after that, it was just too weird, so we never met.

@SeventhSense And I agree with you about EHarmony. After question number 2332, I quit.

I guess it’s okay as a last resort type of thing. My mom tried it and she’s been with her boyfriend for almost five years.

I tried internet dating a couple years back with mixed success. The first was eHarmony, and the matches they sent were horrible!! So I cancelled that and went to Yahoo! Personals. I liked that the Yahoo site had some personality type tests and you could check “compatibility”, but that it didn’t have to be a factor in your searches, if you didn’t want it to be.

I met several men on there, dated a few, and formed friendships with a couple of them. It is tough to separate the wheat from the chaff, that’s for sure. I had a relationship with one man that lasted a few months, but he was still dealing with issues from his divorce and other problems, so he wasn’t ready for a relationship. After that didn’t work out, I took some time to work on myself and my confidence some more.

A few months later, I copied my Profile off of Yahoo! and pasted into the Dating pages at Classmates, because I had just found out that they include the Personals free with the Gold membership. This time, I chose not to pore over the guys’ ads… I decided that if someone contacted me, then I’d respond. That is what happened – one guy contacted me, and we were in a relationship for just over a year, which is how long he claims it took him to realize that I wasn’t what he wanted (a very long, complicated story).

What I liked about internet dating was that it gave me practice at meeting new people and dating, because I had always been painfully shy. I also like that I got to interact with them and get a sense of their character, before having to deal with the nerves of a face-to-face date.

I also took great care to word my profile in a way that was very clear about my intentions. I believe in being forthright, and what better way to start a relationship than by letting someone know what your intentions are. I’m not one for pretense or coy games, and I hope to find someone who appreciates that.

That last relationship ended in January, and I looked at Match and eHarmony and Yahoo again – and the same guys with the same pictures popped up in my searches, 2+ years later! So I decided to toss that out the window for the time being and to get busy living my life, and hope to meet someone that way.

In the end of February, I signed up on Meetup.com, and joined several groups relative to my interests and hobbies. I have made a number of good friends; and I did date someone for a short time, and we are still friends. I like that this is an opportunity to get together with people based on common interests. It has really helped me out of my shell socially, and I have been challenging myself with new adventures, too!

Thanks hearkat

I met my wife on eHarmony and recommend it to friends all the time. I felt strange about joining, but once I met her am forever thankful. I personally think eHarmony is the only relationship site while the others are “hook up” sites.

@Steven0512
I believe in many hook ups and then the final coupling of the caboose with the engine for that final trip into the black tunnel of matrimony. The light at the end of the tunnel being death.

@SeventhSense:
Oh, and if you haven’t heard it before, my Dating Motto is: “High standards, low expectations.”

Lowered expectations always make life more bearable. We’re conditioned to think that we’re more than human by frozen images in magazines and made up celebrity “realities”. Maybe we should all just be assigned a person. It would probably have as much success as our current models.

Considering how difficult I find the cold pick-up, I see dating sites in my future.

@drdoombot
It’s definitely an ice breaker and allows you to explore different types of people.

I have quite a few friends that are happily married with children, and they met online. I think it can work.

Funny story, my brother signed up with one of those dating sites, and when he checked it a couple of weeks later (he used my computer, as he doesn’t own one himself) no one matched him.

He was crest fallen, as my brother is about as normal as you can get. The weirdest thing he does is ride a Japanese motorcycle.

The major flaw I’ve found with these sites (for me personally I mean) is that most of the users are Americans, just like everywhere else on the internet. That means that it would be practically impossible to meet that perfect match (assuming she exists). An even trickier bit (which has always posed a problem for me in offline dating too) is that I am a foreigner living in Greece, meaning I wouldn’t really get along with Greek girls, since I hate Greek music for example, and the pool is generally smaller. And of course everyone else is too far away, and most of the Eastern European ones that end up on dating sites or in Greece in general are not exactly what I’m looking for (to put it mildly).

Many of my single friends use dating sites with some success, It can be hard to meet single people your own age when you’re 40+, and dating sites provide a way to meet people. www.eharmony.com is more of a marriage broker site, whereas www.plentyoffish.com seems to be a good way to meet local people.

Imagine: You are sitting in a bar, alone, eating your sandwich, drinking a soda.
Suddenly someone touches your shoulder.
You look up and there she/he is, a real fine lady/mister!
“Do you mind me joining you to sit at your table?”
-“No, of course i wouldn’t, but please, before you do, first fill in this 500 questions.”

I’ve used www.okcupid.com. And I consider my find a success. Although we’re currently going through a kinda rough patch (well, not so much rough as extremely complicated), I’m quite happy with what I have. We met almost exactly a year ago.

The best part about it is that you have the compatibility tests, and the fact that the people who fill in their bios are usually quite earnest about it (okcupid has quite a lot of categories to fill in), plus you can locate people who’re near you (thus helping @Jack79 with his issue).

Let’s say I’m a straight woman looking for a man in Memphis, aged 18–25 and Catholic, I can do so easily with okcupid. I can also search for people with similar interests. Quite a comprehensive place.

I’m starting to feel like a salesman

I was looking through one of the dating sites and saw a man on it that was a teacher of mine when I was in 10th grade. I am 51 years old. He listed his age at 51. I seem to be getting older and he is getting younger. I wanted to call him out on it, but I didn’t want to join the site.

@Saturated_Brain I’ve heard of those sites, but the problem is that the girls near me are probably girls I already know (and rejected). They may be neighbours, or my ex wife and her cousins, or former students of mine if they’re young enough. Which is one of the many reasons I’m thinking of moving again (not the main one of course, but it also counts).

@Saturated_Brain: I was on OKCupid for a little while. I liked that it was almost like a cross between a social networking site and a dating site. If I were to try online dating again, that is probably where I’s start.

I have never gone to PlentyOfFish, but I have only heard negative reviews from my female friends.

@Jack79: where, praytell, are you considering relocating to?

@hearkat no idea, but there’s absolutely nothing I can do here before February the earliest, so there’s no point in staying. Discussing a job in London, but I think going back to Poland may be more reasonable.

@Jack79
High maintenance are we?

@hearkat – how can you date someone for a year before they know it isn’t right? Did you have any clues?

@SeventhSense not really, just at the wrong place at the wrong time.

@Sunflower: I said it was a long, complicated story, and he is a complicated man. He pushed me away for various reasons and asked me back several times. I was very patient and supportive, and when we would relax and be ourselves, it was a fantastic relationship – he’s even said it was the best relationship he’s ever had, despite what he put us through.