Online Dating-Your Experiences, Thoughs Etc (or-AM I NUTS?)

The Owl is now flying into (for me) uncharted territory here.

Well this VERY unattached Owl, though very content with life in many ways started to get tired of flying solo all the time, I'm coming out of my long hiatus from The Dating Wars.

So, being that I am fairly busy at times and am not about to do the bar scene (SHUDDERING :roll: ) or anything like it, I decided to take a plunge into the online dating world (namely match.com, subscribing for 3 months to try it out) figuring I would have FAR better chances of encountering a wise owlette who I actually have things in common with and at least somewhat compatible with.

So far, got areply from a VERY beautiful lady here in ATL and want to meet her in person this week.

This Owl would like to hear your experiences, thoughts, wisdom advice and what not on this subject.

Post away-----------------------------

Never done it...I have quite a few friends through dancing etc and so am pretty happy, myself. Good luck on your date. :cheers:

Not familiar with match.com.

I've gone the eharmony route. Very impressed! They have a detailed and lengthy initial personality questionaire that takes awhile to complete. Once I got through this they only send matches that seem to be compatible.

I've used the site twice. The first time I was very selective in whom I chose to meet, but had three good initial dates with nothing developing beyond that for various reasons. Then I met someone locally, and stopped, but just recently started up again. So far met one very nice match, but not sure how it will go form here.

For me it an extension of my dating activitees, and I use the same principles I have found to work when meeting ladies in other circumstances, and have enjoyed the experience.

I willing to share more detail or answer questions if folks have them?

I've not started yet (holding at separation plus 8 months with no court date set yet), but my counselor wants me to get very involved with something like match.com so I can re-learn dating skills (atrophied greatly after 28 years of dis-used) as well as to recognize the warning flags.

In preparation, I've talk with some single (also divorced) friends who have used match.com in the past. One described how she had to set up a card file system to keep track of all her contacts, just so she could keep them all straight. Another described how she got 200-300 "winks", which led to [I forget how many] email contacts, which led to fewer than a dozen initial meetings, when led to a handful of first dates, which led to repeat dates with one or two guys.

In other words, you will be filtering through several potential hits (though I don't know whether the numbers would be as high for a guy; as a guy I'll be in the same boat as you) and it takes time and effort to do that. Both girls had since gone inactive because it was just too much work. Maybe that was because of how they were going about it, but then again how would it have worked if they hadn't done it that way (eg, end up routinely making mistakes like winking at somebody you had snubbed earlier and renewing contact with somebody you had wanted to avoid).

But when I get started down the same path in a month or two (I'm still overwhelmed trying to schedule setting up housekeeping around my dancing) I will undoubtedly do something like the file-card system.

I've not tried it. I've heard mixed reviews though...

Funny story. A guy friend of mine became very close to a girl on the other end of a computer and cell phone. Their online romance lasted for some time until the girl confided with my friend that she was terminally ill. Time passed and the girl "died." My friend was heart-broken and destraught. He even had the late girl's name tattooed on his person in memory.

Some time passed and my friend discovered the ex-terminally ill girl was not dead at all. Complete hoax. He was now enraged and was sporting a memorial to a not-dead person he really didn't even know on his person.

That said...better be darn sure you get what you are looking/paying for.

I have also tried eharmony.com website. At least the matches that they send you, have been screened and there is a big possibility that you have things/view points in common. I'll stick to it for now.
(have also tried match.com but don't think it will work as well as eharmony. too many potential dates that you don't know anything about. what you see is not what you get !)

TemptressToo said:

I've not tried it. I've heard mixed reviews though...

Funny story. A guy friend of mine became very close to a girl on the other end of a computer and cell phone. Their online romance lasted for some time until the girl confided with my friend that she was terminally ill. Time passed and the girl "died." My friend was heart-broken and destraught. He even had the late girl's name tattooed on his person in memory.

Some time passed and my friend discovered the ex-terminally ill girl was not dead at all. Complete hoax. He was now enraged and was sporting a memorial to a not-dead person he really didn't even know on his person.

That said...better be darn sure you get what you are looking/paying for.

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Hope not to offend anyone, but I had thought this hilarious when I read it. There's a satire "newspaper" posted on the web somewhere (sorry, I forget now) with phony articles. One headline read: "On-line Lesbian Relationship Ends in Tragedy When Both Men Meet in Person". Similarly, in the Star Trek section of CompuServe's Sci-Fi forum, "Will Wheaton" would frequently post messages whining about how nobody liked Wesley Chrusher.

All we know about anyone we meet on-line, even here, is what that person tells us (assuming it's a person, unless we're caught within a Turing Test) and how he/she/it presents himself/herself/itself to us. I do believe that most of us do present ourselves somewhat honestly, but there are those few (more heavily represented on certain other forums) who like to pretend to be someone or something else in order to fool people. Not much we can do about it except to realize that possibility.

And, cl5814, certainly eharmony appears (to me, not having tried it) to do much more of the filtering work for you. However, there again you are depending on the other person having been honest in filling out their questionaire and in posting their profile.

Anyway, it's way too soon for me to search for a "soul mate" (already had one and she's the one who filed for divorce), but rather I'm needing to get out there are relearn dating, so match.com would appear to be the better match for me (no pun intended). Besides, if I have to do more of the filtering myself, then I'll learn more about handling that aspect of dating.

I'm going to sound like a total jerk, I know that. But I don't believe in soul mates, period. I believe in close matches and a heck of a lot of hard work. (I know. Shoot me, and withdraw my hopefully romantic membership card. :lol: :lol: )

Never done the online thing. I probably won't since a lot of my first-time assessment of a potential date/romance is hocus pocus and gut feelings, which don't work over the internet. :lol: :lol:

I know a couple couples who've successfully met and gotten together online. One couple is happily married. So it must be working for somebody. It's probably worth a try. 8)

I met my last girlfriend from an ad that she had on excite.com We dated for 4+ years and we really had a wonderful time, but we couldn't come to any terms to take it any further. She was the first person I responded to and we emailed back and forth for about 3 months and then decided to meet. We went to Paris, Rome, Hawaii, Vegas, Florida, California, Grand Canyon... and just had alot of fun. So, I would say that they do work out. My aunt has been dating a guy for about 5 years that they met online. They live together, but I don't think she wants to remarry. But, they're very happy.

I just signed up for a service a few weeks ago and notified some women, but never heard back from them, except for one who declined. But, I received about a dozen winks from interested parties, but they weren't my type except for one that I just received. We've talked a couple of times on the phone and we're supposed to meet tomorrow! I don't have high hopes, because you just never know what to expect. She says she's met quite a few and I'm sure has had a ton of replies. My ex-girlfriend said she had a couple of hundred replies to her ad too. A lady next door to me who's around 52 and widowed said she's interviewed over 1000 guys and has met about 150! over the course of a few years. She said they're all short, bald and fat (she resembles that remark) and don't have any property to offer her (alot still live at home). A number of them would travel from out of state and stay with her and she'd give them all kinds of projects to get done! From roof repairs to painting... It sounds like the women have the guys eating out of the palms of their hands! :lol:

pygmalion said:

I'm going to sound like a total jerk, I know that. But I don't believe in soul mates, period. I believe in close matches and a heck of a lot of hard work. (I know. Shoot me, and withdraw my hopefully romantic membership card. :lol: :lol: )

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Well put, very well put!! :notworth: :notworth:

You're not a jerk, and i'm not going to shoot you, just wish more people would get over this ridiculous soul mate, 'you're my one and only..' crap.

pygmalion said:

I don't believe in soul mates, period.

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I'm with ya there.

Of course, I'm an eHarmony reject...

don't believe in soul mates, period.

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Triple ditto! There must be at least 20 men for me. In each state.

Hee hee!

Actually, I feel something welling up deep within me when I hear someone proclaim they have met their soul mate. And then I go to the restroom and toss it up.

pygmalion said:

I'm going to sound like a total jerk, I know that. But I don't believe in soul mates, period. I believe in close matches and a heck of a lot of hard work. (I know. Shoot me, and withdraw my hopefully romantic membership card. :lol: :lol: )

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No, you're just being realistic. I'm the one who should be shot for still being a romantic. And for still being monogamous (with no one to be faithful to).

But instead of using the term in its strict sense (eg, like the Mexican media naranja, "half orange" -- hence my putting it in quotation marks, in which everyone is like half of an orange and they look for their other half to become whole again), I was refering to looking for someone to fall in love with. Even though that is what most people mean by "a relationship", there are a lot of different kinds of relationships that we are in all the time.

pygmalion said:

Never done the online thing. I probably won't since a lot of my first-time assessment of a potential date/romance is hocus pocus and gut feelings, which don't work over the internet. :lol: :lol:

I know a couple couples who've successfully met and gotten together online. One couple is happily married. So it must be working for somebody. It's probably worth a try. 8)

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On one company's VAX-11 system I encountered the fortune program, that when run would randomly print out one fortune-cookie-like remark. One was:
Lonely men go to bars. Lonely women stay at home. They never meet.

For my age range, there are more single women than single men (approx. 1.5 to 1, not counting the guys deemed to be not "relationship material" -- Single women ask, "Where are the men?"). So where are they? I probably see a lot of them every day, but how do I identify them as both single and not in a relationship (oops! even I use that term that way!)? I haven't checked out the literature, but it seems that a large amount of what's written for singles just involves ideas of where and how to meet other singles.

Sites like match.com simply provide another way to meet other singles. It doesn't mean leaving your instincts at home, even though it does give you a little less to work with (eg, not being able at first to see their demeanor and bearing). You still need to go through those first conversations, albeit at first via email, then by phone, then finally the first face-to-face meetings. You just don't have as much to go on for that very first impression.

However, for me that problem is largely solved, since it seems that most of the women around my age whom I meet through dancing are single. All the more reason for guys to learn to dance!

No offense taken on my part. In fact, I too found it hilarious. Poor Cam.

Has anyone tried a dating service? I called the "It's Just Lunch" service here in town, and I was horrified at the prices. It was $1500 for up to 14 dates in a year's time. I passed. :shock: