Senorsheep Presents: Adventures In Online Dating

[senorsheep]

Gotta bring this one over. I have not yet begun to suck at online dating!

[senorsheep]

Original Post

Yep, I did it - I signed up for eHarmony last month. And what a long, strange trip it's been already. I know we have a few other guys here who have used online dating services, so I thought I'd start a thread where the veterans can help me (and others who might be considering this) figure out what the heck we're doing. I really just kind of wandered into it with little clue as to how it worked and what to expect, and I'll confess, I'm kind of overwhelmed. I have a lot to learn about the culture and the etiquette of eHarmony, and what works and what doesn't, and there really doesn't seem to be much out there in terms of guidance. Metaphorically speaking, when it comes to online dating, I'm the virgin who is desperately fumbling with the bra strap.

The story to date: As most of you know, I got divorced last year - separated in the spring, finalized in the fall. After about eight months of clearing my head and enjoying the single life, I was ready to date again. I have a friend who has met some impressive women through eHarmony over the past couple of years, so I was intrigued. I popped into eHarmony during one of their free communication events in early December just to take a look around. They offered me three months at half price to check out their service, so I jumped on it.

First mistake: I knew I would be too busy during the holidays to do much with it, so I figured I would piece together my profile here and there when I could and publish it in January. Wrong! Once you sign up with them, you are immediately "out there." And - damn! - there are a lot of women out there, too. Impatient women who "nudge" you every day to post your pictures, to flesh out your profile, to answer their questions, to e-mail them, etc. Within a week, I had 170 matches, and about 7-8 new ones popping up every day.

Second mistake: Thinking it rude to ignore women who didn't interest me, I was trying to answer everybody who was contacting me, all while trying to process my backlog of matches and my queue of new matches that was growing by the day. It was like managing the freaking Manhattan Project!

Now: After several weeks, I've finally got a handle on the queue. What I've learned is, you've gotta be picky, and only focus on the ones you're really interested in. If you open their profile and your first thought is "No way," close'em. If you're at all ambivalent or detect a red flag, archive'em. The only ones who should remain in your active queue are the ones you actually plan to talk to.

Whew, I haven't even scratched the surface. More to come later. In the meantime, your advice, anecdotes, commentary, questions, and mockery are welcome.

[senorsheep]

Mistake #3: My first profile picture. The idea is to post several photos of yourself in various settings, and select one primary picture as the photo your matches first see when they open your profile. I used what I thought was the perfect picture - me sitting on the grass in my back yard with a polo shirt that showed off my guns . I didn't think much about it until one babe sent me a message reading "Hey, we have something in common - I work at IBM, too!" Wha?! It took me awhile to figure out that I was wearing an IBM shirt (techie vendor schwag) in my picture. Given that I was already in severe danger of presenting too much nerd-ity (profession: software developer/ favorite book: Lord Of The Rings/ favorite TV show: Star Trek - The Next Generation), I changed the picture immediately.

I should have realized that people scrutinize these pictures pretty closely. I tossed one match (hot Asian chick) because she took her profile picture in a public bathroom. WTF?!

[senorsheep]

Originally posted by Erik

Good luck!

As I mentioned in BG's divorce thread, I met my wife on eHarmony. I'll be happy to offer insights, but I haven't been on the site since 2006, and it sounds like it now has a lot of features that didn't exist when I was on it. I'm certainly glad "nudging" didn't exist, or I would have overused it and probably turned off countless women. I tend to be impatient with unresponsive people, as anyone who has played with me in a fantasy league with trading knows.

I have always gotten the sense that, unlike most dating sites, there are substantially more women than men on eHarmony. The reason is because it markets itself as a place to find long-term relationships and spouses, not casual dates or quickies. Also because it's more expensive than most sites, and a lot of men are cheap. This means that men will always have a ton of matches to go through. Your instincts are correct -- you should quickly close out anyone who doesn't interest you right away. You will always be getting new matches. They will never dry up. So no need to keep open an option that's just not that interesting.

I found that a lot of women on eHarmony were really bad about responding in a timely manner, or at all. I think there are two reasons for this.

One, people (of both sexes) who are great at communication are less likely to need to use online dating to find a mate. They usually have no issues meeting people at bars or parties or what have you. So that leaves, for the most part, those of us who are shy or just aren't that good at talking to other people.

Two, women in general tend to be less confrontational than men, and are more likely to avoid saying anything at all than to tell someone bad news.

So not only are you likely to find women that aren't good about getting back to you on the site, you're also likely to find ones that will just stop communicating with you once they've decided they're not into you, instead of telling you the score. Quite a few times I had a woman stop returning my calls after one or two dates. That's frustrating, but it comes with the territory so don't beat yourself up when it happens.

[senorsheep]

Pix of prospective candidates would be nice... :bag:

There are a lot of beautiful ladies on eHarmony - no joke. It's tough to guess which ones are out of your league, because they all come across as so down-to-earth in their profiles. It's easier to tell who's out of your league in real life because they look right past you like you're not even there.

It kind of freaks me out when a super-hottie contacts me. I can't help but think "There's got to be something seriously wrong with her if she's that willing to slum with me."

[Erik]

Didn't you have plans to go out with one of your matches? Anything happen with that yet?

[senorsheep]

It kind of freaks me out when a super-hottie contacts me. I can't help but think "There's got to be something seriously wrong with her if she's that willing to slum with me."

Erik says:

It usually means she's had terrible experiences dating beefcake types and is looking for something different. You just have to hope that such terrible experiences weren't in the "scarred for life" category, otherwise she's probably a psycho.

[senorsheep]

It usually means she's had terrible experiences dating beefcake types and is looking for something different. You just have to hope that such terrible experiences weren't in the "scarred for life" category, otherwise she's probably a psycho.

Or she's had a bad experience being a trophy wife for some fossilized sugar daddy, and will probably flee when I pull up in my 2002 Honda Accord.

[senorsheep]

So not only are you likely to find women that aren't good about getting back to you on the site, you're also likely to find ones that will just stop communicating with you once they've decided they're not into you, instead of telling you the score. Quite a few times I had a woman stop returning my calls after one or two dates. That's frustrating, but it comes with the territory so don't beat yourself up when it happens.

This really bothered me at first. I'd be having a series of great e-mail conversations with someone, and then *poof* - Match Closed. In real world eyeball-to-eyeball dating, you can get a sense of how interested someone is by reading their body language. It's a lot harder to guess what's really going on without those visual cues. It's kind of unsettling to be suddenly blown off with no clue as to why, but in online dating, you gotta learn to shake it off and move on to the next one. Or ten.

[senorsheep]

ah... I figured if I stopped nagging maybe you would stop spiting me!

Sounds like good stuff. Interested to read more.

Sorry bud. I thought I had a great inspirational story all ready for you when I started dating the awesome girl I was babbling about in your thread. Unfortunately, after a couple of weeks, we both realized that there was nothing happening - trying to date after we had known each other as friends for so long proved to be kind of awkward, and we both decided to bag it. At that point, I thought the story might be more likely to depress you than inspire you, so I dropped it.

[senorsheep]

I found that a lot of women on eHarmony were really bad about responding in a timely manner, or at all.

Hmmm, I've had the opposite experience - most of them seem to think I'm moving too slowly. I've been dropped for failing to respond within three days - during the week, even! I'm not on there every day; some of the expectations out there are just nuts.

[senorsheep]

JudeBaldo says:

As a sociological experiment, I find online dating really interesting. I've met enough people I respected actually "find love" on dating sites that there maybe something to them. I guess in the end it is just a piece of media used to connect two parties who are simultaneously buyers and sellers.

[Wonderboy]

I've been dropped for failing to respond within three centimeters.

Fixed!

Ah, who am I kidding. That didn't work...

[senorsheep]

Hmmm, I've had the opposite experience - most of them seem to think I'm moving too slowly. I've been dropped for failing to respond within three days - during the week, even! I'm not on there every day; some of the expectations out there are just nuts.

B-Fly says:

Yeah, since I met Beth and got out of the online dating game, it seems that online dating has moved in the direction of chat/tweet/text protocols where people expect to talk back and forth in close to real time. I'm very glad that wasn't the case when I was online. On J-Date, I was most successful gauging my compatibility with women who were interested in exchanging the equivalent of several five-paragraph essays over the course of a week or two before we moved on to the first phone call to set up a date. (Yes, I'm sure you're all shocked.)

Also, I think you'll probably find that a decent share of the apparent super-hotties will turn out to be normal looking girls who did a good job picking out a few pictures where they looked super hot. Nothing wrong with that, but be prepared and don't select anyone on their picture alone.

[heyelander]

i like the new av