OLD-YIKES!!!!
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OLD-YIKES!!!!
| Fri, 07-27-2007 - 10:05am |
Ok, so I've been snooping on match.com for guys in my area. I haven't made a profile or anything, just looking. Ummmm....so far not impressed! I typed in the age group (35-45) and within 20 miles of my zip code. I live in Orange County so there are lots of guys around here. It pops up 32 guys to look at. I would have to say that out of the 32, I liked maybe 2! Is this normal??? Am I being way too picky? If you join do you get more choices? Are they better in person? I promise you, I'm not looking at looks alone, although for something like this, that's definately the first thing that will catch my eye. It seems like they're profiles are all the same. What happens if you join and you get contacted by men you have no desire to meet. Has anyone tried another online service like e-harmony, or are they all about the same?

2 of 32? That was about my expereince. And sometimes they are not really looking. Just want to occupy some girl's heart. I only really dated one match guy and he lied about his alcoholism. He said he was an occasional drinker. Naiively, I thought, okay, that ground is covered and started dating him. He was an abusive messed-up lush. What a disaster. So be careful.
This is not to say that there are not wonderful men OLD. My best friend is almost 3 years with a man she met OLD. He's a wonderful guy and they adore eachother. She just went to Greece to meet his family, so I think they are getting pretty serious now.
I suggest meeting early on in a public place, sans alcohol. Don't get all hot and bothered with a lot of on-line chat, then you can fall for an illusion, a combination of your ideals and projections and his selective introductions. So meet early and take it slowly.
Good luck. OLD can be a lot of fun, it is a "game" but it's a good way to meet folks.
Another thing that helped me was a girlfriend who also OLD in my area, she had gone out with some of the guys or chatted with them, so I could get her perspective. She and I in the end had the scoop on most of the available OLD guys in our area. It's a pretty small town here.
OMG - I could have written your post!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is so normal for OLD. I had many days of turning on my profile - and then getting discouraged at what was on sale (love your shopping term by the way) and then shutting the profile off. I went on a few dating binges and dated a lot of ones that just were not a match and got really frustrated. And then I took a long long break from OLD. Then I learned patience - put up my profile, stayed busy with other stuff and weeded out the bad ones and had some fun dating a few people. Now I am dating someone I really like and it is going well. We do a lot of the same activities and even have a few mutual acquaintances - but if it wasn't for match we would not have met.
Good luck - hope you stick around and keep posting here - keep us posted, too.
It was the same way here with me. Not a tiny city, but not a big metropolis, either. (about 170,000 population- last time I paid attention)
And I found the same faces for months at a time, and not but 2 or 3 that I might be interested in meeting. It was discouraging that I liked men who were well-groomed and clean... and it seemed like no one around here online ever owned a razor! All the pics were of men with beards or scraggly facial hair and all looked like sterotypical country hicks in appearance. While they might be perfectly nice men- I'm just not attracted to the scraggly look, and so they wouldn't even get in the front door!
All the more reason, IMO- to have a few pics online- and with various looks. Casual, dressy, posed and snapshot... and for the men- with facial hair and without, if that is a look that might change. But PLEASE... get a GOOD picture, and be CLEAN!! I just don't think that is asking for too much! But apparently in the OLD world, it can be.
In the past, I've done just what West did. I'd be online for a short while, just to scope things out. Then I'd turn off my profile and take a break. There was just no reason to stay "on" all the time when the crowd didn't change.
You shouldn't feel bad about being picky! You SHOULD be picky!!! You shouldn't ever settle for 'just good enough' out of a selection range that you didn't like. Be patient and wait. You never know when one day a new person might sign in with a new profile- and he might be the match you're looking for!
As for other services, I've used yahoo personals (and found many of the very same faces locally) and dabbled with PerfectMatch (I think that is what it was called) and eHarmony but never paid for the full services of either one. I just dont' like the matching services where I can't have the ability to choose on my own as well. While I think there might be something about the personality matching and not visual... I still like to SEE what I'm getting into first. But that's just me.
I've also seen some good profiles on a place that I think was called American Singles or something like that. I know I spotted my Hiker using match.com and American singles, and we met through match.
I've never tried POF or craigslist.
Dating is such a wading game (as well as waiting game!)- but you have to sort through the people and NOT SETTLE for someone who is just 'close enough'.
~shrimpy
~shrimpy
"A man who wants something will find a way; a man who doesn't will find an excuse." ~Stephen Dolley Jr.
~<
Oh good...I thought you guys were going to start throwing fruit at me for being picky before I even signed up! Please tell me there are more then 32 guys to choose from. I mean...come'on!
Ugh!!! Why can't the man of my dreams just march into my office and sweep me off my feet? That can happen, right?
One mistake I made on Match was on the education thing.
I was interested in dataing guys with any college at all, but when I clicked on that it wouldn't find guys with graduate degrees too, I had to click a few boxes to include all the categories.
Make sure you do a few searhces with different and multiple criteria checked and experiment to see what the thresholds are for the searches.
Also, try increasing the radius a little bit, maybe you are excludin some suburbs that there might be men in.
Also, be wary of pictures, remember guys really can be clueless and some perfectly nice guys have awful pictures up even though they may bee handsome, they don't have a girl around picking their tie and sweater out, so they have their picture from deer camp up.
If you are feeling just flirty and fun, tey winking at some classy men from far away. I struck up some great conversations with men when there was no chance of dating, just email though match exchanged. The attention felt good even though it was dead end. You can also be candid with these guys since you won't ever be dating them, asking advice about approaching other guys local to you. Just some ideas...
Good luck!
Don't ever waste your money on eharmony, the worst of the bunch! I have been a paid member of every site there is with disasterious results. My advice, stick to the free sites like Plenty of fish and okcupid. You'll get the same results without the financial losses.
Good luck and be careful.
Most of us have had the most luck with match, simply because it's a numbers game. Being picky is a GOOD thing, since you will have to weed people out, one by one.
For me, eHarmony is way too slow going. I did it for about three months, and never found anyone I wanted to meet, but I was turned off by the whole process with that site.
I also tried a bunch of others, but in my very rural area, the guys who were on match were on the other sites as well, and using more than one just didn't make sense.
Good luck, and hang in there- it takes time!
Moody, glad to be out of that particular arena
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