What's wrong with people? Eharmony

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-03-2003
What's wrong with people? Eharmony
4
Mon, 01-24-2005 - 1:07pm

I'm recently divorced and most of my girlfriends who I used to go out with have either moved away or gotten married and don't go out any more. I thought I'd give OLD a try. A friend had success with eharmony so I thought I'd give it a shot and signed up for a three month deal. I won't be renewing.

At first, they were sending me at least 5 guys a day. I hate how eharmony picks the age range they think you should have. I'm not interested in dating guys 10 years older than me! Plus, I'm not looking for anyone who has kids and this is indicated in my preferences. Yet, one out of every three guys mentions their kids in their descriptions. I like kids, I just want my own some day.

Then there are the hit and runs. I'll get a request for communication and we'll get to open communication and we'll even exchange personal email addresses and then boom...they disappear. Nice polite banter...and then nothing. Not even a "hey, I'm not interested email." Just disappear. They don't even close me out or put me on hold. I close them out after not hearing from them for two weeks. Then there are the guys..."Hey, you look great...let's get to know each other better...when are you available." I write back briefly and say okay and then nothing. Why ask if you have no intention of going out? I close them out too after not hearing from them. I'm starting to believe the "kid in the candy store" theory. Something better or more exciting comes along and they just plain leave you in the dark.

It happens in real life too. One guy ran across the parking lot at my grocery store in the rain and knocked on my car window as I was starting to leave. I thought maybe I'd dropped something. He said he was new in town and he'd seen me in the store and introduced himself. He said he was looking to meet new people. I said okay...(he was't ugly) do you have an email address? He pulled out his business card (works for a large corporation here locally) and wrote his personal email address down. I wrote to him and said, "nice to meet you, so what's your story?" And then...you guessed it....NOTHING.

I went recently went on two dates with an eharm guy. I normally wouldn't have been attracted to him, but he was the first one in two months to follow through with a date so I went out with him. I'm still not attracted to him. I wanted to be ...he seems like a good guy and has his life together...but I'm just not attracted to him at all. Crud. Now I have to cut it off somehow. How do you let someone down easy that you've been out with a couple times and that is a good guy, but you are just not feeling the spark for?

Avatar for northwestwanderer
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Mon, 01-24-2005 - 1:19pm

Hi there and welcome to the board...if you read posts here, you'll know you're not alone in your experiences so don't take it personally!

As for your last question, I just had this situation and I emailed him a short note to say I'd enjoyed meeting and spending time with him but after further thought I didn't feel the two of us were a match. Of course, I wouldn't send that unless he actually calls or emails and asks you out again.

Sheri

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-03-2003
Mon, 01-24-2005 - 4:00pm

Thanks for the reply.

I poked around a little here before I posted, but I just found your OLD website and I see that I must be living in a graveyard because there sure are a lot of ghosts around eharm.

This was a new concept to me and I'm surprised how acceptable it seems to be around OLD. If I were to request communication which is I guess the equivalent to a "wink" on Match and then never heard anything back, then great...I understand if they aren't interested and don't respond. However, these are all guys that started the deal with me. I guess I was hoping eharm would be different since it's a little more expensive than the other sites since your paying for a personality match. Why pay for a personality match, start communication with the person and then drop it like a hot potato? I mean, don't people sign up for eharm more for a relationship than a quickie hook-up primarly?

If you're gonna waste my time getting to know me and then change your mind (no foul there), it's just common human decency to say "hey, I'm just not feeling a chemistry here." Is that so hard? I cut 'em off after a couple days of no replies and close them out of my match list. There was one eharm guy who wrote back and forth with me through work email every work day for a month. Finally, he asked me on a Friday morning to go out that weekend. He said he was in a meeting and would email me later that day to set up the date. I sat at work all day, put off other weekend offers waiting for his email and it never came. I went home and later that night I closed the match when I saw he hadn't tried to contact me through eharmony either. He sent me a nasty gram on Monday and said he thought I cut him off too soon, that he was too busy to write me back that day. Well, too bad. It would have taken him a minute to drop me a line. At least I wrote to tell him that.

Avatar for northwestwanderer
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Mon, 01-24-2005 - 4:07pm

Well, my feeling is that you can spend a lot of time and energy getting upset because people don't do the things they "should" do, or you can accept that this is going to happen, that is how that particular person is, and just let it go. That's not to say I don't get frustrated from time to time, but I've found it works best to just say "oh well, next!"

Sheri

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-12-2003
Mon, 01-24-2005 - 4:21pm

Bottom line: ghosting is a fact of DATING, not OLD. I've had plenty of first dates that just disappeared into thin air, and not one of them had anything to do with OLD.

This again gets back to the whole realm of expectations. When you expect someone to act as you do, you're likely setting yourself up for a hard fall (lesson learned by the myriad of bumps and bruises I've received over the years)......especially considering a 'personality profile' is nothing more than a bunch of answered questions and anyone who's done 2 or 5 of them can figure out what the 'right' answers are, so until you actually have met the person face to face on several consistent, consecutive occasions, it's just unrealistic to expect a whole lot from them.

Michelle

Michelle

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