online dating
 

everyone in my office raves about eharmony and match.com. what are yalls felling on online dating?
I have my own opinion, but i don't want to share it yet.

http://www.adultfriendfinder.com

-Rudey

I had a friend meet a guy online.. dont remember how exactly now.. they talked for a bit then met in person since he lived around the area.. she was all safe about it..

well they ended up dating.. now they are married.. I dont know if i would do it personally but i guess it works for some..

I think online dating has the stigma personal-adds do. LOSERS! lol.

That doesn't make it a bad thing. You probably have the same odds of meeting someone good as you do in the real world, keep in mind that most relationships fail right?

And if they fail we feel compelled to blame something?

So in this case you will just blame the fact you met them online . . .

And in actuality you have more of a chance of meeting someone interesting because . . well . . you are trying to meet people lol.

I would imagine it will work fine in meeting new people as long as you aren't one of those people that put the whole "I expect to get married from every relationship" pressure on things.

Also, america is getting lonelier, it may actually be harder to meet people today in person if only becasue the media has made us scared of each other. Stories that 20 years ago would have sounded like a great way to pick someone up sound stalkerish to us now.

Personally I always check out http://www.gorgeous-bisexual-women-t...irlfriends.com

This is extremely true. I don't know that worse things are necessarily happening...some terrible things happened in my grandparents' day too...we are just more aware of all the things that can go wrong.

I guess it's not a bad idea for people who have a hard time meeting others. I don't really get it, though, because it's not so hard to meet people when you're out and about.

I personally wouldn't do it, because I wouldn't want to waste time if there was no physical attraction, which you can't know until you meet someone in person.

I have mixed feelings about it. I thought it was a dumb idea, paying to meet people who you may never actually see, but there are two women in my office who rave about it. However, neither of them have actually come face to face with their online dates....
Its not my cup of tea, but I am begining to understand why its so popular especially for people who are older, divorced, widowed or have kids and can't get out.

My boss has done it few times and is now with a man that she met over a year ago. She has had good luck with it

ITs the same exact thing as a Single's Events service, and the same thing as going to a bar that is a single's place.

In fact you can actually get more dialogue before going on a date with them.

Its just a way of maximizing your chances of meeting as many people as possible.

Personally though I haven't done it, it looks pretty safe to me, but I will be momentarily contrite if you get hacked up by your date and burried under the house :)

I know a lady who met a man over the Internet and married him. It was all a pretty fast deal, and they're not a very good match at all...they've got absolutely nothing in common! I think it's just like anything else...online dating is like regular dating, you have to make sure you're compatible, only I guess sometimes it's a little easier since you can kind of hide behind the computer screen.

That's right! I remember how we met! ;)

Last year, I was asked by the entertainment editor for our newspaper to do a review of online dating services. They're all creepy, even though I met my last boyfriend while doing the research for that article (I met him so that I could write about him...unfortunately we hit it off...but then we broke up because he has a Batman phobia.)

My advice? Stay away from them.

Summer after high school I worked in a doctor's office and one of the nurses got married to this guy she met over the internet. It was the time when the whole internet chatting thing was starting off so everyone in the office was talking about it. To top it off the guy was from England and he flew out to Boston so they could not get married but meet for the first time!

I am internet dating now. I am using JDate and Eharmony. I have many men, and the ones I hear from the most are the ones I have the most in common with. I've met people from there who know some of the same people I know and grew up with. It's been fun and interesting e-mailing and keeping up with them. Have'nt had a serious relationship with anyone from internet dating YET though. Internet dating did start out with a stigma, but no longer does. It does not mean you are a loser, but a way to find people with common interests.

see i don't know if i would actually pay. i was on match.com for a while but never paid so everyone had to contact me and i couldn't contact anyone.
i met someone via that and we dated but the whole thing blew up in my face and we no longer speak.

i have met two of my good guy friends online on those personal sites. i love them like brothers.

yahoo personals was bookmarked for a while... until i met a complete psycho.

needless to say... i have had pretty bad luck.

I'm not into the online thing, but if it works for others then whatever. I'd just rather meet guys the regular way. :)

More online dating fun!

So after reading this thread I decided to check out eharmony cuz i was bored/sick on a friday night.

That personality profile took FOREVER. and some of the things listed i am not quite sure i would want someone to be reading about right away. that takes the whole fun out of meeting someone in person without knowing anything. you won't have much to talk about if the person already knows all your personality quirks and hobbies.
Oh well.

So anyway, I can't get very far without paying, and it's kind of expensive too. And initially i don't get any matches. fine whatever.
The next day my spam folder is full of "you have a match" emails. So there are four guys there.
One was a guy passionate about hunting and worked in retail.
One was on a debate team, enjoyed politics (I hate politics) and was passionate about chess (woo hoo...)
One was 29 with a 2 year old daughter (alright, where's the momma)
And the other was a ballet dancer. Seriously.

I closed my membership. :)
The sad thing is that my boss who is 27 wants to try online dating cuz he doesn't have the time to actually meet girls in person. Yeah I told him these stories... probably shouldn't have.

i met my boyfriend online. we met on a messageboard that was populated by people who went to ncsu (i currently go there, he graduated from ncsu and now goes to grad school in atlanta).

we just started talking one day because i had imed him to see what middle school he went to and if he knew some of the people that i knew.

anyway, we then started talking on instant messanger more often. we actually realized that we knew a lot of the same people. he was good friends with my best friends older brother when they were in highschool, and was also friends with my roommates at the time.

then after a year of talking to each other on instant messanger we started talking on the phone all night to each other. then last year during thanksgiving he came up and stayed with me for a couple of days and that was the first time we had met face to face. we then saw each other during christmas, and for the last year have alternated traveling to see each other. now i am planning on moving down to atlanta over the summer to go to georgia tech for grad school

one thing, i have troubles admitting to people that we met online. he has no problems telling people how we met...but i usually tell people that we met once or twice a long time ago and then remet online (this is what i told my mom). i dont know why.....i think i am afraid of people instantly labeling me as a loser.

i do have to say....we only would have gotten this far because we knew a lot of the same people. i probably would have never met him if he was not such good friends with my best friends older brother. but because they were, i felt a lot safer talking to him and meeting him

Ok, so what about if you met someone in person, but they live so far away that you won't ever see them or really talk to them unless it's online? Is this nuts and what would guys say is the possibility of it working for people who can deal well with long distance relationships?

i started to write a response.....but it was really long, so i pmed you instead

Knowing you gorgeous, its just another desperate way to make yourself unhappy ;)

I have little doubt there are good partners close to home . . . .

Thanks James... I think you're really the only one who knows exactly what I'm talking about.

New Jersey is closer than Australia, by the way. :rolleyes:

online dating is tricky...

i tried it out this past holiday season cuz i was bored....i met a guy who's profile seemed perfect - everything i wanted, same interests - then i met him, had no spark, nothing...
I went on 3 dates with him to give him a chance, but nope.
Since then, I've deleted my profile - I would never pay for anything anyway.

I've found most of em just want sex, and well I can get that elsewhere.

My sorority sister met some guy off the net - they've been married a couple years now.

Another one just met her boyfriend a while ago - they're moving in together this summer.

I guess to each their own!

I did it once, would not recommend. Lived about 500 miles (almost on the dot) away. She was down in Beaumont, TX. I was up in the Oklahoma City area. We met at a CKI divisional event that I attended. I did go down at least once a month while we were an item. It had its ups and downs. Was a very interesting relationship. Would have probably been something very serious had it been local. It sucked though being so far away, so 3 months into it, we decided that it wasn't a good idea.

On the other hand, my younger brother met a girl from Knoxville, Tennessee at a Young Life retreat. They've been together for I think 2 years. She went to school for 2 years at Furman (She's a Chi-O). After making it work for those 2 years, she transferred up to Oklahoma University to be closer to him. She's currently staying with their parents back in Knoxville and he's leaving in a couple of days to go propose to her.

Long distance relationships can work. Most often, they do not. In my opinion, like James said, you can probably find someone just as good close to home. Personally, I don't find it to be worth the trouble. It takes a hell of a committment. Personally, I wouldn't recommend it. I wouldn't presume to tell you what to do here. Just weigh the pros and cons and go with whichever wins out.

one of my pledge sisters has had pretty good luck with jdate. so far none of them have been "the one" but none of them have been wierd or crazy either so she keeps on trying.

I've used Jdate before. It's not too bad. I've met many interesting people through it.

I joined match.com and my best matches are all white guys in their 50s. :(

Not that I wouldn't date white people or even someone outside of my age range, but on the internet, it's very hard to determine if a white guy or old guy is only sending me a message because I'm his fetish.

Ya know?

That's why I generally stick to my own age range (or slightly above) and race, when it comes to internet dating.

i hear you. i had a similar experience with match.com - my matches were, for the most part, older, divorced, white men who may or may not have fetishes.

but from my understanding of match.com and your profile options, were you selecting your (racial and age) preferences to match potential mates? in other words, if you left the race and age categories very broad, did you select potential matches' profiles to reflect the same, or specifically men who are into black men?

if anything, that's one way to judge if its a fetish thing or not. but you probably knew that, youre a smart guy. ;)

as to MY feelings about internet dating?

ive tried different sites and come up with dismal results. i dont find anything wrong with finding dates online and wouldnt judge anyone for it. for clarification, are we including social networking sites under "internet dating?"

if anything i feel like dating sites don't attract a certain "type" of person. most Americans date, right? it has wide appeal and i would expect the populations of these sites to be microcosms of who's "out there" in the dating world. so finding "the one," IMO, will be more or less the same online as it would be IRL.

See, a friend of mine in California highly recommended POF so I tried it out. I swear all the guys in my age range on there from my area are total bottom feeders. However, on match.com, the first profile that came up as being a 100% match for me? My ex-husband. Hah! On paper, sure. In reality, no way!

Was the pun between "Plenty of Fish" and "bottom-feeder" intended? :)

I've seen stuff like that happen.

This is the first guy I've had any luck with off of POF

Yep!

I think online dating is just as difficult as meeting someone offline. Earlier, I mentioned one of the problems I had on eharmony. Now, I think it just boils down to being in the right place at the right time.