Metablog

Online dating has been frustrating for me. I’ve been on OKCupid since last August, ten months ago, and I’ve only gotten two dates out of it. I’ve sent out dozens of messages, and I’ve only gotten responses to maybe 20%. Some of the people with the most promising profiles turned out not to be interested. And I have received only four messages from people I didn’t contact first. So it hasn’t been completely bare, but don’t people typically have more activity than that? Even when I haven’t been doing anything on the site, I regularly log in so that they can see that I’m still active. I have some good, objective reasons to believe that my profile doesn’t have anything seriously wrong with it, though of course there’s always room for improvement.

I wonder if part of my problem is that people just tend to be really picky. I think that the people I’d be interested in would be especially picky. Maybe I’m underestimating how picky most other people are, and so my expectations for success are too high. (Short-term success, for me, would be ongoing conversations with other interesting users leading to around a date per month on average.) Do I need to be less picky to get there? Would I have a much better chance of finding a long-term partner if I were less picky about first dates?

And I’m pretty sure that part of my problem is that I find it hard to get a good idea about someone, to the point where I can actually feel attracted to them, online. On the two dates I’ve actually had, it just ended up feeling weird and flat. I imagine this is unavoidable. You just have to spend time with someone before those feelings can start, and e-mail conversation, especially through a dating site, is a slow, slow process. And then, how long do you need to try to make conversation before you ask someone on a date? Would I have better luck if I sent out first e-mails suggesting a date (along with the usual greeting and conversation starter), instead of e-mails just trying to get a conversation going?

It takes so much energy, and it’s discouraging when you feel like the women don’t have to put as much energy in. I’ve heard a lot of success stories, or at least “success-getting-dates” stories. I’m not one of them.

Filed under Human nature, Personal thoughts, Social issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.