email & dating (or lack thereof)

I'm breathing a sigh of relief. As I figured, I'm happy to report there's nothing unexpected, crazy, or frustrating waiting for me in my work email account that I couldn't bring myself to open up earlier today. Now tomorrow, who knows? Heh!

Another thing while I'm speaking of email. Around valentine's day I had at least two people suggest online dating to me. I also personally know at least 3 couples off the top of my head who met that way. A long time ago I had done the quiz at eharmony but never paid to join, and didn't really feel like I was in a place to follow up. Same for Match.com.

So I let myself get persuaded by friends and the ads. I couldn't figure out a way to re-take the eharmony test. It had been so long since I set it up, I figured some things would be static, but others may have changed. So using a different email address I took the 8-million question test. And then I don't know what came over me, I "joined" so I might actually be able to view photos and talk to folks (even though they periodically have their free communication weekends).

Well. I just can't keep up with these people. Everyday there are new emails about "learn more about your match so-and-so". Uh, excuse me, I haven't even read through the first 40 profiles you've sent me, what makes you think I'm going to look at these. Now of course there's also an ego thing wrapped up in this because many of these people "close" the match for whatever reason. Often because they think you're too far away. At this point I'm not even looking at that screen. Whatever the reason they've decided not to learn more about me, so why try to convince them to reconsider.

The problem when you try to be honest about the role faith plays in your life when answering the questionnaire, is then they try to match you with the same people who left the sinner's prayer pamphlet on my door today. Yeah, we've got some things in common, but not necessarily the best "match." Eharmony does have a scale where you can click to what extent you're interested in someone. That's supposed to get figured into how they suggest future matches. I'm not so sure it's working.

There were actually a couple people not too far from me that seemed like there could be potential. But one is pursuing another relationship. I suspect a lot of the others I've been matched with are like me... have the profile and get sent a match, but haven't paid to be able to communicate. I guess I'll find out more if I ever try to communicate with someone. The last I checked, only one person had wanted some additional communication. But if I remember correctly they were in another state (not an insurmountable obstacle, but it does complicate things), but I also just wasn't sure there was a strong enough fit on paper to consider pursuing it.

Having made it a month past Valentine's day, some of the pressure I felt around being single has faded, as it always does. So do I keep the membership a bit longer and actually try to make use of it, or just try to get out and about more around here? Both? While I'm fine on my own, I can't deny that sometimes I really miss what it was like to be in a relationship when I was with J and when I was with S.

Yeah, here are the current stats.
Out of 17 men I decided were maybe interesting enough to think about contacting, there are 6 left who haven't closed the match. There are 89 that decided to close the match before I could ever look at them. There are 109, yessirree, 109, one-HUNDRED plus nine, "new matches" waiting for me to look at them. Ummm yeah, in all my free time. These are from all over the country. I think there's a "don't match me" option. Maybe I need to find that and click it until I have time to wade through the ones they already sent.

On the positive side if you add 89 + 109 + 17, that's about 215 people out there so far that eharmony formulas think could be a mutual match with me. So I guess you never know what might happen.