Tuesday, November 3, 2015

MY ONLINE DATING TRIALS CONTINUED

I know that I haven’t been taking the online dating thing completely seriously.  But at least I’m trying it out.  My curiosity got the best of me and I decided to start my free trial earlier than my plan.  I just had to find out if the guy I winked back at and then accidentally “favorited” was the one who emailed me right afterward.

Good news…I had found a 7-day free trial online instead of the 3-day one they sent me in an email.  Cool.  Now I had full use of all the features for a week and a little more time to monkey with the site before I had to decide if I want to pay for a subscription. 

Bad news…My “favorite” guy didn’t write me.  But 5 others did, three of which were out of state, which made no sense to me.  Out of those 5 emails, 4 of them all sounded totally like standard form letters; none of them mentioned anything about my profile nor asked me anything about myself.  

One email simply said, “interested are you”.  No kidding, that’s all it said.  No caps, no punctuation, not even a complete sentence.  Wow.  And he was one of the two that was from my state!  

While I was giving the polite “no thanks” system-generated reply to all these guys, I got a notification telling me that Favorite Guy has just favorited me too.  No email though.  Hmmm.  Is he thinking that since I favorited him first that I should email first?  Mine was an accident.  There’s no way he accidentally favorited me too.  

Then one more email popped up.  Still not Favorite Guy.  This one was asking if I wouldn’t mind looking at his profile and telling him why none of the women he’s emailed have emailed him back, and is there something wrong with his profile.   

Really?  I would have been very offended had his photo not looked like a cross between Einstein and Charles Manson.  I didn’t bother responding.

I found out it’s a lot of work using an online dating site.  You spend a lot of time reading profiles and checking to see who winked at you or who looked at your profile. 

And then you have to rate your daily matches and you don’t get more until you do.  I know it’s all designed to pique your curiosity and entice you to initiate contact or respond to emails, but I’m not sure this is the way I want to go about finding a guy.

I decided to be more proactive at this since I had a free trial, so I found two men whose profiles I really liked and who I was physically attracted to.  I winked at both and emailed both.  After 5 days neither one of them winked nor emailed back, and only one of them viewed my profile.  

This time I really was offended.  One of them didn’t even view my profile!  Why not?  Wasn’t he even curious? Was he getting so many emails from other women, or was he sending out so many emails that he didn’t have time to look at mine?  And for both of them not to even reply, not to even send back the system-generated “no thanks” was just rude.  

"Favorite" Guy hid his profile without ever emailing me.  Now I wish I had emailed him.  He's either involved with someone nor or he's decided to take a break.  

I let the free trial run for 5 days and then I canceled it so that I could be sure they wouldn’t start the paid subscription package I selected.  Because I know I’m not ready for this.  I’m still not interested in actually going out on dates. 

Baby steps.  I’ve been taking baby steps all year, preparing myself in little ways that are opening me up to looking for a new relationship.  It’s been a slow process but I can feel myself getting there.  

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