A Girl...

I haven't been on a date that wasn't internet-related since 1997. Although I never used eHarmony, because I don't fit their profile (meaning that I filled out the survey and there wasn't A Single Match.)

Online dating is a numbers game - people initiate contact (generally the guys, although I used to always initiate contact, I was never one for The Rules) in an almost mass-style. Not that you're not a Unique and Special Flower, but chances are lawyer Mark saw New Meat and pounced. You sort of develop a sixth sense the longer that you do it (and learn to ask "is that picture recent?")

There's nothing scientific about it - ten years of online dating taught me that most people don't know themselves well enough to fill out a 10-question profile, much less a 436-question one. Everyone always "loves the theatre" and "long walks on the beach" but you ask them what the last play they saw and it was their high school production of "Our Town."

Anyway, everyone knows threesomes are for Craigslist, not eHarmony!

Man, I have no idea how single people do it. My "internet dating" was limited to going on one date with a guy on Craigslist who posted a M4F ad, and unfortunately he was several inches shorter than he claimed and weighed a good 20 pounds less than I did (and at the time, I was really tiny) so there was just no chemistry. Dan's and my relationship developed over the internets but it wasn't through any sort of online dating situation.

I agree with the Slackmistress, though, from what I know of the process (mostly gleaned from watching my friend Julie use JDate, Craigslist, Match and eHarmony), it's a numbers game. Throw enough poo out there and eventually it will stick to something.

Not that people who use those sites are poo-flinging monkeys or anything. Don't hunt me down and kill me, non-poo-flingers!

It was my idea that we go rappelling on our honeymoon. John rolled his eyes; we'd already done so much (liked leared to scuba dive on the Great Barrier Reef!), why was this necessary? But I insisted and pouted and cajoled and eventually won him over.

And I regretted every inch of my descent. I have never been so effing terrified in my life. I was glad I did it though. In the way everyone's glad to have stared a fear down and won. But when will I learn? I am not a Navy SEAL. I am not a Special Ops Marine. Walks on the beach and a glass of wine at sunset should really suffice. Sheesh.

Never tried it and don't want to... Oh Leah, my one true love and I laughed along with you. I KNOW that we would not be matched up by a similar system but how brave of you to do it, just for fun. I'd be terrified to. I know that there are many more "Marc"s out there who never even gave your love a chance, and, honestly... yay for Simon, eh? That was a fantastic post. Thank you for sharing it, so eloquently and humourously.

We met playing kickball. (In a league, not just crashing some group of 5th graders...) Jeff still refers to me as the best $63 he ever spent, unless we're fighting, in which case I sometimes hear, "At least I got a t-shirt." I can't handle internet dating, though I do like seeing who from my high school is on Match, and exactly what they choose to say about themselves.

(And he is usually the one to come up with the madcap shenanigans -- unless we are in Key West, because I can always think of a way that surely will get us to Cuba this time.)

Well, I guess I can't really say I'm single anymore, but like all single women I really enjoyed standing out on the street wearing one of those cardboard signs around my neck stating "Have vag, will entertain offers." You have no idea how many dates I got that way. I was whirling like a dervish. This is how the goblinous, non-relationshiped generally find love in modern society.

I met my current beau because he read my old, more heavily traffic-ed blog. It's sweet in a stalkerish way and he really has a thing for goblins.

Hi Leah, I'm not a long-time reader, but I am a first-time poster. Actually, I don't even remember how I stumbled upon your blog, but whatever, so anyway, about that eHarmony . . . was it really 436 questions? Wait -- yes, I think I do recall it taking more than an hour to fill out. And I only did it because it promised to then tell me about the kind of guy I was looking out for.

Apparently, my ideal guy is a soft-spoken, church-theatre group leader who's in love with beautifying the community by planting flowers. Needless to say, I did not let my profile go public. No offense to group leaders or horticulturalists, but that just scared me a little bit and I was afraid of the emails that could potentially enter my mailbox.

Anyway, so that's my story. I do still get those pesky 3-for-1 month eHarmony spam emails regularly though . . . lucky me.

Yes, it was actually 436 questions (taken from their website), although a lot of them were like "Please check which of the following apply to you" followed by a list of fifty attributes. It took a while, yes, but SURVEY! ALL ABOUT ME! FUN!

The kind of instant pouncing/rejecting that was going on was just...depressing? painful? I don't know what exactly, but I'm glad I didn't have to do it for real. I'm not a terribly self-conscious and sensitive person when it comes to things like this (i.e., I don't NEED the acceptance of strangers), but even I felt a little sad and deflated to see that I was so easily brushed off by people who had no idea who I really was (I didn't fill out more than the basic profile and I didn't write any cute blurbs about myself or post a photo). All this and I already have a frickin' boyfriend!

Anyway, on-paper "compatibility" is a great place to start (and is a great foundation for long-term success), but in the end, chemistry has an awful lot to do with love and that's hard to measure with a survey, no matter how long it is.

I'm the freak here, because online dating did work for us. I met my guy on match.com six years ago, he lived in Seattle I live in California--He worked at Microsoft, quit his job, sold his house and came here to me and my then two year old son. We're tying the knot this November. it would have happened six years ago if I wasn't a tad bit afraid of commitment. I know it's usally the guy...but I'm odd like that.

I have three friends who met and are married either off of Eharmony or Match.com. Trust me there's a lot of ugly and scary to weed through on those things.

Michele - there's a lot of ugly and scary to weed through IRL, too. I know a ton of people who have gotten married/have LTR through Internet Dating. I think it's somewhat common now.

We met the old-fashioned way in college, but I've seen plenty of friends struggle with finding someone in their late-20s... I think it's perfectly acceptable to try an online dating service.

And Leah, we've been joking around about putting our profiles up just to see if we'd be matched up too, and we're married! :)

"able to squeeze in to small spaces" Ha!
You're my favourite.

another random/semi-long term reader, first time poster:

so, i have ALWAYS wanted to do the e-harmony thing! every time i see the commercial i think it would be great to see if it would match me and my husband up and we've contemplated it many times. my kudos for enacting said wonderful plan! i always thought it wouldn't match us, and your story tells me that is probably the case! man, is that the one dr. phil is promoting these days? if you could pick up a hunk or burning love like him on there...oh and i met the hubs online, but not thru a dating site...i'm old school '97 from when the chat room meeting was paramount!

You never cease to entertain me. Funny, funny girl. YOU CRACK ME UP!

We met through work - snooze, I know - and I have no idea if I had to start dating again where I would meet men (do men like the cute dog accessory section of Old Navy? Cheese shops? My apartment? No? Well, then would just DIE ALONE...) but I have to say that I met some of my most bestest friends ever online, and while there were no surveys, I very much am in favor of any system which allows people to get to know one another from the confort of their own homes.

Mike suggested we do this. I know there's no way we'll be deemed compatible, but I'm not sure if Mike knows that, so I think I'll keep him in the dark a bit longer ;)

I would totally do it. When I was way younger - as in before ONLINE DATING SERVICES, i tried an in person dating service. I met my beloved at my work and not through the dating service. At the time I was working in an almost all female office, out of school, and had no idea on where to meet single 20-something dudes. Alas, work at a university and you have grad students! Yay for nerds working on their PhDs! I did have a couple of ok and one decent date before meeting my now husband, more than 11, 11 years ago. *dies*

My point being, is it difficult to meet people that want to date or mate for more than one night. Unless maybe you work in a prison.

"Sidebar to single people: If you like someone, just tell him/her, okay?"

Far easier said than done, my dear. At least for me anyway

My husband and I met at work. I pined after him but he showed no reciprocal interest until one morning I told him that I had a pretty good coffee date the night before with someone I had met on LavaLife. I guess that turned on a light for him or something because he asked me out two days later and the rest is history.

I‘ve been tempted to sign up to EHarmony too, just to see who they’d match me with.

having tried on-line and having had a few (ok, many) dates and one long-term (9 months, recently ended) i'll say it's not bad, and yes, there are lots of crazies to weed thru. and i know people who have good marriages and they met online.

my best relationships, however, came from real-life meetings.

what i've noticed about on-line dating, especially for people older than 35, is that it's become a very quick-to-judge thing, thanks to two factors. first is a time thing -- people at my age don't want to allow relationships to develop and feel they need to make quick judgements because they don't want to "waste time" on someone who may not be a good fit. understandable, i guess (especially for women who feel under the gun to have kids), but i think it leads to being too superficially harsh.

related is my "aquarium theory" (copyright, me), which follows form the "fish in the sea" adage. yes, there are lots of fish in the sea. but in the pre-interweb days you'd have to go out and work to find your catch. now it's like going to your home aquarium...just turn on the computer and there are the fish, ready for you to view.

combine time with aquarium and you have people all too willing to be very quick to decide because they know the supply will be refreshed every week.

i'm realizing it's best to just get involved in things that draw like-minded folks...music, athletics, cooking classes, whatever interests you. friends should be a good source also...good friends should match-make for each other.

and yeah...the "if you like someone, tell them" thing? yes, if only everyone were that brave or that open. too many folks seem to think playing it cool is better. bleh. can't love if you don't risk, and there's nothing uncool about being open about your desires.

so, yeah, in the words of my friend ray, just say hi, and if after that you like the person, just say "i like you".

Recently I signed up for a midget dating service just to see what would happen and then I felt bad when the little ladies started trying to reach me.

@will: because they had to stand on their tiptoes?

@will & the slackmistress: I like the two of you commenting on messages you leave on other people's blogs (OPB - you down with OPB? yea you know me). so cute

@bobi: JB and I met online (msn chat rooms) in '97, too, back when teh intarwebs were real scary and stuff. Imagine the horror of my family when I moved from WA to NYC to be with him. Not unsurprisingly they barely blink an eye lo these 10 years later (8 yrs married)

'good at math'. Gotta say, slightly offensive.

Maybe just because I suck at math.

I met my boyfriend of 2 and half years through an internet dating site. I had just moved back to the bay after being gone for years and one of my friends recommended it as a way to meet people and get free food. I thought I would give it a try and he was the second person I went on a date with. We have been inseparable ever since. Also, my friend who recommended it is married one of the guys she met on the site.

I tend to think of eHarmony as the devil. For many reasons, but for one, as someone trained in relationship psychology, I can tell you there is no consensus on what constitutes real compatibility, and certainly not as can be measured by questionnaires. Chemistry is impossible to quantify. And as mentioned by someone else, there's a huge problem with range restriction. Take a dimension like humor - have you ever met anyone who didn't say they had a great sense of humor?

On the flip side, as someone who used to look down my nose at the hopelessly unromantic world of online dating, let me warn you that sometimes you can do a free trial at Match as a joke/experiment and meet exactly one person. Who turns out to be perfect for you. And is now your husband of a little over a month.