Ah, the evils of online dating have become abundantly clear to my naive eyes and heart in the past few days. Being socially awkward as a teen and young adult, I did not win the heart of any eligible young lady in the ideal years for matchmaking between men and women - high school and college. As a commentator on one complaint message board about Match.com remarked, he likened finding one's love for life to toy shopping for Christmas, in which if you didn't shop early to get what you want, then the selection later on will be returns and undesirable substitutes to even find any toy left upon the shelf. Other complaints also pointed out these dating sites have a male-female membership ratio of anywhere from 3-1 to 15-1 in favor of men seeking women. If true, it's no wonder I've crapped out gambling with my money for paid memberships in these scam dating sites (I suspect all of them are scamming male customers in one fashion or another). Let's fact facts, gentlemen, as some of the comments at those message boards indicated, higher quality women don't need to date online generally since they can get any man they want in life out in the real world. Only the desperate and undesirable (two categories I also consider myself sometimes) date online seeking out the improbable perfect match. I have come to the conclusion that the only way I'll ever find the right woman is if a just and merciful God drops her into my lap (perhaps literally - wouldn't that make a funny story).
I wasted my time and paid for memberships at three different sites - ChristianMingle.com, Match.com and PlentyofFish.com (the latter sometimes just known as PoF). The first one I joined in hopes of finding another born-again Christian to share my life with. The second one I joined most recently in an attempt to try something different this time. The third was joined (for the second time as with ChristianMingle) to find a broader range of potential women. Now, I'm very particular as to what I want in any woman I'd be willing to marry. The one girl I should've tried harder to get when I was 18, now forever out of my reach seeing that she married another man in 1994, had his two children and then died tragically in a 2004 automobile accident, is obviously not an option in the real world where I must live and loathe my life. One deal breaker aspect is divorce for two reasons. First there are Biblical scriptures prohibiting a divorced woman from remarrying (Matthew 5:32, 19:9, Mark 10:12, Luke 16:18 - the last example clearly saying any man who marries a divorced woman is committing adultery). Second, I refuse to become husband #2 of any woman regardless whether she or her first husband wanted to divorce for whatever reason. I also don't want to become a stepfather to another man's child by marrying his widow, baby momma, or ex-wife. I knew a good Christian gentleman at college who married a divorced woman (his parents and church friends all advised him against the match with that lady from their church) with a son (whom the father claimed was not his), and after a year they divorced leaving him forced to pay child support due to adopting the lad.
Yet it seems that dating sites largely attract women in some of those messed up situations, providing me with choices from among a seemingly endless parade of divorcees who think of their children first if they have any, single mothers of the same stripe and the occasional widow. And the never been married profiles are either women I'm not interested in for marriage or (here's the most painful reality of all) sham profiles put on the site by its managers to entice me to stay and keep looking. This is the subject I will touch upon next.
On Sunday, January 15, 2012, I spotted a promising profile posted on Match.com, a reasonably attractive 34-year-old woman from Bethel, KY with the screen name smilelicking0014. She had the ideal features I seek of blue eyes and black hair, stood 5' 7" and claimed to be slender (I can go for a little meatier woman with curves in fact so long as she's in good shape and takes care of herself). She had no preferences that seemed to disqualify me from consideration, so I e-mailed her the following day after Match.com listed her as a great potential match for me. The next day smilelicking0014's profile was no longer available for me to view and she never answered my e-mail. On that Tuesday I briefly felt crushing despair I liken to being trapped inside a cube-shaped box closing in upon me as I saw my first e-mail on Match being apparently rejected. Some red flags about this profile I noticed on Sunday and ignored out of sheer desperation to end my lonely condition later became clearer when I considered them with aid from the Holy Spirit of God, and I overcame the suicidal despair choking my soul by that evening. First, the photo had a slight resemblance to some actress (won't mention which one, and don't know if it was actually her photo). Second, in the profile the lady claimed she didn't drink alcohol, but the photo appeared to have been taken in some bar (I saw the tap lever behind her listing some beer brand's name in the background). Third, her introductory paragraph was poorly written in terms of grammar and sentence syntax. It almost sounded like the words of someone who didn't speak English as a first language, and kept bringing up luck. This seemed odd for a woman who claimed to hold an associate's degree and worked in marketing/sales. Clear communication seems like a must for anyone in that profession to be effective. Clearly I had been scammed by Match.com's owners. Later I read comments about how they post phony profiles to lure desperate customers in, and have them written by foreign persons. Also the non-paying "members" cannot respond to winks or e-mails from paying members, and the paying members are always highlighted in green on their profile listings with other members shown as potential matches.
The other sad thing about my experiences at these sites are the only women who look up my profile or show interest are usually divorced, and as I said above I cannot date such women since my object is marriage and the Bible prohibits that practice (straight from Jesus' mouth no less and He is God in human form). The few who weren't lived so far away from me that contact and connection would probably be difficult if not impossible for me. And any foreign contact might be a scammer seeking to rob me of money online.
I am more wary to contact another too-good-to-be-true lady on Match, only to have the profile vanish from public view as if she never existed (when that is obviously the answer). I won't even go into the negative commentary I read from other dissatisfied online male daters claiming the women they meet that way are all either "attention whores," psychos or liars with children, etc.
So, I must conclude after two trial periods in online dating one thing - it sucks by being a colossal waste of time.
I wasted my time and paid for memberships at three different sites - ChristianMingle.com, Match.com and PlentyofFish.com (the latter sometimes just known as PoF). The first one I joined in hopes of finding another born-again Christian to share my life with. The second one I joined most recently in an attempt to try something different this time. The third was joined (for the second time as with ChristianMingle) to find a broader range of potential women. Now, I'm very particular as to what I want in any woman I'd be willing to marry. The one girl I should've tried harder to get when I was 18, now forever out of my reach seeing that she married another man in 1994, had his two children and then died tragically in a 2004 automobile accident, is obviously not an option in the real world where I must live and loathe my life. One deal breaker aspect is divorce for two reasons. First there are Biblical scriptures prohibiting a divorced woman from remarrying (Matthew 5:32, 19:9, Mark 10:12, Luke 16:18 - the last example clearly saying any man who marries a divorced woman is committing adultery). Second, I refuse to become husband #2 of any woman regardless whether she or her first husband wanted to divorce for whatever reason. I also don't want to become a stepfather to another man's child by marrying his widow, baby momma, or ex-wife. I knew a good Christian gentleman at college who married a divorced woman (his parents and church friends all advised him against the match with that lady from their church) with a son (whom the father claimed was not his), and after a year they divorced leaving him forced to pay child support due to adopting the lad.
Yet it seems that dating sites largely attract women in some of those messed up situations, providing me with choices from among a seemingly endless parade of divorcees who think of their children first if they have any, single mothers of the same stripe and the occasional widow. And the never been married profiles are either women I'm not interested in for marriage or (here's the most painful reality of all) sham profiles put on the site by its managers to entice me to stay and keep looking. This is the subject I will touch upon next.
On Sunday, January 15, 2012, I spotted a promising profile posted on Match.com, a reasonably attractive 34-year-old woman from Bethel, KY with the screen name smilelicking0014. She had the ideal features I seek of blue eyes and black hair, stood 5' 7" and claimed to be slender (I can go for a little meatier woman with curves in fact so long as she's in good shape and takes care of herself). She had no preferences that seemed to disqualify me from consideration, so I e-mailed her the following day after Match.com listed her as a great potential match for me. The next day smilelicking0014's profile was no longer available for me to view and she never answered my e-mail. On that Tuesday I briefly felt crushing despair I liken to being trapped inside a cube-shaped box closing in upon me as I saw my first e-mail on Match being apparently rejected. Some red flags about this profile I noticed on Sunday and ignored out of sheer desperation to end my lonely condition later became clearer when I considered them with aid from the Holy Spirit of God, and I overcame the suicidal despair choking my soul by that evening. First, the photo had a slight resemblance to some actress (won't mention which one, and don't know if it was actually her photo). Second, in the profile the lady claimed she didn't drink alcohol, but the photo appeared to have been taken in some bar (I saw the tap lever behind her listing some beer brand's name in the background). Third, her introductory paragraph was poorly written in terms of grammar and sentence syntax. It almost sounded like the words of someone who didn't speak English as a first language, and kept bringing up luck. This seemed odd for a woman who claimed to hold an associate's degree and worked in marketing/sales. Clear communication seems like a must for anyone in that profession to be effective. Clearly I had been scammed by Match.com's owners. Later I read comments about how they post phony profiles to lure desperate customers in, and have them written by foreign persons. Also the non-paying "members" cannot respond to winks or e-mails from paying members, and the paying members are always highlighted in green on their profile listings with other members shown as potential matches.
The other sad thing about my experiences at these sites are the only women who look up my profile or show interest are usually divorced, and as I said above I cannot date such women since my object is marriage and the Bible prohibits that practice (straight from Jesus' mouth no less and He is God in human form). The few who weren't lived so far away from me that contact and connection would probably be difficult if not impossible for me. And any foreign contact might be a scammer seeking to rob me of money online.
I am more wary to contact another too-good-to-be-true lady on Match, only to have the profile vanish from public view as if she never existed (when that is obviously the answer). I won't even go into the negative commentary I read from other dissatisfied online male daters claiming the women they meet that way are all either "attention whores," psychos or liars with children, etc.
So, I must conclude after two trial periods in online dating one thing - it sucks by being a colossal waste of time.