I decided to do an experiment and re-join Match.com (http://www.match.com/) for one month. I joined on 11/18, so my one-month membership expired tonight. In the past I've had some success with Match -- in 2007 I dated two "Match men" for six to eight weeks (not at the same time), which is good for me.
But THIS time? Crickets. Here are the stats: over the course of one month, I wrote to 36 men whose profiles appealed to me. That's 36 personal, time-consuming, individualized e-mails -- more than one a day. And guess how many guys wrote me back?
Fewer.
Even fewer.
Way fewer.
Two.
Yes. A whopping two whole guys wrote me back. That's only a 5% rate of return! Oh, three or four guys did hit the button that sends an automatic message saying "thanks, but I've met someone and want to see how it goes." And one guy even wrote me a nice personal e-mail saying the same thing. But for the most part: SILENCE.
Did any guys contact me first? Yes -- but only five. And actually, only a couple of those were messages. The others were winks, which means all they had to do was make the minimal effort of clicking a button. I wrote back to three of them (the three who seemed normal). One stopped responding after a few messages. As of right now I'm still e-mailing two of them, or at least I think I am -- yesterday I sent them each a message explaining I was letting my membership lapse and giving them my personal e-mail address, but I haven't heard from either of them yet.
As for the two guys I contacted first who actually wrote me back, one stopped responding to me after a few messages. I met the other one for coffee last week. He seemed like he would be an interesting guy -- he didn't move to the U.S. until he was 16 and has done a lot of traveling. But we parted after an hour or so, and for some reason I haven't thought about him since. Just no chemistry, I guess? He must have felt the same way, because I haven't heard from him either.
So I wonder if the lack of responses and the lack of guys contacting me first is because I'm now 36. When I was on Match as a 34-year-old, and then again briefly as a 35-year-old, I certainly didn't get tons of responses, but it was definitely better than 5%, and more than 5 guys contacted me per month. So I'm thinking maybe a lot of guys search the site for women 35 and younger? In which case, I aged out of a lot of men's searches three months ago. I'm not sure what else it could be -- I even had the same photo because I couldn't figure out how to switch to a new primary photo. Guys did view my profile -- 342 guys, to be specific (the site lets you know). They just didn't contact me.
So much for Match.com.
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3 comments:
Maybe you should try an experiment and change your age back to 35. Just to see how superficial the men on the site are. Seems to me, if I were shopping for a mate, I would use my standard rule of plus or minus ten. So my criteria would be from 26-46. I like to think I'm not as pathetic as most guys though. I'm curious to see if it would make any difference. I bet it would.
I am a male, and same story really, got plenty of winks and so forth, but not great, did email consistently with one woman, but our own personal commitments clashed everytime, hence karma, if its meant to be it will, may just be karma, thats what I tell myself anyways...
I was using Match in 2007 (age 37, female) with pretty good results. Tried it again in 2008 and 2009 and each time the results grew more and more dismal until I was lucky to hear back from one person. There are only two possible explanations. One, ageism. Two, Facebook and other social networking sites have taken over the dating game, and the profiles on Match are either fake or expired. I did recently read the Lori Gottlieb book "Marry Him" in which she tried the experiment of lowering her age from 40 to 32 with much better results (same photo, same description, etc.). So, I don't know...
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