Online Dating - Progress So Far

After several tearful sessions with my Counsellor, following the 'events of May', she said to me that I should consider putting myself on to an online dating website. In her words, I could "meet a new girl each week and just enjoy chatting and getting out there again". "Yes", I thought, "that would be good". The most horrible thing about splitting up with someone is that feeling of loneliness. The feeling that you're on your own again and no-one will fill that great emotional void that you feel inside you. All you can think about is the good times you had and the bond that you had between you both - surely you're not going to find someone else who has all the same plus points?

I got very close to breaking down completely when, out of nowhere, an inner message of strength and determination came through that told me to stop being the victim and get up and get out there. So, at that very moment I decided to seize the moment and set myself up on a dating website - initially just to see how it all works and get an idea of who is out there. To set myself up on a dating website would be a small, positive baby step towards recovery. A friend recommended to me the free dating website called 'Plenty Of Fish' (www.plentyoffish.com).

Plenty of Fish

Plenty of Fish is one of the most popular free dating websites out there, covering all countries of the world. Signing up was straight forward enough, although when it comes to creating a profile, you need to be feeling a bit creative. The 'about me' section simply allows you to type text about whatever you want. However, as a man you have to make your 'about me' good. Why is that? Well, the simple fact is that when women set their profiles up on these free websites, they get inundated with messages from men - some women get 100 to 200 messages from new men every day (albeit, 90% of the messages are terribly worded, boring or indicating that the man is just after sex). Not only do you have to make your profile stand out from the crowd, but you have to be pro-active in messaging women too. You can't just set your profile up and hope that messages will start arriving, because unless you are a fantastic looker and have the 'ultimate' profile, they won't.

So, how do you create the perfect 'about me' profile? Well, there are lots of articles out there with tips on what to do - from being humorous, making yourself sound interesting, keeping it brief and to-the-point, avoiding negatives, including bits of NLP (neuro-linguistic-programming) and more. Day-by-day I read and discover new things and ideas, so, like mine, your profile is likely to always be changing and evolving.

One of the other important factors of your dating profile is to get a good photograph. One thing I noticed when looking at the photographs of women, that matched my search criteria, was how few actually have a smile on their face in their photograph. To me, it is one of the first things I look for. Also, the photograph is advertising the person - if I don't like the photograph then I won't click to view the profile. So it doesn't matter if your profile is the best one in the world, if you have a crap photo then people won't click through to read it.

So what is the problem with Plenty of Fish? Well, it's a great site and it is free. However, being free does cause issues, the main one being that not everyone on there is necessarily looking for serious dating. You end up with people from all walks of life (some profiles are quite tear-jerking), wanting different things from just chat to intimate encounters. As I mentioned earlier, when a woman sets her profile up, she gets inundated with emails from men trying their luck - it is free, so why wouldn't they? So, this really does diminish the chances of success. The whole dating thing seems far less serious, unlike a paid website where you set yourself up, try hard to find people and take your profile off again once you're in a relationship with someone. You're paying for it and time is money.

After three weeks of being on Plenty of Fish I decided to set myself up on match.com, a subscription based online dating website, to see how it compared.

Match.com

Setting yourself up on match.com does require a bit of time to fill out the forms. Most of it is fairly straight forward and it does go into more detail than Plenty of Fish. Once again, it does require some creative thinking to certain elements about what you like, local places you like to visit and your overall 'about me'. Initially I copied across my Plenty of Fish 'about me' profile, but I quickly realised that I needed to be a bit more serious with my match.com 'about me'. So, I removed some of the outlandish humour and added some more serious bits about what I like and what I am looking for in a woman. I found that for the first week or two, I was regularly tweaking the profile and improving it. Match.com seems much more comprehensive and has features such as 'winking' (sending a little msg to the other person to say that you have winked at them), and daily matches (5 chosen matches per day). A friend of mine, who has been on match.com for a couple of months, told me that I should become a 'serial winker'.... which sounds a rather dodgy title to me. But I will see how it goes. Match.com is costing me about £14 a month, including a couple of added extras like being more highly 'featured' in results and being told when women read my messages.

I am still very new to this, so I will give updates on what I find works and doesn't work, in due course. I'm also going to do another blog post with more information on profiles - what I've researched from other sites (forums) and what I've found works myself. Yes, you have to represent yourself in a profile (not someone completely different). But, the profile has to sell you and make you sound interesting - to entice the woman to make contact and to believe that you are someone special and worth knowing.