Dating online?

This is kind of personal but I feel ready to write about it. Has anyone else here tried online dating? A few months ago I signed up to one of the big personal dating services, wrote (I thought) a reasonable and unprovocative profile and waited to see what would happen. But the replies have been really weird. I know I am 60 but there seemed to be a lot of ordinary men of that age looking for friends and partners. Anyway, I got guys in their 20s and 30s, someone who believes that he is the chosen channel for communication between aliens and Earth, people who only wanted online sex, a male transvestite and others too awful to mention. I only agreed to meet one, for lunch, who seemed OK, until the conversation turned into a job interview! Basically he wanted a partner who would manage the hotel he was buying.

I am happy being single, but I thought it might be fun to find some male friends online. Now, I have unsubscribed and will never do that again. But is it just me or has anyone else had a bad experience?

i've never dated online but I met my fiancee online on a forum infact. Wive been together over 2 years and will be getting married shortly.

I think no matter where you try and meet people you could have a bad experience. There is no guarentee wherever you do it

Good luck

Dx

Gosh, Jenny! I have never had any experience with this, but it certainly sounds like you've 'met' some strange people!

I know a lot of prople on here have found their partners online, they might be able to tell you if they had any odd bods too!

I hope you do find some nice people! Have you tried a different site? maye someone will be able to recomend one to you!

I met my partner online. We've been dating for the last four years. Dating agencies can be a bit suspect at times, we actually met in a chatroom made by the University IT students. I stumbled in accidentally because my ex left the "auto-log-on" enabled... we got chatting and the rest, as they say, is history. I'm glad that my ex and I didn't stay together to be frank. Sometimes dating online can be a good thing - because if you actually meet a genuine person, the relationship you conduct has to be based on communication. Rune and I met and I was very lucky, I think, to have met someone as open, honest and geuine as him... we hit it off and we continued to stay in touch online (living 700 miles apart) and we've had a very good and open relationship. We communicate so well and I can honestly say it was the best move I ever made.

My mother on the other hand, got involved with a dating agency and she had several bad encouinters. Let me see... first there was the Pilsbury Doughboy (who was very similar to his namesake)... Boddington's Boy(Who worked there and drank like a fish)... then Mountain Man(who wanted to take her up a mountain and marry her with a yak as a bridesmaid)... (she only remembers them through the bad nicknames she gave them) Now she is dating an incredible man - Wolfgang. I've adopted him as a step-dad. He's Swedish and has MS... but I don't think I've met anyone who has so much to share, so much of a love of life.... he's such a wonderful man. I think it's a case of trial and error. Some men you will always get a slimy, ozzy vibe from... but when you do find a nice man, it's like finding a diamond in the rough. it's a shame you had a bad experience with it, but in the end, it's entirely up to you whom you divulge information to. That guy who decided he could talk to E.T. sounds... uhm... interesting......

I actually found male and female friends through mIRC, yahoo, icq... Only by chatting (and the females ended up being good friends)
I have met over 100 people off the internet, from experience i know when and not to meet somebody.
I find that the internet isnt used for what it used to be. Hardly anybody chats anymore, there are too many robots, if you sign up on face-pic.com or any other site with pictures and a profile all you will get is weirdos. I presume this is the same with dating services.
Ive also had internet and long distance relationships but to be honest they are BS

I hope you will find someone online through forums or even a chat room, You may even be better off to sign back up at the online dating site, and just not reply to the weirdos untill you come accross to someone good?

Yes, I have tried it and no complaints!

In fact I am currently subscribed to a dating site and have had no problems whatsoever!

I have met a lot of really nice men (no weirdo's ) that I am currently emailing (all through the site - so no worries about security).

I think it was the site... try another - you have nothing to lose!

Juli

i met my husband online.Been together 3 1/2 years now. We met in chat room ! i had some wierd people talking to me though i just pushed them aside i think you can kinda tell who are ok and who are not.


lara x x

Thanks - it is good to know there are some nice people out there online (mind you, I knew that through TCS!). Maybe I will try again after I move to France and am more accessible. But I like the idea of chatting online for a while before possibly arranging to meet, so I was doing it from here. Maybe chat rooms are better than dating services, too. I have never been in one yet!

I've tried online personals this last year, with mixed results. I too was rather conservative with my profile and pics, and I've met two or three gentlemen whom I've been in contact with - two just didn't "click" and one thought he was gettin' some that night (FAT CHANCE) So, mixed results, but thankfully no real whacko's. I seem to get the oddballs when I'm online and logged into Yahoo (apparently if I'm logged into Messenger it shows me as online in Personals as well, and don't they just come out of the woodwork then??!!??!!) - people with nothing better to do than sit online and troll for cybersex . I've learned the hard way not to respond to those morons.

I don't think you should give up entirely, but do take a break and go back to it once the house in France is done. As LilleKat said, it's all trial and error, and I'm willing to give it a few more trial runs before I throw in the towel!

I've never done the on-line dating thing, but I have a friend who shares your frusteration. She was with two services.

One she gave up on after getting too many conservative hunting types (no offense, but my friend is a raving liberal vegetarian, you can see how this might not work?).

The other she gave up after going on a date with a man she described as "the asian Napoleon Dynamite".

The guys that seemed cool usually turned out to be self-absorbed.

Now, would she have any more luck with any other method of dating? No idea.

I've never been much for dating online, it just never happened that way for me. I have several friends who HAVE met partners that way and it seems to have done the trick for them!

Didn't intend to date on-line - but met my husband in a chat room for parrots. We just celebrated 8 years of marriage.

That may be the ticket, go looking for forums and chats of folks that have similar interests. Especially the forums, you can read all of a person's posts and get a feel for them, how they think, how they tick, etc. Perhaps you could even check and see if there are any local forums based out of the area you're moving to. For instance, I've mentioned a couple of times on here getting information from a weather forum which is actually local to me; while obviously the main topic of conversation is the weather, I've learned by lurking in the OT section of the site that there are a few people who are waaaaaay right wing conservatives and while I'm sure they're lovely people would quite frankly make me uncomfortable to be around in the "real world."

I dated a guy from the internet. Bad can't even discribe it. He treated me like a child, wanted to marry me after our first date, and stalked me for 9 months after I dumped him. After I started dating my boyfriend Jon, he kept telling me how poor Jon is because he's from West Virginia. He would show up behind me while I was driving, appear while I was at a football or basketball game and in between classes. He made my life a living hell and if it wasn't for Jon, I would have transfered to get away from him. The internet is not the place to find someone. Go to the bars, sporting events, join clubs and social groups, met people in person, the net brings out every creep and wierdo out there.

Our daughter met a fellow on ICQ 6 years ago when she was looking for someone to help her learn Italian. She had just come back from a student exchange to Argentina and figured she knew French and Spanish so why not Italian. His name is Andrea so for a while she thought he was a girl. They chatted for about 1 year and he came to Canada to meet her. She goes to Italy every year for a month in February and he comes to Canada for a month late July/early August. In fact he is with us now and will be returning home to Italy on August 27.

My brother-in-law joined an on-line dating service because he was rather shy and also very naive (my opinion) and had difficulty meeting women. He chatted to this one lady, they finally met and last year they got married on a Royal Caribbean cruise.

I think it's a matter of trying different on-line services. Some are obviously better than others and probably do better screening.

Don't give up after one bad experience. Go for it girl!

I do belong to another forum, for expats in France, but it is not one where people talk to each other much. Nothing like TCS! I will wait until I move and then see. As I said, I am not trying to get married again - been there, done that, I just wanted to make some friends and see what developed. But it was an interesting experience!

I have done online dating before and the relationship went on for 3 years..

I'm not afraid to tell you the person I was with was a female, and I know for a fact I am never doing that again. We met in a chatroom and well our relationship just kept growing until finally we agreed to come together. We would phone eachother every night and we had it agreed that once I turned 18 I would go out there and see her and we would live together. Well one night I called her up and she had the nerve to tell me that she hated me ever since the day she met me and called me a stupid stalker. That just KILLED me..and more did happen that night but I'm not really ready to tell what I did.

Oh, that sounds terrible. Some of the people who replied to me were pretty odd and gave me bad vibes. But you don't always know - some of them emailed me through the site for quite a while before I realised there was something not right. I am sorry about your bad experience and lost hopes!

Yes, I spent about eight month this past year meeting different guys on a dating website, and I can't say I've been thrilled with the results.

- one of them, after one date, announced that he was allergic to cats and that I should be willing to make 'some lifestyle changes' (ie. get rid of my cats) so that we could become serious. When I essentially laughed in his face, he flew into a rage, ranting and raving about how he knew we were meant to be together and we could have been perfect, but I had to go and ruin it because I was childish and selfish, etc.

- another decided to casually mention after the third date that he still considered himself 'attached' to his 'ex'-girlfriend, 'in a way', and that he considered her his soulmate and would always love her. Also, I should know that she had a serious eating disorder, and that he had to put a lot of time into being a 'loving caretaker' for her. You're darn right I should have known, buddy - before the first date, so I could have NOT wasted time with you!

- my profile clearly states that I am only interested in dating left-wingers - and not as a little side note - I make a big deal in my profile about how important this is to me. Well, date number three spent our entire date going on about how he felt abortion was wrong except in very rare cases and welfare is so out of hand and needs to be reformed, etc.

- The next one, who I actually had a short relationship with, was just bizarre - it was as though he had no emotions whatsoever, and he also had an aversion to conversation, as well - many, many times I would say something, and he would just not answer me at all! At first I assumed I was boring him, and that he wouldn't ask me out again, but he kept asking me out again, so I asked him about it, and apparently, sometimes he 'just isn't in the mood to talk' - actually, it was most of the time (and it wasn't as if I was trying to talk to him at innappropriate times when quiet introspection would be expected - this was all the time!)

- another one also shared date number three's bizarre definition of 'left-wing', except he was also sneaky about it - he didn't bring up anything to make me think he wasn't left-wing throughout the entire date, and then after he's come home with me and, well, you can imagine, while lying in my bed at 1:00 A.M. announces his undying respect for Dennis Miller and his belief that 'some countries just need to be bombed, and Iraq is one of them!'. He wasn't very happy when I made him get up and leave in the middle of the night.

I'll shut up now, because this is getting really long, but these are only some examples of the guys I've dated from online - there are a bunch more along the same lines. Of all the guys I met, only one of them seemed nice and normal (and I wasn't attracted to him at all, unfortunately).

I tried it, and came up with a very witty 'ad' (I was quite proud of it) that listed everthing I didn't want in a man. I got a few bites, went out with one several times, but he turned out to be a freak who up and moved several states away without even telling me... I got an email after he moved.

More than one or two weren't really interested in dating, they just wanted one thing.

My husband and I only "technically" met online four years ago. I had a female friend I had met through another forum and had regular lunch dates with because she had a vacation house close to where I lived, who knew him from work and thought we'd be perfect for each other. She showed him my website, and him being a big geek himself wanted to talk tech so he emailed me. We talked for several weeks, on webcam chats and on the phone (he lived 500 miles away), and after about six weeks I drove down to meet him. After that we made monthly trips to see one another and within five months we were sick of that and I moved to be with him (big scary step for me, the first time I ever moved out of the city where I grew up). It was the best thing I ever did.

I would say it's okay meeting online... but where you meet is key. I was just about to say it was all in how you worded your profile on the dating site, but I've changed my mind... yes you can find quality people online but not really at the "Virtual Meat Market".