Online dating

[Max Rockatansky]

Hit some uncharted territory in the Illinois is flat 2.0 thread regarding online dating:

I met my wife online while I was living in Illinois.  She says that what most attracted her to my profile was my honesty about Illinois's flatness.

Oops, that last part wasn't true.  Had to scratch it out.

I met my wife online also.  I was actually living in Hanford at the time and listed my eHarmony profile as Fresno so I could avoid the military base crowd.  Considering our second date was to a National Park I think we hit some common ground (non flat) early on.

I actually found it much easier to meet people in my mid 30s online than trying the traditional approaches.  Has anyone else found success with online dating or had failings?

[Crash_It]

Hit some uncharted territory in the Illinois is flat 2.0 thread regarding online dating:

I met my wife online while I was living in Illinois.  She says that what most attracted her to my profile was my honesty about Illinois's flatness.

Oops, that last part wasn't true.  Had to scratch it out.

I met my wife online also.  I was actually living in Hanford at the time and listed my eHarmony profile as Fresno so I could avoid the military base crowd.  Considering our second date was to a National Park I think we hit some common ground (non flat) early on.

I actually found it much easier to meet people in my mid 30s online than trying the traditional approaches.  Has anyone else found success with online dating or had failings?

I've had success and some failings as well including meeting a girl that had seizures during the date and numerous others that have lied about their age and turned out to be under the age of consent (yikes, cut them off).

[Rothman]

Found my wife online.

[JoePCool14]

I haven't tried and hopefully I won't have to. I'm out of college now (that's weird to say ) so I'm not entirely sure yet where to look, but going online would definitely not be my first choice.

There's definitely a lot of risk with being cat-fished through online dating. But is it a high-risk, high-reward proposition?

[Rothman]

I haven't tried and hopefully I won't have to. I'm out of college now (that's weird to say ) so I'm not entirely sure yet where to look, but going online would definitely not be my first choice.

There's definitely a lot of risk with being cat-fished through online dating. But is it a high-risk, high-reward proposition?

Stick to reputable sites and the catfishing nonsense can be avoided easily.

It is far more difficult to just find someone compatible with the bona fide candidates.

[JayhawkCO]

OKCupid for the win in 2012.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

I've tried, but like in real life had little luck. I'm currently not actively pursuing relationships.

[Duke87]

I too met my wife online.

Re: catfishing, I always moved to meet in person relatively quickly and would just cut off anyone who wasn't prepared to do so, so falling victim to this was never even really possible.

I did catch someone in the act once though. Based on how she (well, who knows if it actually was a she) was acting something smelled funny. Conveniently, one of her pictures had a bridge prominently in the background. So I asked her "hey where was that photo with the bridge taken" and the she gave an answer that was demonstrably incorrect, thus confirming my suspicion.

[Takumi]

Met my current girlfriend online, as well as my first girlfriend some years ago. Both on OKCupid. Ever since college I've found it easier to date online than the traditional methods.

[bandit957]

Anyone remember Yahoo Personals? It was useless.

[MATraveler128]

I've never tried online dating as I met my current girlfriend in school. From what I've heard from a friend, use either Tinder or Hinge. But do stay away from Bumble.

[NWI_Irish96]

I met my wife online in 2002. I was living in Oak Park, IL, and she was living in Indy.

First contact in July 2002, first in person meeting September 2002, engaged in December 2002, married in May 2003.

[kphoger]

The year was 2001.  My girlfriend (mother of my daughter) had broken up with me.

Just before Christmas, my daughter and I traveled back to where I grew up, to attend my high school best friend's wedding.  While we were there, we stayed with my old Spanish teacher and her family.  They were an amazing, loving family.  We'd go with their daughter to do chores (her horse was stabled just outside of town), and she helped my daughter ride a horse at age 1½.  We went to the next door neighbor's house a couple of days before Christmas for a holiday party with chicken off the grill and a gift exchange.  The husband was a cowboy with a big bushy mustache and ten-gallon hat, but he was a kind and loving softy on the inside toward his wife and daughters.  It was a truly wonderful experience to stay in their house during that time.

On Christmas Eve, we took Amtrak back to the Chicago area.  My ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend met us at the Naperville Amtrak station and drove me to my apartment.  My roommate was gone for Christmas, as was most everyone else in my six-flat apartment building.  I had no warm and loving family, my apartment felt empty.  I was lonely.  I walked 2½ miles through a blizzard to see the first Lord of the Rings movie, which had just come out.  Then I walked 2½ miles back home through the same blizzard.  Along the way, I noticed a young lady walking the other way on the other side of the street, and the John Mayer line jumped into my head:  I could have passed you on the sidewalk / Could I have missed my chance and watched you walk away?

I arrive home and thought to myself:  what a pathetic Christmas Eve.  I want a family.  I want a wife.

After the holiday, I asked people at work:
– Where can I find a wife?
– Church.
– That takes too long.  Where can I find one faster?
– The Internet.

So I went to the library to use the Internet.  I looked at a few sites:  No Cheaters, match.com, et al.  I finally settled on Christian Soulmate.  I only remember two things about the profile I filled out:  (1) I mentioned that I had a daughter from a previous relationship, and (2) I said "high maintenance" was OK.  Other than that, I don't remember.  I didn't want to spend any money, so I signed up for their free seven-day trial.

Only one person contacted me.  I noticed that her profile said "Missouri", so I figured she was probably from Saint Louis.  I figured 300 miles wasn't too bad, so it was worth a shot.

She too had signed up for a free seven-day trial, and she was attracted to my profile because I had been honest about having a daughter.  She was just looking for friends, not a boyfriend, but she contacted me anyway.  Living in Branson, a small town with a zillion tourists, she found it difficult to meet new friends.  I'm the only person she ever contacted.

On the free trial, users weren't allowed to exchange phone numbers or e-mail addresses, or else the message would throw an error.  This being the early days of online activity, we easily figured out a way around that, and began corresponding by e-mail instead.  Then we transitioned to talking by phone.  That first phone conversation was very awkward.  Hi.  Hi.  How are you?  Fine.  The next time I called, it was awkward again, but then suddenly it was like a dam came down and the conversation just flowed and flowed and flowed.

We quickly fell in love over the phone.  Both of us knew it, but we refused to actually say the words until we met face-to-face.  She asked me once where I wanted our relationship to go, and I answered "all the way".  So, even before we ever held hands, we were already thinking ahead to marriage.  Two months after first meeting online, I took a Greyhound bus from Chicago down to Springfield.  The evening before departure, a co-worker and I had some drinks in my apartment, which helped to settle my nerves.  Then I boarded a Metra train at Wheaton with a small suitcase and a vase of flowers, transferred to the Green Line L at Harlem/Lake, transferred to the Blue Line at Clark/Lake, got off at Clinton, and walked to the Greyhound station for a 1am departure.  (On the Blue Line subway, it was standing room only, and a young lady was impressed to see someone holding a vase of flowers and said "I'd do ya!")

She picked me up at the bus station in Springfield.  Shortly after leaving Springfield on southbound US-65, I reached over and held her hand, and she was very happy.  Later that evening, while we were sitting on my hotel bed, I finally told her I loved her.

I hadn't told my parents that I'd met someone online–let alone traveled more than 500 miles.  When I finally told my dad, he was very skeptical about it.  Then I told him that, honestly, we had gotten to know each other a lot better than we would have if we had met in person.  Instead of going to a movie and staring at a screen, we spent hours at a time doing nothing but talk on the phone.  And, when you've got nothing to do but talk, you really get to know somebody.  That made sense to him.

Every couple of months after that, one of us would travel–she would drive up to Illinois, or I'd take the bus down to Missouri.  About a half-year later, she took a nanny position in Naperville, because our relationship was important enough that she didn't want the distance to kill it.  (This was the girl who had quit college after one semester because she couldn't stand to be away from home.)  So then we were 10 miles apart instead of ten hours.  We had one big argument just before she moved, and she gave me back the promise ring I had given her.  I had told her to keep it back then, and eventually she started wearing it again.

We were married in 2006, and my daughter's mom got married on the same day (much to my wife's chagrin).  Fortunately, she isn't at all "high maintenance", and we get along better than I could ever have wished.  It's now sixteen years and three sons later.

[JayhawkCO]

OKCupid for the win in 2012.

To give some color to my story like kphoger did, I had been dating a lot of girls that I worked with for a long time. Being in the restaurant industry, it's a bit incestuous, a bit drunken, and a bit dramatic. So, I decided I'd try online dating. I didn't feel like paying for anything I was pretty sure wouldn't work, so I signed up for OKCupid. I met a couple of girls on there where we hung out for a bit, but nothing serious. Then when I was about to give up, I decided to expand my search range and included anyone from 22 to 35. (I was 29 at the time.) My now-wife's profile popped up and she seemed cute and nice enough, so I figured I'd give it a shot. She was a K-State grad and I went to KU, so I started my conversation with "I might be barking up the wrong tree but...".  We talked for a couple of days and then she asked what I was doing that weekend. I replied that she wouldn't believe me if I told her. She insisted, so I told her I was flying to Kyrgyzstan. She asked why and I told her that I had just found a really cheap flight ($500 RT from Kansas City) and had always wanted to go, so I was going. I was only going to be there for three days (couldn't afford to take too much time off of work), so she instantly thought I was some nefarious international drug runner or something of the like. I got back and we kept talking on OKCupid and then she told me she had only been on the site for two weeks and hated it since every guy other than me was gross. So she was going to cancel her account, but she gave me her phone number.

We went out for drinks on 2/12/2012 and then I asked her when I could see her again, and she told me "No pressure, but I'm free on Tuesday," which happened to be Valentine's Day. I actually surprisingly had the night off, which was a rarity being a bartender at a fancy restaurant, so I jumped at the chance. I took her out to a nice restaurant and brought her a carnation and a Snickers because you're supposed to do candy and flowers on V-Day, but it was our first dinner date, so I figured I'd keep it casual and comedic. Been together ever since, got married in 2015, and just had our first (and only) kiddo in December.

So basically I had about a two week window to have met her online otherwise she was gone. Also, she wasn't willing to date anyone 30 or older, so I just snuck into her filters by about 2 months. Nice coincidences.

[Rothman]

Oh, fine, let us get into our stories further:

My wife was visiting Janet Jackson and Janet actually got her going in online dating and my wife's reluctant involvement led to us eventually getting married.

[US71]

I make the next poor, dumb, b@stard who comes along look like a real find, especially if he's an alcoholic.

[elsmere241]

I met my wife in a chatroom (on a dating site) February 27, 2004.  We were engaged March 27th and married August 20th.

[Ted$8roadFan]

I've had more luck on specialized dating sites than on the traditional ones.

[kurumi]

...
We were married in 2006, and my daughter's mom got married on the same day (much to my wife's chagrin).  Fortunately, she isn't at all "high maintenance", and we get along better than I could ever have wished.  It's now sixteen years and three sons later.

That was a really heartwarming story. Thanks for sharing!

[hbelkins]

I met and married my wife when the Internet was in its infancy, so I have no experience with online dating. I'm honestly not sure how I would approach the issue now if I was still single, or became single. I wouldn't even know where to start.

I've heard of a number of people developing relationships without explicitly looking for one on Facebook. Involvement in special-interest groups, comments on mutual friends' posts, etc., and before they know it they're sending friend requests and communicating via Messenger. Sometimes they don't know one another; other times they're acquaintances; other times they're already friends or otherwise connected and a relationship develops.

I personally know very few people who met online, but I did attend a wedding of a fellow roadgeek many years ago and he had met his wife online.

I believe that Mike and Laura had an online component to their relationship. She was already very aware of his Maryland Roads site when they met for the first time. The first time I ever met them, they weren't dating yet, they were still just friends, but I would have bet big money on the fact that they were a couple at that time.

[Scott5114]

I've never tried online dating as I met my current girlfriend in school. From what I've heard from a friend, use either Tinder or Hinge. But do stay away from Bumble.

In the experience of one girl I've heard stories from, Bumble has had higher-quality candidates than Tinder. Bumble has the odd requirement of requiring the female to initiate contact in a male-female match (obviously this doesn't apply to same-gender matches), so it's possible that women have better experiences than men do.

[Takumi]

I've never tried online dating as I met my current girlfriend in school. From what I've heard from a friend, use either Tinder or Hinge. But do stay away from Bumble.

Tinder is the Walmart of dating sites. I never used Hinge, but I meant to try it before I met my current girlfriend on OKCupid. Anyone telling you not to use Bumble is...well, I don't want to get political.

[GaryV]

Found my wife online.

You found her looking for someone new?   

[Scott5114]

I've never tried online dating as I met my current girlfriend in school. From what I've heard from a friend, use either Tinder or Hinge. But do stay away from Bumble.

Tinder is the Walmart of dating sites. I never used Hinge, but I meant to try it before I met my current girlfriend on OKCupid. Anyone telling you not to use Bumble is...well, I don't want to get political.

Any chance you can word it neutrally? I'm a little curious what the objection would be to it, considering that I've only heard of good experiences with it.

[abefroman329]

I've never tried online dating as I met my current girlfriend in school. From what I've heard from a friend, use either Tinder or Hinge. But do stay away from Bumble.

Tinder is the Walmart of dating sites. I never used Hinge, but I meant to try it before I met my current girlfriend on OKCupid. Anyone telling you not to use Bumble is...well, I don't want to get political.

Any chance you can word it neutrally? I'm a little curious what the objection would be to it, considering that I've only heard of good experiences with it.

"The dating app Bumble['s] defining feature: Only women can initiate the conversation after a match."

edit: No clue why this would be a reason not to use it.