I do it so the person has an understanding that they are a big part of my life. That I do not have them every other weekend and 1 day during the week. I also have on my profile that I have them 50/50 week on and a week off.
Thank you both for responding. I was just curious. Like I said, my kids were adults when I was OLD, so I didn't have that particular aspect to contend with. I have seen lots of varying degrees of response to this. I can totally understand talking about them in the profile because obviously kids are a big part of one's life (presumably).
Me 52, H53 Bomb drop 9/29/2014 Divorce from XH final 12/17/2014 Marriage #2 12/31/2019 5 adult (step)daughters (3 from XH's first marriage, 2 from current H's previous relationships) 6 grandkids
I was pondering the whole "numbers game" thing this morning.
The reality is that the only number that matters isn't the number of people who I reach out to, but rather the number who I connect with. And the fact of the matter is that I only need that number to be one.
Yes - I am well aware that the chances are low that I'll hit it out of the park with a low number of contacts. But this morning I also bought a couple of lottery tickets knowing that my odds there are even lower.
Last night I tried the "boost me" option on POF while I was doing up the dishes figuring that early evening was a good time to catch people's attention. Ever so exciting. Meters spun, lights flashed, the app assured me that I was ever so popular. I got a couple of views that I may or may not have gotten otherwise - all but one outside my geography. One made me smile - about 4 years older than me, a big curvy girl with a very - ahem - direct manner in her profile who is a senior accountant. Sadly outside my geography.
So - the question I have for those who have played this game on the female side - how do you interact with these sorts of apps? My understanding is that it's a lot noisier on your side than the crickets on the guy side other than our resident Don J9. Do you / did you actually browse around who is local? Read profiles? Drool over pictures of pies? Feel compelled to reach out? Do you get overwhelmed by the hundreds of messages and dick picks and just go have a glass of wine or do you actually read ones that have a snappy introduction?
Enquiring minds want to know?
On BD H52, W50 T27, M26 S21, D23 BD-9-Mar-16 D-15-Jan-18 Final-19-Apr-18 I am a storyteller. The story may do you no good. But a story is never for the listener. It is always for the one who tells
Andrew, i think you sound like a great guy on these forums, but im gonna be honest. Based on that profile i would quickly eliminate you as an option. I would think, "heres a guy you just cant win with " based on all your criteria. Its just too much criteria. Too much of what you dont want. ( for example, You dont want a financially independent type, but you dont want a stay at home mom type either?)
You arent ordering a mail order bride. These sites are to get to know people and date. Maybe that financially independent type would one day consider renting her place if she liked you enough. Maybe that SAHM is waiting 1 more year to reenter the work place.
My thought is to make it more light beat and fun and positive. Show (not tell) who you are and what you have to offer. You can then get a sense of whether to ask them out based on their profile or based on a coffee date.
A everyone is different but I do not include what I am looking for in my profile. When a girl sends me an email or likes me I will evaluate myself based on her pictures and what I read in her bio. Not going to lie what she looks like is what will initially spike my interest then I will discover the rest as we chat or go on our first date. No different than if you met someone organically out in public. Usually you would see them first, like what they looked like, then you make an approach. I would make sure your pictures so your best sides and in a positive light. I actually had a buddy of mine and his wife take several of me.
My thought is to make it more light beat and fun and positive. Show (not tell) who you are and what you have to offer. You can then get a sense of whether to ask them out based on their profile or based on a coffee date.
Juju - my actual profile makes no mention of those items. It just asks if they like pie and if they are interested in going to Madrid.
What I was curious about is if women actually look at profiles unsolicited and if they actually bother to read the messages?
Trying to be a better fisherman by asking the fish what bait works best
On BD H52, W50 T27, M26 S21, D23 BD-9-Mar-16 D-15-Jan-18 Final-19-Apr-18 I am a storyteller. The story may do you no good. But a story is never for the listener. It is always for the one who tells
I guess I am the oddball, which I'm used to so it is all good, but contrary to many things I have read on this board, when I did OLD, I was NEVER inundated with message. I would MAYBE on a good week get 2 or 3. IN A WEEK! I didn't get tons every day. I think that was likely for a variety of reasons. I still think it was mostly because my pictures were an honest portrayal of what I really look like. One thing I didn't like about POF is that when it asks you what you are looking for there isn't a choice between not looking for anything serious and looking for a committed relationship, so if you say you want a committed relationship, that scares some off and if you say you are not looking for anything serious, you get hit up by the ones looking just to hook up. So, honestly, that is what most of my messages were...people just looking to hook up so they really didn't care what I looked like or what my profile said.
I also found it rather interesting that many men made a big deal in their profile about how no one reads them and that you shouldn't bother to answer if you don't read it first, but then when they communicated with me privately, it was quite clear that they had not bothered to read mine. I did read the profiles thoroughly. In fact, if they didn't have a fleshed out one or if the spelling and grammar were atrocious in what they did have written, I just didn't even bother to respond.
I know I am different, and I do think that I'm old-fashioned in that I like the man to take the lead, but in OLD, if I saw a profile I liked, I sent a message then it was up to him to respond or not. More often than not, I got no response. I didn't spend hours every day poring over profiles and reading messages because I just didn't get that many. I would look 2 or 3 times a week, scroll through some local profiles, read messages if I got any. The other thing that I didn't like about POF and I am curious if anyone else had this experience. I would get messages that would be fully-fleshed out profiles so that they appeared to be a real person and there would even be pictures and the pictures almost always just looked like normal guys. Some of them were really handsome, some just average, but all very normal looking action shots. I didn't catch on the first couple I got, but I don't know if they were catfishers or bots or what, but they would send a message that seemed innocuous enough so I would typically respond (like I said, I was a little slow on the uptake the first couple of times and thought these were real, bona fide people). Then I noticed, in both cases, that after just a few messages (no more than 3 or 4) exchanged, they would be real pushy about wanting to talk on the phone or text. Now, some people may be ok with this and not think a thing in the world about it, but I don't do that. I don't feel comfortable with that. I would exchange messages for a few days before offering up a phone number. When I would say no, they would just let it go and continue the conversation through messages on the site, but then they would get kind of aggressive about wanting to "be together" not as in let's go out on a date, but let's be a couple. Again, no. Their profiles would say they were local. For some reason I distinctly recall one said he was in Little Rock and one said he was at the Red River Army Depot in Texarkana (both within an hour drive of me). But, when I asked questions about what they liked to do or whatever they would tell me they were just there for work and they were from the Middle East. The one who said he was from Little Rock said he was actually in Egypt but had been in Little Rock working when he set up the profile. Uh, what??????????? Clearly these were scammers and these were the only 2 I interacted with because it became almost like they were following a script. I would get messages that started "hello beautiful lady" and go on from there. DELETE. Not that some handsome, foreign stranger couldn't fall for me, but yeah, NOT likely. It was just weird. I got several messages a week from those types of "people" in addition to the 2 or 3 from actual people.
But, honestly, after that really long answer (I'm so sorry I'm always so wordy in my responses), I don't necessarily have a bad taste in my mouth over OLD. After all, I met Sparky that way and we live about 30 minutes apart. We could've easily encountered each other IRL but we never had, so OLD just kind of expedited that process for us.
Me 52, H53 Bomb drop 9/29/2014 Divorce from XH final 12/17/2014 Marriage #2 12/31/2019 5 adult (step)daughters (3 from XH's first marriage, 2 from current H's previous relationships) 6 grandkids
In my experience women will do both if they find your initial profile picture attractive. If they do...then they will read your bio and make a decision on whether or not to respond to your email. I have had many women not respond to my initial message after reviewing my profile. If they don’t I just move on to the next.
Sorry andrew. I thought you included that list in your profile.
Now i am a little OCD so i went on and read through not only male profiles but female as well. I even looked at lesbian posters profiles. I was curious to see what people wrote and how they wrote. (If you have read my posts though, you might have figured out im not exactly normal )
I live in a very congested area, not a rural area so lots of people to choose from. If a guy wrote something like "hey gorgeous" i ignored them. If they wrote a generic line that seemed like it was cut and paste i ignored them.
If they pulled something out of my profile to comment on, then i took notice and if they asked me a compelling question that related to my profile and didnt seem to be written cause they read it out of an advice colum or some stupid dating book (like tell me your 3 fondest memories living here on... was just too corny and forced a weird intimacy) then i could not help but respond.
The guy i liked the best (but didnt go for cause he left his wife and young kid) was complimentary, responded to a joke i had written (my profile was quirky and light) and asked me something along the lines of how i would describe my sense of humor and it made sense as a question as i tried to incorporate humor in my profile. This interested me, cause its not really an easy question to answer.
If a guy complained about grammar in his profile, like "please know how to use correct grammar and spelling" it turned me off. As did the guys that wanted women to be no more then 10 years younger then them "as they are young at heart".
For me, it was all about profile because i was trying to weed out walkaways. For the most part, the only guy i initiated a post to was someone i saw that raised his kid and had a feeling he wouldnt post to me. I never gave out my phone number unless i met them first.
