Comments on: Do You Rely on People to Write to You Online?

By: vlh

vlh — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 14:59:41 +0000

I will post an ad on craigslist and wait for responses. I get more volume of email contacts that way, from men who are actually interested in hearing from me. 99% of the the time, if I respond to a man’s ad on CL, I will never get a response back. So, I generally just post the ad and wait for them to contact me. It just works out so much better, and I actually get real, live dates that way. I hate the “winks” and other clutter on most dating sites. I think it encourages the machine-gunning behaviors that result in wasted emails on the part of the recipients of winks. If they aren’t interested enough in you to actually write you an email, they aren’t interested enough for your time to be wasted on them.

By: Joe

Joe — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:20:23 +0000

It’s been alluded to in previous posts, but allow me to specifically point out that if you want people to write to you, your profile has to have something worth writing to you about. If it’s all generic crap about “I like to go out sometimes and sometimes I like to stay in” (like most people) how is anyone supposed to comment on YOU in their e-mail?

By: Slim Pickens

Slim Pickens — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 16:24:57 +0000

“definitely probably”, gack. I have no business calling anyone ‘borderline illiterate’!

By: Slim Pickens

Slim Pickens — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 16:22:28 +0000

@juju: okay, thanks. I thought since they kept viewing my profile that they wanted me to contact them. I wasn’t interested, but I didn’t want to be rude either. I guess I’m being hypersensitive. And definitely probably a bit full of myself to boot. A few months of being truly active on one of these sites will probably take care of both issues, so I’ll shut up now!

By: A-L

A-L — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:13:56 +0000

Though I don’t do it often, I have done the fade from an e-mail correspondence. If the guy can’t carry his end of the online conversation, and it’s tedious trying to figure out something to write in reply even if his profile is well-written and he seems interesting…well, I’ll just fade away. Sometimes this will also happen even if the correspondence was good, but the momentum was lost (ie, instead of an e-mail every day or so it’s once a week). I don’t take a fade away personally, and hope it isn’t taken that way either. But then again, I’m not talking about weeks or months worth of e-mails here either. I like to get the ball rolling online with several exchanges, and then meet up in real life.

By: Carol

Carol — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:16:49 +0000

Several people have commented about why people stop writing and just disappear. In my opinion it is just a man’s way to avoid conflict and hurt feelings to just stop responding. The very few men that have actually written to say we are not a fit or someone else has come into their life is rare. When ever I do get one of these I always respond with a thanks and good luck message back to them.

By: JuJu

JuJu — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:12:10 +0000

Slim Pickens,

that’s a non-issue. If you are interested in the person, write to them. If not, then not.

There is nothing you *should* have done.

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:03:54 +0000

@happygirl & moonsicle.

A few years ago when I was first on match I exchanged a few emails with a woman who I later decided was not a match for me. I sent her an email telling her so and got nasty gram back.

I don’t think my experience was uncommon.

I think people just drop people online because they can, and because they want to avoid an unpleasant exchange.

By: Slim Pickens

Slim Pickens — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:55:50 +0000

Since I’m only separated I’ve kept my profile unsearchable. That sounds bad, I know. But I don’t feel like explaining my situation over and over, and I don’t want to risk scaring off anyone prematurely who I might click with when I do finally get divorced. So I have to initiate things right now. And I assume I’ll always have to, as the Guy, even when I’m completely free.

I did publish my profile for a couple of days, just for the hell of it. And I did get a wink from one person. She was out of my age range, actually younger by 6 years. And I think in that sort of situation, for the female, that it’s okay. I did send a nice reply back. I don’t know why a woman would ever reply to one of those though, and I’d never send one myself.

I do have a related question though, as a newbie. I usually have the yahoo feature that let’s somebody know that I’ve viewed them off. When I see someone I’m interested in I turn it on briefly, then write an email right away. But a couple of times I forgot to turn it back off and viewed some more profiles. They viewed me. Then I viewed them again (I only visit the site about once a week, so I forgot who was doing what). And then they viewd me again. I didn’t know what to do. What should I have done? Beside turn of the damn feature quickly before I went off to lala land again.

By: happy girl

happy girl — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:17:08 +0000

Moonsical, I can totally related to having emailed pretty extensively with a few men and we seem to have a rapport and the emails were very interesting. We were going to meet and all of a sudden I don’t hear from them anymore. All I can think off is that they must have met someone else. But like you said why not send a brief line stating: “enjoyed emailing with you, however I have met someone”
That does not seem to difficult to me.
I try to do that as I keep in the back of my mind that I don’t want to be treated like that so I should make an afford not to treat others like that.