Online dating? Save me from living alone with 20 cats!
Hey all, here's the deal:
So I live in an area that is sadly devoid of young, elligible men. All the young men live in the major city in the state which is...a long drive away.
I moved away from the big city to pursue graduate work at a smaller university that has an especially good reputation for my field of study. When I was in the city I was with someone, right around the time I left I was not.
I'm really having a hard time finding anyone to date. I don't think the problem is me, as far as how I look and my personality...I'm soon to be 23, the icon is a real photo of me, I'm HWP, fairly smart, love to laugh and am very easy going. But really...the main problem is just meeting someone. I think there just aren't any men in my area that I can meet conventionally. I've tried all sorts of things, gone to major sporting events, volunteer work, lectures at the university, friends' parties.....haven't met anyone interesting.
So after trying all these things, I tried online dating. I tried eharmony and after one month at $50, was not impressed enough to continue. Match.com looks decent, but is close to $40 per month. (I want to do individual months at a time, because I don't want to be forced into a year of something I end up not liking and because I can't afford a $200-300 charge all at once on my credit card, which is how they do it...tuition does that to ya). I've tried a few free ones, but the men that came up in my area were down right frightening. Something about the free sites seem to attract some strange types, I tell ya.
So I'm wondering...can any of you recommend a good online dating site that is reasonably priced? Or if not....can you think of anything else I can try to meet people?
I'm mainly looking for a 22-29ish, well-educated man with good character that is employed and all that good stuff.
I love cats, but don't want to end up the scary cat lady that only leaves the house to get her mail and scares the children by talking to herself loudly in public.
Plentyoffish.com is free, though I really didn't have much luck from it. I signed up on Yahoo personals and though it does cost money, you get a 7 day free trial to use all of the features like sending messenges to people. I just waited until some interesting prospects showed up and then signed up for the 7 days. Sometimes also people that have payed or are on their 7 days will message me including their email address. It's a way to work around paying.
I used to always say that to people... "bloody hell, I'm going to end up single and lonely living with 20 cats. The local kids are already learning to throw stones at me.....!!"
I met my BF on myspace but I don't totally recommend that, but it is a good way to search for people with similar interests and since it isn't a dating site you can tell pretty easily if someone is cool or not by their profile since they are more trying to impress their friends than get a date, so obvious flaws usually are easier to see... (ie you can read their friend's pages and see what sorts of messages they send back and forth rather than just believing their profile as a test of character) it is more of a meeting people than "dating" site by design, but it is kind of a meat market and there are some real wierdos on there.... however, you never know, so you might want to sign up for some things like that or facebook because there are also good people everywhere... on myspace I recieved a million messages from people hitting on me that I would never dream of even responding to, but then my BF messaged me and somehow I just knew he was a good one so we hung out and the rest is history....
I used to always say that to people... "bloody hell, I'm going to end up single and lonely living with 20 cats. The local kids are already learning to throw stones at me.....!!"
I met my BF on myspace but I don't totally recommend that, but it is a good way to search for people with similar interests and since it isn't a dating site you can tell pretty easily if someone is cool or not by their profile since they are more trying to impress their friends than get a date, so obvious flaws usually are easier to see... (ie you can read their friend's pages and see what sorts of messages they send back and forth rather than just believing their profile as a test of character) it is more of a meeting people than "dating" site by design, but it is kind of a meat market and there are some real wierdos on there.... however, you never know, so you might want to sign up for some things like that or facebook because there are also good people everywhere... on myspace I recieved a million messages from people hitting on me that I would never dream of even responding to, but then my BF messaged me and somehow I just knew he was a good one so we hung out and the rest is history....
I'm all about MySpace and Facebook....I've casually dated two guys from MySpace, and I'm convinced they are just about the only two non-creepy guys on there. You are right there are some er..."interesting" types on MySpace. Got the facebook too, thought that might be a good way to meet people at my university, but since where I go has very few graduate programs, most of the students there are doing their undergraduate degree and are thus a bit young for me. Not real luck yet but...maybe in the future...
Plentyoffish.com is free, though I really didn't have much luck from it. I signed up on Yahoo personals and though it does cost money, you get a 7 day free trial to use all of the features like sending messenges to people. I just waited until some interesting prospects showed up and then signed up for the 7 days. Sometimes also people that have payed or are on their 7 days will message me including their email address. It's a way to work around paying.
I gave plentyoffish a try also, but found that I was getting tons of messages from guys in high school and there weren't too many men in their 20s on the site. That was a while ago, maybe I should try it out again.
Yeah I was curious about Yahoo's personals, as I've heard that they are decent. But when I went to sign up for the trial, I was reading something that said to cancel (i.e. before they start to charge after the 7 days) you have to send a letter in the mail to some place...and it sounded like a big pain in the butt. Do you know if this is the case? I could have misunderstood it.
Hey! I have tried Match.com. I am currently a member. It is $50ish for 3 months. I met a SO there within a month this time last year. We dated for a few months and broke up though. I just signed back up last month. The first time around was much better. I would browse before u commit. They have a three day pass thing for free of charge.
there's also lavalife.com (tho maybe it's only canadian?). You only pay for the first email (introduction). And all correspondence after with that person is free. Also, only one side pays for the intro.
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Online dating? Save me from living alone with 20 cats!
I just signed back up last month. The first time around was much better. I would browse before u commit. They have a three day pass thing for free of charge.
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