After going through a major break-up during the Spring semester of sophomore year, I spent a lot of time seeking out carefree, emotionless hookups and one night stands, avoiding any type of commitment. After the summer was over and I returned to Boston, I felt recovered and rejuvenated and, let’s face it, pretty lonely. Any girl that goes to Suffolk University knows that it is a challenge dating Suffolk boys; and between that and having to balance work and school, I decided online dating might be a more convenient option. To be honest, after reading all kinds of articles about online dating sites I was really curious to check them out. Here is my experience dabbling of dabbling in few dating sites on the interwebs.
Head to the following pages to read about Match.com, HowAboutWe, JDate, and Tinder!
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Match.com: Pretty much everybody has seen the commercials on TV about Match.com. It’s a pretty intense site for people looking for relationships. And since I was actively searching for a relationship, I figured why not give the most popular site a try? One month’s subscription is $35.99. With that, you get access to emails, notifications, and a highlighted profile. You can narrow down your searches for profiles pretty well and it’s really easy to customize your profile to the way you want.
The only problem with Match is that it’s really more for people in their mid to upper twenties and older. There weren’t really a lot guys close to my age, but there were some I found that I was interested in. The way Match works is if we our profiles matched reasonably well and we mutually liked each other, one of us would send the other an email and wait for a response.
I went back and forth with this one guy who lived just outside of Boston for about a week until he asked me for my number. We texted back and forth for a few more days and then decided to go on a date. With any of the dates I went on, I was sure to meet up in a crowded place, not at my apartment, in case he ended up being a weirdo psychopath. We went to a pizza place in the North End and chatted for a few hours. Half way through, I realized that we didn’t really have a whole lot in common and I wasn’t really into him. I finished the date, walked back to my apartment, and gave him a kiss. As far as I was concerned, that was the end of it. However, he seemed to like me a whole lot more than I liked him. He texted me a lot and I started to reply less and less hoping that he would get the hint and let it fizzle out. He didn’t get the hint. He texted me every morning saying, “hey beautiful” without any reply from me for about a week. Finally I blocked his number, deleted my Match profile, cancelled my membership and that was the end of that.
HowAboutWe: My experience with HowAboutWe wasn’t as eventful as Match. The site has a cool concept of proposing fun date ideas and seeing if anyone is interested in going on them with you. The profiles are really fun to design because the site gives you a lot of entertaining questions to respond to, which gives you great insight to the people there. But I found that, just like Match, HowAboutWe was geared towards people just out of my age range. I didn’t find any guys I really liked and spent more time designing my profile (kind of like the old Myspace days!) and less time actually searching for dates. I didn’t want to pay the membership of $28 a month, so eventually I just deleted my profile. However, HowAboutWe has a lot of really fun and interesting dating articles and advice on it’s blog section, so every once in a while I’ll go there to read them!
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JDate: I feel like my use of this site needs a bit more of an explanation. JDate is a dating site for single Jewish people. Personally I am Jewish; not super religious, but it is a part of my life. None of my exes or guys I casually dated have ever been Jewish and I feel that there is a large amount of pressure in the Jewish community to date within the religion. So I was curious about the Jewish guys in Boston and what they were like. Membership for JDate is $36.99 a month and you get your profile and searching and communication tools just like all the other dating websites out there. The main difference is that everyone on the site is Jewish.
I went back and forth with a couple of guys until I chatted with one who seemed cute and interesting and finally asked for my number. Since JDate too has more of a membership based in their mid-twenties and up, I wasn’t surprised that the guy I talked to was in grad school. He seemed smart, athletic, was a former Marine and had a Harley Davidson. And he was Jewish, which was like a cherry on top of a great combination. He called me to ask me out, which no guy has ever done before and I thought it was mature and charming. We met up for coffee and had pretty good conversation about traveling, school, and tattoos.
When I left, I was pretty optimistic about meeting up with him again. He seemed like a good guy. The more that time passed and I thought about it, I really wasn’t physically attracted to him. Although it might sound shallow, physical attraction is important in a relationship. He called to ask me out again during a week I was really busy. When he texted to reschedule, I told him he was a sweet guy but I wasn’t really into it.
My overall impression of JDate is that it’s like Match.com in that it’s a relatively serious dating site. Maybe I will return to it when I’m older, if I am still looking for a relationship and religion becomes more of an important factor in my life.
Tinder is a free dating app for cell phones that has been sweeping college campuses around the country. When I finally heard about it, I had to see what it was all about. You sign up with your Facebook which enables you to see if you have any mutual friends with someone, as well as seeing what they’ve listed as their interests on their profile. It does not share any other Facebook information, nor does it allow you to add anyone (however, if you have mutual friends, it is pretty easy to creep and find them). Basically, it works like Hot or Not. You swipe to one side if you like the person and swipe to the other side to skip them. Once you skip them though, they’re gone forever. It gets pretty addicting just going through and looking at guys. And its easy to accidentally skip someone you’re super attracted to if you’re not paying attention. You can only contact the person if you mutually like each other, which I think is a pretty great concept.
In my opinion, Tinder is just an app for ego boost. I get the impression that people are only on it for two reasons – the first is to see if any of the people you’re attracted to will like you back; and secondly, I think the majority of the users on Tinder are looking to meet up with someone that is only interested in a party hookup or sexual hookup.
I chatted briefly with a few guys, but I had trouble taking it seriously. It was pretty gratifying to see some hot guys mutually like me back. However, I got a lot of messages along the line of “hey baby” and “ur lips are so nice, wanna hang out?” One time I came across a guy who used Tinder as a way to send humorous (but mostly weird) messages to girls and post their reactions to his twitter. That was when I decided I was over it. I deleted the app and don’t really have any interest in going back to it.
Online dating is an interesting experience. When you are looking for a relationship, the sites are great tools to meet up with people you may not know are floating around your city. Now that I am back to being comfortable with being a single collegiette again, I don’t really feel the need to use the sites anymore. Maybe I will venture back onto them when I am older and closer to the age range of the users on the sites. For now, I am just going with the flow of college life and keeping my dating life offline.