This is Depressing...
I was in a rather depressing situation last night. I decided to write a post about it because I know there are readers who are in the same situation, a similar situation, or have relatives dealing with it.
As some of you know, I've succumbed to online dating. This is not because of desperation on my part, but because I have no real way of meeting anyone, let alone a single man. And I would someday like to get married.
Unfortunately, that involves meeting actual people. Book characters don't count, lol. (And even if they did, Aragorn is already taken. Kidding, kidding. xD Sorry, I couldn't resist. The rest of this is so depressing.)
Anyway, I belong to a dating site that has an interesting and detailed matching system. Which is why I joined in the first place. I was hoping it would eliminate a lot of what I wasn't looking for, and help me find what I was looking for.
This site also has a nice search feature. I went and used it because I was bored, and my search criteria looked like this:
Doesn't seem too restricting, does it? It sounds perfectly reasonable to me, since I'm looking for someone like me.
You'll notice in the top right-hand corner that I purposely made it search users located anywhere in the world. Anywhere - got that? I wasn't excluding any country, nationality, or race.
But before I get into what I found, how about a little lesson on how this stuff works?
The matching is done based on questions. A sample question would be:
"Do you, or would you, donate blood without a financial incentive?"
They then give you two to four possible answers, and you choose one. You then choose the answers that you'd accept from a mate, and how important the question ranks to you. The algorithm used matches you based on how you and everyone else on the site answer those questions.
When answering questions, the possible match percentage goes up based on how many questions you've answered. The more questions you've answered, the better chance you have of finding someone with a high match percentage. For the record, I have answered well over two thousand, and my highest possible match percentage is one hundred.
So I had some high hopes when I clicked search. I've seen lots of 99% matches floating around, so I thought there had to be quite a number of them.
You know how many popped up with a match percentage of 99? Seventeen. Out of a site with millions of users from all over the world, there are seventeen that are even close. 99 is a pretty high match percentage. But I know from experience that there's a lot that can be squeezed into that one percent.
What you can't see in that picture is how I had them sorted. I had them sorted with the highest match percentage at the top. Because it appears that the site also ranks in fractions of a percentage, although that's not visible during search. So I went and looked at the very first profile, hoping that maybe there was someone I could feel good about starting a conversation with.
You know what I found?
I found that we disagreed on fundamental issues. I'm a Christian, and I'm very serious about it. This particular man's profile said the same thing. But when I looked closer, I realized that we disagreed on abstinence until marriage. I believed in it, he did not. That's one of my deal-breakers. And that's not even all we differed on. He also believed it was better to be tactful than to be truthful, that some human lives are worth more than others, that passion is more important to a relationship than dedication, that bad grammar was worse than profanity, that men shouldn't be the heads of their houses, and others. We disagreed on all of those issues. Just the kinds of issues that would totally rule out a possible relationship.
This man was the one that matched me the best out of my search criteria, and there was a huge difference. So huge that I wouldn't consider him seriously as a possible mate.
And he matched me the best out of only seventeen. Out of millions of people from all over the world. There were seventeen that ranked at 99%. And the one that came the closest, wasn't close at all.
Get this, the keyword option? If I add the word purity to it, I get blank space. Not a single man who meets the other criteria has used that word in his profile. Even if I take out keywords God and the Bible, purity brings up exactly nothing.
Pretty depressing, yes?
As a Christian woman seeking a Christian man, this is very sad for me. And frustrating.
So, the moral of the story?
I'm going to learn to be happy single, and if God wants me married, He can throw the right one at my head and hope I don't go all unobservant.
Be happy while you're single. Don't worry about finding the right one. That doesn't mean you stop looking, but for goodness sakes - don't spiral down into depression. The right one will come in God's time. Even if it seems like He'd have to use a miracle to make it happen.
As some of you know, I've succumbed to online dating. This is not because of desperation on my part, but because I have no real way of meeting anyone, let alone a single man. And I would someday like to get married.
Unfortunately, that involves meeting actual people. Book characters don't count, lol. (And even if they did, Aragorn is already taken. Kidding, kidding. xD Sorry, I couldn't resist. The rest of this is so depressing.)
Anyway, I belong to a dating site that has an interesting and detailed matching system. Which is why I joined in the first place. I was hoping it would eliminate a lot of what I wasn't looking for, and help me find what I was looking for.
This site also has a nice search feature. I went and used it because I was bored, and my search criteria looked like this:
Doesn't seem too restricting, does it? It sounds perfectly reasonable to me, since I'm looking for someone like me. You'll notice in the top right-hand corner that I purposely made it search users located anywhere in the world. Anywhere - got that? I wasn't excluding any country, nationality, or race.
But before I get into what I found, how about a little lesson on how this stuff works?
The matching is done based on questions. A sample question would be:
"Do you, or would you, donate blood without a financial incentive?"
They then give you two to four possible answers, and you choose one. You then choose the answers that you'd accept from a mate, and how important the question ranks to you. The algorithm used matches you based on how you and everyone else on the site answer those questions.
When answering questions, the possible match percentage goes up based on how many questions you've answered. The more questions you've answered, the better chance you have of finding someone with a high match percentage. For the record, I have answered well over two thousand, and my highest possible match percentage is one hundred.
So I had some high hopes when I clicked search. I've seen lots of 99% matches floating around, so I thought there had to be quite a number of them.
You know how many popped up with a match percentage of 99? Seventeen. Out of a site with millions of users from all over the world, there are seventeen that are even close. 99 is a pretty high match percentage. But I know from experience that there's a lot that can be squeezed into that one percent.
What you can't see in that picture is how I had them sorted. I had them sorted with the highest match percentage at the top. Because it appears that the site also ranks in fractions of a percentage, although that's not visible during search. So I went and looked at the very first profile, hoping that maybe there was someone I could feel good about starting a conversation with.
You know what I found?
I found that we disagreed on fundamental issues. I'm a Christian, and I'm very serious about it. This particular man's profile said the same thing. But when I looked closer, I realized that we disagreed on abstinence until marriage. I believed in it, he did not. That's one of my deal-breakers. And that's not even all we differed on. He also believed it was better to be tactful than to be truthful, that some human lives are worth more than others, that passion is more important to a relationship than dedication, that bad grammar was worse than profanity, that men shouldn't be the heads of their houses, and others. We disagreed on all of those issues. Just the kinds of issues that would totally rule out a possible relationship.
This man was the one that matched me the best out of my search criteria, and there was a huge difference. So huge that I wouldn't consider him seriously as a possible mate.
And he matched me the best out of only seventeen. Out of millions of people from all over the world. There were seventeen that ranked at 99%. And the one that came the closest, wasn't close at all.
Get this, the keyword option? If I add the word purity to it, I get blank space. Not a single man who meets the other criteria has used that word in his profile. Even if I take out keywords God and the Bible, purity brings up exactly nothing.
Pretty depressing, yes?
As a Christian woman seeking a Christian man, this is very sad for me. And frustrating.
So, the moral of the story?
I'm going to learn to be happy single, and if God wants me married, He can throw the right one at my head and hope I don't go all unobservant.
Be happy while you're single. Don't worry about finding the right one. That doesn't mean you stop looking, but for goodness sakes - don't spiral down into depression. The right one will come in God's time. Even if it seems like He'd have to use a miracle to make it happen.
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