WWW.Match.Com - the Dating Game

Match.com has been an interesting, but as yet, an unrewarding experience. Participants are of all ages from 18 and up into their late 60's.

I was not expecting to ever want to use an on-line dating service, but life has a way of throwing some unexpected detours in your path. At my age, which I'll describe only has having more years behind me than in front of me, I do not have the social networks of the younger crowd to find a lady of interest. Match.com is just one of numerous dating sites that provide this opportunity for a monthly fee.

This has been an interesting, but as yet, an unrewarding experience. Participants are of all ages. It seems that the late 40's into the mid-50's comprises most of the divorced women. For some reason, it seems most are blondes. Blondes are supposed to have more fun, right? Maybe that's why they are there on Match.com. Either they had too much fun or perhaps not enough.

Some of the women are strikingly beautiful even into their early 60's. Not so for all. There are some really ugly women that my dog, if I had one, would not even play with. Most of the women, however, are modestly attractive. The women are primarily Caucasian sprinkled with some Hispanic and those of African heritage. To a much lesser extent, there are just a few Native Americans and Asians.

What sort of women are these people? All sorts. A few cougars out there trying to collect a young man. Some seem like career daters. Not really looking for a "Match" as much as a new date. There are a number of them looking for their rich man. Typically, the more young and beautiful a woman is, the more income she expecting from her potential date or "sugar daddy" as the case may be. There are some young ladies in their 20's and 30's who are willing to date men in their 60's. A beautiful young woman of that age looking for a man that old can only be looking for money. Sadly, I did not fall into that category.

The dating scam is not something one expects, but it is probably more prevalent than I realize. There are women, or maybe it is men posing as women, who claim to be from another state or maybe even another country. I was approached by a young lady who claimed to be living outside of Moscow and coming here on a work permit. Some of the local hotels here do use contracted labor for housecleaning services, so it was a believable situation. Even so, I was on guard. The initial contact was through Match.com and then carried on via regular email. Once "she" asked for money to get here, I knew it was a scam. I pulled the address of the Internet provider from "her" email and Googled it. Sure enough, it was a know date scammer. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted, and I received some nice photographs of someone, probably not the scammer, maybe his girlfriend? Now the funny part was, even after I stopped responding, "she" continued to email. I guess they lost track of whom they were emailing to; I'm sure I was not their sole target at the time.

I can not give a good description of the woman's side of Match.com, but from some of the conversations I have had with my potential dates, there are some really sleazy men on the prowl. Men looking for their money or just looking for sex. With that said, I don't want to leave you with the impression that the dating site is some sort of outlet for undesirable people. There are many good folks who truly do want to find the new love of their life. One just has to proceed with caution.

As for the Match.com's site setup. Pretty easy to navigate. They are, however, not very good at keeping track of the status of active members profiles. Some members who I had exchanges with showed up in searches as active in one week, so many days or hours when I had traded messages with the individual for the past three weeks already.

Searches and "Daily Matches" are also not well filtered to fit your desired dating partner. Some fall outside of the age range you specify, and they do not exclude ethnic races you have no interest in. It is not a terrible situation. It only means that you have to manually weed out a few undesirable candidates. Not a problem, I weed out a lot already.

So is Match.com worth the money? Maybe not. There are a few free sites on the Internet that can provide much the same services for no fee. DateHookup.com is just one of them.