Ready to give up

I've been out on approximately 75 first dates in the past 19 months... 4 have ended up in some type of multi-month exclusive relationship, and the other 71 were almost all one-date-wonders.

So statistically I'm running roughly 6%

I'm in awe. Even at my most successful, I may have gotten 10 first dates a year. This means you more or less have a date every week or so. I slow down if something pans out. But still, this is awesome.

Wooly you should really post some more info or data on what your system is and how you achieved this, 75 first dates in 19 months for a guy online makes you somewhat of a phenom. It means you were getting responses from women I'm guessing on average every 3 days at least or so. Like what did your opening letters look like, how long your profile was, how many photos you had up, your overall standards, etc. How many women a week did you write? If you're not comfortable posting it PM me pls. I think you could help quite a few guys on here, including me. My batting average right now on the other sites is horrid even though I know I'm not emailing women out of my league.

I have only been on eHarmony for going on 7 months now, I haven't gone on a single date with my nearly 100 matches that I have since then on eHarmony. Though in my observations there are numerous variables that are in play, and you have to ask yourself if you are willing to spend the money with the possibility that you might not have anything good come out of it.

So let me begin by saying, I don't think you lack of success indicates that there is anything wrong with you or that you are less worthy of any of the guys on eHarmony. The biggest factor is likely your age, I am also 21 and eHarmony does have it's disadvantages for us. There are a number of people (like you and I) who are 20-25 and use online dating sites as a tool. However, we are in the minority. The majority of those in eHarmony are actually quite a bit older, and believe it or not there are probably a number of 27 year old guys who are not interested in a 21 year old woman. I know there are a number of 27 year old women that are not interested in 21 year old guy. So that is just a factor that is working against the both of us. That is one reason why I went to OkCupid, I am not putting eHarmony down at all but I have had better luck over there because of it being a free site there is a greater number of people are age.

I am also curios what your distance settings are, if you have kept your distance settings fairly restrictive than your amount of matches is going to be lower. As for guys going out with you and things no working out, that happens to all of us and is going to happen regardless of what dating site you are on or if you are meeting people out and about. eHarmony uses a computer algorithm to try to match people, but we all know that the emotional attachment between two people goes far beyond and is far more complex than anything a computer programmer can write.

So as for giving up on eHarmony that is entirely up to you. Personally, if you can afford to renew and you have any faith in the system than I think you should renew. If you have lost all faith in the system than perhaps you should consider other systems out there. What you can't allow yourself to do is to get entirely discouraged as that is going to have a negative impact, not only are you going to be more passive and perhaps miss the opportunity to meet a great guy but if you begin to get discouraged and you begin questioning yourself than you are going to lose confidence and we all know the troubles that can lead to.

I think Eharmony is the biggest waste of money for our demographic.

So far, I've mostly been matched up with extremely overweight people or people who are polar opposite of what I stand for - or of course, the inactive fake profiles.

I don't date a lot, but the few I have been on, usually end up in long relationships (although I'm pretty selective on who I ask out in the first place).

The one BAD date I've EVER gone on (the only internet date I've had) was with some girl that said she had no camera or pictures on her new laptop (Chalk it up to experience).

She said she was attractive, worked out a lot, felt down because her boyfriend just cheated on her, etc. So I was willing to give it a shot because I felt bad for her. When I came to pick her up, she was like 100 pounds overweight and (I apologize if this sounds rude) looked like she was hit by the ugly bus. Not to mention the baggage.

I still took her out, but I was so happy when I drove off - the relief was like actually having a good date (I actually told her we had no chemistry and I would not call her back, she slammed my door on the way out).

Internet dating really sucks - all the normal people with no problems are probably out there in the real world. We just need to take some time off our busy schedules to look for dates in the right places. I finally have some time off this semester from my load to finally do it after a few years, so I'm ditching the useless online dating thing.

If you don't have a gym membership yet, use the money you would pay Eharmony to get one. Try to go to a gym in a nice neighborhood. If you go to a bad neighborhood, you'll just get stupid meat heads. The best gym to go to would be your school gym.

If you don't know how to use any of the equipment (or even if you do know how to use it), just go up to some guy you think is cute and ask him how (This is like the least scary way to strike up a conversation). You'll probably end up with 30000 times better dates than finding Joe Gut online. Just make sure to size him up before you ask, if he looks like he has too huge muscles, he's probably into cheating and loving himself.

Don't try to use subtle clues like smiling or staring at us, we males are stupid. Subtle hints mean nothing to us.

Good luck.