Chemistry versus Eharmony — encouraging two different types of strategies.

It seems to me no one at EHarmoy wants to initiate bc there is no penalty for not opening/closing a match and moving on with things. You can let 1000000000 matches hang in the air indefinitely

[but please don't turn this into some sort of personal attack on me

Actually there just might be a certain number if reached eH will stop sending you any new matches. I recall a poster complaining about this a few months back.

NEVER!!

Just don't start a thread telling us that you're leaving for chemistry's new advice board and we're a bunch of pitas' over here!

I read all of the above, and my reply is: Man, I think I will just avoid Chemistry.com which I have never visited before. And not due to anything about Chemistry nor anything about eHarmony. But rather, why would I go to all of the trouble of being on two sites?

All right at the request of Buck, I am starting this thread to discuss what happened when I tried out Chemistry.com for a free communication weekend.

Their set up has a big difference from Eharmony. There's a penalty for not sorting matches into the definitely or not really pile. So I am there for an FCW so decided to give their way a try their way and just put all the ones I have the slightest interested in into the yes pile. The rest went to not really. I have 2 in undecided.

This would be unusual behavior for me at eHarmony. Here I tend to wait for others to initiate and only initiate myself with one or two of the matches I'm particularly interested in. The rest I leave in maybe land. If I run out of other matches to talk to, I would pick one or two from the maybe pile and move them to communicating.

But at chemistry, being there for an FCW, I just went ahead and made that decision immediately and ended up sending first steps to 16 matches, 8 of whom I made it through all the steps with to open communication. The rest I just left hanging. I doubt we get to open communication in time.

One of the interesting things I noticed going through things that way is the ones I had at first been the most interested in based on their profiles didn't always stay at the top of my list. Some of the ones who I was initially very iffy on in my interest floated to the top based on their emails and what they told me about their life and history.

Of course, I am kind of basing this on them being truthful in their responses and telling me things straight, and that they are only polishing things up a bit not outright lying. Might not be the case. MIght not even look like their photos. Don't know till we meet. So unlike some, no I don't view this stage as overly "meaningful" communication and I'd be uncomfortable if they showed signs they think I am "The One."

Anyway, it was a very instructive weekend. I think I will now approach things at eHarmony much more like Roxy has suggested in the past and just communicate with everyone who doesn't say something completely inappropriate in the profile, such as list sex as their top thing they can't live without.

At eHarmony, I have 10 matches open, but only 3 are actively communicating. The rest appear to be poofing. I initiated two of those 10 open.

It seems to me no one at EHarmoy wants to initiate bc there is no penalty for not opening/closing a match and moving on with things. You can let 1000000000 matches hang in the air indefinitely — and it appears to me that is what most people do. I am guilty of it too so I am not judging, there's no penalty to letting the maybes hang on and I just felt more comfortable only initiating with a few at a time.

Feel free to discuss, but please don't turn this into some sort of personal attack on me bc I was willing to share my experience. I am new to online dating, and I like many others here am just trying to figure out how best to go about it. I do want to be kind and courteous as possible as I go about this.

I've come to the same conclusion. It is a waste of money invested to not send first questions to people of interest, imo. Given that there is such a high % of unpaid members leaving them in your inbox is just clutter. Might as well send the messages. I used to shy away from sending the messages thinking they signaled "I'm into you." Now I see them more as "Wanna chat?"

The only reason I would change this strategy is if people actually started responding back to my questions. And I was in the position of talking to a bunch of people at once.