Online Dating Sites

After 21 long years of marriage I found myself divorced, a single mom with three teenagers and facing the prospect of dating again for the first time since college. I was no longer a young, fresh co-ed; here I was in my upper forties starting over and I didn't know where to begin.

Online dating seemed to have come of age while I was married, and I saw all the ads on television daily about a number of sites, and I actually knew a few people who had meet their spouses through some sites. So when I decided I was ready to meet people my first choice was eHarmony.

eHarmony had this lengthy questionnaire that you had to fill out to be matched with people, and that really appealed to me because I thought that would mean that only people who were serious would be on there. You also had to pay, they really didn't have a free version and so that again signaled to me that the people on there would be serious. Guess I was naïve.

I would be matched with dozens of guys a day, and I would say Hello and nothing. No one would even take the time to say Hello back. One or two finally did respond and they were just looking for sex, really? You went through this lengthy questionnaire and paid to be on the site just to find sex? I was shocked and hurt, I mean who wouldn't be, but I continued. The next couple of responses I got were my introduction to the online dating scammers of the world.

Online dating scammers use someone's pictures, and whose or where they get them I have no idea. Then they tell you this sob story about being a widower and raising a child alone. That they were born sometimes overseas, but live in the US but at the moment they are currently working in a foreign country. Sometimes they even tell you they are in the service, usually Army. Once you start talking to them, they start trying to draw you in with talk of religion, having been praying to find you, that they know God led them to you and of undying love within those first few conversations. For the most part that has always been my clue to dump these guys, but there was one in the very beginning that I kept talking to after he started this line. The next thing that happens is he starts to ask you for money. His wallet was stolen, or he can't cash his check in the foreign country, etc. Now, I may be older but I am not stupid and I dumped him fast and reported him to eHarmony.

After six months on eHarmony I found that I was wasting my time. I would get on every day, like they advised. I would check my matches and send Hellos to a few, and get no responses. I revised my profile over and over trying not to sound desperate or anything, but nothing made any difference. Either no one would respond to my Hellos or I would get another scammer. Finally I decided I had had enough and cancelled my membership and left.

Now, in the past three years, I have tried eHarmony again a second time only to have the exact same thing happen. Every time I see one of those ads on television talking about how great they are I just want to scream, lies, lies, it's all lies. And where are these people that actually say they meet on there, how did they do it? How long did they have to weed through the scammers or is it just me? Is there something special about me that has only the scammers responding to me?

Well, that's eHarmony and Bumble down, what dating site should I try next?