I'm a 49 year old male who has been on Match.com for 3 months, and I find it to be nothing more than an extension of real life. Most women of average caliber in the real world do not consider me attractive enough to pursue a relationship with (the undesirables, however, are wild about me), so by joining Match, I thought I could first get the woman to know me and become interested in me as a person via e-mail and phone conversations, then when it came time for the face-to-face "interview", she would maybe overlook the fact that I am 6' tall but skinny and lacking in muscles (the male equivalent of an obese woman), have a fairly prominent nose and look too much like a kid at 49. Now I have no problem getting responses and generating "chemistry" in my e-mails or phone conversations. Most of the women tell me what an interesting, funny, etc. person I am, that it's really what's on the "inside" that counts most, and how they are just dying to meet me in person. And guess what? Yup, when we do meet, as long as the woman is of average caliber, she almost always ends it right there with a "sorry, but there's no chemistry". It simply goes to show, whether it's out in the real world or in online dating, looks are the only thing that matters. If you're a macho man with big muscles, nothing else will matter, you'll get the girl every time. Match.com has its flaws, but they perform a valuable service by allowing access to a large database of available women, something that is not easy to come by in everyday life, since 99.4% of even half-way desirable women are either married or in a committed relationship. But one must set realistic expectations. Going into Match, my goal was to meet a compatible, honest woman in good health who was fairly intelligent and of average looks. "No problem", I thought. But now I realize that these goals were way too high for a skinny guy like me who doesn't look like a movie star. The one lesson I learned from Match.com is that it is virtually impossible to move up even one notch from one's own level of physical attractiveness, except in rare cases. It doesn't matter what else you may have going for you, even if you have money coming out of your ears, it's just not going to happen. And it's the same whether you're 20 or 50. All said, though, I am not yet ready to give up on Match, because I am still holding out a faint hope of finding that rare woman who is not shallow or superficial, who cares about something more than instant "chemistry", looks, or muscles. Good luck, everyone!