I broke up with my fiancee in December of '03. I was a high school teacher in my late 30's with a busy schedule and a limited pool of dating partners, so I joined E Harmony and was in it for about a year. I had several dates from E and two long term relationships. I gave it a try again in the Spring of '06, but found that I was getting very few matches and most didn't fit me. Finally in December of '06 I decided to give Match a try.

Match. has been an absolute failure, a total waste of my time and money. From December to June I must have sent out over 100 combined emails and winks and the final score card reads like this:

* I received responses from only SEVEN women.

* I made it to speaking on the phone with exactly THREE women (and two of those were at the end of June when my time was about up).

* The first one I spoke with, we had several conversations and then she got cold feet before meeting, saying "we needed to talk on the phone more."

* I never met face to face with anyone until June (phone call #2). We both had talked and joked at length about our bad expereinces with people on Match and met for lunch. We appeared to have a nice time at lunch and agreed to meet again. Then she did the thing I hate the most. She stopped answering her phone and just ignored me. God, I hate that. If you don't want to see me, fine we're both adults, please tell me. Don't ignore someone's phone call.

* Phone call #3 was a standard "few pounds overweight" on her profile, and she is close to 300 in real life. (BTW I realize at my age I am not looking for, nor am I going to find a rail-thin supermodel type on a dating site. I don't mind a few extra pounds, but obesity turns me off.

So there you have it, close to 100 dollars and three phone conversations and over 95% of the women I contacted did not even have the common decency to respond. This is probably my biggest complaint. You find someone whom you match with in about 20 of 25 categories, including some of the big ones like religion or politics, and drop them friendly note. They don't even give you the courtesy of saying "no thanks" in a polite manner.

I begin to wonder what the women on this site are looking for. I have found a few that I feel have "unrealistic expectations," for instance a legal secretary, 42 with two kids, who was only looking for men making 100K or more. Yeah, that's gonna happen Hon, let me know how that works out for you.

At least with E Harmony, I had more contact with prospective matches and had more dates (the first go round anyway). Match is an unmitigated disaste. I wonder what the women out there are looking for.