plumtreeblossom

Following a class action suit, the homophobically managed eHarmony was pressured into finally providing same sex matching services after years of pointedly shunning it. Rather than mix their straight clientele with all the nasty homosexuals, they opened up a bare-bones outboard site called CompatiblePartners.net.

I bet it sucks. It's so clear that they hate doing it. Not only did they give it the most joyless and utilitarian name possible, the registry page features a big, fat disclaimer that all of their research was done on married heterosexual couples and that they have not done (and surely will not do) any research on same-sex matching. The disclaimer is repeated in dramatic CAPSLOCK on their TOS page. And the no-frills graphics show stereotype-reinforcing twinks and probably-not-lesbian stock photography models.

I'm sure they don't care if they ever generate a successful same-sex match. I can only imagine that they put no resources into it and are waiting and hoping it will fail. Part of the class action suit required that they give out 10,000 free memberships. That's a tiny number of people for a national dating service, but there appear to be free memberships left so perhaps potential clients aren't buying the farce. If any of you have memberships, I'd be very curious to hear how your matching is going (or not going).

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Years ago when they first opened, I attempted to join eHarmony. After filling out 3 hours worth of questions and essays, I was informed that because of my answers, they could only offer me a 6% chance of ever finding me a match, and that I might not get my money's worth if I bought a membership. At least they're upfront about their discrimination.

What angered me in the questionaire was their inflexibility about what they think a proper match is. When it asked my preferred dating age range (mine is 10 years younger to 10 years older), it said I couldn't do that and that they would only match me to men between 5 and 20 years older, but not my own age or younger. It also said that females should be willing to relocate within 500 miles (I most certainly am NOT!). Clearly eHarmony didn't consider me to be wife material for their men. Damn right I'm not! :-)

Okay, the info contained that second paragraph makes me stabby. WTF?

That's how I felt. I was not willing to move and leave my whole world behind! And I wanted to pick my age range, not have it dictated to me. It just smacked of complete patriarchy and sexism. Do Not Want!

Definitely Do Not Want!

Nice to know it never would have even allowed me to be matched with my husband simply because of the age range. Dumbasses.

Yep, it never would have let me meet Jay because he's a whooping 2 years younger than me. Luckily Yenta

surrealestate had more enlightened matching skills.

I joined the free membership a long time ago just to see what it was, but I was already hesitant enough about it that I didn't bother getting a paid membership. I'm sure I still have a profile floating around there somewhere, but I'm not sure. I do know two other people that were actually told, similar to the way you were, that there was very little chance they could find someone for them and to save their money. I have no idea what it was about these people that got them denied. And they're not at all from the same circle of friends that you and I are part of, so the reasons must be completely different. At least they're honest.

Also, I really like younger men. And I don't think I would have anything in common with someone 20 years older than me!

I feel really bad for my best friend (I'm not sure if you know him). He's gay and has been using online dating services for a number of years. He says that Manhunt is mostly people looking for casual sex . He's been on okc for a number of years too, but is plagued by all the 23 year olds or people just looking for something casual. He's 33, an engineer, very cute, owns his own house (one street from you, actually) and is looking for someone to settle down with and get married. He's not into casual sex at all. I feel really bad that the dating sites for gay men don't seem to cater at all to what he's looking for. I almost want to tell him about Compatible Partners, but I feel like maybe it would be insulting to him because of the reasons you stated. :-/

umm, hello!

Heh. I do try to bring him to T@F shows from time to time, so there's a chance you'll meet him at some point! ;-)

And out of curiousity...I'm not sure if you do or ever did the whole internet dating thing, but did you find the same thing with Manhunt and OKC as he did? He's now talking about wanting to try Match.com because he's given up on everything else already.

My best friend met his husband on match.com -- he tells me it's the place to go for gay guys seeking something more serious.

I tried a number of dating sites, including match.com, manhunt and OKC. I've found OKC to be completely worthless. If I wanted to meet a married bisexual or a curious 20-year-old, maybe; but there's damn few gay grownups on it. Manhunt, as your friend observed, is about sex, and for that purpose it serves admirably. Match.com started out promising, but after a year or so it became clear that I'd already met everyone I was going to meet through that database, and I gave up.

All gay dating sites, as far as I can tell, suffer from the same problem: the number of gay men is relatively small, and only a fraction of them are willing to put themselves out there on a dating site. I assure myself that there must be some winners, since, after all, I'm one of them; but there are an awful lot of curious, married men, or twinks who consider anyplace outside the South End to be inaccessible, or men who are online all the time but never respond.

So yeah, online dating sucks. The only thing worse is not dating—or hanging around bars.

I've heard that there is a gay craft social at Diesel Cafe on Monday nights that was started for gay guys who wanted to meet guys in a non-bar location.

What happened? I thought it was going very well :(

Oh no, Matt was unceremoniously dumped shortly after Valentine's Day. He told Matt that just didn't "feel the passion." Even though everything seemed to be going well. Matt was pretty pissed because this was the first boyfriend he's had in like 3 years and he really liked the guy.

That's terrible. The last I heard, everything was going so well. I haven't spoken to him since that time. I'm really sorry... I guess I should write him.

eFail

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