"Top Matches"

Friday, December 18, 2009
I get this daily email from Match.com with “top matches selected just for me”. Somehow I don’t think there’s too much going into the pulling of these so-called matches. Snapshots of the profiles include the photo, and the following info.

(1) Age / Location. Age, at least, does not appear to line up to my specified range, which I would think is one of the easiest things to match on. Unfortunately there are a zillion people from Chicago on Match, so that's hardly narrowing it down for me.

(2) % Match. So far I haven’t gotten higher than 86% on the email, a B+ if you're grading on the curve.

(3) Height (in Inches and Centimeters). Sometimes it also adds “Slender” after the height. I think the male appropriate term is actually “Slight”, but the odd thing is that’s the only physical attribute that appears on the email, not “average” or “stocky” or whatever the others are. I don’t like slender so maybe they’re warning me?

(4) Age Range of Women He Seeks. I like how some guys have round numbers, like 25-35 and others are really specific, like 23-31. There are the typical huge age ranges, like 24-42 (for a 35-year old), and then the exclusively younger range, like 24-31 for a 33-year old. Of course all men go WAY younger than their own age.

(5) Previous Relationship Status. The most frequent answer is “He has been in committed relationships but was never married”.

I don’t know how I answered this question on my profile, but if I was being honest I should have been looking for the “I haven’t been in a stable, committed relationship in years, but I regularly get over attached to men I’m not in committed relationships with and now feel I’m ready for said stable, committed relationships” option. Doesn’t this option just mean “Never married”? No one will admit to never being committed so this hardly seems like an accurate assessment of anything.

(6) Faith. This is a pretty basic stat, but how could I be an 86% match with someone who is Jewish when I explicitly excluded it from the list of religions I would match up with? I’m pretty open on most comparables but I’m fundamentally not Jewish and won't be a match for anyone identifying himself as such.

(7) Kid Status. “Someday, He will want children”. I love this one, I think because of the way it’s annotated. It seems wistful.

Focusing on the details of the presentation instead of the content is obviously not the purpose of these emails, but since at this point I’m mostly letting men come to me it hardly seems necessary to do anything but critique them. The emails, that is, not the men. I’ll be saving that for when they send me an email, obviously.

7 comments:

Plentymorefishoutofwater said...

My age range is 13-63. Basically, as long as it's legal I'm good.

MA said...

Don't take these rankings seriously.

Match.com offered my most recent ex - over whom I was severely heartbroken - as my number one 98% match. OKCupid and eHarmony did the same thing a year later. They don't know a thing.

Dater at Large said...

PMFOOW: I would expect nothing less from you.

Miss Alpha: that's crazy! I would definitely not appreciate seeing an ex in my matches.

jo said...

yes i agree that most of the so-called "top matches" sure aren't any kinda match at all.

Unknown said...

Wow, because Judaism is such a horrible religion and all... Are you excluding it because you would rather someone with your own specific beliefs, or do you just find it that "fundamentally" tasteless....

Dater at Large said...

Eileen: First of all, welcome!

Second, I have nothing against any religion and I think God doesn't discriminate against any either. I have plenty of friends with a wide variety of beliefs and I certainly didn't mean to offend anyone.

But this is a dating blog, and for life partners, I want religion to be something that we have in common and can share. I am fundamentally Christian, so I tend to exclude Judaism, Muslim, Buddhist, atheist, etc.

I also exclude people who choose "no way" to drinking, because alcohol is a part of my lifestyle and I think it would be difficult to date someone for whom it wasn't.

I'm just identifying what I think are characteristics that will work with my personality and lifestyle.

Unknown said...

Thanks for the response:)