Online Dating Blog

Why do men ignore what a woman lists as her requirements for the men in her online dating profile? The woman doesn’t even need to have an unreasonable list of things she’s looking for. It might be one thing if she made it impossible for any man to contact her. But that’s happening. Simple things such as required religion or height or age are often ignored entirely by some of the contacting men.

You say you’re looking for a 20-something college graduate who is looking to settle down but you’re contacted by a 19-year old high school drop out who wants you to know that he would “hit dat”. You say you’re interested in finding someone around your age to hang out with and someone 20 years older than you wants you to know that you’re beautiful. Flattering but also annoying.

Why Is This Happening?

The main reason you’re going to get contact like this is that some men don’t read profiles at all. They browse photos and if they find the woman attractive, they immediately email her. No reading occurs at all. Their process is based on the same tactic that an email spammer would use. Most people don’t fall for email spam but by sending out thousands of emails, the spammers only need one or two people to be tricked. Same thing with these guys. They’re looking for that one woman out of 100 that will respond. To be more honest, they’re looking for that one woman who will end up having sex with them after one compliment.

When I was dating online, I remember talking to a woman on a first date about some of the strange things we had seen while online dating. She explained how a man had sent her the same exact email every so often. He didn’t even try to avoid sending it to the same women (and really he couldn’t avoid it since he wasn’t even looking at who he was contacting). She also mentioned that he never bothered to change the text of his email.

How Should A Woman Handle This?

Just like email spam, what you can do about this is rather limited. First, don’t feel like you need to respond to these guys who are obviously contacting you without reading your profile. As a matter of fact, it would be a big mistake to write these guys back unless you’re looking to sleep around. The fact that you have requirements is a good thing and guys pulling this sort of thing should be rejected without a second thought. If you are able to block the user, that would be better because many of these men will continue to try to contact you repeatedly.

Are You On Plenty of Fish?
If you are on Plenty of Fish and this is happening, I’m not surprised. I suspect there is far more of this type of communication from men on Plenty of Fish than there is real communication. The sites I recommend are Match.com and eHarmony but if you’re looking for a free site I think OKCupid is the best one available. Sometimes the best way to fight this kind of communication is to find sites that don’t allow it (or at least actively try to prevent it).