Online Dating Blog

If you’ve dated online for any amount of time you’ve probably experienced this situation: you find a nearly perfect profile and you’re so excited to contact the person and then notice that they have a requirement that you don’t meet. Do you contact or not?

Generally, I feel like those doing the contacting (often men) need to try to observe the requirements of those they are contacting. In my article on Issues with Older Men Contacting Younger Women, I tackled the idea of wanting to encourage men to take some risks but at the same time not totally ignoring the requirements a woman lists. My recommendation was making decisions on a scale based on how far the man was from the requirement; I’m sure it’s not perfect but it was one way to tackle the problem.

Some Men Hate this Advice

Through emails (and some comments) I’ve come to realize that there are men who hate any advice that suggests they should observe a requirement. And this isn’t just an age thing: height is something that has generated a lot of hate mail too.

Now not every man is hateful toward me on this advice, but most who contact me disagree with the idea of not contacting a woman based on a requirement she has that they don’t meet. Here’s one response from the article I listed above:

There is little in on-line dating that can raise my hackles more than age related issues. I am 58 years old, but look ten years younger than my age. I can accept discrimination against myself on almost any grounds be it looks, height, ethnicity or even the color of my shoes, but not when it comes to age. I realize that there must be reasonable bounds, but so many woman (and no doubt men) are not at all reasonable.

…

What I would suggest is, take their lower age bound and set their upper age bound by an equal number of years. If your age falls within this range then don’t feel guilty about contacting them. It’s ‘your time to waste’ and if they get upset or frustrated, then that’s their problem. After all, if you were outside looking to date, would you approach someone and ask their age?

Now unlike some communication I’ve had with men on this topic where it’s all emotional anger, this reader presents some interesting logic. Basically, if a 45-year-old woman is willing to date a 35-year-old man, then it’s only reasonable that she be willing to date a 55-year-old man.

Your Online Dating Preferences Don’t Matter to Me

The problem I see when I talk to other men on the topic is that they all pick their own area to ignore. This reader finds it acceptable for a woman to reject him based on his height or race but draws the line at age. The next guy I talk to draws the line at height. The next one physical activity. And so on.

To the man, it looks like he’s being fair. It’s not as if he’s ignoring every requirement, after all. However, to the woman receiving his email, it can look like he’s saying that her preferences don’t matter. That in itself isn’t a huge problem. What becomes a bigger problem is when dozens or hundreds of men decide that they too are going to ignore that particular requirement.

What if Things Were Reversed?
Men do most of the contacting. However, if things were reversed, I think men would have more empathy. If you’re a man who finds yourself hating what I’m saying here, imagine you live in a world where women do most of the contacting. Now imagine the following scenarios:

• You make a point in your profile to talk about how active you are and how you’d love to date someone who could be your running partner. Your profile generates a few good emails but primarily you find your inbox filled with emails from women who are over-weight and openly against exercise in their profile. For every email you get from a good match, you get ten from women obviously ignoring what you’re looking for.
• Alternately, imagine you list in your profile that you’d like to meet someone within 20 miles of where you are. That might seem petty to some people, but where you are in your life you need someone close to home. You then find all your emails coming from women who are hundreds of miles away.

The point I’m trying to make is that what you want to find in someone matters. To me, you’re allowed to care about anything. You’re even allowed to be unreasonable! Being unreasonable will probably hurt your chances, but it’s still your right. When the reader above said there needs to be reasonable bounds, I agree…and I think those bounds are set by the writer of the profile, not the writer of the first email.

Does that mean men should never take a risk? Absolutely not! However, I do think it means that when we contact someone that has a requirement we don’t meet, we should be very intentional about it. If a 30-year-old woman states she wants to date men between the ages of 25 and 35, I totally support a 36-year-old guy contacting her. I’m hesitant if he’s 40, but there are times where I’d even support that…but I think the man should take care and be intentional about deciding if he’ll contact the woman. What I’m against is the idea that such-and-such a requirement is one that can simply be ignored.

But Isn’t it Fair to Have a 10-Year Range go Both Ways?
Back to the reader’s idea: if a woman will date someone 10 years younger than she should be willing to date someone 10 years older. As I said, there is logic here. I don’t support his approach, though. Even if the woman who is 45 listed her age range as 35 to 45. Why not?

1. Again, I think it’s everyone’s right to be as unreasonable as they want to be. I don’t think 35 to 45 is a good age range for a 45 year old woman in most cases, but it’s her choice, not mine.
2. This logic doesn’t work well with other areas. If a woman is willing to date a man six inches taller than her, this means that she should be willing to date a man six inches shorter than her.
3. The logic is hard to apply to other qualities such as physical fitness, hobbies/interests, etc.

It’s a better approach than simply ignoring someone’s requirements, but I think additional thought should be given. Maybe this could be a starting point but I would still argue that you take other things into account before contacting: do she mention age requirements in her profile text? Do you match all the other requirements listed? Do you share a lot of hobbies? Based on those questions, sure, there are probably times where taking a risk to contact her is reasonable.

A Big Enough Issues for Dating Services to Tackle It

I know there’s always a risk in writing articles like this, as the past has shown me. However, before you convince yourself that I’m being unfair, keep in mind that some dating services have built features for this very problem.

For example, eHarmony won’t give you any matches that are outside of an age range you specify. They’ll even prevent matches on things like smoking so, on that service, there’s a lot of filtering that prevents many of the issues discussed here.

For a second example, Match.com has the feature called Filtered Mail which automatically moves emails from people that don’t meet certain requirements to a spam area. Why would Match.com take the time to develop this feature? It seems that it must have been a real problem in their eyes. Women can be chased away if they get 100 emails but only 5 of those men meet the requirements the woman wants. Match.com wants to be successful and I bet that they’ve found if a woman can only see the contacts she interested, even when that means a lot less emails, that she’s more likely to stick around.

Risks and Respect

Again, I’m not totally against taking some risks. If you match someone in ten ways but not in one other way by a small degree, often contacting them is the right way to go. However, I also believe that respecting what other people want is important too. Are your desires worth respect?

I think there is a balance to be found and for me when I dated online, it included some risk but respect as well…and I found that I could be quite successful even when I respected that a woman might be looking for something I didn’t have.