Guy Winks at Me but Won’t Respond to my Emails
Published on December 16, 2013
The way Match.com works can sometimes create confusion for subscribers. In this case, a woman receives a wink from a man and she’s interested so she emails him back…then he doesn’t respond! What’s up with that? Here’s an example from a reader:
Hi, I have received a wink a couple of months ago from a match guy. He also made me a favorite and “liked” my pictures. I winked back and sent him a note thanking him. No response. A month later, he “liked” some new pictures I put up. Just a few days ago, he winked again and “liked” another picture. What the what? Any ideas what is happening here? I have a strong attraction to him and like his profile. Thanks for your thoughts!
What the What?!
So to understand what’s going on here you need to understand a few things about the “free version” of Match.com:
- First, anyone who signs up at Match.com is immediately in the “free account” mode. The biggest benefit of signing up for the free version is you can browse all the dating profiles…so you can see if there are people you’re interested in before signing up.
- You can also do some limited communication including winking, although you can only wink at the same person once a month. I suppose the once-a-month limitation is to make sure a non-paying member can’t harass someone. Photos can also be liked under the free version.
- You can also add people to your favorites list (which shows as “Save” if you’re looking at search results). I still have a non-paying account and I just verified that I can added someone to my saved/favorites list.
So if you’re in this situation and you look at what a free member can do, it becomes clear that there’s a good chance the guy contacting you is likely not a paying member. You might think, “How annoying! Why would Match.com let someone wink at me if they’re not a paying member?”
Well, don’t forget that Match.com is a business and they want to encourage people to become paying members. If a guy isn’t a paying member, by winking at women he can measure how much success he might have by seeing how many responses he gets to his winks. If a man thought there were ten women that he was interested in and winked at each of them, if five of them responded he might be motivated to subscribe for the service.
However, one thing that many people might not realize is that while a non-paying member is alerted when they get an email, they can’t even see their inbox until they subscribe. This means they won’t know which women responded to the winks if you email them back.
A Few Thoughts on this Situation
First, I generally think guys should not be winking. I’ve talked to enough women to know that the majority of them do NOT like this. They all say basically the same thing, “if you want to talk to me send me an email”.
With that aside, some guys will wink and there will be non-paying members included in that group. So it’s good to remember that whenever you get a wink, you have no guarantee that they’re a member. So what should you do? If you want to respond with an email, that’s great. But I think you should also wink back. A non-paying member can’t see their inbox to know who is responding but they can see who has winked at them.
With this approach, if the guy is looking for motivation to sign up, knowing who is responding to him might help him take that next step. Of course, it’s not your job to convince someone else to try a dating service so I wouldn’t put too much thought into it…but adding a wink to the response email is a pretty easy step to take.
And hopefully that helps solve the question of “what the what”!
Author: Brad
Brad initially struggled with online dating but over time became quite successful using it. He met his wife using online dating and has been giving advice and helping people improve their results since 2007. He has written a Free Online Dating Guide to help others find success with online dating. You can learn more about his personal experience using online dating and running this website here.
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