The next wave

Weather (outside): Scattered rain, surprisingly warm. Sun poking through.
Weather (inside): Cloudy... sun not to be found.

So this is called "the next wave" because, well, there is a new wave of contacts I've made. I guessed, correctly, that the holidays would inspire some to join the system, or give others incentive to try again. So I found like 15 or so women (it this sounds so bad to talk about it like this!!!) who met my general requirements (again, bad, but the system basically forces us to put the others into buckets... we can either email, or not. We can respond, or not. More about theories of this later.) So I found like 15 "new" women, of those, I fell out of the preferred age category of maybe 5. But I usually don't let that stop me, they can reject me if it's that important to them. I emailed 5 of them last night.

Now, I try very hard to make sure I read their profiles carefully and customize my emails to them. Not because I want to flatter them, but because I want them to know that's what kind of guy I am, and honestly, because I want to be sure that I know why I want to contact them, beyond what is hopefully a good picture. So I write what I think are decent emails to the women I contact, and I certainly hope they appreciate it.

But the question is: what is a good success rate of responses? It seems to be about 1 in 5, just taking a guess. Is that good? I don't know. And then, I've also found that an enthusiastic response with an enthusiastic re-response, well, that's no guarantee that they're interested. Which I find strange. Maybe they think it's polite to write a long response because I did? But I've had several where I can only guess my response to her response did something to turn them away. In any case, I sent the emails late last night. I know that several of them have been read and the woman has looked at my profile (another ripe topic of discussion, how that works), but haven't responded. Two of them, I do fall outside their age range, by two years. So I can't be too disappointed. So I don't know how long to wait. I guess I just keep waiting, I mean, what else am I supposed to do? I guess not everyone deals with these emails transactionally. Not everyone makes an immediate decision one way or the other. And even if they do, may not write back immediately.

I think one of the flaws of the system. No, won't go there. It's not a flaw, it's a natural result of how the system is set up, there are three things you can do with a profile you've read:

• Ignore (either entirely or just back in the "waitlist" pile)
• Wink, which some people seem to prefer but most seem to dislike. I'm not sure what winking indicates. Is it an icebreaker, just wanted to point myself out? Or is it a lazy form of an email? Or, thirdly, is it some kind of hint that you want to hook up, but aren't interested in them romantically?
• Email them. Self explanatory.

And then, well, the person has four choices back...

• Ignore/delete
• Send a "no, thanks"... no one has ever sent one of those to me, and I don't know if any else sends them, either.
• Wink back. This seems to be rare, but has happened.
• Reply.

And, as I've discussed, a Email/Reply sequence doesn't guarantee anything. And, with the way it's set up, unless they reply right away, you can't tell if they're interested but busy, hate you, or, and this is where it almost becomes a flaw... they might have been interested but you said one or two wrong things. In other words, there's no discussion. Maybe that's how it has to work... but I'm going to think about this and try to figure out how an intermediate response, sort of a non-committal "OK, tell me more" or a way of asking about something that you found interesting, or something that pointed you away from the person, a kind of "Did you mean X like that?"

Because I think the current system creates an environment that forces people into a too much of a binary decision... yes or no. But in the real world, there's discussion, a gray area, a maybe.

Hmmmn. Something to think about.