Those dating websites again

I've already written about online dating but up until recently I'd been signed up for one for about 2 years (since June '02) and not had a wink of action (literally - you can send virtual 'winks' to people you might wink/cheesy-smile at for real). I have had a couple of winks in the last few weeks and started considering signing up to send messages, but generally it has been pretty quiet. Mind you I never made a load of effort myself and I didn't subscribe (paid-service) to be able to send/read messages.

Ok I probably started out with a bad (not interesting/funny/sexy enough) profile, and it was definitely an unsexy photo (ex-company mugshot, 'professional' looking). But I did evolve it and specifically went out on a good day some time ago and took a load of photos for it and picked the best look etc...

So earlier this week I looked at the other sites and signed up to a couple more - tried to pick UK-specific (again), just the free sign-ups they all allow so you can put your photo and a bit about yourself on it. Hoped I might find a more active site or at least get more responses.

I'd only been signed up to one of them for a day or two when I got my first wink and a message or two. The difference with this site is that you can see who's been checking your profile. It also means that someone else knows when you've looked at their profile, so sometimes you might think twice about looking but I'm not paranoid enough for it to stop me. So I did the normal search, narrowed it down a bit and tried to just include local-ish (local county-specific) areas. I've also been looking to see who else is online at the time and checking out any profiles that might be interesting. There's a range from very interesting to weird, from 18 year-old students to lonely 60 year-olds, and some incredibly attractive people on some of them (assuming the photos are real).

It sure does boost your confidence and make you feel a load better about yourself to be contacted by other people who like the look of you/your profile. I've never thought I was that attractive (see my about-me page here for evidence, ignore the b&w pixelly one) and sometimes I think about finding one of those "amIhotornot" type sites to get myself honestly rated.

Anyway, I seem to be getting along quite well with one lady in particular from a site and all going well we might end up meeting sometime in the near future. I hope I'm not appearing to be too much a rooky (of these dating sites, or writing the right kind of chatty messages after 2yrs being single).