This writer has been single for several years now, so I’m ready to meet someone! I haven’t really been actively looking for someone to date (and hopefully marry), and I also haven’t tried the online dating thing before. While I’m most excited to find a match, I am also excited to try an online dating site and to see what kind of fun I can have along the way.

My end goal of dating is really to meet a match that will lead to marriage. I have a strong faith background, so this attribute will be important to look for in a partner, and the ability to search for these preferences on a dating site. I’m not really interested in taking some big, long personality and preferences survey. I’m most interested in having access to a quality community rather than having a site choose potential matches on my behalf.

Choosing a Site

Through my writing with OBODs, I’ve become familiar with many different types of dating sites with very different member communities to connect with. I know myself pretty well – so I already am wanting to try either eHarmony or Elite Singles, both powerhouses with high rates of successful matching of the online dating communities.

I chose Elite Singles due to my education level and I believe I am also a “quality” partner. I am a little concerned about choosing a non-U.S. focused site, but I’m willing to take the chance on a more international site to find “quality” elite partners. We’ll see who I find!

Creating an Account

Creating my account was super simple! I signed up for a free, basic membership. The entire sign up process took less than three screens to complete, and one was just text. At no point did Elite Singles request payment information for this free account. On the first screen, they request your gender and the gender of the person you are looking for. You’ll note that there are only binary options – “female” and “male”-  to choose, so the site is behind in gender equality as we define it here in the U.S.

After selecting my gender and the gender I’m wanting to find, the next screen asks for your email address and to set a password for your new account. You click the little box to accept the Elite Singles Terms & Conditions, and then you click the Get Started button – that’s it! I was then in my new account and able to browse, create my profile, or take the short personality survey.

Setting Up a Profile

The first thing I wanted to do, rather than jumping right in to scrolling for matches, is to create my own profile page. The profile has several standard attributes that you can set to describe yourself: height, ethnicity, religion, desire to have children, smoking habits, education level, and languages spoken. While setting my matches preferences, if you set an attribute as “very important” the system actually puts an alert on it and advises you to not be so stringent. Kinda annoying, if a certain attribute IS very important to you.

Moving down the Elite Singles profile format, the next items I set up were Questions and Answers. These are conversation-sparking questions that you answer about yourself. I only did a few, but I learned later on that some singles do many of these questions. As I completed and saved my profile, an incorrectly entered occupation was flagged with an alert for incorrect information (somehow it said “graphic”?), so somebody at Elite Singles (or a computer) is checking the profiles for accurate information.

Finding Matches

Finding matches and actually interacting with other singles is where I’m really getting excited about Elite Singles. The preference choices on Elite Singles are pretty standard and include: age, height, your desire to have kids/no kids, education, income, language, smoking/drinking habits, ethnicity, and religion. I did notice that whenever I would make a change to my preferences, it instantly updates my matches that I receive to the inbox and default search. So that’s pretty seamless and helpful to updating who I get to meet.

One neat thing as I am interacting with profiles is that I can “like” sections of matches’ profiles – like or ask a message specifically about a certain profile section. This seems like a great way to connect on a topic or one of the Questions and Answers. I can’t see photos without a paying account, which is a bummer. I do like how every section of the potential matches’ profile shows you where you are compatible – how helpful to compatibility. Some people have really taken the time to fill out their profiles, while others are almost blank.

Talking to a Match

As a free member, I could only respond to premium members who messaged me first, so I may need to upgrade in order to really get talking with people on Elite Singles. For my first 14 matches that I received to my inbox – 3 were in the U.S. and the rest were in Canada. One potential match was in the state I’m in, but located over 8 hours away. I was unable to see any indication of when someone was last logged into the site.

While my online dating journey is just starting, I am glad that I chose Elite Singles to start with. Hopefully it’ll be the last site too 😉 And my overall impression of Elite Singles? This is going to take a while to actually talk with someone. There does seem to be a lot of quality, sweet guys on the site. I’m curious how long it will take for the interest I sent to be returned (at least by some). Time to log back in and check for new matches… Happy searching for your next true love too!

Additional Resources and Next Steps

• Best U.S. Dating Sites
• Top 10 Dating Sites
• Online Dating Site Free Trials

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