OkCupid - The Best of the Online Dating Sites?

My 23-year-old son, Matt, a CU medical school student in his second year, has been spending this week of his winter break with me... that is when he's not texting or calling or going out with the girl he met recently on OkCupid. He is definitely smitten. He can't stop talking about how absolutely perfect they are for one another. And she is the only person he's ever met from online dating. In fact, I think this is his first experience with online dating at all, and he's hit the jackpot.

Despite my vast experience with online dating, I had not known about OkCupid! Matt has told me all about it, and, of course, online dating guru that I am, I had to check it out! (I feel I must interject here to mention that personally, I've been in kind of a not-really-wanting-to-date place.) It's all about the research....

So, I signed up, and I have to say, it's quite unique and interesting! It's got the ability to search and there are a lot of people (the best thing about match) but you answer all these questions so you can determine compatibility (the "supposedly" best thing about eHarmony) and it's FREE (the best thing about plentyoffish.)

There are hundreds of questions that are posed... you can pose them yourself... and through some very interesting algorithms you end up being able to find out how potential dates feel about all kinds of topics, including all the biggies: politics, sex and religion. You also get to say which answers you'd accept in a date and how important that is for you. Even though I'm not really feeling like dating, I just think it's an incredibly interesting way of getting to know people!

I've always been interested in personality typing systems (ie. Myers-Briggs, Enneagrams) and this site has all kinds of tests and little games to help you know more about yourself and a potential date. Of course, there's the danger of being "labeled" or for your answers to be misinterpreted... but there's even the ability to explain an answer if it's one of those "it depends" kind of situations.

Some of the questions are pure "intelligence" questions (ie. which is bigger, the sun or the earth?) and I suppose those are thrown in there to check if you're an airhead. I messed up on a simple logic question (And I'm an engineer! I'm like a genius at even really complicated logic questions!) But... it was early, and I was careless and thinking...ha ha ha... any dummy can do this...) It doesn't look like you can change your answers so... now people will think I'm a logic dunce, which is kind of a bummer. But, the truth is, I can be an airhead sometimes about a lot of stuff (not logic, mind you.. but just about anything else), so if someone doesn't want to be stuck with an airhead, I suppose it's only fair that they find out sooner, rather than later.

I have been getting a fair amount of interest. One guy even found me and bought my book! Woo Hoo! (Months of blogging about my book and I hardly get any sales... Who knew I should have targeted the online dating sites with my shameless self-promotion!) He's quite the blogger himself! Check out this post he wrote about relationships as well as his interview with Dr. Cornell about emotional abuse of men by women. Having spent a lot of time volunteering with people who are going through divorce recovery, this isn't the first I've heard of this.

I already feel like OkCupid has more than paid off. (Well.. after all, it's free...) Ready-for-dating or not, I am definitely going to be exploring OkCupid some more... I predict this site is going to be the new big online dating site of the year!