Matchmaker, Matchmaker...

I read two interesting articles recently on the Boundless website. One was about online matchmaking services, and the other was about the idea of soulmates. It was interesting timing for those articles because I had a conversation with a friend a few weeks ago about this very topic. That got me thinking about it again. I say "again" because I was actually a member of an online matchmaking website for a while last year. There were good things about that experience, like the opportunity to learn a lot about myself and what's really important to me. Overall, though, I can say emphatically that it's not for me. There are several reasons for that.

• I think there was a certain amount of desperation motivating me to try a matchmaking service. I wasn't really trusting in God's plan and his timing. It was an effort to make my dreams become come true now. (By the way, I got over my pity-party phase and am now happily single.)
• The process of being a member of the matchmaking service was very time-consuming. I spent almost every evening sorting through messages, answering hard questions, and deciding how far to go with communication. It started to take over my life, and was really a distraction from a lot of other things I could have been doing, like investing in real, flesh-and-blood relationships.
• It seems like an unnatural way to meet people. It's easy to present yourself as something you're not when you're only sending messages back and forth. At first, I thought that was an advantage because it allows you to learn a lot about a person before things get muddled by physical attraction. However, I have come to believe that it's really not the best way to develop a friendship, and it's way too easy to say things to each other that the relationship is not ready for.

Okay, I'm stepping off my soap box now. What do any of you think about this?