Charming, but single

My subscription to Match.com expired this weekend. I didn’t renew. (I cancelled it so that it wouldn’t auto-renew, which, as y’all probably know is the way that online dating services squeeze money from you. For the uninitiated, the vast majority of online dating services have it in their terms of service that your subscription auto-renews if you don’t cancel it before it ends. Meaning, if you have a three-month subscription like I did? You end up being auto renewed for three more months, having your credit card charged for $50 more and then feeling like you should be trying if you’re paying for it, right? So, you end up subscribed for months longer than you’d intended and your heart isn’t in it so you’re not getting much benefit from it. And I’m not saying $50 is a ton of money, but personally I’d rather go shopping or get a manicure than be forced to online date for even a minute longer than I desire. But that could just be me.) And, no, I don’t want to talk about how I went on zero Match.com dates this cycle. Yeah, I got e-mails and winks and profile views. But none of the men were quite what I wanted. I spoke with several of them and I generally wasn’t thrilled with my selection. And I sort of feel like I keep getting the same 10 people in my “Your Matches” e-mails. And most of them, hello, live in The Sticks around my smallish city. And not to beat a dead horse, but I do NOT like to commute to date. Hell no. Well, right before my subscription ended, I happened upon a profile for a guy who really seemed great. Early 30s, never married, tall, interesting answers to the standard dating profile questions. And I added him to my favorites but decided against e-mailing him. What was the point? I was going to be done with Match in two weeks anyway. Truth be told, I kept wondering about him. As I continued to get e-mailed and winked at through the site, I’d see his little picture in my list of favorites and ultimately decided to e-mail him. This time I didn’t send my standard, “Hi, I’m [Charming], here is a bit about me, I liked your profile, please drop me a line if you would like to chat” e-mail. This time, I put a little more thought into it. I noted that “I liked your profile” was the cheesiest line ever used on Match.com, but that it was true. I had like his profile and at first glance he seemed nice and normal and I’d certainly like to get to know him better if he was interested. I got an almost immediate response. He said he understood how difficult it was to craft an e-mail to a perfect stranger and he appreciated that I’d put some time into my note. His response to my response was a nice length – much better than the incomplete sentences most guys seem to throw together as a way of flirtation. And thus began several days of e-mailing. I learned a lot about him – he’d moved back to the South recently, he’d been a lawyer, he was into real estate now, we liked a lot of the same music. I’d react with excitement when I’d get an e-mail from him. He always responded within a day of my last message. And though he hadn’t asked me out yet, I was confident that he would, as I don’t exchange six or seven paragraph e-mails with people in whom I don’t have at least a passing interest. On Thursday morning, realizing that my time on Match was winding down, I closed my e-mail to him with a note that my Match subscription was ending this weekend. I said I wasn’t subscribing again, but noted that I was still going to be dating and that I’d like to keep corresponding with him. I gave him my e-mail address and asked that he e-mail me there. And … nothing. No e-mail response on either Match or in my e-mail account. I checked and he’s definitely signed on each day since I sent him the e-mail. He’s even viewed my profile between then and now. But no response or note to my e-mail account – I’ve even checked my Spam folder. I swear, the amount of knowledge I have about men could fit in a thimble. Because I seriously have no idea why it would matter that I wasn’t subscribed to Match anymore. Does he think that means I want to date him exclusively and that I’ve stopped looking? Does he like the semi anonymous nature of Match.com and is he just not willing to get rid of that quite yet? Am I simply reading too much into this? Will he e-mail me this week?