Jill M. Horn, a real estate manager who lives in Manhattan, said that after divorcing in 2001 she joined about five paid dating sites. E-mail begat more e-mail. There were personality tests and phone calls.
"It's a lot of effort, and it's really no different from the people you meet in the offline world," she said. "The argument is that technology is supposed to make your life easier, but that's not necessarily the case," she said.
While most women interviewed complained that too many men just "window shop" online and are unwilling to consider any but the prettiest faces, Zev Guttman, 28, a mortgage banker in Monsey, New York, said it was men who are at a disadvantage online: it is still typically the man who has to make the first move, and it is still the woman who gets to pick and choose.
As a result, he said, he either had to lie -- about, say, the fact that he is divorced -- or face an empty mailbox every day. "If I write that I'm divorced, I don't have a chance of hooking up," he said. "If I write that I'm single, they're not interested because they think I lied to them" once they discover the truth.
"I'm just going to go back to matchmaking, or friends," he said.
"In the last five years, [online dating has] become so mainstream," said Sherrie Schneider, an author of The Rules for Online Dating, who remains a great champion of the practice. "It's your boss. It's your co-worker. Every single woman in my neighborhood is on Match.com. It's like brushing your teeth." And sometimes it's just as exciting.
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