In the early 90s I had a roommate who used the printed personals for dating for a while
I met up with three women I think. Each time we’d have at least one, probably more, conversations before agreeing to meet up somewhere in central London for dinner or coffee.
Note that at that point, neither of you knew what the other person looked like. There were no camera phones, not a lot of digital cameras, etc.
I guess she had a really sexy phone voice because they spent a solid couple of weeks having intense phone sex every night (tying up our single phone line, of course), and then one night the phone sex was so good he headed over to see her
Two dates were. not awful, but things clearly weren’t going to go any further for either https://getbride.org/tr/sicak-bulgar-kadinlar/ side. The other one, we became friends for a while after.
Fwiw, the LRB ended its personal ads in 2010. It still has a small handful each issue but they’re quite conventional compared to the pre-2010 ones. posted by fabius at 5:35 AM on [1 favorite]
My memory is that there was a much closer balance in numbers between men seeking women and women seeking men, unlike apparently the situation on dating apps now
In my experience, ads were classified as Men Seeking Women, Women Seeking Men, Men Seeking Men, and Women Seeking Women. There might have been one for people seeking friends, but I’m not sure (the “friends with benefits” thing didn’t really exist).
Like others mentioned, there was also the Missed Connections section, which I always read and was always disappointed that no one was ever describing me.
He placed an ad in the local free alternative weekly paper and also responded to other people’s ads. It was via voicemail, so you got a PIN and could call in to see if anyone had left you a message (so much excitement if there were messages, and much disappointment when there were not). (more…)