Ave Maria Singles Question

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alwayslooking

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A friend told me to try Ave Maria Singles after I’ve failed to find someone on other dating sites.

Since this site is a bit pricier than Catholic Match I thought I’d ask those of you who are members about the participation level of members of the site. They don’t allow for an in depth preview of how many members are in your area, which has me hesitant about dropping $175.00 on joining a site that may be low on available women in my age group.

I’d like to know if there is much of a participation level within the 20-30 crowd on the site? Particularly around St. Louis if you could.

Thanks!
 
I met my husband on AMS. It was years ago now, so I can’t help too much with your question, but remember, you only need to find that one right person. There was a student discount available when I joined, if that’s applicable to you it might help.
 
Hey there, I’ve got a discount code which brings the price down to $79. I’d be happy to give it freely to you, and would ask in return nothing except an answer to the same question you seek haha (albeit a different area :p).

Sent the code regardless to you. 🙂
 
I, too, was on Catholicmatch. The constant renewal of the subscription made me feel like I was wasting money if I wasn’t constantly searching on the site. With Avemariasingles since it is a one time fee, in the long run it could end up being cheaper than Catholicmatch. It just depends how long it takes you. I had no success with Catholicmatch and expected the slow pace with avemariasingles as well. I met my husband very soon after joining, however.

I did notice that in 2007 there seemed to be less guys on there than on Catholicmatch, though that was at first glance. Catholicmatch inflates its profiles by allowing people who aren’t full members to have profiles. As such if you email them, your email becomes a lure to get them to pay for membership. Not everyone, though, decides to join so you never know if the person actually can respond back. However on avemariasingles, everyone does have full access. So I did find that when I emailed people, people were more responsive.

That said, a friend of ours was on avemariasingles for years and felt like she never got a response from anyone perhaps because her profile number was so low and indicated she’d been there for awhile. She switched to Catholicmatch and met her husband on there right away.
 
AMS seemed to have a fairly large number of woman that were looking for prince charming even though they themselves were far from perfect. Comparing CM to AMS, both had a sizable number that were on both websites and had been on both for a while. CM had more volume of people. There were very few younger than 30 on AMS while CM had a lot. I think that has to do with the cost. AMS costs a ton and for what you get it is quite a lot. I mean for that kind of money they should at least have a personal instant messaging service instead of a group chat.

What I didnt like about CM was the lack of a search feature to search out keywords in profiles.

From my experience, there are many that dont do well with Catholic online dating sites and those that do well with it often get lucky and find someone very fast. So much of it is luck of the draw. All you can do is gamble and hope that you will be able to find someone.
 
alwayslooking said:
A friend told me to try Ave Maria Singles after I’ve failed to find someone on other dating sites.

Since this site is a bit pricier than Catholic Match I thought I’d ask those of you who are members about the participation level of members of the site. They don’t allow for an in depth preview of how many members are in your area, which has me hesitant about dropping $175.00 on joining a site that may be low on available women in my age group.

I’d like to know if there is much of a participation level within the 20-30 crowd on the site? Particularly around St. Louis if you could.

Thanks!
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Here are my thoughts.
  • You get what you pay for. The sights that have “free” areas, or where you can sign up and “look” without paying, get a lot of traffic that is just that-- people who are “lookers”. I don’t think they have any more traffic of people who are “serious”. I think that is probably about the same. But, for the paid service, you just weed out all the “lookers”-- the ones who are not serious. So, you have fewer people, but you have less BS.
  • Geography can be limiting. Don’t limit yourself to just STL. God may have other plans for you.
  • Don’t plan on being an instant success story. Most people on Ave (or any other site) kiss some frogs before finding the prince. Some are on the site for a number of years before that one needle in the haystack comes along.
  • It’s all worth it.
I cannot speak to the # of ppl in your age range and location, as it has been 7 years since I was on Ave. When I was on Ave, there were lots of younger people in the 20-30 age range. And lots in the Midwest. I can only assume that trend has continued.

I joined in 2001, met my now husband in 2003, and married in 2005.
 
I met my husband on Ave Maria. We both fell in that age range but lived on opposite coasts of the US. We didn’t let distance stop us (DH ended up moving to my city) and will be married 5 years this summer. 🙂

I did a search of the “great lakes area” for 20-30 and there are over forty guys that come up in that criteria…not sure how many girls. 🤷 I’m thinking it would be comparable.

Are you a student? You can get a discount–I did way back when I joined. 🙂

Good luck!

KG
 
I was there for a couple years and only heard from guys in Canada…over 1,000 miles away. I gave up after awhile and stayed with catholicmatch.com for years which has many of the same people on there. A friend of mine met his wife there. I think it’s all up to GOD in the end. You can try it but I found the numbers of men on there were limited especially in my area.
 
I met some wonderful men on Ave Maria. I had a couple of men who I worked well with, and I had some really good times.

I then met my FH online through different means, infact, complaining about some of the men on Ave Maria (who seem to want a young, virginal wife to crank out babies while they’re ever ripening living in their mom’s house at 45).

I’ve since cancelled (deactived) my account, but I give them a wee bit of credit. It opened my eyes to dating someone on the interent. I think my FH would agree…

The interent is the place to be for singles, weither it be on a message board, on a dating site or on a blog or anything. Even if you don’t meet on the interent it affords you alot of oppurtunites to travel to cities for single gatherings and to know and plan things out of your region.
 
I met my wife on Ave Maria Singles 8 years ago…I think they were still fairly new then. Activity in the age-range you specified was fairly high, and I know they have grown since then.
 
I have mixed feelings about AMS. If you’d have asked me a year ago, I would have had only the most positive things to say. I hadn’t joined the site for very long when I met a very nice guy on the East Coast (I live in the Midwest). It had been 5 years since I had gotten up the courage to agree to a date with anyone. Anyhow, we dated for about 6 months, and it was only after 4 visits and countless hours on the phone that it became abundantly clear that, despite having a lovely profile about his devotion to his faith and commitment to Church teachings on everything, that he wasn’t as committed as he lead on and, specifically, had some very malleable opinions on sexual matters. :o

It was also around this time (6 months in) that he started making a few snide remarks about my appearance, requested that I drop my weight down to a dress size 2, and begin stying my hair differently. It really broke my heart, I thought I had found this really marvellous Catholic gentleman, well educated, we could talk for hours and hours on the phone or in person, and, most importantly shared all the same moral priorities. It was only later that I discovered his biggest priority was finding a girl whom he “wouldn’t be embarassed to be seen in public with.” And while I’m certainly not overweight or particularly hard on the eyes, I’m certainly not a model or a size-2. :rolleyes:

That said, I telephoned him to indicate that the things he said had really emotionally damaged me, implored him never to do the same to another woman, and then suggested that his prorities (finding someone who he felt was physically attractive enough for him) were different than mine (finding someone whom I loved, and desiring a happy family whom, with God’s help, I would be able to help get to Heaven). After that, I took a break from dating, Catholic online or otherwise.

I guess all I can offer by way of advice, therefore, is to make sure you really know someone very well before you commit to a relationship. The online thing can take longer, especially if the person isn’t local, and I wish AMS had a better screening process to weed out people like that (or some way I could report a person so they couldn’t stay on the site after behaving like that!) but it seems that the responsibility for care rests entirely with the users. Just don’t take the profile descriptions too seriously. 👍
 
If you’ve spent a lot of time communicating via computer and phone, how awkward or nerve-wracking is that first visit in person?
 
AlwaysCurious said:
If you’ve spent a lot of time communicating via computer and phone, how awkward or nerve-wracking is that first visit in person?
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I think that is unique to the individual person.

To me, it was no big deal. But, for some people I’m sure it is awkward.
 
AlwaysCurious said:
If you’ve spent a lot of time communicating via computer and phone, how awkward or nerve-wracking is that first visit in person?
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It was awesome for us. 🙂 I surprised my hubby at the airport in the baggage claims area. 😛

KG
 
I have used Ave Maria Singles and Catholic Match- lots of luck, no success. I’m not planning to use the sites any longer.

I just did a 100 mile radius search around zip code 63113 on AMS. There are 9 women on the site between 20 and 35 within that area.
 
Norseman82 said:
So what’s wrong with that?
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Because it’s gross!!! No 45-year-old man should be looking for a young (20ish) wife. That’s too big of an age difference. He’s old enough to be her father!!! I just don’t think there should be that big of an age difference – especially the younger one side is. My personal age range is 10 years – and that’s older. I don’t want someone 10 years younger than me.
 
Norseman82 said:
So what’s wrong with that?
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Please tell me you’re joking. However, based upon your posting history you’re probably not & and are looking for a fight. So far this has remained a nice thread about online dating and honest but coherent personal stories. If you (or anyone else) turns this into a thread about how no girl/guy will date you and its all the internet’s fault…I will report you and encourage others to do the same. Lets keep this civilized.
 
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