It was through my listing at www.match.com that I met the woman I'm involved with now. BTW, we just celebrated our two year wedding anniversary.

I thought it was a great service and, obviously, it worked out well for me. I dated a few women that I met through match.com and none of them were strange or frightening in any way. They were just people looking for their match, like me.

For me, it was a great way to introduce myself and reveal my personality without the pressure of real time conversation. I'm shy when first meeting face to face or over the phone but I'm comfortable when I have time to compose an email. The email exchanges served to break the ice and when I would meet the women we would already have established a comfort level and the initial conversation was much less awkward.

I can give you a couple of suggestions:

Don't push too quickly for a face to face meeting.

Have your first meeting be in a public place and arrive independently. I'd suggest your first meeting be a fairly short activity with an established end point... lunch, happy hour, something like that. If it goes well you can always extend it or schedule another time in the near future. But if it goes poorly you'll be very glad that you don't have to make an excuse to leave or suffer through many hours with someone that you don't click with.

Choose the matchmaking service with the most people in your area and that allows you to filter based on the criteria that are important to you. If religion is a make or break factor then make sure you can filter on that one. Five years ago, match.com was clearly the best but I don't know how things have changed since then.

Good luck. I hope it works out for you.

-Dylan