Childfree Dating Site

[joreth]

I was just referred to this site (www.idonotwantkids.com) through the LJ community

childfreepoly . It seems to be a fledgling site and I have yet to determine how poly-friendly it is (there are no glaring red flags so far), but I want to support any dating site that encourages non-traditional relationship styles. And since I happen to *be* Childfree By Choice, I joined, and I'm recommending everyone else who is to join too, whether you want to actively participate or not.

Some of the questions did include a variety of options. For instance, one was phrased as:

do NOT want kids...* (Please complete the sentence)

 

• Ever
  
• For At Least 5 Years
  
• For At Least 10 Years
  
• Of my own, but I would adopt
  
• Until I finish school
  
• Now, but I might want them in the future
  
• Now, but I will definitely want them in the future
  
• Now, but perhaps if I met the right person I would
  

and ...

To clear up any possibility of misunderstanding, what do YOU mean when you say: 'I do NOT want kids?'*

• It means what it says. I do NOT have kids, I do NOT want to date someone with kids, and I do NOT ever want to have any kids with anyone.
  
• It means that it's ok if you already have kids, but I just don't want any of my own.
  
• It means that I already have kids, and it's ok if you do, I just don't want them to tag along on our dates.
  
• It means that I do not currently have kids and I do not want to marry someone that already has any either, but I do want us to have kids together one day.
  
• It means that I do not want to date anybody with children, because I do not want to raise another person's child, but it's different if you are a widow with children.
  

So I think this site has some potential.   The bulk of the questions center around sex, money, and kids, as the owner feels these are the statistically most stressful aspects of relationships.  Several of the questions did not leave options for "none of the above", but each section has a box where you can address anything you want that wasn't covered in the questions, including elaborating on the above questions in that section.

So I highly recommend checking this site out.  It's fine that many people want to have kids, but I'm tired of things being weighted so heavily in favor of those who want kids and against those of us who do not, for instance, many dating sites don't have the question of kids as a searchable option.  It's a waste of both the Childfree person's time and the person hoping to start a family to not be able to filter each other out.  And the options this site gives doesn't necessarily make the same mistake in reverse of discriminating against those in favor of kids, by allowing us to customize what, exactly, Childfree means to us individually. 

*EDIT - I just did a profile search to find my matches, and they do offer the options of "seeking: man/woman/couple/group", so that speaks well for the poly options

Comments

[leora.livejournal.com]

That does sound good. Not for me personally, but for many people. I'm just surprised it doesn't also focus on religion, since if I were listing big areas of potential problems I'd also put religion in it. Possibly also political leanings, but that gets trickier, because people can be a lot harder to define politically in general.

[joreth]

Among the questions, it does have a section in the "basic information" for checkboxes of religion, with Atheist being among them, so one could filter one's results that way, but questions about religion are not lumped into their own section, unlike questions of how to handle money or sex.

The owner claims that, statistically, the main causes of relationship breakups and tension center around sex, money and kids (and I do remember reading this somewhere). One might assume that religion is not in the same league because people tend to marry either those of the same faith or those for whom religion is not very important, so the number of breakups due to religion are significantly less than the number of breaksups due to financial reasons.

There is also a question about why we are on this site, and I *think* "just friends" or some derivative thereof was available.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Sounds highly plausible that few breakups happen due to religion. But I suspect many relationships fail to happen in the first place because of differences in religion, culture, and politics.

Breakups happen over the stuff people fail to take adequately into consideration in advance, often the stuff you can easily get along while being different about but still being friends or dating. But if you're trying to meet people to date, I think you also need to take into consideration the things that prevent people from becoming friends or from falling for each other so as to save time.

But a basic filter for religion is probably adequate.

[joreth]

I definately agree that many relationships fail to happen in the first place because of differences in religion, culture and politics.

And I also heartily agree that many things that cause romantic breakups are things that can be lived with in friendships or lesser-romantic relationships (like "dating" or "fuckbuddies").

I recently ran into an old friend who asked after the boyfriend I was dating last time I saw him. I related the story of how I moved to Orlando and how his current gf and my landlord accused me of "hating" my ex simply because I chose to move out when my landlord allowed him to move into the house I was living in. I don't know why some people don't understand that a perfectly fun social acquaintance does not necessarily make a good housemate, and my desire to not live with my ex doesn't mean I hate him. His inability to pay equal financial contribution and his refusal to take up the slack by doing housework doesn't bother me at all if he's a friend, but it's a HUGE FREAKIN' DEAL when he's a housemate/boyfriend.

If I couldn't filter my searches by some kind of religious criteria, I wouldn't find much value in this website, since my religious (or rather, anti-religion) views figure fairly prominantly in how I structure my life and how I view the world and how I judge people.

[leora.livejournal.com]

I agree with all of that. I just was wondering about some basic filtering, which they apparently have. I would have problems with most extremely religious people (I have some friends who are, but they are of the sort who believe this is the path for them and they shouldn't try to persuade others and they're polite about it) and they tend to have problems with me. I can have similar problems with people with certain political views. I do have at least one pro-life friend currently, but that's a hard issue for me have differences over, and it's generally a bad sign of our likelihood to get along. If you threw in any sort of desire to mix church and state in more general ways, that'd probably destroy my ability to be friends with the person. So, I was thinking, some basic filtering along those lines might be a good thing. You usually can figure that out early, but it's a lot easier for me to have childfree friends or even a partner if carefully worked out than someone who wants to put prayer in school and ban birth control because all sex should be for procreation (well, you probably won't find that on a childfree site... but that sort of idea; I'm sketching a basic picture of what would really cause me problems).

[joreth]

Understandable, I would have similar difficulties with similar ideas (perhaps that's why we're friends :-D). I also tend to address these concepts in my profile, although we've all seen how that doesn't weed out everyone :-D

[femetal.livejournal.com]

I intended to create a profile, but I found the categories to be too narrow. Because wanting to remain childfree hasn't been an obstacle for me in dating thus far, I'm not willing to pigeonhole myself just for the sake of upping their numbers.

I find OKCupid does a fine job of helping filter through that stuff, and it lets me be incredibly flexible in defining myself, which is important to me.

Thanks for the heads-up, though. Give me a couple of years, and I might change my mind. ;)

[joreth]

I definately believe that OKC is by far the best dating site out there for their flexibility and available options. For some reason, I continue to get harassed by people who are the antithesis of what I want in a partner, and that includes the whole childfree issue, so I'll give this one a try. I'm also not actively looking for new partners, being fairly polysaturated at the moment, but I'm not totally closed off to the right person or persons :-D which should make this experiment interesting!