As you know from my last post, I have signed up for a matchmaking service. It is an on line service, and this is not the first time I have tried one. The first time was with a large and well-advertised American service that uses an extensive "psychological" questionnaire to pigeonhole a person into a slot where they can be matched with others.
Let me tell you, I seemed to always be matched with guys who were extremely-- well, let's not speak poorly of them, but I'll merely say that one of them, bless him, thought that the Ideal First Date would be for me to go out with him to the open desert and go target shooting. Alone. Yup. You heard that correctly. Needless to say, I turned him down very gently.
Because I am a very religious person, I was "slotted" with others from the very far right of the political spectrum. I will not go into politics and/or religion here (as my Grandmother taught me, those two topics, plus sex are NOT suitable for the dinner table, or MS!) but suffice it to say, because of my interest in social justice issues, I found myself disagreeing with parts of what my partners had to say.
Also, there was a bias towards folks who couldn't, or didn't do well in the traditional dating scene. Now, since that includes myself, this pot can't call the kettle black. But let's just refer back to the gun-totin' cowboy referenced in the above paragraph, bless him, and say that I did meet some rather, ahem, colorful individuals. Not only that, but many were not that interested in marriage.
Now, I am trying an Indian service. At first, I was put off by the bluntness and detailed nature of the questions -- skin tone preference? No American dating service would dare ask that question! (I put "no preference", also "caste no bar".) Nevertheless, I have found that the matches I have been provided have been all interesting, serious about marriage, and very close to people whom I would chat with at a party or social event.
(In fact, I may have found my soulmate, although it is early days, as we both agree.)
Now to my question to MSians: As part of the service, a horoscope (Indian style) is provided. I know that this is very important to some people. I had my horoscope done. My friend refuses, since he is also Christian and thinks it is superstitious nonsense.
To those of you who have had your horoscopes done, how helpful have you found it to be as a matching tool? Is it something that has been useful? In case I sound like a complete idiot, let me preface this by saying that while I don't believe in using horoscopes for divination purposes, since that is against my faith, I do believe that they can provide interesting insight into a person's character.
My feeling is that astrology is the combined statistical data from thousands of years, and is a general "snapshot" for babies born during certain times of the year.
I used to not believe in astrology at all, and then a friend paid for me to go to a psychic astrologer here in the Bay Area, a woman who is world-famous. Without knowing me at all, she gave me a reading that was so dead-on target it was spooky! It explained a lot about my past life and helped me avoid mistakes in the future by counterbalancing negative personality quirks that I tend to have (but wouldn't acknowledge). So now I am open minded about it.
I open this up to comments and suggestions: Have any MSians married with horoscopes? How useful/not useful was it? Are any of you astrologers?
What are your gut feelings about using horoscopes, not as predictive, but for character reading adjuncts? Thank you very much, in advance.
ML
