About five years ago, I met a guy through CasualKiss (a free dating site geared towards the under 35 set) who advised me “Lavalife is a lot better”. At the time I wasn’t partial to the paid dating sites, as few were heavily populated in Canada at the time. But recommendations go a long way in my world, so I decided to sign up and see what happened.

I was, in a word, overwhelmed.

Where CasualKiss offered me a couple of responses and hello’s a week, Lavalife gave me hundreds upon hundreds in mere hours. Chat requests, messages and winks came at me from all three of their sections (dating, relationships and my personal favorite, intimate), and mostly from people within a 100 mile radius. I remember spending more than a day just sending out, “Thanks but no thanks” copy and pastes to everyone who had taken the time to say hello, but quickly gave up when I realized that replying meant somehow I was interested, even if the communication stated something different.

Instead, I slowly worked my way through every message, wink and chat, looking for something unusual to grab my attention. No picture? Erased. Bad grammar or spelling that was beyond my basic tolerance levels? Gone. Not within driving distance? Sorry dude. Over 20 years my senior? Not going to happen. I even changed my profile to explicitly state, “I’m not looking for a Daddy, thanks.”

Still, the responses flowed faster than I could keep up and within a week I had to take a break. In the five years since I still haven’t received anything quite as intense as what I received my first week on Lavalife (affectionately referred to as Lava).

Eventually the surge lifted, and I was able to thinkabout the entire process, and realized: I haven’t paid a penny to Lavalife yet, and it’s not a free dating site. Meet revelation #2: Lavalife is free for those in demand, as only the pursuers need to pay for credits to contact others.

With this newfound information, I was even more impressed with the site, although I did feel a tad dirty knowing men were paying merely to say hello to a picture and profile. I finally came to the conclusion it was no different than some guy sending a drink my way at the bar to get an introduction, so I left it at that.

Several months later and a couple dozen dates under my belt, I was hooked on Lavalife. I later learned it was the top online dating site in Canada (according to ComScore Media Matrix), with more than five million views a month. It had an adequate number of people, lots of fun features, and the ability to openly state exactly what I was looking for. Score!

That’s when Revelation #3 hit me on the head: the intimate section was where it was at. In my personal experience the Relationship folks were looking to get married, fast (going so far as to propose on the first, second or third date more times than I can remember). The Dating dudes were usually looking for intimate encounters but knew few women would openly say so themselves at the time, so they hunkered down in the next best space. A select few were more Relationship oriented, but again, they went where the women were. Less than 1% of the men I met with or spoke to on Lavalife actually wanted to just date.

The intimate section was also where people seemed to loose their inhibitions, and not just the sexual ones. Anything and everything was fair game over there, including politics, religion, alternative lifestyles and odd social news. My favorite people (and now close friends) were all found over in intimate.

But this is all old news.

Perhaps I’m not in love with Lavalife as much as I used to be because the market share has decreased, or maybe I don’t have the same social currency as I did in my mid-twenties. Either way, Lavalife doesn’t seem anywhere near as exciting anymore. I rarely get messages (even living in a city of more than a million people), and the few I do border on downright creepy. One recent contact asked to meet me in a secluded area, devoid of any contact information or pictures “just for the hell of it”.

The intimate section has lost its luster as well. All I seem to find over there now are lusty men looking to get their members wet with little interest in the person on the other side of the interaction. Now, there’s nothing wrong with lusty in my world, but I’d much rather some sort of intellectual attachment even if there isn’t an emotional one.

I still don’t regret my Lavalife days; I met thousands of people through the site. (Now there’s a feature I’d like - one that chronicles all the people I met!) I’ve even had several friends ask, “How many people do you know that you didn’t meet on Lavalife?” and I’m usually hard pressed to find someone, anyone, that doesn’t have even a cursory attachment to the site.

Still, Lavalife hasn’t changed much in the past few years, so I’m looking to fill it’s social gap in my life.