I found the dating sites to be much more useful when I decided to stop taking them seriously, and start using them to make new, single friends and just people with similar interests to do things with. I found a new chiropractor in the process. lol
I was newly single when I started using them, and I searched out people that have been single for a long time, because they tend to have a lot of other single friends, and I made a great network of single friends, male and female, in my area. To be around so many people who were also single, very positive about it, and had fulfilling lives outside of a serious relationship made me feel a lot better and a lot less lonely. Just a thought