Making contact
Why do I sometimes receive contact requests from members who do not correspond to my search criteria?
The recommended partners on your list: i) could be genuinely compatible with you, and ii) conform precisely to your search criteria.
However, you could well be recommended to someone who is potentially compatible with you, but who does not conform to your search criteria. This means they can send you a contact request. (That being said, you will never receive a contact request from someone who does not conform to your criteria for country or age.)
For example ... You live in Bristol and are looking for a partner in the Bristol area. The recommended partners you see on your list will all be people from Bristol. However, you can still be contacted by a member from Glasgow, provided that person has set wider search criteria and is happy for a potential partner to be located in Bristol as well as Glasgow. This means that you fulfil this member’s search criteria and will feature in his/her list of recommended partners.
It’s worth being flexible and open to new possibilities ... If someone is a year or two older than your ‘ideal’, or lives 30 miles away rather than round the corner, they could still be really right for you.