Why Meet Online? New Rules for Dating in an Online World.

Why Meet online? Well, why not?

Betcha thought that was a rhetorical question! I’ve heard a few reasons why you (or anyone else) should not meet anyone who you e-meet on the ‘net (e-meet is a word I made up. I made it up to deal with the difference between “meeting” — chatting, e-mailing, etc. — online, vs. actually coming face to face with someone. It’s a new age, - it requires a new vocabulary. Bear with me.). OK, before I digress further . . . these are some of the reasons I’ve heard why you should not meet people who you have e-met.

Everyone on the ‘net lies. Uh . . . yeah. The Internet makes it easier for a person to get away with lying. A person encountered face-to-face is less likely to say they weigh 180 pounds if they really weigh 310. But, if you e-meet someone in a situation where it is understood from the start that a face-to-face meeting is in the future, they are not likely to tell you something that would cause embarrassment later. And, is there any woman or man alive who can say that they have never been lied to by a member of the opposite sex who they first met in person???

People who you meet on the ‘net are desperate losers. Uh . . . yeah. There are a good many desperate losers online. There are also a lot of really nice, attractive, successful people who’ve decided to use the Internet as a meeting place. Are you going to miss out on all of those for fear you’ll run into a loser? And, I’d be willing to lay a heavy bet that there are a lot of desperate losers hanging out in your home town, too!

I don’t want to date someone who lives 3,000 miles away! Uh . . . yeah. Me neither! That’s why I put a geographic limitation of fifty miles in the last ad I placed. There are lots of people in your home town who look in the Internet personals.

You can’t get to know someone very well if you never meet them. Uh . . . yeah. I wouldn’t want to marry someone who I had never met face to face. I’d definitely recommend throwing in a heavy dose of real-life personal contact before I committed to anything. On the other hand, you can get to know someone well enough online to decide if you want to meet them, and thereby save yourself a lot of schlepping around.

It is dangerous to meet someone in person who you have e-met! Uh . . . yeah. There are a lot of stories . . . and some of them are even true . . . about the awful things that have happened to people (particularly women) who went out on a date with someone who they had e-met. There are even more stories . . . and some of them are true, too . . . about the awful things that have happened to people (particularly women) who went out on a date with someone they met in a library, at a bus-stop, in a college class, or at a party. Unless you intend to spend the rest of your life sitting home alone, with all of the doors locked, you are going to have to take some risks (I don’t know how you will manage to get groceries in that situation, so you may starve . . . hmmm . . . I guess that’s a risk you will be taking!).

You should minimize the risks by taking some precautions before you invite someone to come within arm’s length of you. If you do your homework, you will definitely know more about the guy you e-met than you know (or want to know!) about the creep who sat down beside you at Rudy’s Pub the other week.

Does that about cover the negatives? Seriously, if you’ve got another one, write me, and I’ll see about throwing it in!

Passive vs. Active Dating

There are two types of people who search for love, lust, and friendship on the internet, passive daters and active daters. Unfortunately for you, around 90% of the people using the major dating sites like Match.com and Date.com are passive daters, only sites like eHarmony.com really force the user to become active participants.

Who is the passive dater?
A passive dater is generally a person who is not fully committed to the idea of meeting someone online and is probably not a paying member of a dating site. They have the concept that there is someone out there that is perfect for them and by setting up an ad on a website than that person will find them. They rarely search for people they are interested in and when they do find someone who piques their interest they generally just save them to their favorites or possibly send them a wink or what ever other free contact method is offered. This is what the majority of the people who try online dating are like. They sit online waiting to be found but are not willing to make the effort to contact someone out of laziness, indecisiveness, or fear of rejection. This is the person who is almost guaranteed to fail at online dating and in the process taking a hit to their self esteem because by the time they give up they feel like everyone can find someone online except for them.

Who is the Active dater?
Well there is a good chance that if you care enough about succeeding at online dating that you have purchased, borrowed, or even stolen this book than you are an active dater. Active daters are the ones who have the best chance of finding love on the internet because they are the most willing to put the effort into it. They research the sites to find which one is the best for them, they carefully craft their profile so that it really shows off who they are, and when they look for people they like they send emails to those who catch their eye. While 9 out of ten people on the internet are waiting to be found, it is the active dater who is willing to go hunting for treasure instead of just waiting to hear about how their friend just got engaged to someone they met online

Can You Find Friendship or Even Love Online?

Singles investigate friendship, romance online

The men in this article did not want their last names used.

“You have the most amazing smile I have ever seen and those eyes are intoxicating … I could gaze into those eyes for hours …”

Jennifer Eaton of Madison joined Match.com because she wanted to know what men were looking for in women. Jennifer Eaton’s online profile has elicited other messages like this one from online admirers, and many singles in the area like her are turning to the Internet to find friendship, love, or maybe simply to explore what makes the opposite sex tick.

When Eaton decided to sign up for Match.com, one of the most popular online dating sites, it wasn’t because she was hunting romance.

“I’m kind of wanting to get an idea of what men are looking for in women what intrigues them.”

At first, she didn’t put a picture of herself on the site, a touch that Match.com says will get you eight times more responses than if you don’t have one.

“I’m not looking to date anyone,” she said. “If I find one, hey, that’s great I found something I wasn’t even looking for.”

Shortly after joining, Eaton decided to see what kind of interest adding a picture would draw to her profile.

“I was amazed at the difference,” she said.

Within three weeks, she had received 170 messages from men who wanted to get to know her. But she is cautious whom she talks to, and especially, whom she meets in person.

“People could put a ‘pic’ of their brother on there you really don’t know who you’re talking to,” Eaton said. “They can be anything they want to be. They can type anything they think you want to hear.”

Of the 170 men who’ve contacted her, she’s considering 10.

Despite her caution, Eaton doesn’t let fear keep her from trying online dating.

“You can meet a psycho in a club just as much as you can online,” she said.

Justin, 26, a former Decaturite who relocated to Birmingham and joined Match to meet people in his area, said there are perks to meeting in cyberspace rather than in a social setting.

“You don’t have to worry about timing,” he said. “You don’t have to worry about games.”

He also said it takes the pressure off making a good first impression.

“It eliminates all that stuff, if you’re shy.”

But what if that great first impression doesn’t match up with the person behind the screen? Eaton looks for red flags when reading profiles and chatting with a potential date on the site’s instant messenger.

“There have been some offensive things, and I ignore those,” she said.

How does one recognize the more subtle warning signs of a creep or a harmful person?

“Guys who don’t know you, and are already ready to love you forever they have a lot of insecurities or there is something wrong with them that they can’t meet women,” said Eaton.

Not only should you be careful when sizing up online prospects, but also be discreet when opening up to others.

“It’s not a good idea, unless you know what you’re doing and you’re really careful,” Eaton said.

She recalls a male friend in Philadelphia who got involved in online dating and sent money to a woman he thought was in need, only to find out she scammed him.

Eaton thinks people who are scamming will look for signs of desperation or naivete in your conversation.

Another friend of Eaton, Greg, whom she met online a few weeks ago, admits that he can be susceptible to this.

“The problem with me is I’m a very nice guy. When I feel like somebody’s in trouble, I want to help them,” he said.

Greg handles his uncertainty about meeting people the first time by driving to the date in separate cars, so he can “walk away from it, no harm done,” he said. He and Eaton drove separately when they went out for the first time.

“She’s been the most successful friendship so far because we’ve gone the extra step of actually meeting,” he said.

Though he has met three others, they weren’t as promising.

“The first one clued me in to the pitfalls of online dating,” he said.

She didn’t look like the picture she’d posted with her profile, nor did her personality match how she’d described herself.

“If you meet a person live, the first thing people see is whether or not there’s an attraction,” Greg explained. “Online there was, but at the front door, absolutely no attraction.”

The two women who didn’t work out haven’t discouraged him.

“So far, I’ve met two others who were who they said they’d be.”

Greg thinks women are more scrutinizing than men are when reading online profiles.

“We (men) just think, ‘Hey, she’s cute,’ ” he said.

Eaton reads profiles carefully so she’ll get an idea of who the person is.

“I’m looking for real people,” she said.

One major turn-off is seeing a man’s profile picture with another woman in it.

“If you’re trying to click with me, I don’t want to see the last girl you dated,” Eaton said.

Greg had a similar experience trying to click with an online prospect who he thinks was juggling too many men.

One woman who contacted him to confirm a date called Greg by another name. He wasn’t offended by the tongue slip, although he felt she hadn’t been honest. She’d been making excuses for not meeting him, saying she was shy and scared. Greg suspects she was trying to keep up with too many men at once.

Although Greg is talking to several people, he is not leading on anybody.

“I may be pushy, but I’m also honest,” he said.

Honesty is important to Eaton as well. She joined Match.com because she wanted to find out what men are looking for in women not to find a serious relationship which she believes is the best attitude for online dating.

“Go in it with an open mind, expecting the absolute worst. And if something good comes out of it, you’re lucky,” she said.

Eaton and Greg both live in Madison and now spend a significant amount of time together offline. But Eaton realizes they may have never met, if it weren’t for the convenience of meeting online.

“There’s a lot of interesting people out there, and they only live two miles down the street,” she said.

For Justin, online dating also makes it easier to meet those interesting people.

“Everybody’s a little more outgoing (online),” he said. “You already know up front what they’re looking for.”

And that’s the way he likes it, especially since Match.com has so many possibilities for him.

“I don’t think they have that many ugly people on it,” he said.

Your Dating Profile - Quick Tips to Make You Stand Out

Everyone who signs up for an online dating service wants to be found and contacted - otherwise, they wouldn’t be there. To make sure that you are contacted by others interested in you - you need stand out from the other profiles. Below are some tips on improving your profile to help get you noticed.

• A catchy headline will draw more attention to your profile. Make it clever but not boastful.
• What is it that makes you unique? Try to focus on the positives when describing yourself.
• Keep it brief! Write enough just to catch someone’s attention. You can share the more personal details later.
• Double-check your spelling and grammar. People are more likely to take your profile seriously if you have put some thought into it.
• Read your profile and ask yourself, “Would I date this person?” If not, then you need to put more work into it.
• Spend time honing your favorites lists. You’ll find it easier to meet other people who share common interests that way.

When Should I Respond to an Email I Get?

Playing hard to get can definitely have its advantages in the traditional dating world, but with online dating, it could possibly mean a trip to the recycle bin instead of the IN bin.

I’m frequently asked, When should I respond to an email I get? Should I wait at least ten minutes? Can I email him/her back on Saturday night at 8 PM? Or Should I wait until I’m twenty pounds thinner? The answer should be fairly simple, but can actually be a little tricky. You may want to wait at least one day so you don’t appear overly anxious or desperate, and it may also be a good idea to wait to respond until after your divorce is final. BUT if you wait too long, there are plenty of other fish in the sea to snag, so don’t dilly-dally too long.

Great! You’re anxious if you answer right away, and you’re not interested if you don’t answer right away. Jeepers, what should we do, Dr. Phil? If I didn’t respond within .25 seconds, I would have guys writing me wondering if I received their email, or if I had already found a husband. Chill out people! I know we all have the patience of a two year old, but hold on to your horses. Just because were all desperate (you know online dating and all) doesn’t mean we don’t have lives outside of these matchmaker sites.

One guy actually wrote back and yelled at me (he used all caps and lots of explanation marks!!!!) because I didn’t respond to his email at all. When I read his profile, he sounded angry, frustrated, and bitter. His final comment was, IF YOU AREN’T SERIOUS AND IF YOU ONLY WANT TO PLAY WITH MY HEAD, DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT RESPOND TO THIS AD. Well, I wasn’t interested, so I didn’t respond. (Not sure why, he seems like such a sweet heart and all.) He sent me one of the nastiest emails Ive ever received. Gee, it just broke my heart to be dumped by a guy I never met. I did write back and told him if he doubled up on his anger management classes (and his lithium) I might reconsider corresponding with him.

I read in another source that you should not respond to emails for at least 24 hours (thats after each and every one!) and that you should not respond on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Well gee whiz, menopause doesn’t wait until Mondays, so why should we? Heavens to Betsy! Why would we want to wait until Monday? Oh, I know, so we appear to be busy on the weekends. I get it!! Well toots, if I was busy on the weekends, I wouldn’t be online dating, now would I?!

I really don’t think the person on the other side of cyber space is counting the minutes it takes for you to respond. Write back when you have a few minutes. If you’re tired, or had a bad hair day, or you forgot to take your antidepressants, you may want to hold off for a few days. Your writing can definitely reflect the mood you’re in.

Make this process of finding a new relationship fun. don’t beat yourself up wondering if you waited too long to respond, or not long enough, or if you said the right thing, or you said too much or too little. Be yourself, have patience, respond in a positive way, and by gosh, don’t forget to use spell check!

Question: What’s it like to Date You?

Question:

I am just not successful in love. I go out on dates, maybe even go out with someone for a few months, but at some point they always break up with me or call it off. I am not sure what I am doing wrong. The most recent woman just said that she didn’t feel like we would work out; the one before that said that I wasn’t her type after all. Do you have any suggestions?

Advice:
It is hard to give you specific advice without any specific information as to what you are doing and saying, but I can give you some general advice in terms of what to ask yourself, and what to pay attention to. For starters, think about what you have been doing in relationships, specifically just prior to when these women decide you are not the one. Become an expert on how you show up on dates and in relationships. Be self-observant. What do you say? What don’t you say? How do you behave? Do you listen? Do you talk? Do you show interest in the other person? Are you emotionally available?
Ask yourself, What is it like to date me? Put yourself into the other persons place and try to imagine what it is like to be in a relationship with you. What is it like to go out to dinner with you? What is it like to be in love with you? What is it like to be intimate with you? Pay attention to the feedback women are giving you. Perhaps they are giving you more information as to why it isn’t working than you are paying attention to.
Let me ask you this also, did you think that you were a match, or were the women right to call it off? Sometimes we get so offended by rejection that our egos don’t stop to realize that we really didn’t belong with someone and they actually did us a favor by acknowledging the truth. It may not be that you are not successful in love but rather that you simply haven’t yet found the right person to be successful with.
Another thing that may be useful to you is to examine the set of rules that you unconsciously (or consciously) live by. We all have rules or beliefs that dictate our behavior but these rules don’t always serve usor our relationships. Even The Rules taught to us by experts can actually do more harm than good by interfering with your natural, authentic expression and your values. Identify your personal rules, for instance, A man should always be the one to make the move (and the flipside rule that a woman shouldn’t make the move, or A man should always pay for the date, or You shouldn’t tell someone that you really like them too early in a relationship or it is better to make up an excuse than to tell the truth when you don’t want to date someone. Notice which beliefs impact your behavior on a date and then determine whether these rules and beliefs are serving you or not. If they are, great! Continue believing them. If they don’t serve you , or worse yet, actually sabotage you, then it is time to choose new beliefs. If you have always done things one way (and it hasn’t worked for you), then consciously choose to do it a different way next time and see if the results are different.

My Online Dating Service Didn’t Work

Most online dating services are open to nearly anyone who wants to try them, but the overall success rate of people finding a lasting relationship is less than 10%. So if this is such a great way to meet people, why is there such a high rate of failure when using online dating services?

Society
The first thing that you have to keep in mind is that for the last 20 years, as we have evolved as a society (for better or worse) we have become obsessed with having as many choices as possible. We have over 200 channels on TV and there is never anything we want on, but when there were only 10 channels, people always found something to enjoy. You can pick from over 100 different cell phones to help you stay connected to the world, dozens of internet service providers, and the list goes on. In short, we have become the pickiest generation in existence. With all these choices it is very easy to lose the forest for the trees. When you dive head first into one of the over 300 online dating services sites on the web you need to remember that nobody is perfect. Everyone there will have a listing of qualities, physical attributes, income (sometimes), interests and a bunch of other stuff that in the past people didn’t know about until they already started to develop a relationship with them. If you are so inflexible that you will dismiss any potential match who is not perfect in every single way than you are destined to be very lonely for a very long time.

Carelessness
There is almost nothing worse than getting passed over by a potential date because your profile is filled with careless errors. When your potential date reads your profile and finds it full of spelling errors and poor grammar, you can almost guarantee rejection. By not checking for these stupid and easy to fix problems with your online dating service profile you look a lot less intelligent than you are and also that you don’t really care about meeting someone because you didn’t even put in the effort to read what you wrote before you posted it on the online dating service site. I mean what woman is going to want a man who is looking for an intelligent lady when they can’t even spell intelligent?

Your best bet to solve this problem is to cut and paste the text of your profile into a word processing program and run a spell and grammar check. This will help with the glaring mistakes. But you might still miss some incorrect words like if you typed “form” when you mean to type “from.” If you are still not sure about your profile, there are several professionals on the net who will be happy to help you make the most of your online dating service.

Advantages of Online Personals

Personals at online dating sites are the internet’s equivalent of a singles bar with personality. At there most basic level online personals are giant databases of people’s pictures and backgrounds that you can scan through like you would scan the faces at a bar. There are a lot of advantages to trying online personals compared to a singles bar. First of all it is convenient. The places you will normally go to meet people are only available to you at certain times and every place you go may only have one or two hundred people of the opposite sex for you to pick through. With online personals all you need is an internet connection and the ability to read. The sites are open 24-7 and are filled with thousands if not millions more people than you would have met if you went out for the evening.

Secondly is attire. When you go to a bar you’ve got to look sharp as Joe Jackson used to say. If you don’t look just right when your eyes meet up with those of the babe or beau at a bar, you can forget about the wedding, hell, you won’t even make it to the first date. For online personals you don’t need make up or cologne and best of all, you can wear whatever you like. You can even be naked if you want, but if it’s hot out and your computer chair is leather, you may want to at least throw on some underwear.

One of the biggest advantages that people think of when they go into online personals is that you no longer have that moment of terror where you slowly approach that person who has caught your eye in hopes that they might see in you what you saw in them and not shoot you down like a wounded duck. This is true, to a point. You don’t have to walk up to someone and ask them out through online personals. You have the personal barrier of email in-between you. This is great if you are a little low in confidence, but it can backfire on you. Many people put up a personals profile and wait for people to contact them. It can be a much greater rejection when millions of people decide not to email you compared to striking out once or twice in person. Also if you are sending emails to people on your favorite online personals site, you have to remember that the need for tact is not a necessity on the net. While in the real world a person may shoot you down and say thanks but no thanks, or possibly something less tactful, their attitude on an online personals site may be to just delete your message without replying, leaving you hanging and with no feedback from them at all.

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