|
|
I love stories that encourage people older than 20 to get online and date.
Here’s one that appeared recently in The Guardian:
Finding love in later life
Reaching 60 certainly doesn’t mean we lose the twinkle in our eye. The media often presents a glamorous image of dating, full of whirlwind romances for twentysomethings or enviable hormone-crazed flings by the likes Carrie Bradshaw or a Desperate Housewife. As a sixty-something singleton, it’s easy to feel daunted by the dating scene.
Well, you’ll be relieved to know that the older generation is becoming a major part of it. Increasing divorce rates and the disparity in life expectancy for men and women have led to huge numbers of people facing retirement alone. According to eharmony.co.uk, 30% of men over 65 and a whopping 60% of women don’t live as part of a couple.
The internet dating industry is cottoning on to that fact. Match.com claims the baby boomer generation is its fastest-growing market.
Many niche websites have popped up, specifically targeting an older demographic. The Senior Dating Agency and Senior Dating Group are both free to join and are targeted at over-50s. Singlesover60.co.uk and Online Senior Dates focus on a slightly higher age bracket, with the majority of its members over 60. If you’re stumped on how to write a profile, browse others to gain a feel for how much you need to divulge.
If you’re still not convinced about releasing your details into the cyber abyss, then there’s Dateline Platinum - the equivalent of old-fashioned dating agencies. It offers a personalised introductory service and vets all its members in person.
Traditional courting, without the aid of a keyboard, isn’t dead either. A 35-year-old female friend recently complained her 65-year-old mother goes on more dates than she does - and none of them were organised through cyberspace.
The film industry has also seen an opportunity with the rise of the dating baby boomer. Last Chance Harvey hit cinema screens this month, prompting comment about the unusual choice of 40-plus characters in a love story.
Remember James and Peggy Mason? They are proof you certainly don’t have to be young to get married. They became Britain’s oldest newlyweds in 2007 after their eyes met across a crowded day centre in Devon.
Don’t panic, though; we’re not suggesting a date should lead to selling your home and rewriting your will. Casual companionship is perfectly acceptable. Pauline Stone (64), from Arundel in West Sussex, lost her husband from a heart attack four years ago.
“Being suddenly single made me feel young again. It wasn’t my choice to be on my own, of course, but when you’re thrown into it you either sit and vegetate or you get out. I joined a singles’ club for my area and have met lots of people.
“I’m not looking for someone to move in with, just someone to share a bit of fun and go to dinner. I miss having a person to make plans and go on holiday with.”
Most later-life single status is down to separation or bereavement, and the sentiments surrounding each are very different. The former brings a greater fear of rejection, and the latter can carry a huge sense of guilt. A small percentage of people have never settled down, and others may have an ailing spouse and be seeking a platonic friendship.
Whatever the reason, there’s a huge network of single sixty-, seventy- and eightysomethings who have not lost their lust for life or their desire to be loved. If you’ve found romance after 60, are still looking, or want to share your concerns about returning to dating, post your comments below.
I’ve been out of the Internet dating news/gossip loop for a few weeks now while we made our annual trip north to our house in Maine. Apparently, there has been some big news in the meantime: Match.com is being sued for what I have been harping on for years: The common practice on paid dating sites of allowing non-paying members to post profiles for free, but then not allowing the freebies to open and/or answer emails from the paying members. What really is galling about this practice is that there is no differentiation—a single cannot tell who is paid or not by the looks of the listing. Therefore, considerable time, effort, and emotions are spent by paying singles writing to non-paying ones who cannot answer without paying up—a powerful disincentive. I’ve called this “Internet dating’s dirty little secret.” Here’s a link to my first blog post about the practice. But I had been writing about this “dirty secret” for several years before.
Note too that the dating sites NEVER publish their member (paid and unpaid listers) and subscriber (paid only) numbers together. The most recent figuring I did was several years ago when the two very different numbers from Match seemed to indicate something like 13:1 non-paid to paid members.
Now, I still thing that Match is the best all-around dating site, but this all-too-common practice of Match and other paid sites is long overdue for a change. “Why don’t they answer my emails?” is THE most common complaint I hear from Internet daters. And probably the most common reason for non-replies is that the lister is a freeloader and not a paid member. It’s too bad that it make take legal action to get dating sites to stop this practice. All it would take is some small indicator on each profile of the lister’s status. I’d like to know. Wouldn’t you?
See this article below for more details:
NY man sues dating website Match.com for deception
Tue Jun 9, 2009
* Suit says site causes “humiliation and disappointment”
* Match.com says suit lacks merit, will defend vigorously
NEW YORK, June 9 (Reuters) - A New York man sued dating website Match.com on Tuesday for misleading members by posting profiles of prospective dates who are unable to respond to any interest in them because they do not have a paid subscription.
Sean McGinn, of Brooklyn, who filed the lawsuit in New York federal court, accused Match.com of causing “humiliation and disappointment” for some members who feel rejected when their attempt to contact a prospective date gets no reply.
McGinn wants Match.com to stop “its deceptive practices” and demands unspecified damages.
People can create a Match.com profile for others to see and search the database of prospective dates for free, but to be able contact someone of interest or respond there are fees, ranging from $39.99 for one month to $19.99 a month for six months.
The lawsuit said that “despite the emotional vulnerability inherent in the dating process, fraught as it is with fear of rejection and anxiety, Match defrauds the consumer of his/her time, labor, and emotional investment” by not telling them that someone they are contacting does not have a subscription.
“Because the writer has no way of knowing this, he or she may experience profound personal anguish, suffering which is easily preventable by Match,” the lawsuit said.
Match.com, which is owned by Barry Diller’s Internet media company IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI.O), is still reviewing the complaint, but said “we believe this lawsuit is without merit and we will defend it vigorously.”
“On any given day, upon information and belief, many thousands of members log into the Match site hoping to find someone special,” the lawsuit said. “At any given time, a significant percentage of the emails a member sends cannot be opened, read or responded to by the recipient.”
Match.com’s website it has had more than 100 million members since 2000, offers services in 24 countries and territories and hosts sites in 15 languages. (Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Eric Walsh)
Our instructor in the wine course that Drew and I are taking is great about recommending romantic bottles. Here’s the latest:
Baccarosa is a sparkling pink wine from Italy (only sparkling wines from the Champagne regions of France can be called Champagne). It is a lovely rose pink and smells like roses, too, as well as strawberries and raspberries. According to our teacher, it would go great with dark chocolate. One of my clients who writes romance novels would say that it would be great poured over naked skin, too.
More from Steve about men and dating age-appropriately. See my blog entry for May 29th too.
Dating column readers reiterate: Date your age
By Steve Penner
I figured my last column would generate some interesting feedback.
In that column I advised middle-aged single and divorced men that they would be far more “marketable” to the opposite sex if they were willing to date women close to their own age.
To use a popular analogy (that I hope won’t be misinterpreted by anyone), the whole issue of older men wanting to date much younger women has been the proverbial “elephant in the room” for years. It is an issue that most people are aware of, but few people inside or outside of the media ever want to discuss honestly and frankly.
Here is some of the more interesting feedback that I received.
One local woman wrote “As a 50-year-old woman attempting to date, I truly appreciated your article in the Portsmouth Herald dated 3/13/09. I have noticed that many men my age say they want to date a woman who is closer to my daughter’s age, which I think is just icky. I cannot relate because I have no desire to date an immature, inexperienced young adult; I’m looking for someone who has been tested by life’s experiences and has come to know themselves. Thank you for telling middle age men that they should keep an open mind about age and dating because I know many fabulous women in their 50s who are emotionally stable, financially secure, intellectually stimulating, and looking for a guy their age to date.”
Another woman e-mailed “You did a very nice job with today’s column. I think the best thing about it was the way it reminded men that there are positive aspects to being open to dating women their age (or even older!), such as a larger dating pool, and finding someone with shared interests and life experiences. Thank you! I hope it generates some reflection and perhaps discussions in the coming days, and I suspect women in the Seacoast will copy the column and share it with men they know because there was no negativity or scolding… It was a great perspective on the issue.”
But the most intriguing and totally honest comment came from a man who wrote “I agree with your column completely today. It’s like everything else. There are tradeoffs. If a young woman is willing to settle for a much older man, it’s because she needs to, because she lacks something else that would enable her to snag a younger man. Maybe she is looking for financial security and that’s OK if you can afford her. We men are wired to seek young women of childbearing years who look healthy (symmetric). But do we really want more children when we are old men? I don’t! Once I started to date women my own age, a world of high quality women opened to me. Bright, charming, talented, and, yes, wealthy woman, who can pull their own weight. Now I attend parties with women who talk about their knee replacement surgery but they have so many other virtues that really count.”
Several other brief e-mails arrived from women applauding my thesis, and one man wrote to say “As someone who married an ‘older woman’...; there is a great deal of sense in your advice.”
But the question remains, are men really “wired to seek young women of childbearing years,” or are they merely conditioned by society to lust after younger women?
Obviously the answer is complex, and I would like to add another theory. Basically when it comes to important relationship and dating issues, men tend to mature much later than women. This is especially true among teenagers and young adults in their 20s and even 30s.
Therefore, starting in high school, girls prefer dating slightly older boys and vice versa. Consequently, a pattern is established (and later in life copied and perpetuated) of women wanting to date older men and men wanting to date younger women.
But by the time people reach middle age, most of us have finally achieved what I call “relationship maturity.” What do I mean by that term? Simply that people who have reached that level have finally learned what few young people know.
Simply, that the most important criteria in a relationship is NOT how tall a guy is or how cute a girl is, but rather how well a couple communicates with one another; how well a couple can mutually nurture one another; and how a couple can deal with the inevitable problems and pitfalls that life throws at everyone. These are the factors that are truly important in order to develop a meaningful relationship that one hopes will last for decades.
It is unfortunate that many people arrive at middle age still not having reached “relationship maturity.” It is even more unfortunate that a vast majority of such people happens to be men, which is why so many middle aged men are so gung-ho about wanting to date much younger women.
I further assert most such men are guys who have had limited relationship experience and who, in many ways, are as immature as they were 20 and even 30 years ago.
Show me a 50-year-old man who insists that he only wants to meet women in their 20s or 30s, and I will show you a guy whose chances of EVER developing a fulfilling long-term relationship are about as good as his chances of winning the lottery.
In other words, ladies, don’t even bother buying a ticket to meet him.
Steve Penner is my favorite dating columnist. He is so “right on” (to use a term that probably dates me) with so many dating issues. Here in this entry and my next one, you’ll see two of Steve’s columns on men’s desire to date younger women.
I’d add to Steve’s thoughts on why men (or women) would try to date someone years and years younger than themselves: They are being totally unrealistic. They are agist. They are not accepting of their own aging (no matter how “young” they feel they look and act). No one has EVER told me that they are older looking and acting than their actual age. Not since they were 13 anyway. As Gloria Steinem said. “This is what sixty looks like.” I think it has to do with folks getting “stuck” on what people looked like the last time they were dating. When they start again, they are attracted to men or women who look like the men or women they were attracted to years ago. Plus they have not REALLY looked in the mirror themselves lately.
I remember how startled I was to meet the new boyfriend of my 50ish friend to find him completely bald. And to get a sober comeuppance from her, too, when we were together at a conference in Boston: It was snowy and icy and several times, handsome college guys helped us across the streets. I loved the attention, but she simmered me down with “Don’t flatter yourself. We are old enough to be their mothers.” Wham.
Go out and look around and find people your own age. See what they look like. That’s what you look like too. That’s your market. Get used to it.
The simplest way to raise your dating quotient The Truth About Dating
By Steve Penner
“How can I make myself more marketable to single women?” (Translation for regular readers of this column: “How can I raise my Dating Quotient?") That is a question (in one form or another) I am often asked by single or divorced men. Obviously, for many men the answer is quite complex.
But for men over 45 or so, there is one shortcut that will immediately and dramatically increase their DQ. So I am writing this column specifically for them. (If you are a woman, make a copy and send it to every single, divorced, or widowed man over 45 that you know.) OK guys, you don’t have to get a hair transplant, dye your goatee, develop abs of steel, or even insert lifts in your shoes. Nor do you have to develop a sparkling personality. (Just don’t come across as a totally self-centered jerk.) All you have to do is be yourself (unless you are a totally self-centered jerk) and do one teeny, tiny thing.
Just open yourself up to meeting women close to your own age. And if you really want to raise your DQ, be willing to date women a few years older than yourself!
I know, many of you would prefer meeting much younger women. After all, in every movie, television show, and commercial you see, the men are always considerably older than their wives and girlfriends. But those shows and movies are produced primarily by wealthy Hollywood moguls whose power, fame, and most of all, their pocketbook, are the prime reasons they attract much younger trophy wives.
The fact is that today’s 50-year-old single woman is not “your father’s 50-year-old woman.” To use another worn out expression “50 is the new 35.” Have you guys noticed what many 50-year-old women look like these days?
Improved diet and fitness workouts have kept them in much better shape than women of a similar age from previous generations. Many if not most of these women also have careers, which further motivate them to lead a healthy lifestyle and to look good in the work place.
Unfortunately though, when filling out your profiles at online or personal dating services, so many of you guys foolishly list a “strong preference” for meeting women 10-20 years younger than yourselves. Then you wonder why you have little success.
Moreover, if you are a 50-year-old man who wants to meet a woman 25-39, please keep in mind that not too many 25-39 year-old women will say they want to meet you! Also please understand that by doing so, you are placing yourself in direct competition with much younger men.
To be honest, I realize that so much of what I have written sounds silly, even to me. Age is only a number, and I don’t want to hear excuses like “I am such a youthful 50, I can’t imagine going out with a woman my own age.” Interestingly, I hear those exact same claims from women.
Everyone these days looks, acts, and feels young for their age, but that is because we are comparing ourselves to our parents’ generation. That was a generation that, for the most part, was unaware of (or ignored) the health risks and appearance consequences associated with cigarette smoking and excessive sun worship (both of which produce premature signs of aging). Moreover, fitness clubs were few and far between, as were home gyms. Let’s face it, except for golf and bowling, most of our parents lived a sedentary lifestyle, while puffing away on their Kents, Lucky Strikes or Winstons. And of course active women were encouraged to smoke Virginia Slims.
Today, I implore single middle-aged men to try the following. The next time you complete a dating service profile, list a desired age range that is plus or minus five years of your own. That’s right, state that you are willing to meet women who are (gasp) older than you. Come on; give it a shot. You might be surprised at the quality (and quantity) of the pool of women who will suddenly become available to you.
But then be very strict about every other criterion. If you work out almost daily, state you only want to meet women who do the same. If you ski every weekend in the winter or you are an avid hiker, golfer or tennis player, state that you only want to meet women who are avid outdoors enthusiasts. If you are a Fred Astaire on the dance floor, state very clearly that you must meet a Ginger Rogers. If being youthful to you means that you are open-minded, liberal and love to “rock ‘n’ roll,” then just say you only want to meet women who at least have heard of Woodstock.
I recently received an e-mail from a woman who wrote “I ...; wonder if you could address a topic of dating discrimination that is so obvious and widespread that it affects most of the women I know, yet hasn’t made it into your column nearly as much as your pet peeve of women who shun short men. The discrimination I would like you to discuss is men who refuse to date women their own age.” She went on to say “So, please, I’d love to see this issue in a column of yours. Being shunned for age is as unfair as being shunned for height, both of which are factors beyond one’s control.” I couldn’t agree with her more. Besides guys, if you really are into rock ‘n’ roll, why would you want to meet a much younger woman who thinks The Who is just a strangely worded pronoun?
One of the questions I get most frequently (right after “Why didn’t he/she answer my email?”) is “Why did he just disappear?” The “he” is purposeful, because I practically never hear that women “just disappear,” though the men seem to on a regular basis.
The disappearance usually happens in what has up until then been a pleasant email exchange, or after the first date, or somewhere in the dating process. It’s a frustrating and painful experience for the receiver of this non-behavior (dropping out of contact), and “Why?” is the natural question.
Well, first off, you probably will never really know why, because part of the nature of online dating is that you don’t know this other person and probably will never run into them in real life so that you can ask. And if they refuse to reconnect via email, phone or otherwise, you are left with your “Why? What happened???” And the natural next question is “What did I do wrong?”
Most likely, you did nothing wrong. Or nothing so grievous to deserve a silent cutoff.
Here are possible explanations:
1. He got hit by a bus. His computer died right after he sent you the last email. He lost your phone number. He has been abducted by aliens. Or worse.
Unlikely, but possible.
2. He decided he is not interested in pursuing contact and is too rude or unskilled or scared to tell you directly. Email and anonymity make silence a perfect solution.
More likely and quite possible. Don’t let “I was too busy with work” excuse this kind of behavior. It takes practically no time at all to zip off an email or speed dial your cell phone.
3. He got scared. Yeah, scared. Grown ups get scared about developing relationships, even when they are lonely and want one. At each point that a budding relationship takes a baby step towards more closeness (like moving towards a first meeting, deciding on date #2, going public by meeting family and friends), fear can get stirred up and bad behavior result.
Most likely, and usually the reason behind deciding not to pursue contact, too.
Now, both men and women have fears about getting closer, but men seem most prone to silence and the disappearing act. Here’s why:
1. Disappearing is easy. You just do nothing, and probably you will never get directly confronted.
2. You don’t have to give bad news and face the upset of the other person – ie crying.
3. You also don’t have to confront yourself about the implications of your callous behavior.
Guys, correct me if I am wrong about this, and/or tell my about your experiences with disappearing ladies. I’m willing to learn!
Anyway, I had exactly this kind of issue come up with one of my clients recently. Lisa is a lovely lady, just over 60, very pretty and looks much younger. She had been emailing nicely with a gentleman named George and they were starting to plan their first meeting. Then…nothing. This was not the first time this had happened to Lisa, and she was dumbfounded about what was going on. Why would someone just “drop out of sight”?
I explained the “Hit by a bus, he’s decided ‘no, thanks,’ or he’s scared.” Lisa was incredulous. “Why would he be scared? I’ve done nothing to scare him.” Of course, we couldn’t know precisely, but getting closer risks potential loss, maybe being “found out” as not being as presented, old pains getting reactivated.
Here’s what Lisa (who as she says, has a hard time giving up) did – and this was all on her own, without my prompting – she emailed George the following:
George,
Is this the point when someone gets scared .. and thinks
(Multiple Choice)
a- she may be the size of a tent and not look like her pictures at all
b- she may want to get me drunk and take advantage of me
c- she might expect me to give up my freedom and see her
constantly and never have a free moment again (even though
she lives 3 hrs away)
d- she may throw away my remote control
e- she may be the mean step-mother type
f- what if she has a social disease
g-what if she is after my money
h- maybe she shops til she drops and brings in bills instead
of money
i- Other
George’s email reply:
I guess I must plead guilty to not getting back to you...I work a lot....sometimes too much....and I tend to slip away from things that are out of my comfort zone...like “dating”..LOL!
I have come close to the number of “dates” where one questions his choices or his dating skills..I think I am bad at both.
NO....I’m not afraid if you don’t look like your photos....I’m used to it…
it would be nice to find someone who is MORE interested in What you are about..more than what you have in life.
I’m a little burned out and dissapointed in people ,"our" group...who just Don’t get it.
So take my remote..there’s nothing on that I haven’t seen before.
LOL!!
Stay warm
George
Bingo. I was right. George was scared. Even this note showed it – though he had the guts to write back (Lisa had done a fabulous job with her light, humorous, yet to-the-point email), George did not clearly indicate a “yes” or “no” to further contact. So Lisa hits the keyboard again:
George,
Thanks so much for the great and honest answer and for not taking the easy way
out by fading into the woodwork and disappearing.
This means you have character. :-) big points
I have experienced the dating disappointments and the people who
just “don’t get it”. I have questioned what this dating thing is all
about and how people can be so “reckless” when we are all putting
our heart and ego out there. But, I’m not good at giving up and
I hope you aren’t either. Plus, you have the sense of humor to
keep this in perspective.
What can I do to make you feel more comfortable? First, I do
come with references. LOL and I promise not to steal the remote.
I won’t even ask where you live nor become a stalker. LOL
Second, you pick the place and timeframe
that makes it easy… 10 min at the local 7/11??
enough time to eat a great burger?? one drink and one
dance at the local casual bar (lesson free) Timer and batteries
included.
Besides, if you didn’t meet me, wouldn’t you wonder? Did I miss
meeting somebody who DOES get it? and is as nice as she says
she is? How can someone who adores a true Irish twinkle be so
bad? Wow, and she knows how to dance (even lead if necessary)?
Lisa
Isn’t Lisa something? She is handling this situation PERFECTLY, and subsequent emails indicate that George is gingerly taking his fear in hand. They are talking about meeting again.
Here’s the lesson:
Singles pursuing love get scared easily. Expect that fear will crop up, especially when the budding relationship gets ready to take a step forward.
Acknowledge fear (maybe expressed through silence), treat it gently and with humor. You don’t want to stir up still more fear.
Be persistent, though do not become a stalker. If someone tells you a clear “No,” then respect it.
What do a fly in a urinal, an alarm clock that jumps off your bedside stand and dives under your bed, and parking places in Florence have in common? Even better, what do they have to do with your efforts to find love?
The fly, clock, and parking spaces are all examples of the new trendy trend “nudging.” A nudge is a gentle push, or when used as a verb: To push against gently, especially in order to gain attention or give a signal. Nudging is the hottest thing in getting people to make the right choices.
Some bright dude figured out if guys had a target to aim at in a urinal, “spillage” was reduced significantly. Ergo: The fly. A nudge towards aiming better. Take a look.
The clock actually does jump off onto the floor when the alarm goes off, and then proceeds to dash around madly until you get up, chase it, and turn it off. By then you are up. Might as well stay that way.
Parking spaces in downtown Florence, Italy, are the size of Smart cars, so no big vehicles can park there. Ergo: a nudge towards buying Smart cars.
Getting and keeping moving towards finding love can be terribly difficult for singles. Even if you are lonely and miserable, the anxiety of going out and looking for love can keep you stuck in singleness forever. Jumping in the seemingly icy water of dating, Internet or otherwise, can be too much of a shock to contemplate.
So how can you use the concept of nudging to get you and keep you moving in a direction that is likely to find you love?
I use the “slice and dice” method all the time, both with myself and with my clients. “Slice and dice” is chopping up a task into smaller and smaller bits until you can actually do one of the bits – and then another – without distress. Nudging is similar.
What can you do to give yourself a little push in the right direction? Not a big push that would scare you and stop you in your tracks, but just a little push that gets you moving.
Here’s a fabulous gadget, another alarm clock configuration, that would get me moving for sure: the SnuzNLuz Wifi Donation Alarm Clock. You’ve GOT to take a look: http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/snuznluz.shtml You can set the SnuzNLuz to donate to your least favorite charity or organization automatically unless you turn it off beforehand!
Now, we are talking about getting you moving to find love, not waking up in the morning, so how could this alarm clock help? How about if you made a deal with yourself to do something, anything! Or take a particular step each day towards finding love? If you HADN’T done anything that day by 9pm, let’s say, the clock would automatically make your donation.
You set up a similar system without the clock: Write a series of checks to your least favorite organization in an amount that is significant to you, place each one in an addressed envelope, line them up on your desk, and put one in the mail every day you do nothing to find love.
Whether or not you have been using an Internet dating site to find love, a better question than “Why try Internet dating?” is “Why not?”
Yes, online daters experience myriad frustrations. Here are a few that I hear regularly from my clients:
It takes so much time.
I hate all that emailing.
I feel so exposed.
What if my friends/relatives/clients see me on a dating site?
Love should happen naturally, without this kind of effort.
The only people who contact me are jerks/fat/crazy/boring/out for my money/interested only in sex/not interested in sex/ugly/loaded with baggage/scary/liars.
I can’t write about myself.
I don’t have any good pictures.
Any of these sound familiar? Of course, there is some truth in each statement; otherwise, the complaints would not sound so believable. But none of these excuses are good enough reasons not to use the best tool that has come around to help older singles find love – singles over 30, I mean.
The Internet and dating sites are merely tools, good, sophisticated tools, but just tools, nonetheless. You the user have to learn to manipulate the tools to do what you want. If you are not using the tool properly, or haven’t learned how, it’s no surprise that you don’t get the results that you want.
Think of Internet dating sites like specialized telephone directories. Just as everyone with a land-line telephone gets a listing in the local telephone directory, any single with access to a computer and the Internet can sign up to be listed on an Internet dating site.
We all know how marvelously useful telephone books are. I’ll bet it would be hard to find a household without one. If you have a business, you’d be crazy not to have a phone book listing, because that’s where people go to find a plumber or beauty salon or the closest pizza parlor.
Similarly, Internet dating sites are very, very useful. The biggest advantage is that everyone listed is looking for love. Keep in mind how hard it is to tell if someone is looking if you bump into them in the grocery store. On a dating site, you know. And so does everybody else.
But also, think about how much more information you get about an individual who had listed on a dating site, much, much more information than you would get in a Yellow Pages ad. We never think twice about using the Yellow Pages to find a plumber, let’s say. We may ask a friend for recommendations, but we don’t blame the telephone or the directory if the plumber turns out to be a jerk. Nor do we never hire a plumber again. We use our judgment. We simply don’t use that plumber, and we go back to the phone book for another one.
We don’t throw out the phone book or the phone simply because we dialed a wrong number either.
The phone book is full of people who lie, cheat, and you wouldn’t want to marry. But the phone book also contains nice people, great folks, even, and we all know that. We know how to use the phone book as a tool to contact those folks, and we never even notice the listings we wouldn’t be interested in. We skip right over what we don’t want.
Don’t throw out the Internet equivalent of a phone book for singles, simply because you haven’t figured out how to use it to your advantage. Yes, Internet dating sites are much more sophisticated than a telephone directory, and therefore harder to learn how to use effectively, but the principal is the same. Dating sites list hundreds of thousands of singles, 99.9% of whom you will not be interested in. Same with phone books: 99.9% of the listings in the phone book you will never call and never want to. But that .01% you would be VERY interested in, and the phone book/ dating site allows you to find them.
The anger, disgust, disappointment that you may feel about looking for love online is not the fault of the dating site, that is, if you have picked a good, reputable one. Your frustration most probably is that you have not learned how to use the Internet and dating sites to get what you want. Or perhaps, what you want doesn’t exist, so you need to readjust what you are looking for. But the point is, the solution lies in you – and part of that solution may be getting help to learn what you don’t know about making online dating work for you. This is where hiring a coach can really pay off handsomely – just try me.
My client Leslie has been working her way through my book “Find a Sweetheart Soon! Your Love Trip Planner for Women” and also my ecourse “Ten Days to Get Lucky at Love.” She’s a great student and taking to it all like “a fish to water.” After President Obama’s Inauguration, she emailed me the following – I liked her views so much that I asked if I could preprint it here so you could enjoy it too:
On page 16 of “Get Lucky at Love,” you write:
“BTW, women find men who can dance VERY attractive. And a man willing to get out on the dance floor, despite not being perfect, can ask any woman there to dance. And she will probably say ‘Yes.’”
Analytical student-type that I am, I’m looking everywhere for Love Luck and Bright Spots, and I found one in the coverage of the inaugural festivities. What I saw really proves what you say about guys learning to dance—or even trying to dance. Just a few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have seen this myself, so thanks a lot for that, too!
Everyone—absolutely everyone—is talking about the new President and First Lady and their first dance. The recap on ABC opened and closed with footage from it. They do look terrific; I think it’s the first time I’ve thought any of our American presidents actually looked romantic. But here’s the thing. President Obama isn’t doing anything all that complicated. People are saying that they “glided” through a “slow, dignified two-step,” but it’s the same left-LEFT, right-RIGHT, three-two-one-spinnn that I remember from high school.
So lesson A: You do not have to know how to move like a professional to look awfully good. You just have to look comfortable and into your partner. People will think you’re attractive even if you’re the President.
Fewer people are talking about the new Vice President’s first dance, but he’s happy to say why. He says he can’t dance. He’ll tell anyone who will stand still long enough to listen. He freely admits stalling so that he won’t have to dance as long. But here’s the thing. The new VP DID dance in front of the assembled company, even if he didn’t think he was good at it. And for double bonus points, he said he might not care much for dancing but he loved being close to his wife.
So lesson B: Willingness will get you almost as far as ability. In some cases, it will get you even farther.
Now, there were doubtless tons of guys at the inaugural balls who couldn’t dance, told their dates they couldn’t dance and then punished themselves and their dates by refusing to dance. I can’t say for sure because no one at all is talking about them.
Which leads us to lesson C: You only lose if you don’t play.
Dance-shy people take notice!
Talk to you Friday,
Leslie
I made some money the other day from a little writing I did in response to a question posed on the Online Dating Newsletter: $5 for the best answer to an online dating dilemma. Here’s the predicament and then my answer. What would you have written?
http://www.onlinedatingnewsletter.com/youmakethecall/391/onlinedatehaskids.html/comment-page-1#comment-558” title="From Online Dating Newsletter">From Online Dating Newsletter:
You go out on a second date with someone you met online. The first date was great and the second date is confirming the chemistry you felt on the first date. However, midway through the second date you learn that the person you are with has two kids. It’s something that he/she said nothing about in his/her profile or on the first date. What do you do?
Not revealing that someone has children is a pretty blatant omission. Did they forget their parenthood, perhaps? More likely, they did not mention the kids in order to be more marketable. It’s possible to lie without saying anything — this is a lie by omission. The receiver of this information probably will feel tricked: they thought their date was childless and now it appears they are not. If your date will withhold such a big piece of information, what else could they be holding back? I’d first ask, “Why didn’t you tell me this beforehand?” and then listen very carefully to the answer. If the presence of children is a deal breaker for you, then you will know what to do. On the other hand, if you are neutral on the issue, then you will want to evaluate the whole of the situation, bearing in mind that this person withholds what you might need to know. Then again, children might be seen as a wonderful addition to the mix. But there is still the question of the withholding…
Now, just to try out your problem solving capabilities, how would you behave in the following dilemma, again from Online Dating Newsletter?
You’ve had great chemistry online and on the phone with a person you are about to meet for the first time at a coffee place. When your date arrives, he/she is wearing wrinkled clothes (not ugly, but definitely wrinkled) and a mismatched outfit. To top it off, he/she smells pretty bad. What do you do?
This one is a toughy. Send me your best solutions, and I’ll do at least as well as Online Dating Newsletter. Hmmm. What will the prize be, do you think?
When I was dating online back in 1998, I met a guy who not only was doing online dating, but also “It’s Just Lunch” and several other organized activities. When I asked him why he was doing all those things as well as Match.com, he said his philosophy was to start up as many avenues as possible that might lead to love, the more, the better. While I think that Internet dating is the best thing since sliced bread for singles, I agree that Match.com and the like are not the only shows in town when it comes to finding love. This fellow was right: The more options that you create for finding a partner, the more likely it is that you will find one.
I’ve been interested in the Meetup Group phenomenon for awhile, and last week I met with a woman who is active here in Tallahassee Meetup groups. We actually met because she wants a Romance Coach, but come to find out, she coordinates several Meetup Groups here and has had dates and relationships with men she has met through the Meetup Groups. For those of you who don’t know, here’s the definition of Meetup for Wikipedia:
Meetup.com (also called Meetup) is an online social networking portal that facilitates offline group meetings in various localities around the world. Meetup allows members to find and join groups unified by a common interest, such as politics, books, games, movies, health, pets, careers or hobbies. Users enter their ZIP code (or their city outside the United States) and the topic they want to meet about, and the website helps them arrange a place and time to meet. Topic listings are also available for users who only enter a location.
Meetup has only been around a few years now, really taking off after 2002. Meetup’s became part of the political action in Howard Dean’s campaign, then John Kerry and John Edwards. The grass roots efforts that were so important in getting Barack Obama elected have a strong Meetup flavor.
But Meetup is far more than a political movement. Meetup groups spring up for all kinds of reasons, but basically, they are a way for people to with similar, perhaps obscure, interests to meet when they otherwise would not.
Most of the scamming stories I read are about women being scammed. But here is an interesting article that focuses on men being scammed.
From How to spot a fake profile online?
How does this scam work?
Fake profile scam is very common because it is easy to do. You need several minutes to create a profile with an anonymous email address, a fake picture, and bogus information. Some people do it as a joke, others – to entice you to part with your money. The result is always the same: the trusting victim gets nothing.
Typically, fake entries are targeted at males. There are some fake male profiles to entice females to part with their money, but they are not popular. Males are more willing to pay for subscriptions or additional services than females, so they are a more attractive and profitable target for online scammers.
The typical fake profile scam works this way. A fraudster creates a profile or personal ad posing as a pretty young woman looking for a date. When he gets a response, he (or an auto-responder) sends a link to sign up for a dating site or adult site so that you can see profile or photos of this imaginary young woman. The subscription will cost you $5-$30 per month.
Some scammers create fake profiles of pretty girls in chat rooms. They are waiting for guys to start a private instant messaging. After a short talk, the pretty girl will tell you that she has a webcam and ask whether you want to see her naked online. She will tell you to sign up at a webcam site to make sure that she is not doing a show for an underage boy. Once you do it, the pretty girl will never communicate with you again.
Some online scammers send links to websites where you can get viruses and Trojan programs. Or your Internet love can ask you to send her money because she has got in a difficult life situation. New types of online scam appear faster than articles about them.
The main reason why scammers create fake profiles is money. They are paid for this work. For every person scammers get to sign up for a free membership they can receive $5-$15 dollars. Paid membership is worth more because it requires more time and efforts.
Some people creating fake identities are not scammers. They can want to advertise their own online resources and draw free traffic. So they add a lot of friends in social networking websites or blogs and post messages and comments with links to their site. In this case you won’t lose money, but you will waste time on such virtual persons. They are not interested in your desires or thoughts; they just want to promote their site.
Some people make fake entries because they don’t want to reveal who they are. For example, they have a committed relationship and simply bored. But they won’t tell it in their ads – who will respond to it? So they pretend to be a single young man or woman looking for a life-long partner. This type of fraud can make you feel hurt and disappointed in people.
How to avoid a fake profile scam?
Some people think that fake profile scam occurs on large websites that don’t invest money in technology or employ people to review all profiles before posting them. However, it is not so. As we have already mentioned, the number of fake identities is significant. The loss of these profiles means the loss of many members. Imagine that a large number of good-looking attractive women will disappear from you favorite dating site! It will make this service less attractive for you and for other users, right?
It is a well-known fact that some small dating sites create fake profiles to show that they have a large member database and get people use their service. Do you want to see proof of it? Just visit any popular freelance site and browse jobs they offer!
As you see, some large and small website owners can be interested in fake profiles. That’s why it makes sense to keep in mind some simple rules to avoid dealing with bogus people. In some cases a fake profile is easy to spot. In other cases, you can spend several days to find out that your partner is just a spammer.
• The photo is obviously the first thing to analyze. You should be suspicious of profiles featuring photos of professional models.
• If the email and photo are too good to be true, then they are likely to be a fake.
• If you ask for the phone number of your partner, and he/she does not reply to your calls, it’s not a good sign.
• Be careful if your partner speaks more about yourself than asking questions about you, or doesn’t answer your questions. It happens because scammers write e-mails to many people simultaneously.
• Due to the same reason, scammers can forget about specific personal things. For example, they can ask about your hobby several times.
• If the emails you receive are very impersonal and neutral, it can indicate that you are possibly one of many people scammers are talking to. The e-mails are used for both men and women.
• If your partner writes that he/she likes your attractive photo and interesting description, but you don’t have any photo or self description online, it’s very suspicious.
• Scammers don’t ask you about your life, work, friends, or family. They prefer to communicate in general words: How are you today? How was your weekend?
• If a member profile is long and detailed, then you can be pretty sure that it is a real person. Scammers don’t have time to create long interesting profiles.
We do not want to say that most member profiles are a fake and you will lose time looking for your match online. There are many people who met their spouses on the Internet. So if you like that man or woman on a dating site or elsewhere online, take a chance! But don’t reveal all information about yourself in the first e-mails.
If you receive a link in the response, don’t sign up for any sites or click suspicious links. You can lose money or install malicious software. Use your common sense and intuition to spot fake identities!
Want to know what to write in a first email? Here are some great guidelines:
Online Dating 101: Writing a great first contact email by
E. Foley
Online Dating Examiner
What to write? What to write?
I was talking with a new client yesterday who was lamenting about the fact that he’s sent out dozens of first contact emails and gotten very few responses. He’s an attractive man with a great life and his head firmly planted on his shoulders - what was going wrong?
Then he sent me a copy of a sample email he had sent to one of the ladies who interested him. It broke nearly all the rules of first contact emails. Poor guy. Thankfully, I have coached him and set him straight!
Wondering what the rules are? Let me lay them out for you:
1) Never, ever, ever mention the person’s physical appearance. Hot people know they are hot. Besides, everyone else is telling them about how beautiful they are on the outside. On the flip side, if you tell a shy girl that’s she’s beautiful right off the bat, you’ll most likely scare her away.
2) Mention something about their profile that intrigued you or made you admire them in some way. Amazed that she paid her own way through college while holding down a full-time job? Shocked that he currently holds the 3rd place title in competitive hacky-sack? Write it down! Show your love for something other than their looks.
3) Do not cut yourself down. The most unattractive thing you can possibly say is, “Well, if you happen to like my profile, please write me back.” I feel wormy just typing that! They are going to look at your profile if you send them an email - if only for curiosity’s sake. Let them pass their own judgement without getting the ball rolling with your own insecurity.
4) Do not storm the castle. Don’t mention what you’d like to do on your first date in your first contact email. Take things one step at a time. The next thing you’d like is for the person to reply to your email. Start small and build up to the date.
5) Always end with a question. People like to talk about themselves. Find something in the person’s profile that you’d like to learn more about and ask a question.
As with all rules, some of these can be bent or even broken in the right circumstances. In general, they will work for you and they will work well. Good luck and happy emailing, friends!
Well, you know, I like this new frankness about finances that the economy is prompting. In my family, money discussions were more tabu than sex, and it was hard to get more tabu than sex. If I had thought about it at the time, I would have given my FICO score to my now husband Drew (if I had known it). As it was, we were equally financially savvy and shared Quicken reports on our second date.
Hey baby, What’s your credit score?
Josh Smith
The economy is affecting all aspects of our lives, so it’s no surprise that individuals on the dating scene are starting to check out their date’s assets before getting serious. ABC news 7 reports that a recent Match.com survey found that over 80% of singles are more selective about who they date now that the economy has gone south. Financial guru Suze Orman also weighed in on the issue of creditworthy dates in a recent Oprah appearance, recommending that you, “FICO first, then sex.”
There are even websites devoted to matching people with others in a select credit score range! One such site, CreditScoreDating.com with the tagline “Credit Scores Are Sexy,” claims to help thousands of people a day meet others with good credit.
If you’re looking for a date with a good credit score, it turns out you don’t need to go to a specialized site; just take one look at your potential date. A recent study published in The Economist showed a link between a person’s face and their credit score. In the study, scientists had individuals rate the trustworthiness and likelihood of repayment for a $100 loan and found that there was a correlation between user ratings and actual credit scores. While the study hasn’t isolated what makes someone appear to have bad credit, it seems you should trust your instincts in order to find a creditworthy date.
Given the huge impact money has on a relationship and the fact that most Americans will talk about sex before they will discuss their credit card debt, being open about debt and credit is as important as ever. Rather than hiding your bad credit, you’d be better off being open with your dates, if not on the first date then at least before you get ready to walk down the aisle. Not everyone will be as understanding about massive credit card debt as Marshall was towards his fiance on hit TV show How I Met Your Mother.
You know, I have NEVER had a single tell me that they looked older than their birthdate would warrant. But lots tell me that they look younger, thinking that gives them some kind of special license to lie. People are incredibly good at deceiving themselves about their own marketability and who would actually agree to go out with them. Look below at some real life experiences of attempts to match young women with much older men, and young men with much older women.
The myth of Ashton
By Meredith Goldstein
Maureen Trickett, an event organizer for 8minuteDating.com, had an idea based on all the hype surrounding younger men dating older women. She decided last year to plan an event specifically for that demographic - a night of speed dating for women-of-a-certain-age and the boyish men who love them.
Trickett posted the event online, and women quickly signed up. But the men - they were slow to show interest. After only six men registered, the event was canceled.
“I need eight men,” Trickett explained. “If I don’t get eight, the system cancels the event.”
Trickett decided it was worth a second try. She set up another speed dating event for a recent Sunday afternoon at Tommy Doyle’s in Kendall Square, this time for older women and younger men, as well as older men and younger women. The room would be split in half - age-inappropriate on both sides.
But again she had a shortage of younger men. The “cougar event,” as Trickett was calling it, was canceled.
The older men/younger women event went on as planned, but only because Trickett waived the fee for a few women so that they’d sign up and the numbers would be even.
Despite what magazines and tabloids might suggest, Trickett said, despite all the talk of cougar culture, men still want to date younger women, and older women . . . well, their options are limited.
“If I do the age-appropriate [events,] I get tons of women,” Trickett said. “When I do younger men and older women, I get tons of women. When I do younger women older men, I get tons of older men and I struggle to get the women.”
Sure, Demi Moore broke a mold, and I know a few couples - family members and friends of friends - who represent the highly publicized demographic of older women and younger men, but the dating industry will tell you that for the most part that demographic is a myth. Men still seek younger women, especially as those men get older themselves.
“It’s the general rules, what happens when people hook up and go into a relationship,” said Mark Brooks, an online dating industry consultant who runs Online Personals Watch. “With men dating women, it tends to be up to six years younger but it will only be up to two years older.”
And why is that?
“Guys tend to have unrealistic expectations,” said Brooks, who bragged that he is one of the mythical Ashton Kutcher-types (he recently dated someone nine years older than him). “Most men are too busy looking at magazines and not busy enough looking in the mirror.”
HurryDate knows this. The company’s local events almost always skew age-inappropriate to ensure a good male turnout. Upcoming HurryDate events (which like 8minuteDating have twosomes pair off to chat for a few minutes at a time), call for older men and slightly younger women. Tonight, for instance, there are two simultaneous events at Charley’s on Newbury Street, one for 24-to-32-year-old men and 21-to-29-year-old women, and another for 35-to-45-year-old men and 30-to-40-year-old women.
“We have actually tried to capitalize on the cougar trend and it didn’t really work for us,” said Adele Testani, founder of HurryDate. “There really is so much in the media, but . . . people really want that more traditional arrangement.”
Those HurryDate age ranges mirror what most men ask for online. I asked Kate Bilenki, a spokeswoman for Plentyoffish.com, a dating website with 10 million members, if she’s ever seen a male profile call for an older woman. “In my experience, no, I can’t say that I have,” she said.
Bilenki adds another depressing tidbit: “For every 55-year old male, there are three 55-year-old women.”
At the recent 8minuteDating party that had older men hunting for younger women, Trickett joked that she wished she could have hosted the party with the folks who were actually enthusiastic about signing up - the older women and the older men. Maybe they would have shown up, discovered that the younger daters were no-shows, and been forced to go on the speed dates with one another - people their own age.
“I’d love to do that with them all, just to see their faces,” Trickett said.
Me too.
For all you not-so-smart people out there, it’s consoling to know that smart people have a rough time. They do. For example, I know from years of doing psychotherapy with all sorts of folks (in my practice in Maine I had lobster fishermen and world class scientists), the smarter you are, the better you are at making yourself crazy and your life miserable. I’ve seen similar problems with smart singles: They are very good at eliminating perfectly good candidates because the person can spell or doesn’t have a graduate degree or know much about some obscure topic. And they are good about complicating what should be a simpler process. After all, if birds and bees do it, why can’t they figure it out? This article below, though sassy and a bit cutting, sums up the dilemma well.
Why The Smartest People Have The Toughest Time Dating by Dr. Alex Benzer
I have a mini-confession to make: I wrote the Tao of Dating books specifically for really smart people. The writing of the books was precipitated by the endemic dating woes on the Harvard campus, as I observed them as an advisor and earlier, indulged in them as a student.
Those kids graduate and pretty much continue to have the same dating woes—only now with fewer single people around who happen to live in the same building and share meals with them every day. So if they had challenges then, it gets about 1000 times worse once they’re tossed from the warm womb of their alma mater.
From my observations, the following dating challenges seem to be common to most smart people. In fact, the smarter you are, the more clueless you will be, and the more problems you’re going to have in your dating life. Once upon a day I used to be pretty smart, and believe me, I had a lock on clueless.
On the one hand, this makes no sense. Smart people can figure stuff out, right? And this stuff is simple!
On the other hand, it makes total sense. For simple things, it takes someone smart to really screw it up. So whether you went (or should have gone) to the likes of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, Columbia, Cornell, Swarthmore, Amherst, Dartmouth, Brown, Oxford, Cambridge, Berkeley, Penn, Caltech, Duke, read on:
1. Smart people spent more time on achievements than on relationships when growing up.
Smart kids usually come from smart families. And smart families are usually achievement-oriented. Bring me home those straight As, son. Get into those top colleges, daughter. Take piano, violin, tennis, swimming and Tibetan throat-singing lessons. Win every award there is in the book. Be ‘well-rounded.’
Well, you’re a talented little bugger. Of course you should develop those talents. At the same time, there’s an opportunity cost associated with achievement. Time spent studying, doing homework, and practicing the violin is time not spent doing other things—like chasing boys or girls, which turns out is fairly instrumental in making you a well-rounded human.
The upshot of all that achievement is that you get into a top college—congratulations!—and then continue doing even more of what you were doing before. Dating is at best another extracurricular, #6 or #7 down the list, somewhere between Model UN and intramural badminton.
I’ve been co-hosting young alumni events for name-brand schools for long enough to know that these kids come out a little lopsided (which sounds so much better than ‘socially awkward’, don’t you think?). All they need is a little tune-up, or a little dating textbook like The Tao of Dating for Women or Men, to get them going—plus a little practice.
Of course, as noted above, things only get worse once you graduate. And if you’re frustrated with your love life, you just might try to compensate by working harder and achieving even more to fill that void. Left untreated, this condition can go on for decades. I know people in their 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond who still haven’t figured out how to create an intimate connection with another human being.
It’s because they’ve been going at it the wrong way. Which brings us to…
2. Smart people feel that they’re entitled to love because of their achievements.
For most of their lives, smart people inhabit a seemingly meritocratic universe: if they work hard, they get good results (or, in the case of really smart folks, even if they don’t work hard, they still get good results). Good results mean kudos, strokes, positive reinforcement, respect from peers, love from parents.
So it only makes sense that in the romantic arena, it should work the same way. Right? The more stuff I do, the more accomplishments and awards I have, the more girls (or boys) will like me. Right? Please say I’m right, because I’ve spent a LOT of time and energy accumulating this mental jewelry, and I’m going to be really bummed if you tell me it’s not going to get me laid.
Well, it’s not going to get you laid, brother (or sister). It may get you a first date, but it’s probably not going to get you a second date. And it certainly won’t bring you lasting love and fulfillment.
Here’s the thing: your romantic success has nothing to do with your mental jewelry and everything to do with how you make the other person feel. And making someone feel a certain way is a somewhat nonlinear process that requires a different kind of mastery than that of calculus or Shakespeare.
In other words, you need to earn love (or at least lust). Sadly, no mom, dad or professor teaches us about the power of the well-placed compliment (or put-down), giving attention but not too much attention, being caring without being needy. I wrote a whole 280-page book about that, so that’s a story for a different day.
3. You don’t feel like a fully-realized sexual being, and therefore don’t act like one.
At some point in your life, you got pegged as a smart person. From then on, that was your principal identity: The Smart One. Especially if you had a sibling who was better-looking than you, in which case she (or he) was The Pretty One.
Now you could be absolutely stunning (in which case you’re both smart AND pretty and everyone hates you except for me—call me, like, immediately), but your identity is still bound up in being The Smart One. So maybe you dress frumpy and don’t pay a lot of attention to your appearance. Or never bothered to cultivate your sensuality as a woman. Or your sexual aggression as a male.
Attracting a partner is all about the dance of polarity. Energy flows between positive and negative electrodes, anode and cathode, magnetic north and south. Unless you actually convey femininity as a woman or masculinity as a man, you’re not going to attract a suitable companion of the opposite sex.
Part of the issue is this: when all of your personal energy is concentrated in the head, it never gets a chance to trickle down to the heart, or, god forbid, the groin. By virtue of being born of the union of male and female, yang and yin, you are a sexual being. Deal with it. Now do what you need to do to perpetuate the race already. Use what mama amoeba gave you.
That brings us to…
4. You’re exceptionally talented at getting in the way of your own romantic success.
Here’s an incontrovertible fact: every one of your ancestors survived to reproductive age and got it on at least once with a member of the opposite sex. All the way back to Homo erectus. And even further back to Australopithecus. And even further back to monkeys, to lizards, to the first amphibian that crawled out of the slime, the fish that preceded that amphibian, the worm before the fish and the amoeba that preceded the worm.
And you, YOU, in the year 2009 C.E., the culmination of that miraculously unbroken line of succession, you, Homo sapiens sapiens, not just thinking man but thinking thinking man (or woman), are the only one smart enough to SCREW THE WHOLE THING UP.
Perhaps you should consider thinking a little less then.
Because heaven knows that the amoeba, worm, fish, amphibian, monkey and primitive hominids didn’t do a whole lot of thinking. Their DNA had a vested interest in perpetuating itself, so it made sure that happened.
Turns out your DNA works the same way, too. And maybe when you’re really sloshed at a party and your whole frontal lobe is on vacation in the outer rings of Saturn, you’ve noticed that your lizard brain knows exactly how to grab that cute girl by the waist for a twirl on the dance floor. Or knows exactly how to arch your back, flip your hair and glance at that handsome hunk just so such that he comes on over to say hi.
To put it plainly, you are programmed to reproduce. Now quit thinking you’re smarter than the 3 billion base pairs in your genome and 4 billion years of evolution. Actually, just stop thinking altogether. Let the program do its work.
5. By virtue (or vice) of being smart, you eliminate most of the planet’s inhabitants as a dating prospect
Let’s say by ‘smart’ we mean ‘in the top 5% of the population in terms of intelligence and education’. Generally speaking, smart people seek out other smart people to hang out with, simply because they get bored otherwise. And if they’re going to spend a lot of time with someone, intelligence in a partner is pretty much a requirement.
Well, congratulations—you’ve just eliminated 95% of the world’s population as a potential mate, Mr or Ms Smartypants. Now, luckily, the world’s kinda big, so the remaining 5% of the gender of your choice is still a plentiful 160 million or so people. Even if only 1% of those are single enough, good-looking enough, local enough and just all-around cool enough for you, that’s over a million people you can date out there.
Still, that’s less than one in five thousand people. And if you live in a smaller city, it may be just a handful of folks who are going to meet your stringent criteria.
At this point, you have three choices:
A) Loosen up
B) Do a very thorough search all over the planet and be prepared to move to Duesseldorf OR
C) Join a monastery.
My hearty recommendation is choice A. The purpose of relationship (and perhaps all of life) is to practice the loving. No partner is going to be 100% perfect anyway, so learn to appreciate people for what they have to offer, not what they don’t. And love them for that. That’s what real loving is.
Nobody’s asking to lower your standards here; you should still spend time only with worthwhile company. But do question the standards to see whether they’re serving you or you’re serving them.
When you open your heart to love, you may find fulfillment in ways you never imagined possible—like the day you tried sushi or beer in spite of your trepidation, found it surprisingly alright, and expanded your personal envelope of pleasure. Taking that into consideration, given a choice between happy-go-lucky and picky-but-lonely, happy sounds like more fun.
Remember when it was not okay to Google a prospective date? Those days are definitely over, and how fast time flies! We’ve skipped right over background checks and are now talking about FICO scores as part of a responsible dater’s resume.
Recession Has Some Daters Checking Credit Scores
WASHINGTON - The recession has some singles being more careful about who they date. A recent survey shows more than 80 percent of singles are being more selective because they don’t want to get involved with someone who needs their own bailout.
Money may be all the talk these days but at a speed-dating event in D.C., singles say they’re not bringing it up—yet.
“Money thing, that’s serious stuff. I’ll worry about that later,” said one participant.
But concerns about job security and financial stability are close to the surface.
“I know a lot of my friends, their financial situations are difficult right now,” added another participant.
In addition to their own tight finances, many worry about a potential date’s money troubles.
“I met a few female lawyers who told me that they had extreme—like $240,000—debt and yes, that would be an impediment,” said Mel Hutson.
Finance guru Suze Orman shared her advice about that with Oprah and guests.
“Before you get involved in a relationship or anything, FICO first, then sex,” she said, producing laughter in the audience. “That’s a new dating question,” replied Oprah, “‘What’s your FICO score?’”
For many, one’s credit score is a touchy subject. But it’s not taboo at CreditScoreDating.com, where singles weed out low-credit score holders.
But Michael Karlan, founder of the Professionals in the City dating service, says those restrictions are a double-edged sword.
“What the credit score dating site does is you’re getting people that are pre-selected,” he said. “So within that group, you can find somebody that you’re attracted to and you’ll already know that they’re pre-selected so it helps in that regard. But it still doesn’t avoid that situation of, you have to find the person with whom you’re attracted.”
If not specifically dating by credit score, 84 percent of singles admitted in a Match.com survey they are at least more selective about who they date in a down economy. And online dating Web sites are reporting a surge in business, because many singles say it’s cheaper to find a date online then heading out to the bar and restaurant scene.
Dear Advice Goddess: I met this girl on an online dating site, and we exchanged roughly 10 e-mails there, maybe 10 more on our personal accounts, and about 15 texts. This was all before our first date (scheduling conflicts kept us from meeting for several weeks). After our date, I knew I wasn’t interested, but I feel I owe her more than an e-mailed “thanks, but no thanks” since we had all this correspondence. - Oddly Connected
Dear Connected: Imagine walking up to a stranger in a parking lot and telling them you’re worried about your mom’s gallbladder. That’s pretty much what you did with this girl. And then, because you spilled, and she spilled, and then you both spilled some more, you started to feel connected - before you actually knew what you were connecting to.
I used to joke “Never have sex before the first date,” but these days, with everybody’s capability for constant instant communication, there’s a real need for the advice “Never start a relationship before the first date.” Since you only have the illusion of a relationship, all you owe this girl is an e-mail telling her you had a good time but felt you didn’t “click.”
In the future, try to meet the girl as soon as possible, or maintain near radio silence until you do, lest you start acting all “You complete me” when it’s possible the message you’ll eventually want to send is “You! Delete me!”
Sigh. Along with fat thighs and STD’s, we have to worry about our credit card balances. Yes, it is right to disclose. But yes, you should have tidied up your business before getting out there and dating. Unless you are hoping your Sweetie will rescue you. In which case, there’s even more reason to disclose. What if he or she is in worse shape than you???
You owe it to your partner to disclose debt
By Jenifer Goodwin
Union-Tribune Staff Writer
You’re getting serious with a new boyfriend or girlfriend. As you grow closer, you’re naturally sharing more about your personal life. But there’s one thing you haven’t discussed: You’re carrying thousands of dollars in credit-card debt.
Now what?
If you fear you’ve gotten in over your head with credit cards, you’re not alone. As of December, the average amount owed on credit cards was $5,710, according to TransUnion. About 55 percent of credit-card users carry a balance from month to month.
Still, during those first few dates, you really don’t have to reveal anything about your financial affairs – and it’s wise not to, said Jackie Black, a relationship coach and author of “Meeting Your Match: Cracking the code to successful relationships.” “Dating is a time to meet people and explore whether or not they are a good match for you on many different levels,” said Black, who lives in Palm Desert. “Most of the people you date will not be a match, and you’ll move on and never see them again.”
But when you start to get serious, especially if you’re moving in together or contemplating getting engaged, your financial situation becomes very much your partner’s business. Simply fessing up isn’t enough, Black said.
If you owe thousands of dollars that you can’t pay back, you’re a poor choice for a partner. Before involving someone too deeply in your life, either pay off the cards or take concrete steps toward making better spending decisions.
“Get to work now to clean up your financial affairs so you can report honestly that this is an issue that is being addressed by you,” Black said.
In the end, you’ll be happy you did.
Financial issues are a major reason couples divorce, said Hilary Black, author of “The Secret Currency of Love: The Unabashed Truth About Women, Money and Relationships.”
You owe it to your partner to be upfront about your financial style, even if it’s not particularly flattering. Couples who have similar outlooks toward spending and saving do better than those who are mismatched.
“Financial compatibility is as important as sexual compatibility,” she said.
Oooo. If you weren’t nervous already about dating online, you don’t want to read about the data you enter and what the sites do with it. Frankly, I’d rather not know.
Online dating: Your profile’s long, scary shelf life
By Robert L. Mitchell
Two years after meeting your one true love, you find yourself embroiled in a nasty divorce. During the proceedings, your spouse claims that you misrepresented yourself right from the beginning, and—surprise!—she has a copy of your original profile from the online dating site where you met to prove it.
Online dating services have privacy policies that offer some assurances about how that data will be used and not used, but they don’t necessarily delete your data after you’ve canceled your subscription and moved on. Many sites keep the profiles and related data long after you’ve left the service; some won’t delete it unless you ask—and others never delete it at all.
“We have an archiving strategy, but we don’t delete you out of our database,” says Joseph Essas, vice president of technology at eHarmony . In that way, users who return a few months—or a few years—later don’t have to fill out the 400-question profile again. “We’ll remember who you are,” he says.
Related Content
That’s important because a substantial percentage of users tend to return to online dating sites over and over again. eHarmony also uses that archival data for research purposes, according to a company spokesperson.
Yahoo Personals declined to say how long it retains customer information. True.com retains the data indefinitely. “The data just sits there. We don’t really get rid of those [old records],” says CEO and founder Herb Vest. But Plenty of Fish is more pragmatic about its disk space. It tends to delete records after six months to a year of inactivity, according to CEO Markus Frind.
Users should know the retention policy of the service they’re using, says Jonathan Sablone, a partner and chair of the e-discovery group at law firm Nixon Peabody LLP . “If you don’t know what the policy is, you have to assume that the data will be there for a very long time, if not forever,” he says.
Legal concerns
Users should be well familiar with a dating site’s privacy policy. Ideally, you should have a good idea what will happen if the site is presented with a subpoena or court order.
eHarmony maintains that its records are safe. It has a strict privacy policy and complies with the state and federal laws regarding the privacy of electronically stored information, “which prohibit the release of customer records in response to a subpoena in civil litigation,” a spokesperson says. “For example, the contents of users’ communications cannot be disclosed in response to a subpoena.”
That is true for cases where the Federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act applies, says Sablone, but litigants can still get the data. “If there’s information within that database that may be relevant to a divorce proceeding, then through a court order, it’s possible to obtain that. If the court issues an order, you’ve got to do it.”
While businesses routintely delete old records to protect themselves from future legal discovery requests, many online dating sites don’t. “The danger of retaining information longer [than is necessary] is that it opens the door for legal processes down the road,” says Sablone.
That means personal data within online dating profiles has the potential to haunt users months or even years later. “The risk is that the detailed personality profiles can be disclosed in a lawsuit and then used against you in novel and negative ways,” says Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum . These include divorce or custody proceedings, employment-related lawsuits and potentially even medical-related lawsuits.
Though rare, legal actions have been filed in cases ranging from date rape accusations to sexual harassment accusations to a lawsuit ( preview the story here ) against former WellPoint Inc. executive David Colby by a woman who contended that he misrepresented himself on Match.com .
Related Content
In an ideal world, the service would notify the customer immediately of a subpoena so that he could get a court order to block it. But online dating services are not obligated to tell you when someone presents a subpoena or court order demanding your profile data.
“Whether or not a dating site will do this for each and every customer is an open question that only the site’s privacy policy can answer,” Dixon says. Those policies, she says, aren’t reassuring.
Some Web companies fight hard to protect records. “They will resist every effort to produce that data,” says Sablone. Others simply notify the user, particularly if the data resides on an active storage device and is inexpensive to produce. “They put the burden on the consumer to fight that battle,” he says.
Matchmaking or marketing?
Online dating services have good reasons for wanting to hang onto user data: It’s valuable. The sites gather extensive amounts of personal information about their customers that can be extremely valuable for marketing purposes.
When you sign up for an online dating site, you fill out a profile, which can run from a few dozen questions to several hundred. It includes both demographic data (age, gender, location, race and religion) and personal preferences even your mom might not know about. (You don’t want to date Hindus or Catholics. Who knew?)
Most services use this profile data to try to convert customers who are just looking into paying subscribers. But what else can they do with it?
For one, they can try and sell you other products or services from their own company. While Yahoo Personals, Plenty of Fish and PerfectMatch.com all say they eschew this practice, eHarmony uses the business intelligence it has gained about its customers to market related services on four advertiser-supported advice sites, including Project Wedding and Fertile Thoughts . More are planned.
Advertising issues
That same data also can be used by online dating sites that carry advertising to deliver ads or offers for complementary advertiser-supported services that are highly targeted to individuals. “Ultimately, we’re looking at hypertargeting individuals to deliver ads that way,” says a spokesperson for eHarmony.
Ross Williams, CEO at White Label Dating , which provides business and hosting services to dating sites, says the prospect of offering highly targeted advertising based on detailed demographic, behavioral and psychological data—and even very detailed profile data such as the color of your hair and that you’re balding—is attractive.
“We know that information. If I have a hair product for men, I don’t think there are any places online other than online dating where you can get that [demographic data],” he says. That type of information, Williams says, gives online dating sites a unique competitive opportunity, if they’re willing to exploit it.
That raises concerns for Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy at the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse . He thinks that users who sign up for online dating services may be giving up too much about themselves in the bargain.
“I would be reluctant to provide the level of information they are requesting. You’re essentially providing a gold mine of information, both for behavioral and marketing purposes. That information—on hobbies, interests, religion—is very valuable information that you are aggregating into one location,” he says.
Stephens also notes that it’s probably better not to reveal too much about yourself before you meet someone. As with a good resume, an online profile should be a teaser that makes people want to meet you, rather than a detailed biography. “You might want to use a bit of discretion and leave a little bit of mystery there,” he says.
Mark Brooks, editor of Online Personals Watch , a newsletter that covers online dating and social networking sites, sees highly targeted marketing as inevitable. He says traditional “interruption marketing”—rollovers, pop-ups and so forth—hasn’t worked well on Internet dating sites because users don’t pay attention to the ads.
Brooks thinks ad-supported sites such as Plenty of Fish (a former client of Brooks’ consultancy, Courtland Brooks) should leverage compatibility profiles to allow advertisers to target users with highly contextual offers that would be of the most interest to them. “Advertising is an annoyance. The only way it will work is through the power of the friendly referral,” he says.
But for now, Plenty of Fish’s Frind says the site’s current advertising model, which lets advertisers target users based on basic demographic information, is working just fine. He claims that the site has a higher click-through rate than social networking sites and generated about $10 million in ad revenue last year.
As these profile databases continue to scale, the economics of targeted adverting could one day switch the dominant model from subscription-based to advertising-based. “Once you build up a big enough database, advertising becomes quite interesting,” Williams says.
Protecting your personal data
Both Stephens and Dixon recommend that users who have concerns about how their data will be used should read the privacy policies of these services before signing up. Sablone suggests inquiring about user account data retention policies as well, which may not be in the privacy policy.
Once you’re through using a service, some sites will delete your data if you ask. If you think you’ll return to the site, it might be convenient to have your profile waiting. But users who value their privacy may want to ask to have their profiles deleted when they leave.
Plenty of Fish will honor that, says Frind. Vest says True.com will also delete user profiles on request. But Sablone warns that if there’s no stated policy or agreement in advance, a customer request to delete data is just that. “It’s a request that the company may follow—or not,” he says.
eHarmony has a different policy. “We do not permanently delete account information from our system, but when members ask to close their account, we ensure that their profile information is turned off and not shared with other members unless the member explicitly asks for the account to be reactivated,” says a spokesperson.
eHarmony also deletes the user’s e-mail account information once the account has been closed. Presumably, you won’t be hearing from them again. But that time capsule of data about you remains in the vault forever. And, says Dixon, “that [privacy] policy can change any time the site wants to change it.”
Is more better? How many dating sites do you belong to?
Singles play the field online, seeking match with ‘the one’
Megan K. Scott ASSOCIATED PRESS
When it comes to love, Kathleen Hanover is searching for a needle in a haystack. So, to find Mr. Right, she has profiles on at least five online dating sites.
Miss Hanover, who owns a marketing business, figures it’s simple math.
“You have to have a big pool of leads to find the percentage who might feel right,” says the Dayton, Ohio, resident, 43. “I’m looking for a very specific kind of man.”
With 1,400 online dating sites, according to the research firm Hitwise, many singles are finding it easy to cast a wide net, posting profiles on multiple sites in hope of reeling in “the one.”
Melissa Galt, an interior designer and motivational speaker in Atlanta, was on four sites at once and compared it to having a second full-time job. One site she used was about “quantity and not necessarily quality.” Another seemed better suited to one-night stands.
She subscribed to eHarmony multiple times but had no luck there and didn’t fare much better at Match.com, where she struck out enough that the site was willing to give her six months of free membership. Since then, Miss Galt has gone out on two dates with someone from Match.com and says so far, so good.
Neither eHarmony nor Match.com, two of the leading online dating sites, captures information about how many of their members are on other sites. Match.com has 15 million active members worldwide. EHarmony has more than 20 million registered users around the world.
Markus Frind, chief executive of the free dating site Plenty offish.com, estimates that 15 percent of the people in the United States who are active on his site are members of other, paid dating sites. About 900,000 people in the North America and the United Kingdom log on each day.
It makes sense to post profiles on more than one site, says Mark Brooks, editor of Online Personals Watch and an Internet dating consultant.
He compares serial online dating to bar- and nightclub-hopping. Someone may go to a wine bar one night and a “Cheers” bar another night. He says people generally settle on one main site and a smaller niche site.
Jordanna Petkun, 30, a business owner in Half Moon Bay, Calif., says when JDate, a site for Jewish singles, seemed to run out of potential matches, she signed up for OKCupid. She didn’t want to cancel her JDate membership, though, because “what if the right guy comes along tomorrow?”
Some relationship experts aren’t so sure that signing up for multiple sites brings better luck in love.
Michael Somerville, host of the upcoming dating series “Wingman” on the Fine Living Network, wonders how people can genuinely give the time and attention to a potential match on eight different dating sites. If you really want to meet the right person online, you need to work at it, he says.
“I have seen daters who spend more time checking their dating sites than they do dating,” says Nicholas Aretakis, author of “Ditching Mr. Wrong: How to End a Bad Relationship and Find Mr. Right.”
Jess McCann, a dating coach and author who once used three sites at the same time, says she was cutting and pasting generic responses to e-mails for awhile. She had two folders: one for the men she wanted to meet and another for the ones who gave her a so-so feeling. If one of the top prospects disappeared, she bumped up one from the other folder.
She has since met her match - but not online.
Tricia Dodson, 47, of Murrieta, Calif., who has been on four or more sites at the same time, says she printed out the profiles of the men with whom she communicated and wrote detailed notes on them, such as hobbies, career and “cute things he said.”
“This isn’t a fail-proof system,” says Miss Dodson, who wrote a book about dating. “At one time, I was e-mailing and talking to six different men via phone and there was a time or two that I got them mixed up.”
So just how much is too much?
Mr. Aretakis recommends singles sign up for one general site, a second specific site and a third niche dating site. So, for example, someone who is Jewish and loves to fish might be on Match.com, JDate and Single Fishing Enthusiasts on the Net.
However, it’s better to be on one site proactively than on three passively, says Nancy Slotnick, founder of the love-life management site Cablight.com. She recommends that singles log on and e-mail 10 people a week. Of the 15 hours a week Miss Slotnick recommends spending on finding a mate, she suggests spending no more than three hours on online dating.
After all, there is a real world out there.
Miss Hanover has no time for that. In fact, she’s so short on time that in some of her online profiles, she directs potential suitors to her personal Web site, http://www.myhero quest.com, where she asks prospects to give her five first dates’ worth of details about who they are and what they want in a relationship.
“I honestly don’t have time or the patience for long, drawn-out, get-to-know-you chitchat and casual dating,” she writes on the home page, adding that “frankly, I’d rather get some extra sleep!”
Women want tall men and men want little women, but only 15% of men are six feet tall or more, and roughly 1/3 of adults are obese. So think of all those good ones you are passing by, just because you are prejudiced against the vertically or horizontally challenged.
The big and small of dating
By Dusan In General |
Most of us think up the most ideal situations when it comes to dating is a petite girl and a tall, dark and handsome man. But what happens when the guy is shorter than girl, or the girl weighs a few more pounds than her man?
This is an important question to be asking — obesity is rampant in the United States with more than 31% of the dating population being overweight.
Dating a short guy should no longer cause a problem, as we are no longer fighting for survival - so the height and strength of a man is not a question of life and death. But it seems that the guys are more self-conscious about this. If you want to date a short guy, you should consider measuring up his self-confidence first.
Though it seems that the bigger ladies will have more of a problem finding a date, as there is much more of a stigma around dating big women. This is met with rude stares and a lack of acceptance. However, this does not mean the big and tall ladies do not deserve just as much love as the men. The ratio between overweight women and men is fairly even, so why all the hang-ups?
Basically, those who have been wading through the dating pool for a long time and just haven’t found anyone, should try opening their horizons. A few inches more here and few less there does not mean that someone does not have the kind heart and love that you are looking for.
Now here’s an interesting take on the economy and the advantages of online dating. Beyond the “more fish in the sea,” #3 and 4 are goodies: Use the profile information to ferret out whether you potential Sweetie is similar to you in economic status and spending habits, and think about the economy of shared expenses. Taking that a bit further: Ladies, it’s time to pony up when the check comes.
Four reasons why online dating is recession proof
By Amelia McDonell-Parry
With unemployment rates at a record low, mortgage rates skyrocketing, and businesses shutting their doors on nearly a daily basis, the average American is cutting back on expenses BIG time, especially when it comes to their social lives.
Online dating is one social activity that has not been hit hard by the economic recession.
Dinners at restaurants have been replaced by cooking at home, seeing movies in the theaters—at a whopping $12 a ticket --seems excessive when you can wait until the film in on DVD, and traveling? For fun? Not in this economy!
But one social activity that’s NOT seeing a dip in participation is online dating. According to The New York Times, Match.com had its strongest fourth quarter in the last seven years. An easy explanation is that though times may be tough, loneliness is loneliness, no matter how much money you have in your bank account.
Rich or poor, employed or recently laid off, everyone wants to have love. With that in mind, here are four reasons why online dating is recession proof.
1. There’s more fish in the pond: The primary benefit of dating online is that you’re casting a wide net. A whole world of romantic possibility is at your fingertips. The chances of meeting someone amazing with thousands to choose from online is far greater than frequenting your local watering hole, in hopes that in between rounds of overpriced cocktails, someone fantastic will walk in and take a seat next to you.
While many people meet possible mates through friends or acquaintances, as you get older, the dating pool gets smaller, as more people get engaged and married. With online dating, there’s little question as to whether someone is available.
“I was sick of going out every weekend, spending money on drinks, as I made small talk with men who bored or offended me,” says Emily Parker*, an editor in New York City. “My budget is super tight, especially since I feel like my job isn’t secure. But I didn’t want to stop dating, either. I joined an online dating site and have met some really cool guys so far. That’s more than I can say about the time I spent trolling the bar scene.”
2. Narrow your options via e-mail, IM, and phone convos: How many first dates have you been on that felt like a waste of time, where you would have preferred to clean your oven than waste two hours talking about the weather with Mr. Not Right?
First impressions are everything, but you can certainly gauge your compatibility with someone in conversations you conduct over Instant Messenger, email, and the telephone, before you commit to an in-person date.
“Online dating is totally cost effective,” says John DeVore, a 34-year-old playwright from Austin, TX. “A guy like me can screen his prospective dates, engage in witty banter, and size up whether there’s a mental click there well before fulfilling his gentlemanly duties and purchasing her dinner or drinks. Better not to waste her time, my time, or my wallet’s.”
“In my time online dating, I’ve messaged with at least a dozen men, but only with a few have I clicked well enough to actually meet in person,” says Jane Walsh, a 27-year-old actress in Los Angeles.
“Nowadays, more people are going Dutch treat on dates, which is a bummer if you’re more traditional, but regardless, it makes you think hard about whether you really want to spend a three hours with that person - and shell out the money for dinner and drinks. You’re forced to consider what qualities are really important to you. In the end, that benefits all.”
3. Fit your financial lifestyle: Are you strapped for cash and can’t afford to take a woman out on a fancy date? Thanks to the handy information offered up on an online dater’s profile, you can sniff out the gold diggers who insist upon four-star meals at restaurants with foreign sounding names. And you can also come across potential dates that share your affordable interests.
“I think there are a lot of creative things that a person can do for a date if they put in the time to plan,” says Jennifer DeChristoforo, 32, a copywriter based in Boston, MA. “Just because times are hard does not mean that being skimpy is acceptable. One of my best dates ever was with someone I met online. We went to the Natural History Museum and then had coffee. It was a great day and not expensive in the slightest.”
Still, if you are looking for a fancy dinner at a classy restaurant and tickets to the opera, you can certainly find the perfect gentleman to provide that online too. Certainly, “John Smith, 34, Investment Banker,” might be down for that.
But beware. Just because the quantity of people dating online is up, doesn’t mean the quality of the dates is always that great.
“I had one Match.com guy tell me on our first, and only, date that he has ‘levels’ for dates,” says DeChristoforo. “First, there’s a drink. One. If things are going well with him, he’ll offer to order a second round ... and if that’s going well, appetizers can be in your very near future! He did ask me out again, because I was worthy of a whole second date, but I politely declined.”
4. You’re that much closer to shared expenses: The fact of the matter is, two people sharing the bills is always more cost effective than one person being singularly responsible for a household. So once you’ve toiled away online, found someone who is on the same financially playing field, and has been deemed worthy of multiple - creative and cheap! - dates, you’re well on your way to shacking up, sharing the bills, and merging bank accounts.
Social networking sites are the rage for sure. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and their derivatives are spouting like mushrooms. I just wrote a couple of entries ago about Zoosk and MyTweetheart. What do you think?
Facebook and MySpace are ‘most popular places to find love’
Social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Friends Reunited have taken over from pubs and nightclubs as the most popular place to find love, it has emerged.
Three quarters of Brits believe there are fewer stigmas attached to meeting a love-match via Facebook, Friends Reunited or Bebo than normal internet dating websites like match.com
One in four British people are dating – or have dated – someone they met through online community websites.
And over a third have got back in touch with an old flame through the sites.
One in ten have even had gone a step further and had an affair or a one-night stand with someone they met via a social networking site.
A spokesman for internet market research company http://www.OnePoll.com, which carried out the study, said: “Traditionally the pub used to be a central meeting place where many couples met across the bar and got to know each other.
“Now social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace have taken over as the dating hot spot with many singletons finding love online.
“The websites also seem to be a breeding ground for rekindling old romances and the results also show that many affairs begin by tracing ex-lovers too.”
The poll of 3,000 20 to 40 year olds revealed that almost half (46 per cent) believe it’s now easier to meet someone through social networking sites than in the flesh.
And 57 per cent of those admitted they are more confident communicating with a potential suitor online.
Over a third (39 per cent) said they preferred the method as it enabled them to get to know someone before actually meeting them.
And 27 per cent felt using social networking sites cut down the time to find love compared to having to having to meet prospective partners face to face.
Yet 44 per cent agreed it’s now considered “cooler” to find love via online community sites than traditional means.
This could explain why over a quarter surveyed confessed to purposely uploading nice pictures of themselves in the hope that potential love interests will spot their profile.
And three quarters of Brits believe there are fewer stigmas attached to meeting a love-match via Facebook, Friends Reunited or Bebo than normal internet dating websites like match.com.
A spokesman from http://www.OnePoll.com added: “You can see why the appeal for finding love through social networking sites is so strong.
“You can see someone’s profile online, trawl through their personal pictures and see messages from their friends – creating a far greater impression of what that person is like than a traditional internet dating site.
“The fact that almost half of the nation now considers finding love via online community sites cooler than traditional means proves the stigma that used to be attached to online dating is becoming a thing of the past.”
Ooooh. If you want to get the chills, read this story. It is WEIRD.
Shon Pernice Posts Online Dating Profile Husband Of Missing Mom Says He’s Seeking Companionship
KANSAS CITY, Mo.—Relatives of a missing Northland mother are upset that her husband has published a profile on a dating Web site, claiming he’s divorced and looking for companionship.
Renee Pernice, 35, has been missing since early January. Prosecutors have declared her dead.
Shon Pernice has returned to work at an Independence fire station, where he is a paramedic.
His dating profile was found on the site Plentyoffish.com.
“I think any concept of Shon being on a single’s Web site, and particularly announcing himself as being divorced, is just disgusting and appalling,” said Rick Pretz, Renee’s father.
The profile features photos of Shon Pernice serving in Iraq, mentions his two sons and said he’s looking for a life partner.
“I would say, given the short time frame that has passed since his wife’s disappearance, the fact that her body hasn’t been found or anything like that, I think it’s somewhat unusual for someone to be out there so soon,” Capt. Rich Lockhart told KMBC’s Jim Flink.
Flink knocked on Pernice’s door to ask him about the dating profile, but he refused to comment.
Renee’s relatives are hoping someone will recognize a white pickup truck that was spotted near where her personal belongings were found.
“The family believes Renee had to be carried from that home—we just believe that—and a vehicle had to be used to do that,” Pretz said.
“We’re very much in need of a critical piece of evidence, a critical tip, a critical detail, that someone out there may know, and they don’t know how important it is,” Lockhart said.
On Wednesday, shortly after KMBC visited his house, Shon Pernice’s dating page was shut down and the account was closed by the user.
“I really wish Shon would spend as much time trying to resolve the death of his wife as he does trying to find a new companionship,” Pretz said.
Police said Shon Pernice’s recent behavior is one more part of the puzzle in helping them determine what role he may have played in his wife’s disappearance.
Pretz said he has only been able to see his grandsons in limited meetings. He said he’s been unwilling to discuss the issue out of fear that the rest of the family would be kept from seeing the two boys, ages 8 and 6.
Anyone with information in the case can call the Crime Stoppers TIPS hot line at 816-474-TIPS.
Your Sweetheart School is open! The very first FREE class is:
I don’t know where to start. Do you yearn for love, hope desperately for a date, but haven’t the foggiest idea how to get going? Join other lost souls and get Kathryn’s suggestions on how to get yourself on the right track and moving.
This class is scheduled for Tuesday, April 21, at 8pm Eastern.
CLASS SIZE IS LIMITED! ONLY 10 SEATS PER SESSION! So if you are interested, sign up NOW! Once the seats are filled, it’s full. If you do not get a seat in this first class, have no fear. I’ll put you on a list and schedule more classes until everyone has had a chance.
Since this class is totally FREE, the price is right and will be very popular. Don’t wait!
Click here to register now:
Add to cart
Another sad story of a woman duped by a Nigerian scammer. It’s worth reading her story, because it is so clear about how the scam worked. The woman paid this guy to tell her what she wanted to hear.
Romeo 419ers take Canadian women for $300k
Lonely hearts, empty wallets
By Lester Haines
Nigerian fraudsters have relieved a number of Edmonton women of a total of $300,000 in what the local Sun describes as “an online dating scam”.
One unnamed middle-aged divorcee - who admitted to losing “a lot” of money - was baited last September by a text message purportedly from a US businessman buying antiques in Nigeria. It read: “You know, you’re a very pretty lady, I like your profile.”
The victim, who was presumably identified on an online dating site, said: “You feel very flattered.”
The romance blossomed via text messages, emails and instant messaging, and the scammer faithfully promised to fly to Canada to marry the lovestruck mugu. She explained: “You can’t wait to get home from work, to message them. They’re not like your partner in life - they’re always there. And it’s always good things [they say], right? It’s never bad stuff. It’s what everybody wants to hear.”
Once firmly hooked, the woman then fell for a classic fleece. Requests for cash quickly “flooded in”, including a claim that the con artist’s son was in a NIgerian hospital and “needed money for three surgeries”.
She said: “I had so many friends tell me, ‘don’t send money’. But you love that person, you believe what they say. You don’t want to stop.”
After five months, during which other scammers also moved to extract cash from the unwitting victim - including one who offered unspecified Nigerian “police help” in return for wonga - the woman finally called the Canadian police.
She said of the Casanova crook: “How could you do this to me? Take away my money, my self-esteem. They took my life, basically.”
The victim concluded: “You think you’re smarter than [the crooks], but you’re not. It can happen to anyone.”
Detective Mark Johnson of Edmonton police explained that the woman was “not alone in getting duped by the same elaborate scam”. He admitted cops would “have to rely on Nigerian police to find and arrest the crooks”, but stressed that the victims could probably wave goodbye to their cash due to a “patchy foreign court system”.
Everything indicates that a poor economy is great for looking for love. I just watched a Nightline segment featuring Match.com and Internet dating and Match had double the business in January 2009 compared with January 2008. DOUBLE! Here’s an artcle below about a dating site I hadn’t heard of before—Zoosk—that appears to be doing a booming business. But BTW, the quotes of Match.com prices is dead wrong. I just checked: Match is $29.99 for one month, but just $14.99 if you join for six months. Chances are very good that you will not meet your match in one month, so sign up for the six. And even if you do meet Mr. or Ms. Right the first day, isn’t that a great investment?
Can a recession seriously boost online dating? Commentary: Free and social services will see more of a boost than pay sites
By Therese Poletti, MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch)—As empty pizza boxes piled up on office tables, tech-minded twenty-somethings swilled beer from plastic cups. In the corner, a DJ was spinning dance music. A guy donning a toga and blonde curly wig worked the room, pretending to be Cupid for Valentine’s Day.
No, it’s not the dot-com era rising from the grave. It’s a startup named Zoosk, hosting its own “Lunch 2.0,” a vestige of the recent Web 2.0 boom. It begs the question: At a time when many in the tech world are now job searching, what kind of company could host a free beer-and-pizza lunch?
Zoosk is an online dating site targeted at those in their 20s and early 30s, a demographic that spends a lot of time on social networking sites. Zoosk’s founders say their site is among the first to incorporate social networking into online dating.
Available both as a full subscription premium service and scaled-down free offering, it just may represent online dating of the future, where friends join the same sites and help find each other matches. It was started in December 2007.
I asked a Zoosk investor how the 13-person startup could hold a free lunch and have offices in San Francisco’s pricey Financial District. After all, startups were warned late last year to save pennies if they want to survive, and generate revenue.
Zoosk has received $4.5 million in funding from various venture capitalists, a fair amount but not really enough to warrant corporate indulgences, unless it was generating revenue.
“We had a subscription model at the outset,” explained Deepak Kamra, a general partner at Canaan Partners in nearby Menlo Park. Kamra was also an early investor in online dating pioneer Match.com, now part of IAC/InterActiveCorp.
Unprecedented growth
Kamra said Zoosk was seeing “unprecedented growth,” especially when compared with the early days of Match.com, when online dating was a new and scary concept. Zoosk currently has 16.5 million registered users despite being barely one year old, and it is even hiring a few software engineers. The company won’t disclose its revenue figures.
Dating services seem impervious to economic downturns, Kamra said. To illustrate the point, he borrowed a news hook from some pre-Valentine’s Day articles last week about traffic growth at online-dating Websites.
“Why would love be susceptible to a recession?” he asked.
Jeff Lindsay, an analyst with Bernstein Research, described the recession phenomenon in a report last week, in which he analyzed sudden boosts in visits to U.S. online dating sites.
“The explanation is not rocket science,” Lindsay wrote. ”People suddenly have 60 to 80 more hours free per week and are miserable—almost perfect conditions for the dating services. These conditions are particularly favorable for the online players because online is cheaper.”
Visits do not necessarily translate into revenue for all. Zoosk has applications for MySpace, Facebook and Twitter and calls itself a social dating network.
Not all Zoosk users—many of whom use free social networking sites—pay $24.95 a month. In return, though, they have fewer features. Zoosk offered a Valentine’s Day promo where users who signed up on Feb. 13 and 14 received full access to the site and members for those days.
Not all growing
But not all dating sites are growing like Zoosk.
Older pay sites have seen growth fall off in the last year or so. Last January, reports surfaced that Beverly Hills, Calif.-based Spark Networks Inc was looking to sell one of its sites, the popular JDate.com, a service geared toward Jewish singles. Sparks saw overall sales drop to $14 million for the most recently reported quarter ended Sept. 30, vs. $15.8 million a year ago.
On the other hand, Match.com saw growth in the quarter, albeit in the single digits, in part due to its expansion in other countries. Revenue at Match grew 5% to $93.5 million.
December 2008 monthly unique visitor data compiled by ComScore and Bernstein Research showed another player in the U.S. called SinglesNet.com taking the lead from Match, with a slightly cheaper monthly subscription of $24.99. Match charges about $35 a month.
Right behind SinglesNet and Match was a free offering, called PlentyofFish.com, based in Vancouver. It generates advertising revenue based on partnerships and links to other pay dating sites, said Dave Evans, who writes a blog called Online Dating Insider. PlentyofFish probably has one of the lowest-cost businesses models. Founder and Chief Executive Markus Frind is the company’s sole employee, though he gets some help from his girlfriend.
“The economy has affected online dating in recent months,” Evans said. “But to say that is the primary driver is just lazy. People are joining more free dating sites; that is a constant trend.”
Increased ads
Evans also said many sites, such as Match, increased advertising budgets to take advantage of the often gloomy time for those without partners. That’s the period from Thanksgiving to Valentine’s Day when many feel pressure from families about their single status.
The December boost in unique visits ahead of Valentine’s Day surely will slow at the pay dating sites as the recession wears on. While jobless people may be also lonely, many will find paying $25 to $35 a month for a dating service is a luxury when they have no income.
They likely will veer toward free social networking sites, social dating sites like Zoosk or free sites like PlentyofFish. No doubt some people are also now taking advantage of free promotions, and will cancel their subscriptions as soon as the free trial period ends.
“We see a real risk of a Craigslist-like disintermediation of the online dating space,” said Bernstein’s Lindsay.
So while the recession seems to have given a temporary boost to some of these sites, it may only be short lived. End of Story
Therese Poletti is a senior columnist for MarketWatch in San Francisco.
All of us who find ourselves single and wishing we weren’t need all the help we can get. Since older folks have been looking and finding love online in greater and greater numbers, we are also seeing more and more good advice. Here’s some from Abigail Trafford:
How to Find Love Later in Life You’re never too old to fall in love—or fall apart
By Emily Brandon
Falling in love at age 60 is reminiscent of love at sixteen—just as exciting, and just as risky. Washington Post columnist Abigail Trafford quips: “It’s wonderful to realize that you’re never too old to fall in love, but wise to remember that you’re never too old to fall apart in love.” Trafford spent a year at the Stanford Center on Longevity at Stanford University interviewing couples over age 50 about their personal love stories. She published those stories in a book released this month called As Time Goes By: Boomerang Marriages, Serial Spouses, Throwback Couples, and Other Romantic Adventures in an Age of Longevity. U.S. News asked her to share some of her dating adventures. Excerpts:
What’s different about dating in your 50s, compared with your 20s and 30s?
The biggest difference is you have some experience. You already have a love story inside you. You’re a lot freer. You’ve completed your adult tasks, which are to raise a family and establish yourself in the community. In your 20s, 30s, and 40s, you have a really long to-do list. By the time you get into your 60s and 70s, you have a kind of confidence that comes with experience. You are freer to define the kind of life you want to lead. That’s a wonderful bonus for relationships. You put a premium not on scoring with someone, but on connecting with someone and being who you really are. When you’re young, there’s a lot of pressure to find your mate and settle down. Once you’re in your 50s and 60s, you don’t have that pressure. The urgency is to make friends. You’re dating for fun.
How do you balance commitments to a deceased spouse with beginning new relationship?
People who decouple again after having had a relationship before are able to embrace the past relationship and then move on. I think one of the dangers is that second relationships feel that they are in competition with first relationships. The man and the woman need to be very comfortable acknowledging that each person had a past life. The key is to have confidence in who you are in the relationship right now. Remember the past, but also don’t let it weight you down.
How do kids from previous relationships come into play?
You redefine your relationship with your adult children. They are no longer a dependent child, but someone who is also an adult who you can be very close to. They may think it’s cool that Grandma goes out on a date or [that] adult children may be protective. They want to make sure that their mom is not going to get hurt or their dad is not going to be taken for a ride. Adult children are usually happy that their parents, who have become single from a death or a divorce, are going on dates and have someone special in their lives.
Do baby boomers and seniors frequently look up old flames from high school or college?
This happens quite frequently. Sometimes people wonder what has happened to someone they had cared about so many years ago. Sometimes it is part of a reunion of a college class. Sometimes people look them up with the Internet. You go to your hometown for a funeral and you run into that person’s family. It’s a way that older people like to write their narrative of relations and make a coherent story
What dating mistakes are baby boomers and seniors making?
In the research that I did, finding a partner and being part of a couple is not enough. You really need a network of friends and family to enrich your life. You should have about eight or 10 people in your circle. If you get below three, you may become quite isolated.
More people than ever are over 40, 50, 60 and even 70 and 80 are going online to find love. Goodness knows we need all the help we can get. Here are some suggestions for the over 50 folks.
7 Tips for Dating After Age 50 How to meet new people and ace your first date
By Emily Brandon
Posted February 20, 2009
Dating can be an unnerving experience at any age. But dating after age 50 presents a unique set of challenges. “You have a 50-year-old body with a 20-year-old headset,” says Judith Sills, a clinical psychologist and author of Getting Naked Again: Dating, Romance, Sex, and Love When You’ve Been Divorced, Widowed, Dumped, or Distracted. “You are anxious and giggling the way you were when you were 19. You feel like you have dialed the clock back.” To help you ace that first date, here are some pointers:
Try a new activity. Let your friends know that you’re dating and ask if they know anyone who might be right for you. Also, expand your social circle by taking on new actives such as a cooking class, hiking group, or becoming a docent at a park or museum. “Find a situation that brings people together and offers an opportunity to meet and get to know each other,” says Abigail Trafford, author of As Time Goes By: Boomerang Marriages, Serial Spouses, Throwback Couples, and Other Romantic Adventures in an Age of Longevity. Her suggestions for great places to meet a love interest: community centers, elder hostels, music and book clubs, or other community associations.
Look up an old friend. Remember the guy you dated in college for two years and lost touch with? Do you still think about the beautiful girl your traveled around Europe with for a month? If you remember someone fondly from your past, it could be worth looking them up online. “A large percent of people who get married in their 50s...they find people they met in their past and look them up,” says John Gray, a certified family therapist and author of Mars and Venus Starting Over: A Practical Guide for Finding Love Again After a Painful Breakup, Divorce, or the Loss of a Loved One. Try Googling their name, contacting college or high school alumni offices, or even an old-fashioned phone book.
Go online. Americans age 50 and older are the fastest growing demographic on the dating website Match.com, and they make up 20 percent of all users. “My mom found someone on Match in five months and she is 63,” says Whitney Casey, a relationship insider (her actual job title) for Match.com and author of The Man Plan: Drive Men Wild...Not Away. The stock market slump may further contribute to a surge in online dating. “On days when the Dow went down by 100 points, we found an increase in our site usage relative to when the Dow increased by 100 points,” says Gian Gonzaga, a senior research scientist for the dating website eHarmony, which saw a 20 percent spike in users between September 2008 and January 2009, compared with the same time period a year ago. “Economic news tends to be stressful, and as you become more stressed, you begin to look for things that will offer you comfort and help you out during these tough times.” Post a flattering picture of yourself online, but don’t use a photo 10 years younger than you are. “Get friends to look at [the picture] before you put it online and find the best picture that really represents who you are,” says Casey. You should also avoid exaggerating or downright lying in your profile. “The more descriptive and honest that you are, the better match you are actually going to make,” says Casey.
Keep it light. Don’t turn a first date into a job interview. Go into the meeting with the intention of having a good time. “Let go of the goal-oriented dating of finding a soul mate,” advises Gray. “You want to lower your expectation of finding someone to spend the rest of your life with. Find someone to date that seems intriguing to you.” Be open to experiencing each date and each person for what they have to offer.
Prepare conversation starters. There’s nothing worse than awkward pauses on a first date that stretch into eternity. “You need to have a list of three surefire conversation starters and continuers,” says Casey. Her favorite questions: What is the most memorable meal you’ve ever had? Where do you want to travel to? Movies, books, and television shows are also safe topics, she says.
Mention, but don’t dwell on kids. It’s important to mention that you have children in passing or if asked, but don’t talk about their first words or college choices for two hours. “When people talk about their exes and their children, it’s boring,” says Sills. “Your children are never ever as fascinating to other people as they are to you.”
Don’t mention your ex. It probably goes without saying that by age 50, you have had a few love relationships in your life. There’s no need to give a new love interest the play-by-play. “People in their 50s often have a history of being in a relationship where it didn’t go well,” says Gray. But that’s no excuse for imposing that resentment on a different person, he says. Don’t talk about your dating life, either. “Cute, funny stories about horrible men you have dated do not make men laugh,” cautions Sills. “Don’t bring up your ex-husband or your ex-wife for a very long time.”
|
|
