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I love to read articles about online dating. Used to be, they were few and far between, but now it’s hard to keep up. I particularly like to see research into the whole phenomenon. But sometimes the pros just muddy the waters, like the following article that just appeared in “Psychology Today.” Read it below, followed by my comment that I posted on the site.
Why Online Dating Is a Poor Way to Find Love
by Key Sun, Ph.D.
Published on July 29, 2010
Some people believe that recent research on online dating/matching sheds a new light on understanding attraction, love, and romantic relationships. I argue that, however, although the internet has helped few find romantic relationships and marriages, the research has overlooked various defects and problems associated with this type of “contact.” I will examine a couple of them.
The research findings can be summarized as followings:
1. Online daters tend to fill in the information gaps with positive qualities in a potential partner; on the other hand, everyone wants to make the self appear as attractive as possible to potential dates by exaggerating the self desirable traits.
2. There are gender differences in both preference and messaging behavior on online dating sites. Women weigh income more than physical characteristics, and men sought physical attractiveness and offered status-related information more than women.
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3. The service users preferred similarity on a variety of (mainly demographic) categories (including child preferences, education, and physical features like height, age, race, religion, political views, and smoking).
It is accurate to say that the research findings showed some behavior and attitudes of the online daters who joined the internet community with different motivations, expectations and backgrounds, but it is inaccurate to assume the behavior and attitudes reflect real interpersonal attractions. This is because the online dating/matching (as provided by the commercial websites) lacks the basic ingredients for developing real love. The most evident problem involves its use of several categories (plus a few photos) for the daters to predict and decide the effectiveness and success of their further interactions with one another. This type of artificial “contact” contradicts the process of meaningful interpersonal interactions (to be explained), which generates love and attraction.
To explain the problem, I need to first elucidate the ingredients for love and the meaningful interactions.
The basic ingredients for love
As demonstrated by studies on interpersonal attraction, creating and maintaining love involves validating communications between the partners on a variety of issues, including understanding and concern for the partner’s personal and emotional needs, developing companionship, physical attractiveness, cultivating and nurturing physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual well beings, respecting, supporting, accepting and encouraging, expressions of appreciation and affection: sexual pleasure and fidelity, commitment, shared activities, as well as the absence of controlling and blaming, among other factors.
To accomplish the above tasks, the partners need to engage in the meaningful interactions (face-to-face interactions, including both verbal and nonverbal communications), which allow one person to give to and receive from the other. (Although online daters may be able to exchange messages after they pass each other’s initial screening on the basis of evaluating the category-based information, the process is the opposite of the interaction-based attraction). The meaningful interactions depend on two factors: (1) the right opportunities (the right time, place, persons, and further communications) and, (2) the right mind (absence of biases about the self and others).
The right opportunities are significant. Although psychological research on attraction has identified several variables, such as disclosure reciprocity (revealing intimate aspects of oneself to others), mutual eye gazing, mutual reward, similarity and physical attractiveness, these variables are worthless unless people who possess the attributes and tendencies have the opportunities to implement them to the targets of attraction.
On the other hand, the right mind is more important factor. Why have some individuals who have encountered good opportunities of meeting their ideal mates lost the chances to develop the desired relationships? The answer is that mostly they have the dysfunctional mind, with the emotional baggage of fear, anxiety or other mental conflicts and past hurts in interpersonal situations. They fear experiencing invalidation from the target of attraction because they use superficial categories to define the self and others as well as to predict the effectiveness of their possible relationships, ignoring the affection messages from the real people who are attracted them. All categories are just the maps or substitutes of social reality, not the reality its. When people use categories to predict an interaction (but not pay attention to the other’s real communications, they will produce two outcomes:
a), avoiding love from right individuals, and,
b) approaching the wrong person(s).
This kind of distorted cognitions can only be rectified through the regular and meaningful interactions, which help individuals find out that they are worthy others’ love and appreciation.
The problems with online dating
It is clear that online dating has at least two problems. First, it is an opposite of face-to -face interaction. Second, it does not help heal the emotional pains of some online daters. Online dating is a category-based, rather than an interaction-based process. In the category-based process, one uses some concepts to predict both possibilities of acceptance and rejection by the others. It is an artificial type because both rejection and acceptance by the daters are not about the rejection and acceptance of real persons, but of the imagined or perceived attributes of their categories.
People never fall in love with categories (even eHarmony’s use of personality traits as the basis of matching does not represent real diverse human experiences and characteristics), because only real interpersonal process can create the feeling of love. Love is created and maintained by the process of meaningful communications (including validating accurate perceptions and invalidating inaccurate perceptions of interpersonal reality). Online dating cannot do so. Additionally, love is highly individualistically based. One loves another person because the Mr. Right or Ms. Right is unique individual in one’s eyes.
I make a distinction between online communications and online dating/matching. New computer technology has greatly expanded people’s potential and freedom to communicate with one another, some of which may generate love and romantic relationships, but online dating/matching, at least in its current format, has restricted the freedom. My reply:
Forest vs. Trees
Submitted by Kathryn Lord on July 30, 2010 - 7:07am.
I’ve been a romance coach since 2002 and a psychotherapist for more than 32 years. Seldom have I read a denser or more confusing article than this one, and I have read thousands.
Yes, some of the criticisms are accurate, like discarding a potential mate simply based on height. But what Internet dating sites have done so well is bring huge numbers of interested singles (most of them singles, anyway) together in the same place.
It was not that long ago when it was difficult to identify even one single and appropriate individual. Because there are so many potential candidates, the chore becomes whittling down the numbers to a manageable pool. Height, location, behaviors (non-smoking, for instance), and interests all provide search parameters that decrease the numbers.
It is more helpful to think of dating sites like the Yellow Pages in the old fashioned paper phone books. You find categories you are interested in and then scan those listed. In the Yellow Pages, some businesses have a simple line ad with their phone number, others have a big, good looking ad that draws more attention—and customers. The Yellow Pages is a directory only. It is up to the business and the customer to do the deal.
I’ve been helping singles with their online profiles from the very start, in 2002 when I became a Romance Coach. Most usually, I even write the profile essay, using the individual’s own words that they write in answer to some fun questions. I seem to have a particular skill for writing the essays, because my clients usually like them so much that they do not even change a single word. And their profiles get result, which is what we all are looking for.
Occasionally, I’ll get requests, usually from men, to write first emails for them, even once in awhile more than that. Even more occasionally I might do so, but usually only for men who are good guys but severely limited in their writing skills. I do NOT do this sort of writing for people who “don’t have the time.” Dating takes time, and so do relationships. If you haven’t got time to write an email, how are you going to have time to build and maintain a relationship? And no one likes being tricked or fooled. Email recipients are of course going to think that the person sending the email actually WROTE it. Well, maybe they did, since some of these services described below search for candidates, write and send the first emails, then continue the correspondence. They even set up the first date! The next step would be actually going on the date. Yeesh.
What do you think? Would you hire someone to write your emails for you? And what if you found out that you had been corresponding with someone your date hired and not him/her?
The cyber Cyrano
By Claire Prentice
The world of internet dating can be fraught. But, for a fee, a ghost writer will rewrite your online profile with the promise of making you more attractive to others. How does it work?
These modern-day cupids are popping up across the internet. They specialise in ghost writing witty, charming, flirtatious messages on behalf of single men and women unwilling, unable or too busy to do it themselves.
“We’ve noticed a definite trend with more and more of these companies springing up- and there is a huge demand,” says Mark Brooks, editor of Online Personals Watch, a site that tracks internet dating trends.
Clients usually come to these online-dating outsourcing companies because their own attempts to find love in cyberspace just aren’t getting results. Many want to avoid the rejection they feel when their lovingly-crafted messages go unanswered.
“Necessity is the mother of invention,” says Evan Marc Katz, who has worked as a dating coach since 2003 and runs e-cyrano.com, one of the first of this new breed of companies. “There are a surprising number of people out there who don’t know how to market themselves in an original way.”
He stresses that his clients are not losers, but are typically successful, professional and well-rounded people. So what qualifies someone to set themselves up as a dating expert?
“I did online dating myself for years with great success and I worked as a customer-care representative for an online dating company,” says Mr Katz, who is now happily married.
Every date brings financial rewards for the ghost writers, who compare themselves to salesmen, telemarketers and, in some cases, poets. Some offer their services in a range of languages.
Working for a set fee, the companies interview their clients at length over the phone. Using this information, they then write the initial “sell”, the blurb which online daters use to advertise themselves. Many also provide tips and advice on how to optimise your appeal to fellow daters.
TargetLove offers everything, from basic profile writing for £150 to dating coaches who, for around £90 an hour, will talk the unlucky and inept through every step of the dating game.
Some companies will go so far as posing as their client on dating sites and writing messages to potential partners to arrange first dates.
These tactics have provoked controversy. Critics claim it is a dishonest way to try to find true love.
Major turn-off
“It’s awful. You’re misrepresenting yourself,” says Jared Gordon, editor of A Bad Case of the Dates, a blog that collects dating horror stories.
Not so, insists Scott Valdez, the founder and president of Virtual Dating Assistants (VDA). “We are representing our clients as honestly and accurately as possible online,” he says.
VDA does it all: writes a client’s profile, picks out potential matches, sends introductory e-mails and messages back and forth until a date is confirmed. The company guarantees between two and five dates per month in return for fees ranging from £400 to £800 a month.
It bills itself as a company that “specialises in making the dating dreams of busy individuals come true”.
Most of these outsourcing companies are in America and, though the majority of their clients are American, many have customers as far afield as the UK, Canada, Australia, Mexico and South America.
Scott Valdez Mr Valdez says online dating is a ‘screening process’
Typically, the majority of clients are men. Although it says the proportion of women is increasing, 80% of Virtual Dating Assistants’ clients are male.
Mr Valdez, who previously worked in sales and marketing, compares his service to a direct-marketing campaign.
“Online dating is not a date,” he says. “It’s a screening process and a place to filter through the masses to identify potential dates.”
So what tips can would-be daters expect to hear for their money?
“Be specific. And don’t rely on adjectives. Instead of saying you are spontaneous, give an example of an occasion when you were spontaneous,” says Mr Katz.
The dating website OK Cupid does data mining, analysing their users’ data to look for patterns for successful internet dating. Their research suggests that bad grammar and “text speak” are a major turn-off.
Ok Cupid analysed feedback on more than 700,000 photos of daters. The results showed that daters who smiled or look flirtatiously into the camera were rated more favourably than those who didn’t. And people who used pictures of themselves doing something “conversation worthy” such as playing guitar or scuba diving got more positive responses than those who didn’t.
Have they ever had any complaints from clients? “There was one guy who complained we made him sound too cool,” says Mr Valdez.
Most of the companies are relatively small operations, often employing a team of freelance writers. A number have been forced to take on more staff to keep up with demand.
“It’s like the funeral business - there’s always demand,” says Mr Katz. “It’s recession-proof - people are always looking for love.”
Most Frequently Asked Questions—And Answers: 1. I am so scared I don’t know where to start. What can I do?
Fear is an unbelievably common problem for singles. There are many reasons singles have for avoiding dating or even getting started. Little is more terrifying than risking our most vulnerable selves to a new person. And the older we get, the scarier it can be, what with a lifetime of bumps and bruises, both physical and emotional. Past hurts, an aging body, and perhaps years since you dated successfully—if you ever did – really get in the way.
Mastering three skills will help you get going: 1. Setting an attractive goal, 2. Slicing and dicing the process, and 3. Learning some anxiety management techniques.
1. Setting an attractive goal If you were going to go on a trip, you would know your destination before you left home. How can you know where you are going to end up if you don’t decide before you get started? Get as clear as you can about the kind of relationship you are looking for and the ideal person to fill the role of partner. Think about the life that you want in five or ten years with that mate. What does it look like? Where do you live? What are your days like? The realer you can make it, the better. Then write a paragraph or two, describing in minute details, where you want your mate search to end up.
2. Slicing and dicing the process Then, start chopping up the tasks you need to do to get going into small enough pieces so that you can actually do a task right now, right away. Maybe it only takes a minute or two to accomplish that task and you can do it without really thinking about it. Maybe it takes five or ten minutes, but it is something you can tuck into your day without too much difficulty—or anxiety. However small you need to chop the tasks to get them to a size that you can actually take on and accomplish: who cares? Whatever it takes. Even a millimeter will get you started. Enough millimeters stacked up will eventually get you where you want to go.
3. Learning some anxiety management techniques Last, you need to develop some skills to handle your anxiety and fear. Start with monitoring your anxiety level using a 0 to 10 scale, 0 being absolutely relaxed and calm, and 10 being total panic. Rate yourself now, right now.
Since you are reading something that is connected to dating, and potentially scary, your anxiety level may be quite high, like a 7 or 8. What could you do, right now, to calm yourself down a couple of points? If you are a 7, what would help you get down to 5? Here are some suggestions: Have a cup of herbal tea. Breathe deeply. Read something totally different for ten minutes. Take a warm bath or shower. Play with your pet or look up cute animal videos on YouTube. Here’s a good one. Listen to soothing music. Meditate. Do yoga. You get the idea. Whatever you choose, then rate your anxiety level afterward.
You will get better and better at getting control over your anxiety and fear level if you practice. Try checking your anxiety levels through the day, and when you get up over a 4 or 5, try one of your favorite relaxation remedies. You goal is to consistently be able to lower your anxiety level 2 or more points.
My book “Find a Sweetheart Soon!” goes into these foundation skills in much more depth than I have here. Take advantage of my Summer Sale and get your copy now! See 3. Summer Sale! above.
Using social networking sites to find the love of your life seems a little beside the point when dating sites do such a good job, and directly, too. But using everything available is not a bad idea. I’m going to start posting articles that highlight ways to use services like Twitter or Facebook, or in this case, Flyertalk.com.
Social Networking Takes Flight
By BARBARA S. PETERSON
On a flight from Newark to the West Coast not long ago, Jeff Jarvis, author of the book “What Would Google Do?” fell into a conversation with a fellow passenger familiar with his work. But it was not a face-to-face chat. Rather, it started as an exchange of Twitter posts at the boarding gate.
Virgin America also offers seat-to-seat messaging via video screens installed on seat backs.
When the plane landed, Mr. Jarvis recalled, the conversation resumed. “It was as if someone had recognized you and come up to say, ‘hello,’ on the flight.” He said it reminded him of the days when passengers could socialize in airborne lounges, “except now it’s happening digitally.”
The mobile phone and laptop are not just tools to stay in touch with the office or home anymore. As Mr. Jarvis can attest, a growing number of frequent fliers are using their mobile devices to create an informal travelers’ community in airports and aloft.
Airlines and social media providers are scrambling to catch up. Airlines are beefing up their presence on networking channels, and travelers’ groups like FlyerTalk.com have created new applications that allow members to find one another while on the road. Business travelers can use these services to share cabs to the airport, swap advice or locate colleagues in the same city. As Mr. Jarvis puts it, “finding a like-minded person to travel with lessens the chance of getting stuck next to some talkative bozo” on a long flight.
Increasing availability of Wi-Fi at airports and on planes has made the travel networking possible. A survey of 84 of the world’s largest airports by the Airports Council International earlier this year found that 96 percent offered Wi-Fi connections, and 73 percent had connections throughout their terminals. About 45 percent offer the service free; the rest charge an average of about $8 an hour.
More than 10 airlines in North America, including American, Delta and Southwest, are wiring their planes for Internet access, and major foreign airlines like Lufthansa are introducing new technology that will let customers connect on transoceanic flights. In-flight calls are still forbidden on most flights, although several airlines, including Emirates, have been testing calling on shorter trips.
As many as 1,200 commercial airliners in the United States will have Wi-Fi capability by the end of the year, according to Chris Babb, senior product manager of in-flight entertainment for Delta Air Lines. “It’s a much different world than it was a year ago,” he said, noting that on a recent flight he exchanged e-mail messages with several colleagues who were in the air at the same time.
And Virgin America, which has wired its entire 28-plane fleet for the Internet, said about half of its passengers brought their laptops with them and 17 to 20 percent were online at any given time. On longer flights, about a third of passengers go online. Like airports, most airlines charge a fee for the service, usually ranging from $5 to $13.
Some airline passengers may mourn the loss of their last remaining refuge from e-mail intrusions. But the benefits of staying connected became clear several months ago during the eruption of the Icelandic volcano that grounded thousands of European flights. Facebook and Twitter set up sites for stranded travelers, who swapped ideas and offered rides to ferry terminals, and Twitter had its own thread. Based on anecdotal reports, the sites helped in getting information out quickly.
For those with time at an airport, FlyerTalk.com has an “itineraries” feature that allows travelers to post their coming flights in the hope that other “flier talkers,” as they call themselves, may be heading the same way.
Lufthansa said it consulted with FlyerTalk members in developing its own product to help customers tap into social networking from any location. The application works on iPhones and this fall will be available on BlackBerrys. A built-in GPS allows users to find fellow fliers who might be nearby. It also has a taxi-sharing feature that travelers can activate upon landing.
Users must already be members of the airlines’ loyalty program, and Lufthansa said it had added privacy controls for those who preferred to travel incognito. FlyerTalk’s president, Gary Leff, said that while some members had welcomed the service, others were skeptical. “Some of us just like to keep to ourselves” on the road, he said.
For those who want to connect, few airlines can match Virgin America for mingling opportunities. In addition to its Internet service, it offers seat-to-seat messaging via its seatback video screens. It has also teamed up with match.com to create a party atmosphere on specific flights (reportedly at least one couple who met this way became engaged). But there is also the potential for spurned advances and hurt feelings.
“Seat-to-seat chatting could lead to a negative form of social networking,” said Jeanne Martinet, a social commentator who writes the missmingle.com blog. “What if someone spots another passenger doing something annoying?” she asked. In the past, that person might have simply suffered in silence. Now, Ms. Martinet said, “It would be tempting to message them, ‘Can’t you get your big feet out of the aisle?’ ”
Porter Gale, Virgin’s vice president of marketing, said there were safeguards against abuse and that a passenger could simply turn off the messaging function. And she said that offering Wi-Fi access had benefits for the airline, like the ability to resolve a customer’s problem before a flight lands.
A passenger once sent an e-mail message to the airline from his seat, saying that he was not pleased with the sandwich he had just eaten, she said. A customer service representative on the ground sent a message back to the plane, and shortly thereafter, she said, the passenger was served an acceptable substitute.
This can work against the airline, too, as Virgin discovered when a New York-bound flight was diverted and some passengers sent out messages venting their annoyance with the delay.
Anyone who is an expert at what they do will say that they get the same questions over and over. Me too. So I have listed those and am answering them one by one. Here’s the list. I will post the answers as I write them. Click on the link after each question to see the answer.
Kathryn Lord’s 10 Most Frequently Asked Questions
1. I am so scared I don’t know where to start. What can I do? For my answer, click here.
2. Does Internet dating work? For my answer, click here.
3. What is the best dating site for me?
4. Why don’t they answer my emails?
5. I don’t want to be recognized on a dating site by my family/friends/clients/co-workers/students. What can I do to prevent that?
6. Shouldn’t I try eHarmony?
7. Is it okay to lie about my age?
8. How do I tell my date about xyz?
9. There are no good men/women where I live. Should I even try?
10. This shouldn’t be so hard. Why does Internet dating take so much time? Shouldn’t love “just happen”?
Carolyn Hax has a nice, tart way of getting right to the heart of the matter. In this following letter and her response, she rightly chides the writer about assuming that this man will take the initiative in asking her to marry him, when he clearly is passive and does not initiate much of anything. What she neglects to emphasize is that the relationship is SEVEN YEARS in length, they have had a child together, and marriage has not been discussed? And also, why should this guy get married? What more would he get from the arrangement by getting married?
A huge red flag here is that the man previously lived with his mother most of his life. While we do not know how old he is, the woman in question has grown daughters, so he is probably in his 40’s at least. Not a good omen. While there have always been men—and women—who live their whole lives with their parents, that situation would be evident in a traditional courtship pattern, where the individuals would have known each other and/or the families. With Internet dating, it is easy for people who otherwise might not be on the dating market to list themselves on a dating site as available. Other singles cannot be faulted for assuming that an older adult is on their own or has had experience being so. But buyer beware: Investigate carefully the living situations of your prospective dates.
Carolyn Hax: She’s the only force moving ‘Inertia Man’
Girlfriend is only one moving relationship along.
By CAROLYN HAX
Dear Carolyn: I have been with my boyfriend for seven years. We began dating because I asked him out. I was the first to say, “I love you.” I was the one, after two years, who brought up moving in together. He had no children and wanted a child, but I am the one who brought up children: My daughters were adults when my boyfriend and I had our child. In seven years, I seem to have been the only one making decisions about our future.
So I refuse to bring up marriage. I wanted it to come from him, I needed him to want it, and I waited very patiently. I find myself becoming very bitter that this man obviously does not want to marry me. I know he would if it became an issue.
I do not want to break up my family. I want to be in a relationship knowing the other intends to spend the rest of his life with me. We split expenses. He has a financial cushion; I struggle paycheck to paycheck. I was a single young mother and struggled all my life. He lived with his mother for the majority of his life and has managed to invest and save.
It is not about the money, though I do feel as if we are two separate islands. I feel so very lonely. I feel like I would be happier without him, but what cost would my child pay for my happiness? My boyfriend and I rarely argue and get along quite well. Our child is happy and content. It is only me who is miserable.
Carolyn says: I get why you’re miserable, and why you pinpoint your boyfriend’s failure to merge your “separate islands” as the source of your misery.
But I can also argue that you’ve brought misery upon yourself.
You say your boyfriend didn’t put any moves on you, didn’t volunteer I-love-yous, didn’t pine to live with you, didn’t take the initiative to have a child, and (theatrical throat-clearing here) didn’t even leave his mother’s nest to go out and feather his own.
So how, exactly, did he become someone in your mind who would ever initiate anything?
Here’s a new way to make some money that specifically eliminates sex from the deal (though who could stop you if both were interested?): RentaFriend.com It has a little bit of yick factor, in that people exchange money for what is usually done for free—the services friends do for each other. I guess I get itchy whenever money enters the equation, though I guess it always does, at some level or antoher. What do you think?
Popular rent a friend website allows people to pay for friendship; it’s created an internet buzz
‘Net Buzz ExaminerMarci Stone
RentAFriend.com allows people to rent friends from the US and Canada, and the site has created an internet buzz Monday morning. A friend can be rented to go to a movie, restaurant, a party, to teach you something, or show you around town, or just hang out. You enter your zip code and you can see profiles of friends available for rent in your area. In order to book that friend you must sign up on the website, and pay a small membership fee, and then you can contact the potential friends.
The site states that they are strictly a platonic friends website, and that they are not a dating website, nor are they an escort service.
A friend can be used for a variety of activities including: having a workout partner, someone to give you personal advice, go to a sporting event, or they can teach you a new language.
Many of the friends on RentAFriend.com are about $10 an hour, some are more. But most are willing to negotiate their fee depending on the activity. Once you become a member, you can contact the friend directly to speak about your plans.
Ooohh, I just don’t know how I feel about this one. The photo with the article (follow the link and maybe you can see it too) shows a very overweight man with a slim, attractive woman, and the article makes clear he is 15 years older than she is. Now, he may have gained the weight since meeting her, but this is such a clear case of a less marketable man (at least with similarly aged American women) using money and the promise of life in the USA to get a young, pretty, and desperate woman. The ick factor for me is high. What about for you?
Inter-racial couple finds true love online
By Henni Espinosa, ABS-CBN North America News Bureau
ORINDA, California – An inter-racial couple found each other 6 years ago through a dating website.
Filipina Rhoda Mae Sancho, 35, and American Rick Vincent, 50, found the love online.
Sancho was born poor in Bacolod City. She was only a high school graduate, unemployed and desperate to get out of the country. She saved P20.00 a day to go an Internet café with the goal of finding true love online.
“Kahit mahirap ako, tinitiis ko talaga na maka-Internet, makatagpo ako ng mabait na Amerikano, makapunta ako dito para maiahon ko rin ang pamilya ko sa hirap,” said Sancho.
In 2004, she found Vincent through a dating website. Vincent is a millionaire stockbroker from the Bay Area who was ready to start a family.
A few months after their first online chat, Vincent flew to the Philippines to meet Sancho and her family for the first time.
“Pinangkra ko talaga siya, sabi ko ‘I’m so sorry. I cannot speak too much English kasi I’m only high school graduate. Sabi niya, ‘It’s okay. I understand what you’re saying.’ Sabi ko, ‘Thanks God!’” Sancho recalled.
For Vincent, it was love at first sight. Because he fell in love with Sancho, he also felt the need to help her and her family out of poverty.
“I knew that if I wanted to marry a Filipina girl, I had to make her parents happy. That’s what I did my first trip. I brought my mother-in-law 2 boxes of See’s Candies,” said Vincent.
“Parang hindi ako makapaniwala na lahat ibinigay niya sa akin. Yung gusto ko lang mahalin niya yung anak ko kasi lumaki siyang walang tatay,” said Sancho.
Not only did Vincent become Sancho’s husband on January 2005, he also became a father to Juliana, her daughter from a previous relationship. Juliana is now 8.
Soon, Sancho bore Vincent 2 children—Charlotte, now 2, and Kenneth, now 10-months old.
While they live comfortably in the US, Vincent has not forgotten to take care of Rhoda’s family and relatives in the Philippines.
He now sends 22 nieces and nephews, even children of Sancho’s friends, to school.
He also bought her parents a new home where he plans to build a swimming pool for them.
Vincent said the secret to an inter-racial marriage is the same as any other marriage.
“I make sure that when she says something, I say, ‘Yes, Hon,’” he said.
“Yung love, walang pinipili yan. Kung nagmamahalan kayo talaga, hindi importante kung sino ka man, kung ano ka man,” said Sancho.
More about matching than maybe you want to know….
High-End Matchmakers Dish on Dating
By Val Brown
Online dating has become increasingly de-stigmatized, but there are many who still aren’t comfortable having their photo online and publicly admitting they need help finding a mate: the powerful, the wealthy, and the well-known to name a few. And though you’d think they would have fewer problems than us mere mortals in finding a significant other, apparently they suffer the same slings, arrows and bad dates as the rest of us. Their solution: professional, pricey, discreet matchmakers. They are not the kind of guys who go on on “Millionaire Matchmaker.”
By “they,” I mean men. Men make up the majority of a high end matchmaker’s clients. Women are generally not the clients but potential matches for the men; and in most cases, they simply pay an application or interview fee. I don’t think this is any sexist plot by the modern day Dolly Levi’s, only a reflection of a dating dynamic that is still alive and well—at least where well-to-do men are concerned.
I spoke recently with three matchmakers, Richard Easton, Janis Spindel and Samantha Daniels. Though New York based, all work with clients across the country (and internationally), and Daniels keeps an LA office as well. All offer a unique perspective and approach to their services, and all have toe-curling prices.
How much will this set a guy back? From $25,000-$100,000, depending on the matchmaker and your deal. This will give you a year to 18 months of matches. Matchmaker Richard Easton, new to the New York market and an anomaly among matchmakers—most are women—says he challenges the price resistance he sometimes encounters with a car analogy. “I’m working with guys who pay $150 grand for a car without the blink of an eye. So I ask them, ‘What’s 50K to find your life partner?’” Fair point. He does offer a $10K starter rate for young Wall St. and Silicon Alley/Valley types as well.
A personable former head of his own boutique M&A firm, Easton has parlayed his expertise in marrying companies into the more rewarding realm of marrying hearts and minds. He says he offers a different perspective on the art cum science. “Men feel more comfortable with me, they will say things to me that they won’t say to a woman, about what they’re looking for, what works and doesn’t.” Putting on my marketing hat, it does make sense that that his branding appeals to masculine sensibilities, with nary a heart or pink flower in sight.
Janis Spindel, the doyenne of New York matchmaking, might disagree. A smart, sassy tsunami of self-confidence, Spindel has the chutzpa and sixth sense needed to ferret out the perfect match for her clients . She’ll approach anyone woman who fits the bill—in gyms, Barneys, a parking garage, on the street. A former fashion sales director, she boasts an uncanny ability to know who is right for whom. With hundreds of marriages and countless relationships in her 17 year career, her combination of intuition, persuasion, and calculation—a quick up and down glance can tell her a lot—are her stock in trade. And she gets results.
“You get invited, you go.” So said Samantha Daniel’s grandmother when she was a girl, and she’s been going ever since, attending events, fundraisers, dinners, reunions—not to directly sell or recruit, but to network. She takes a soft sell approach to her metier. A former divorce attorney, Daniels traded acrimony for harmony, deciding she’d rather bring people together than break them apart. She launched her agency in New York 11 years ago, then set up an office in L.A. after going there to produce the TV show based on her life, “Miss Match.” Very social in both cities, she takes on high profile women as paying clients as well—studio heads, CEO’s, and other successful women who need equally successful—or incredibly well- adjusted—men who will not be intimidated by their success. And Daniel’s former career gives her great insight into what breaks couples up (number one: poor communication), so she can offer clear-headed advice as clients embark upon relationships or marriage.
With all the matchmakers I couldn’t help but think that there are some real sad sacks on their books, but they all insist their clients are actually quite social, popular—but just haven’t found the right person.
And while the price of admission is high for men, money will get you in regardless of your age, height, or attractiveness (though I’m assured that the overly odious are turned down). And if you’re not looking your best, you’ll be sent off to an image consultant for a male makeover.
In order to get on the “roster,” women must be very attractive, fit, be either book smart or street smart, and have a successful career of some sort. “Ivy league educated” gets thrown around a lot in describing both the men and women on the matchmakers’ books. Most women are under 40, with some exceptions. (How old are the men? 27 to 78.) They don’t accept many short women, though they do keep a small pool for very short men. They ask for “natural beauty”, so presumably those botoxed into a state of forehead catatonia or sporting impossibly perky triple D’s are less desirable.
I am curious about how they weed out the gold diggers—why would a beautiful, Ivy League educated 25 year old woman need a dating service to find a man? Spindel assures me she can spot them a mile away, and they won’t get on her roster. Perhaps it’s just time management for these 25 year olds—better to shoot gilded fish in a barrel than trawl through the charity, club or Hamptons circuit for five years.
Whether it was to butter me up to write a positive article, or there was some genuine interest, they all said they may have some guys for me. “How old will you go?” Janis inquired.
“Well, if they’re youthful and in shape, 60. 65 in a pinch.” She seemed surprised. I am way over 40, but I know from internet dating that 45 or 50 year old guys are generally not looking for women their age. You have to go older. And anyway, I’ve always liked older men. And younger, come to think of it.
Daniels asks if I would be willing to relocate? Hmm. L.A., London, Paris…? Sure. A zillion acre ranch in Montana? No.
I’m a little trepidatious. I’ve made a good living and have never targeted wealthy men as suitors. I’ve mostly gone for the starving artists. They suited my creative sensibilities, and I’ve also thought that if I were with someone wealthy I would give up some of my power. I’ve never understood how people can marry for money, not love. That would be torture for me—a waste of good years of my life.
So we’ll see if these matchmakers come up with the goods. I’ll keep you posted. If you see me in a restaurant with a 78-year-old, you’ll know it was a set-up .
If you are wondering why Internet dating hasn’t put matchmakers out of business, here’s why.
Matchmakers thriving despite rise of dating Web sites
Turned off by Internet dating sites that offer a vast selection but take a lot of time, singles are spending bigger bucks for more service that leaves the date-picking to a matchmaker.
By Susan Carpenter
What would you pay to meet the love of your life? Twenty dollars a month for an Internet dating site that lets you wade knee-deep into the dating pool and swim with millions of other singles? Or $1,000-plus for a personalized matchmaker who will do the wading, and weeding, for you?
Over the last few years, a surprising number of singles have been choosing the latter, despite the declining economy. Turned off by Internet dating sites that offer a vast selection but take a lot of time, they’re spending bigger bucks for more service that leaves the date-picking to someone else.
“Matchmaking should have been dead by now,” said Mark Brooks of Online Personals Watch, a Web site that’s been tracking Internet dating of all kinds since 2004.
Instead, the opposite has happened, he said. Matchmakers not only have survived but are thriving, having been aided and legitimized by the entity that was supposed to have killed them off — the Internet.
Like social networking, which had many dating industry experts inaccurately predicting the demise of paid Internet dating sites, Internet dating hasn’t killed matchmaking, but fed it. In fact, the three go hand in hand, leading relationship-minded singles to ever higher levels of paid service.
Though social networking sites such as Facebook may bring people together and do it for free, there’s no guarantee that those brought-together people are available and looking for a relationship. And though Internet dating sites such as Yahoo Personals do a better job of bringing together singles who are motivated to get together because they are paying to find dates, they don’t always do a good job of sorting out the serious from the players, or even to help individuals select people who are truly good for them.
Personalized matchmakers promise to do just that. Of course, they also charge a higher price — anywhere from $1,000 to $100,000, depending on the exclusivity of the service, the number of matches they’ve said they’ll provide and how willing they are to go the extra mile.
“You’re the therapist, the mother, the best friend, the sister, the nonsexual girlfriend. You have to be everything,” said Patti Stanger, star of the Bravo reality TV series “The Millionaire Matchmaker” and proprietor of the L.A.-based Millionaire’s Club matchmaking service.
“It’s not good enough to say, ‘Here’s a nice girl.’ You get them a girl, they’ll sleep with that girl, cheat on the girl. Then I’ve got to get that girl back. I have to go in and do an intervention and be on call seven days a week. That’s why I get the big bucks,” said Stanger, who charges men $25,000 a year and female “millionairesses” $55,000 for 28 months of unlimited introductions. (She finds her female clients take longer to match.)
Whether it’s hooking up her clients with a personal stylist to improve their appearance or enrolling them in an improv class to get over their shyness, “there are 5 million things to do,” she said. There are more details to attend to with clients: manners, appearance, expectations. “In the old days, it was, ‘OK. I know who I’m going to give you. Here she is. Bye.”’
There are two ways to work with a matchmaker. There are the clients who pay for introductions to potential partners and the people with whom those clients are paired. In many cases, the potential partners pay nothing, having joined the matchmaker’s network for free after electronically submitting photos and personal information through a Web site. Equipped with an extensive database of singles, the matchmaker then peruses the possibilities to determine who might be a match and calls in good prospects for one-on-one interviews that help to further hone the pairing in hopes of a click.
Then comes the big unknown: chemistry. A couple could look perfect together on paper, but they can’t know until they’re face to face.
Eight years ago, an actress (who asked to remain anonymous because of what she believes is a lingering social stigma) went on a date through a matchmaking service for the first time. At the time, the then-38-year-old woman thought getting set up through a matchmaker “was crazy” but worth giving a try because she “was never very good at going to Starbucks and seeing the cute guy across the room and smiling.”
After talking on the phone for 2 ½ hours, the two agreed to meet for dinner. “There was an immediate click for me,” she said.
Four and a half months later, they were engaged. Eleven months later, they were married. They now have two kids and are getting ready to celebrate their eighth wedding anniversary.
That actress, it turns out, was part of the first marriage put together by April Beyer, founder of the 11-year-old, L.A. and San Francisco matchmaking service Beyer & Co. Working with 10 to 15 “very special bachelors” per year, each of whom pays her $40,000, Beyer’s talents have since paid off in an additional 29 “I Do’s,” a track record she attributes to understanding what a client needs, not just providing what he says he wants — like a significantly younger woman.
“A lot of times, a man doesn’t know to ask for the woman I give him,” Beyer said. “Matchmakers are not computers. Hopefully our clients are giving us the freedom to be creative and have a bit more latitude.”
That’s a very different idea from many Internet dating sites, which can’t verify all the information provided by their members and which match people based on self-selected criteria, allowing singles to choose their own partners, for better or worse. But increasingly, Internet dating is bringing in a matchmaking component.
In late 2008, Match.com expanded its hunt-and-peck model with a service called the Daily 5, delivering “five matches based on our prediction of which two people would most want to engage in a conversation together,” said Match.com Chief Executive Greg Blatt. In December, the site added yet another matchmaking feature called Singled Out, for “when we have a match with a stronger likelihood of connecting and want to highlight that to our users,” Blatt said.
“A lot of people put their relationships on the wrong course because they select the wrong people,” said Gian Gonzaga, senior director of research and development for Pasadena, Calif.-based EHarmony. “A lot of the things that are powerful forces for initial attraction are different from what makes a relationship successful.”
According to Gonzaga, attraction is important because it gets people into a relationship, but it’s the similarities between individuals that keep them together and lead to more satisfying relationships. It’s that philosophy that’s shaped EHarmony’s extensive member questionnaire and given EHarmony its reputation as the most matchmaker-like of Internet dating services.
If dating is, indeed, a numbers game, then Internet dating sites have the edge. But matchmakers have gut instincts. And for many singles, especially those with more money than time, or more discriminating criteria, or those who, for various reasons, would rather not post a photo online for the entire world to see, that’s even better.
“Women are very attracted to the concept because it’s private. They can’t be browsed,” said Julie Ferman, founder of Cupid’s Coach in Westlake Village, Calif., a matchmaking service that charges $2,500 to $25,000 annually for an average of 2.2 introductions per month and takes both women and men as paying clients.
Matchmaking is strongest among thirty-, forty- and fiftysomethings, according to Fermin. Her average client splits the difference at a median age of 46 and makes at least $50,000.
“If you’re having a hard time making rent or saving for your kid’s college education, I’m the first one to tell someone, ‘Don’t hire a personal matchmaker,’ ” Fermin said.
But if they do have money, Fermin is confident she can help. In 14 years, she says she’s formed the beginnings of more than 144 marriages.
Not everyone’s a believer.
“What smooth James Bond character with a great personal image is going to write a check to meet somebody?” asked L.A.-based dating coach David Wygant. “These men are looking for women they’ve never been able to get in their lives. They want the 27- to 31-year-old even though they’re 46 to 65. And the women, they can tell you they’re in it for love, but they’re looking for guys with money. This is not love. It’s a gold digger looking for a guy that wants eye candy.”
“Nothing is better than opening your eyes and flirting with the people in front of you,” Wygant said. “People need to get out of fantasyland and think somebody else is going to do it for them.”
That is, of course, easier said than done. And the thousands of singles using hundreds of matchmakers — ELove, It’s Just Lunch, the Millionaire’s Club — seem to prove it .
Women in our culture have traditionally tried to ‘marry up,” that is, find men of higher social or economic class. It makes sense from a biological point of view: These men should be better able to provide for a wife and family. The technical term is hypergamy. Men do the opposite: trade their money and power for youth and beauty. This kind of imbalance exists in cultures where there is gender inequality. But now as women are catching up and sometimes surpassing men career- and money-wise, there are fewer men for educated, successful women to marry up to. Ergo, a cultural shift: educated successful women are prudently considering men who could be seen as “less than.” The real consideration here is if the man is good husband material. Plenty of powerful, educated men are real jerks and poor husbands.
Education, income and relationships
By Stephanie Chen, CNN
May 17, 2010 9:12 a.m. EDT
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* Pew: Women made more than men in 22 percent of married couples surveyed in 2007
* “It doesn’t bother me one bit that she makes more money,” says one husband
* Expert: Relationships where women are more educated can work if values are the same
(CNN)—If dating is a numbers game, then single ladies should consider this: A Pew Research Center report this year noted a surge in women between the ages of 30 and 44 making more money than their husbands.
Women made more money than men in 22 percent of married couples surveyed in 2007, compared with 4 percent in 1970. While men make more money overall and hold more management positions, women are making greater gains.
“The supply of men has changed,” said D’Vera Cohn, senior writer at the Pew Research Center’s Social and Demographic Trends project. “The pool of college educated men isn’t growing as rapidly as it is for women.”
There is also a gender shift in the realm of education. Women represent nearly 60 percent of students holding advanced degrees in areas such as medicine, law, business and graduate programs, the U.S. Census reported in April.
Researchers have found educational attainment to be a higher priority among couples than ever. Popular online dating sites Match.com and eHarmony report that romances happen occasionally between educated, professional women and men who are less educated or have a lower salary.
Leah MacIsaac-Ruff, 45, works 11-hour-plus-days as a technology vice president at a Wall Street firm. She has a college degree. So does her husband, Doug, 43, who walks dogs for a living.
MacIsaac-Ruff may be the breadwinner, but she finds her husband’s career choice refreshing.
“If I were to marry a type-A personality and we sat on our computers side by side in the evenings, I think I’d die,” she says. “I think I’d be in a cold relationship. The last thing I want is to go home to an investment banker.”
Despite their job disparities, the couple share enjoyment of the opera and theater. When they attend her upscale corporate events, she isn’t embarrassed when people ask about her husband’s profession. Instead, people are intrigued by his dog-walking job.
“It doesn’t bother me one bit that she makes more money,” said her husband one morning as he was gearing up to walk 15 dogs. “I couldn’t be more proud of what she’s done in the business world.”
The recession has shaken some traditional gender expectations, said several marriage and family experts. About 4.7 million jobs were lost among men during the recession, according to April figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Two million women lost their jobs, the report said, leaving more women to become sole supporters of their families.
Particularly among the millennial generation, people are less likely to have gripes with a woman who earns more and has more education, said Nicole Johnson, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Professional Women. Her organization represents 150,000 women, with a majority working in a white-collar profession.
“At one point, the stereotype was a man might feel inferior to a woman who is at a higher point in her career than he is,” Johnson said. “I think that’s dissipated a bit, where there aren’t these built-in expectations of who should be above.”
Educated, professional women exposed to men working lower-paying jobs growing up are more likely to date them, said Amadu Jacky Kaba, a sociology professor at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. “When they see a hard-working garbage collector or different kinds of lower-level jobs, then they trust them,” Kaba said.
Robin Coates, 45, of Mobile, Alabama, found starting a relationship with her boyfriend, Sam, a 39-year-old who installs floors, to be tricky. Coates works as a creative director and has a college degree. She, too, makes more money than her boyfriend, who dropped out of school in the eighth grade.
“Many years ago he said, ‘I’m not the guy for you. You need to be dating a guy with a suit and tie,’ ” she said.
Coates said they have dated for eight years and plan to get married soon.
Dating a man who makes less money or hasn’t attained as high a level of education can be difficult, said Whitney Casey, a dating expert at Match.com, the online dating site for singles. She said the differences can work if the couple has similar goals and values.
“There are benefits, too,” she said. “It can open your world and make you become a better-rounded person.”
Men are more interested in sex than women? No surprise here, but interesting research to back it up.
Even in Old Age, Men Want Sex More Than Women Do
By John Cloud Tuesday
Spring is coming, and a young man’s thoughts turn to ... you know. Apparently, old men’s thoughts turn to the same subject. According to an article to be published Wednesday in the British Medical Journal, 67% of men ages 65 to 74 said they had been sexually active in the past year, compared with just 40% of women in that age group. Everyone knows young men think constantly about sex, but many guys remain interested in sex until they are almost dead: more than one-third of men ages 75 to 85 said they had sex in the past 12 months, compared with just 17% of women in that age group.
Some of this surely has to do with Viagra, which makes it easier for older men to be interested in sex. But the disparity in sexual activity between older men and older women isn’t entirely explained by the 1998 release of the little blue pill. One set of data presented in the new paper — taken from the National Survey of Midlife Development, involving about 3,000 adults ages 25 to 74 — was collected in 1995 and 1996. That data set shows that 62% of men ages 65 to 74 reported sexual activity in the previous six months; only 36% of women in the same age group did so.
These differences matter because having a healthy sex life is strongly associated with having a healthy life, period — and also a longer life. Scientists aren’t sure about the causal relationship here. Sexually active people tend to be healthier, and healthier people tend to be sexually active. It could be that the fulfillment of sex gives you a health boost, or that being more fit makes sex better — or, more likely, it’s a little of both.
What we do know, from this new paper, is that if you are a 30-year-old male, you can be expected to have sex for 35 more years. The authors — Dr. Stacy Tessler Lindau and researcher Natalia Gavrilova of the University of Chicago — call this measure your “sexually active life expectancy,” or SALE. A 30-year-old woman has a SALE of just 31 more years. (The study also finds that men and women who stay healthy and in good shape gain extra years of sexually active life in older age, compared with their peers in poorer health.) But women live about five years longer than men, so when you do the math, all this means that women go approximately twice as long without sex as men before they die.
Older women also enjoy the sex they do have far less than older men. Married women ages 57 to 64 who haven’t been divorced or widowed report having about as much sex as married men in the same age group. But while 77% of partnered men in that age group say they are interested in sex, only 36% of partnered women report the same interest. These figures suggest that a lot of older women may be having sex when they don’t really want to.
Lindau, the lead author on the paper, is cautious about drawing strong conclusions from this variance. “It may be that women are more likely to have sex for reasons other than fulfilling pleasure — or that they are more interested in giving a partner satisfaction,” she says. “Maybe they lack the agency, or maybe they feel marital duty, but our paper doesn’t provide an explanation.” (See how to prevent illness at any age.)
It’s a shortcoming in the paper that the journal itself notes: in a British Medical Journal editorial accompanying the paper, Texas A&M University professor Patricia Goodson says that while Lindau and Gavrilova’s new SALE measure might someday prove a useful tool for gauging an aging population’s medical and public-health needs as they relate to sex, it “sheds no light on the intriguing — and still poorly understood — question of why, even though they enjoy fewer years of sexually active life, many women do not perceive this as a ‘problem.’ “
Another problem the editorial doesn’t mention: the paper is based on self-reported data, and although the authors note that self-reported information about health is usually highly consistent with objective health data, reports of actual sexual activity simply cannot be objectively measured. Even so, the paper does confirm a large difference in sexual interest among older men and older women.
The reasons for the male-female sex disparity among the elderly may not be clear, but the paper shows that the problem in sex quality seems to worsen with age. Still, there is a silver lining for older women having bad or unwanted sex: men tend to die younger than women. Also, it is men’s increasing physical and health problems that are most commonly cited (by both men and women) as the reason sexual activity declines later in life.
The new paper raises more questions than it answers. When interviewed, Lindau avoids making any sweeping social commentary. Instead, she notes that as a gynecologist, she gets a lot of questions from older patients about whether their level of sexual activity is normal. “And I haven’t had the data to give these women answers,” she says. The new paper is a start.
This is so weird. Phone bumping? I am continually astounded by what phones can do, and the applications that people conjure up to make it happen.
Bump Goes Cross-Platform With New Android App; Upgrades iPhone Version Too
by Jason Kincaid on Nov 11, 2009
It’s a big night for Bump Technologies, the mobile software startup that recently landed a round of funding led by Sequoia Capital. The company makes mobile apps that let users share their contact information (and other data) simply by tapping their phones together. Up until now the app has been available for the iPhone only, where it’s developed quite a following, and tonight it’s launching on Android as well. The iPhone is getting some love too, as Bump’s 1.2 update was just approved by Apple (you can grab it here).
The updated iPhone app includes a ‘Friend Compare’ feature that looks at the address book and Facebook profiles of you and the person you’re bumping with to see if you have any mutual friends, which can be a good way to break the ice if you’re meeting someone for the first time. The app now also includes deeper Facebook integration, allowing you to send a notification to yourself through Facebook when you bump someone (this seems like it would serve as a good reminder for following up). You can also choose to publish an item to your friends’ News Feeds when you Bump a new contact. Finally there’s the addition of a Bump history, which lets you see at a glance who, where, and when you’ve met all of your contacts (you can use filters to search through the history quickly).
The Android app is still a bit behind the iPhone (it doesn’t have the features mentioned above), but it does have everything Bump 1.1 has, which includes support for both contact and photo swapping. Better yet, Bump is cross-platform, which means that you can bump an Android phone with an iPhone and it should work seamlessly. This is where the real potential of Bump lies — if the service can establish itself on more mobile platforms, it could potentially become the de facto way to swap contacts, photos, and other media between phones with next to no effort required. You can grab the new Android version here (you’ll want to visit the link from your Android phone).
Some people lie online, for sure. But it looks like the word is getting out that it doesn’t make sense to lie if you are looking for a long term relationship.
Online dating liars: Why they do it
By Jason Hanna, CNN
Those who tell you what you want to hear in real life will tell you the same online, a study finds.
(CNN)— Worried that the 27-year-old man making $70,000 as profiled on an online dating service isn’t so young or taking home that much cash?
Chances are he’s telling the truth if the site is geared toward long-term relationships.
But if he’s lying, he’s probably a people pleaser—the type of person who’d try to put himself in the best light even if you’d found him offline first, according to a University of Kansas researcher.
In professor Jeffrey Hall’s survey of 5,020 men and women who belonged to an undisclosed Internet dating site, most respondents indicated they wouldn’t lie. But those saying they were most likely to lie generally gave answers to other questions indicating they were people pleasers, or “high self-monitors.”
Such people have an acute sense of what others like and control their own behavior accordingly for social ends. Because they want to be liked and fit in, these people, whether online or off, may lie about weight, age, income and interests, Hall said.
“The type of people who misrepresented themselves online is the same type of people who do so face-to-face,” Hall, an assistant professor of communication studies and the study’s lead author, said by phone Thursday.
In the study, published in the February issue of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, respondents were asked to rate on a 10-point scale the likelihood that they would misrepresent their education, income, relationship goals, personal interests, weight and age to a potential date online. An answer of 1 indicated “not at all likely;” a 10 indicated “very likely.”
“On average, answers were close to around 2 for the most part,” Hall said.
Men indicated they were more likely than women to lie in every category except weight, according to the study.
However, the differences between men and women were small, Hall said. For example, men led women 2.01 to 1.83 when it came to lying about education and income. Women led men 3.24 to 2.37 in lying about weight.
The strongest predictor of lying wasn’t gender, but high self-monitoring, Hall said.
“Personality makes much more of a difference in how much people lie,” he said.
Hall wouldn’t name the dating site to which the respondents belonged, but he said that people interested in long-term relationships “tend to be the users that are attracted to this site” and that the site didn’t commission the study.
Hall said it added to other research showing that—particularly for people looking for long-term relationships—the amount of lying is usually small, because people want an anticipated face-to-face meeting to go well.
“Online daters shouldn’t be concerned that most people are presenting a false impression of themselves,” Hall said in a news release before Thursday’s phone interview. “What influences face-to-face dating influences the online world, too.”
The study also was authored by professors Namkee Park of the University of Oklahoma, Hayeon Song of the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and Michael Cody of the University of Southern California.
Why lie? Seems like more and more people are realizing it just doesn’t make sense.
Online dating as honest as real life
By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, March 11 (HealthDay News)—For the millions looking for love on the Internet, the nagging question remains: Is my virtual paramour the person they say they are?
A new survey of more than 5,000 U.S. online daters finds that the answer to that question is—by and large—‘yes,’ or at least as honest as they would be in face-to-face dating.
The study also found that when fibs do occur, men and women appear equally guilty.
“The concerns people have when dating online are very similar to the ones they have in their face-to-face lives. And we found that dating behavior is very similar as well,” said study author Jeffrey Hall, an assistant professor in the department of communication studies at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.
The study appears in the March 8 issue of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.
The new study comes on the heels of recent work by German and U.S. researchers indicating that users of friendship-oriented social networking sites, such as Facebook, offer up realistic self portraits when posting online profiles.
But is this true for the online dating world, where the emotional stakes are higher?
To find out, Hall and his team administered an online survey in 2007 to more than 5,000 American adults—all patrons of a “large [unnamed] online dating site”.
Participants averaged 40 years of age, more than 80 percent were white, and nearly three-quarters were women. More than half said they were single and had never been married, while just over 40 percent said they were divorced. A little over two-thirds said they were not currently involved in a romantic relationship.
After collecting demographic information, the participants were asked how likely they would be to misrepresent themselves online with respect to their personal attributes, relationship goals, personal interests, personal assets, and/or past relationships.
The researchers also ranked participants in terms of how neurotic, extroverted, conscientious, agreeable, and/or open they were.
The online daters also completed a questionnaire to assess to what degree they were capable of putting on a “social performance” and/or altering their behavior during face-to-face meetings, simply to suit particular people and changing circumstances.
As a whole, those who indulged in such behaviors—generally driven by an interest in being liked, fitting in, and/or looking good—were characterized as “self-monitors”—people who are predisposed to stage-manage the impressions they make on others.
According to the study, patrons of the online dating site were no more or less likely to lie about themselves than people who find dates the old-fashioned way via work, recreation or friends.
It was an individual’s personality that seemed to determine whether they would lie or bend the truth in the virtual world.
For example, being “adventurous” and “open” to new experiences lowered the likelihood of lying online, presumably because such individuals felt they were interesting enough to begin with.
On the other hand, while extroverts were less likely than introverts to misrepresent their personal interests, they were more likely to lie about their prior relationship history online. The authors speculated that this could be a function of extroverts having had a more “active” past then their introverted colleagues—a fact they might prefer not to highlight.
People who tended to shift their behavior to create more favorable impressions in “real-world” meetings—so-called “high self-monitors”—were most likely to try to deceive others online, the team found.
“So when these kind of people are online and looking to date they’re going to make their pictures better and their profile more exciting,” noted Hall. “By comparison, low self-monitors are going to present themselves exactly as they are in all circumstance—in person and online.”
Being a neurotic personality seemed to have no bearing one way or the other on honesty in online dating, the team found.
Demographics also played a role in online deception. Not surprisingly, older online daters were more likely to lie about their age than younger daters, and men were more likely to shave years off their age than women.
Overall, however, “we found that the differences between men and women online were very small,” Hall stressed.
“Yes, we did find that women were more likely to misrepresent their weight,” he added. “And men were more likely to misrepresent their personal interests, and more likely to misrepresent personal assets like job and money and personal attributes, like how nice and polite they are. But these latter differences were really very small.”
Hall stressed, however, that levels of online deception might change depending on the context.
“The survey was about people more interested in establishing a single romantic relationship,” he noted. “But there are sites that are exclusively dedicated to the hook-up—the short-term, casual sex experience. And in that case, you don’t really need to present yourself in a fully authentic way, because the purpose is just to enjoy yourself in a one-night stand. And a survey of that kind of online group might find very different results.”
Eli Finkel, an associate professor of social psychology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., said the study results came as little surprise.
“These findings lend empirical validation to my longstanding assumption that the typical person using modern dating approaches doesn’t differ much from the typical person using traditional dating approaches,” he said.
“There was probably a time when people using dating services were different in important ways from the general dating population,” added Finkel, “but that seems to be less and less true as modern dating approaches become increasingly popular. Online daters, speed-daters, and the like seem to be just like the rest of us in most ways. That this intuition extends to truth-telling among online daters is important validation of that general point.”
I’m “feeling” a trend: Internet dating is going to be increasingly populated by older singles, while the younger ones will gravitate towards Facebook, Twitter, mobile and video dating. What do you think?
Online and Over 50: Dating for the Dated
Posted By: Jon Sobel
Online dating isn’t just for the young. In fact, it’s not even mostly for the young.
It might come as a shock to Twitter-happy tweens, but the Web itself is a mere youth: if it were a person, it would just be graduating high school about now. Yet, in a new twist on the old saw that youth is wasted on the young, it’s older folks who are making the best use of the Web when it comes to searching for that special someone.
According to a survey conducted in early 2006, the odds an adult 40 - 58 in a relationship met his or her partner through an online dating service were just 1 in 33.33. For those 59 and older, they stood at an even slimmer 1 in 100. But this situation appears to have changed. Match.com, one of the leading online dating services, reports that 1 in 5 of its members is 50 or older—and that demographic is the site’s fastest growing segment.
A 2009 survey of adults in the UK who had dated in the past year found that the over-55’s were the most active online daters: 1 in 1.61 (62%) of them had joined a dating site, almost three times the rate of 18 - 24-year-olds. These mature singles had an average of 8.2 Internet dates and met an average of 2.4 sexual partners online.
Aligned with this trend, a 2010 US study of newlywed couples found that those who’d met online tended to be older, and less likely to be in a first marriage, than those who’d met in a more traditional way.
One might have expected the opposite—that younger people, more comfortable with technology and the Internet, would be the more active (and successful) online daters. But young people typically have more active real-world social lives, and hence more opportunities to meet people in the flesh. Older singles, by contrast, are more likely to have children, time-consuming careers—and an understandable aversion to the loud, youth-oriented bar and club scene. And as time goes by, older people get more accustomed to using the Internet.
Perhaps the greatest dating challenges await the retired. Today’s seniors are less likely than in the past to be able to count on their grown children to take them in and care for them if and when that time comes, so many single seniors are highly motivated to find a companion. But they have relatively limited opportunities to meet eligible singles. As one retiree active in online dating put it, either you move to an assisted living community with a built-in social scene, a proposition which is often quite costly, you take up bridge, or you learn how to post your profile on the Internet.
Given these choices, surfing for love and companionship seems mighty attractive.
Most Frequently Asked Questions—And Answers: 2.Does Internet dating work?
Now, on the surface, this sounds like a dumb question to a Romance Coach who met her husband on Match.com. Of course! We are living evidence that Internet dating does indeed work, and work well. And it is not just Drew and me. Internet dating is working so well now that 17% of newly marrieds over the last three years say they met online, 30% of those on Match.com. Particularly since 9/11, online dating has gone mainstream. If it wasn’t working, people wouldn’t be saying so.
The important thing to recognize is that Internet dating sites are not really the matchmakers some would like you to think. It’s better to realize that they are like glorified telephone books or catalogs.
Everyone listed is looking for someone. You can’t be sure what they are looking FOR, or how available they really are, but they are looking.
It’s up to you, though, to do the work and make your luck. The phone book won’t make the call for you, but will help you find the phone number for an individual or business. The catalogue won’t order a shirt or dress for you that is the right size and looks great. You have to do the picking and choosing yourself.
A better question would be “Does hiring a Romance Coach work?” For that, the answer is an unqualified “Yes!” At least, hiring THIS Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord.
Every one of the singles who have hired me to help them find love, have taken my advice, and have stuck with the process has found a loving partner. Every single one. And by the way, I have NEVER advised anyone to stop looking. Very occasionally, there will be someone who, for whatever reason, I simply cannot work with. We may agree to disagree. But never have I given up working with someone who really wants to find love and is willing to keep going until they do.
So here’s the secret: Internet dating works, and works very well, IF you know how to work it and are willing to keep at it until you succeed. Part of the success may be hiring a coach to help you with what you don’t know. But if you find yourself saying “Internet dating doesn’t work,” the real reason is that you haven’t figured out how to make it work for you. That’s where I can help. Because Internet dating DOES work.
It’s always good to get some facts and figures about what is really going on. Here are some from the over 50 crowd, who by the way, ARE crowding the dating sites.
Dissecting the Data: Best Changes in Modern Dating Etiquette
In addition to top-line results from the more than 5,000 poll respondents in total, the data reveal some intriguing differences between male and female respondents at SeniorPeopleMeet.com. Among the findings:
—Women place the most emphasis on the ease of communication via the Internet (48%), compared to men nearly splitting their opinions between the gender equality in asking for a date (39%) and the Internet’s communication ease (36%).
—Men welcome the lack of stigma about sex far more than women do (11% for men vs. 4% for women).
—Conversely, women appreciate the decreased pressure to marry more than men do (13% for women vs. 8% for men).
—Relatively few of either gender cares much about the idea that men and women can take turns paying (4% for women vs. 6% for men).
—Among those respondents who named the gender equality in asking for a date as the best change, 49% were women and 51% were men —the only evenly divided response according to gender.
—Among those respondents who named the decreased stigma about sex as being the best change, 71% were men and just 29% were women.
—Among those respondents who named the newfound equality in paying as the best change, 57% were men and 43% were women.
—Among those respondents who named the Internet makes it easier to communicate as the best change, 62% were women and just 38% were men.
—Among those respondents who named feeling less pressure to marry as the best change, 66% were women and 34% were men.
Here’s an article that really “gets it” about Internet dating and the enormous benefit it has been to older people looking for love, in particular, the never marrieds, who it appears are now getting married and never before rates.
SOME WAIT TO TIE THE KNOT
By Sharon Jayson, USA TODAY
When she was still single in her 40s, Debra Siegel made a list of qualities for her yet-elusive perfect husband: honest, family-oriented, a hard worker and physically fit.
But the years passed and the list went unfulfilled.
“When I hit 50, the bells went off,” she says. “I didn’t want to be alone for the rest of my life.”
That’s when she took what she calls “drastic action.”
Her future husband, Dan Furlin, was of a similar mind.
“I didn’t think marriage was in the picture for me,” he says. “Once you hit 50, you don’t want to go through the rest of life without your soul mate. I was a little bit more aggressive.”
Both went the online dating route and met within months. The Dunedin, Fla., couple are both fitness-conscious and vegetarian. They were also both natives of New York state, and each had lived in Los Angeles. They moved to Florida — Furlin to Clearwater and Siegel to Orlando — before meeting online. They married in 2003.
Siegel-Furlin, 56, and Furlin, 58, are among a small but growing group of older adults marrying for the first time after age 45. Years ago, these older singles would have been known as the “spinster” neighbor or the confirmed “bachelor” friend. But now, longer life spans mean 50 is the new 30 — there’s plenty of life ahead. That, coupled with the baby boomer “never-wanna-be-old” attitude and a greater number of aging singles in the population, makes it more likely that those who want to marry actually will.
A USA TODAY analysis of Census records of Americans ages 45-55 shows that the percentage of those who said they had never been married in 2006 had doubled since 1990, and the percentage of those who were currently married had dropped by 9%.
It’s fairly difficult to get a real handle on this segment of the singles population because no federal entity tracks first marriages at specific ages. The closest count is the median age at first marriage, which in 2006 (the latest year for which data are available) was at its highest point: men at 27.5 and women at 25.5, according to the U.S. Census.
A tally by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is available just for a 20-year period, 1970 to 1990, shows that in 1990, only 0.4% of women and 0.6% of men married for the first time at ages 45 to 49.
According to the most recent data from the federal Survey of Income and Program Participation, which includes marriage, 13% of those who wed in 2003 were 45 and older.
Internet dating has largely made it possible for many of these later-life first marriages. It’s only in recent years that some sites have started monitoring that demographic. Among them is Yahoo Personals, based in Santa Clara, Calif., which reports a 33% increase from January 2006 to November 2007 among users ages 45 and over who say they have never been married. Since 2005, Match.com reports an increase of almost 10% of new members 45 and older and who have never been married; these now make up almost 14% of its members.
New patterns, new people
“As people get older, they tend to find themselves in fairly established patterns, so the ability to meet new people goes down over time. They’ve got to do something new if they want to meet different people,” says Craig Wax of Dallas, senior vice president and general manager for Match.com for North America.
Brian Lebowitz, 57, and Lise Goldman, 53, are to be married June 22. They met online almost two years ago and found out at the time that they lived within blocks of each other. Lebowitz, an attorney, lives in Washington, D.C. Goldman, who works in economic development, now lives in suburban Chevy Chase, Md. Lebowitz says his job and his hobby as a book collector took up most of his free time. But when he turned 55, he decided to give online dating a shot.
“I’d pretty much given up, but then thought I would give it a try and see what it was like,” he says. “Some people — myself included — would be more comfortable starting off communication by e-mail rather than going up to somebody at a party. It’s a less threatening way to go about it.”
Goldman says she always wanted to be married. She had been engaged twice — once in her mid-20s and again more than a decade ago — but she says it just wasn’t right until she met Lebowitz, whom she says is intelligent and kindhearted.
“There are wonderful people still out there who are hiding away in their work,” she says. “He’s an international lawyer, so he needs to work evenings a lot. That’s been one of the blessings that kept him away from the dating scene.”
Dating websites have been reinventing themselves since online dating took off in the mid-1990s. They’ve refined their methods, largely emphasizing a more scientific approach, which often includes compatibility and personality testing. Others have focused on niche marketing, including Spark Networks, whose online dating sites include JDate for Jewish singles, as well as CatholicMingle.com, InterracialSingles.net, BlackSingles.com, LatinSinglesConnection.com and PrimeSingles.net. That site, as well as lavalifePRIME and BOOMj.com, is among those offering social networking for these older singles.
LavalifePRIME surveyed 1,001 adults ages 45-65 in the USA and Canada last month who are not in a serious relationship and found almost one-third (31%) have never been married.
Carl Weisman of Redondo Beach, Calif., author of So Why Have You Never Been Married?, conducted an online survey for the book and found that 48% of the 1,533 bachelors ages 40 and older who responded said they were afraid of marrying the wrong person.
“They’d rather go to the grave unmarried than marry someone wrong,” says Weisman, 49. “The No. 1 fear is marrying the wrong person — more than not marrying at all — by 10 to 1.”
In addition to the online survey, Weisman conducted lengthy telephone interviews with 30 men. He says writing the book changed his own perspective.
“I was interviewing men 10 years older than me, and I felt like I could look into my future. I was not necessarily afraid, but I realized if I didn’t change things, it was not going to change,” he says.
Just weeks after completing the book, Weisman says he met a woman at a wine-tasting event and they now live together. They’ve talked about marriage; by the time they tie the knot, he expects they will have known each other three years.
Pepper Schwartz, a sociologist at the University of Washington in Seattle who developed a personality test for Perfectmatch.com, says the Internet has given never-marrieds new hope for matrimony.
“If you were 50 and you went to a dinner party, what’s the chance of meeting a good selection, if any, of eligible people? People would show you the one person they knew who was single, and you would consider that person very closely, even if they were slightly disturbing, because you weren’t going to meet many,” she says.
Despite being engaged in her 20s, Stacey Kono, 48, of Beaverton, Ore., says she really didn’t think about looking for a husband when she was younger because she wasn’t sure a long-term relationship was for her.
Web of happiness
“It was never on my list of things to do. I just wanted to go to work,” she says. “Because I am financially stable on my own, I did not need a partner.”
Her husband, Terry Kono, 51, also was focused on his career. Because he’s in the military, he was moving at least every three years, which he says made developing a long-term relationship difficult.
But as they got older, both decided to try eHarmony, a site that matches members based on a lengthy compatibility questionnaire.
And they didn’t limit themselves on location: He lived in South Dakota; she was in Las Vegas. They dated for two years until he was transferred to Virginia. She moved to Virginia, and the couple were married last year.
Unlike the Konos, Richard Elliott,54, a software engineer from Bedford, Texas, says he had always wanted to be married, but “it just never happened.”
“I thought I’d buy a house and pool and work on an immaculate lawn, and I thought somebody would just show up. You get all these things and it makes you more attractive, but it doesn’t work that way. You have to get out there and be more proactive,” he says.
In his 40s, he says, he sold the house and bought a sailboat, which led him to meet people. He was in a short relationship with a woman 15 years younger, and after they broke up, he decided to look online. That’s where he met his wife, Cindy. They dated for a year, were engaged a year, and now they’ve been married a year and a half.
Cindy Elliott, a marketing manager, 49, says she had been in a five-year relationship during her early 30s and then figured it was too late for her.
“There was a time when I thought, ‘It’s just not going to happen.’ But the World Wide Web is a wonderful thing,” she says.
You know, I hadn’t really thought about this web cam business, but this following article with the survey results make good sense to me. OF COURSE, men would like video date, and OF COURSE, women would not. Men want to see, and women want to hear. And men take advantage of web cams at an astounding rate. Take a gander at chatroulette.com, totally random video chatting. I just did, to try out my thesis, and indeed, the first four hits were men, two of whom were masturbating.
Video Dating - a One Way Street?
A year ago, dating & friendship site http://www.makefriendsonline.com asked its members if they would like the option to use Webcams on the site. Male respondents were keen to give it a go but the proposal met a resounding No from MFO’s female members, 56% of whom not only did not want the option but voiced reservations about even joining a site which offered it.
One year on we see Webcam Dating in general and Video Speed Dating in particular being hyped as the latest ‘thing’ for online communities ……. makefriendsonline wondered if they’d misjudged their market. So this month the survey was repeated and the results illustrate an interesting trend, possibly not yet recognised by those more involved in the Webcam scene:
Overall, 72% of male respondents liked webcams and wanted to use them on dating sites. Sounds promising. Unfortunately however this clashes dramatically with an astounding 63% of female respondents who don’t like webcams and most certainly don’t want to use them on dating sites! Not only does this suggest men on cams might be increasingly talking to themselves, it also illustrates a marked trend with the percentage of women unwilling to use webcams increasing at a convincing rate.
The age group most open to Webcams was, perhaps unsurprisingly, the under-25s. But importantly for site owners, the current growth in online dating seems to be in the older age groups.
The increased availability of Webcam Sites was reflected in the overall results which show an additional 12% of women have tried Webcam Dating since the last survey. But of those, a massive two thirds didn’t like it and wouldn’t do it again. By comparison the Male figures remain fairly static, the majority being as willing and eager to use a webcam this year as they were last.
So the trend which was illustrated in last year’s survey is only underlined one year on: More women have tried Webcam Dating and have confirmed the previous results with a resounding majority continuing to dislike the entire experience. Men, possibly less eloquent and more visually driven, were already geared up a year ago and remain as keen as ever, but without women it’s a one way street.
Makefriendsonline MD, Martin Bysh commented ‘In a market where it is notoriously difficult to attract and retain female users, makefriendsonline is very proud and protective of it’s female membership, which at 51% is probably the best male/female ratio you’ll find anywhere. We would not want to alienate our female members by offering a feature that makes them uncomfortable and certainly not one which would actively put them off joining our site. We will therefore not be adding webcams to MFO.’
And when asked if the men would still come to his site if they can’t use their webcams, he added ‘Ultimately, men visit Dating Sites to meet women. With our large database of happy female members and countless alternative features which those ladies are happy to use, we’re confident we are meeting the fundamental requirements of all our potential customers and men will of course continue to find MFO a rewarding experience’.
Now Forbes magazine weighs in. They touch on something I hadn’t thought of: What if two people who hired out their online dating prelims bumped into each other, that is, their virtual assistants made the dates for them, without either of them knowing that they were not dealing with the actual person?
A Surprisingly Simple Way To Date: Outsource It
Joan Indiana Rigdon, 06.03.10, 4:30 PM ET
“I wouldn’t dare speak to her, I don’t have the brains. The way people speak and write nowadays makes my head hurt. I’m just an honest, simple, terrified soldier.”
With these words, French soldier Christian de Neuvillette convinces Cyrano de Bergerac to help him pitch woo at the lovely Roxanne, whom Christian fears might be an intellectual. Christian is a man of very few letters: only four that spell “fool,” as Cyrano might say. But he is smart enough to turn to a sharper wit to help him win a woman’s heart.
Now, in the world of online dating, Cyrano-style services are for rent to any fool—er, guy—with a valid credit card. Busy guys, guys who can’t write, shy guys, guys who fear online rejection, guys who haven’t dated in years or guys who just find the process leading up to the date “really repetitive” can now pay virtual impostors to get dates for them. (Women use these services too, but for now it’s overwhelmingly a guy thing.)
These services write dating profiles, fish for prospects and perform the initial online flirting required to set up a first date. The first time a guy has to deal with his date is when he meets her in person.
Freelancer writers and companies like e-Cyrano have been offering profile-writing services for years. Dating Done for You, based in Toronto, takes it one step further by offering the services of a female staff member who will role-play a date with clients over the phone, and then give feedback. Virtual Dating Assistants is one of the few who offer initial flirtation.
What kind of guy goes for this?
Let’s be kind, and imagine a man who’s logging 70 hours a week. He has time for his career, golf and Twitter, but online dating is just too time-consuming.
There’s no village matchmaker, so he hires Virtual Dating Assistants. They get to know him and craft his perfect profile. They fish, they find, they flirt. They set up a time and place to meet. They fill him in on what exactly he said during the flirtation process, so his target will be none the wiser, unless he chooses to confess. They even tell him what to wear.
But why stop there?
For an additional fee, a dating service could offer on-site assistance, perhaps in the form of a woman who arranges to dine at the next table, so she can eavesdrop on how the client is doing. She could text him real-time advice, which he could read, say, when he excuses himself to go to the men’s room.
That’s not as romantic as Cyrano whispering lines under cover of night and foliage to a beautiful woman on a balcony in late 19th-century France, but it could work.
On their FAQ, right under the question about whether virtual dating is dishonest, services that offer on-site dating operatives could explain that all this isn’t as creepy as it sounds. They are, you could say, just like the friends their clients don’t have, who are trying to help out in any way they can.
For more money, hired dating operatives could listen in on the follow-up phone call, texting advice in real time.
Eventually, someone will figure out that this is just the tip of a virtual iceberg. If an automated dating service for busy women mated with an automated service for busy men and they could enter a virtual world where people interact through 3-D avatars to date each other in virtual bars ... what a lifeless dating world it would be.
Here we go again, another piece about outsourcing everything until the first date. This article zeros in more closely on the sense of lying and trickery.
Outsourcing Online Dating: Are We Really Okay With This?
Dear God. Single men (and a few women) are now paying strangers to find suitable dates for them online. According to a recent article in the Washington Post, they don’t have the time—or the will—to do it themselves.
So add relationships to the list of things that can be outsourced, along with cleaning your condo, detailing your car and buying and delivering your groceries.
One web-based company that provides this service, Virtual Dating Assistants, employs 45 freelance writers to pen and submit a suitor’s profile. Replies go to a writer’s inbox, thereby sparing the would-be suitor the embarrassment of not getting any responses or having to wade through, ponder, perhaps respond to, any he does receive.
The writer decides whom to answer and if a woman responds favorably, a “closer” sets up time and place.
Think about this from the point of view of the woman—and there’s a good chance it’s a woman since 80 percent of Virtual Dating Assistants’ clients are men. She is charmed by the person she reads about online and more intrigued once she starts receiving emails she presumes are from him. Does she know he’s not the sincere, soulful man he seems but actually some corporate suit who can’t be bothered to put a little thought and time into deciding whom he takes to dinner? Nope.
Say she sets aside several hours in her busy schedule to get dressed and joins him at a swanky restaurant, then by the second glass of Chardonnay realizes what a jerk he is. This could happen on a traditional first date too, of course, or on a date arranged by partners online who portray themselves as better-looking and smarter than they actually are.
But misrepresentation by surrogate seems somehow worse. Colder. Harder to detect. It has a kind of “I’ve been lied to” feeling times two.
Additionally, as my son Jeff, 26 and single, points out, the third-party setup may diminish any sense of responsibility a man might feel for making a date work.
The guy “hasn’t invested anything emotionally,” Jeff says. “So I wonder if it’s then easier for him to just get out early if there’s something that doesn’t work with the person he’s dating, rather than try to work through it. If I’ve spent a lot of energy trying to get a date with a girl, I’m likely to forgive minor eccentricities in the interest of the bigger picture. But if someone just hands me a girl that I didn’t have to work for, who knows?”
In the Washington Post story, reporter Ellen McCarthy quotes a 27-year-old man named Luke who outsourced online dating to his receptionist. Otherwise, “you have to go through 10 conversations to get one date,” he said.
Imagine having to actually communicate directly with people you might be interested in. What a concept.
Another plus in Luke’s mind? He doesn’t have to watch his online advances being turned down or worse, deleted without being read.
“Emotionally, I feel a little small pain of rejection every time that happens,” he said.
Of course it can be tedious to sort through overtures from people whom you have no interest in, and rejection is never fun. But isn’t it worth preserving some sense of personal connection to the selection?
No pain, no gain, I say.
Third-party matchmaking has been around a long time. Think of the village elder, priest, rabbi, parent.
But unlike the relationship concierge, these people of the past usually knew the couple in question and, in many cases, cared deeply about the couple’s well-being. Sometimes they were paid for their matches, but often not. The concierge, on the other hand, is in it only for the money.
The whole thing makes me incredibly sad, and reminds me of a book I reviewed last year. In A Vindication of Love, Cristina Nehring wrote:
“We inhabit a world in which every aspect of romance from meeting to mating has been streamlined, safety-checked and emptied of spiritual consequence. The result is that we imagine we live in an erotic culture of unprecedented opportunity when, in fact, we live in an erotic culture that is almost unendurably bland.”
People are not rental units or luxury sedans or oven-ready chickens and—forgive the cliché—many times in a relationship of any consequence, it’s the little things that mean the most. I can’t help thinking that regardless of how the surrogate-arranged dates turn out, these men, and the women they take to dinner, can’t possibly be getting their money’s worth.
Here’s more discussion about outsourcing your online dating work. These comments come closer to my sense that this amounts to a form of trickery, like lying, that should not be engaged in at all. If you can’t find the time, etc., to lay the groundwork, why should you get the intimacy?
Digital Cyranos: The Strangeness of Online Dating Surrogates
By Alex Eichler
A recent Washington Post trend piece describes the rise of “online dating assistants,” writers-for-hire who correspond with singles on matchmaking sites on behalf of their (mostly male) clients. Here’s how it works: Say you want to meet someone on Match.com or eHarmony, but are too busy, or otherwise disinclined, to write a profile, sort through potential partners, and exchange e-mails. You hire an online dating assistant to do all of this for you, under your name—and once the date is set up, you go out to meet someone in real life whom you may have never actually communicated with, and who thinks they’ve been talking to you all along.
Sound odd? More than a few writers think so:
* Basically Lying, is the opinion of Jared Gordon, a blogger quoted in the Post story. “It is! It’s awful! You’re misrepresenting yourself. You’re lying about yourself,” Gordon told Ellen McCarthy, the author of the story. McCarthy goes on to note that “in Gordon’s mind, it’s tantamount to having someone else write your college term paper, or putting a picture of a more attractive stranger on your online dating profile. ‘You’re going to fall in love with someone because of their honesty,’ he says. ‘And some people might say, ‘Who has the time to write a profile?’ But if something is that important to you, you make the time to do it.’”
* Equates Dating With Shopping At Slate, Amanda Marcotte muses about the attitudes that might underlie such a practice. “Hiring someone to pretend to be you, feigning interest in looking up and chatting with women through a dating Web site, isn’t cheap, of course. The customers of this service largely seem to be privileged but busy men, which only adds to the creepy sense that they see dating as a form of shopping, and shopping as a chore that can be delegated to the help.”
* Imagine How the Other Person Feels! Jezebel’s Sadie Stein lingers on a quote from one of the men in the Post story who uses an online assistant because he feels “a little small pain of rejection” when a woman doesn’t show interest. Fair enough, says Stein—“but as a woman, I can tell you that for most of the women I know, finding out we’ve been courted by a surrogate is going to lead to a much harsher - and more personal - form of rejection.”
* Sucks the Romance Out of It Mark White of Psychology Today is skeptical about the whole idea of virtual courting. “Generally, there’s just something detached and clinical about online dating, with or without an assistant. I may be a hopeless romantic… but I still cling to the ideal of two strangers meeting each other’s gaze across a crowded room while the world melts away, a la Tony and Maria in ‘West Side Story.’ The internet can be a wonderful tool to enhance our lives and expand our social networks, but it seems to me that some things are just not the same if they aren’t done in person, and meeting the love of your life (or even of this month) would be at the top of that list.”
* Another Possible Explanation What might drive people to use assistants? National Review’s Kathryn Jean Lopez gets in the best zinger. “I guess if you grew up with shortcuts to winning Super Mario Brothers, it’s only natural?”
We’ve had a new wave of innovation in the online dating sphere lately: paying someone else to do your work on the dating site—Scanning for prospects, writing the first and subsequent email, even setting up dates. Without informing the recipient. The next few postings will be reprints of pieces I have found on the wire. Let me know what you think.
Online dating assistants help the lonely and busy
By Ellen McCarthy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Max Hartshorn has pretty much mastered online dating.
It took awhile, but the 24-year-old now knows exactly what kind of message to send to pique a woman’s interest. The Montreal research assistant will come home from work, sit down with his laptop and bang out dozens of e-mails to attractive, eligible women.
He’s never needy—always charming and a little flirtatious. He keeps his missives short and usually includes a question or a subtle challenge. He’s witty, a touch aloof and not overly complimentary.
And when he gets the woman, it’s not his heart that flutters. It’s his bank account.
Hartshorn is a hired gun, ghostwriting correspondence on behalf of single men unwilling, too busy or too inept to do it themselves. His online dating is done on commission for Virtual Dating Assistants, one of the first full-scale Internet-dating outsourcing companies. For $600, Virtual Dating Assistants guarantees clients two dates a month; the “executive service” package promises five dates a month for $1,200. [that’s PER MONTH—editor}
“I get paid for each woman who writes back positively,” explains the modern-day Cyrano de Bergerac. “It’s very analogous to sales . . . like a cold-caller or a telemarketer.”
A telemarketer who toils anonymously in pursuit of love for the lonely. Darkly romantic, no?
No. “I don’t care that much if it becomes a date or not,” Hartshorn admits. His job is “lead generation” only. Sealing the deal is up to the company’s “closers.”
And going out on actual dates? That, unfortunately, the men have to do all by themselves. And the women never need know who hooked them.
* * *
The great promise of online dating is this: You sit on the couch in pajamas, click through sparkling profiles of nearby singles, fire off a few quippy e-mails or a nonchalant “wink” and—ta-da!—a series of romantic rendezvous is instantly on the docket.
It’s love through a high-speed line, a model of amorous efficiency.
For Scott Valdez it worked, but the endeavor required just a little too much effort. He was working 70 or 80 hours a week in sales for a start-up technology company and traveling constantly. Every time he tried online dating, he met interesting women, but he found the process leading to the dates “really repetitive.” So he decided to outsource it.
“Why not just teach my secretary to do it?” he thought.
She didn’t have the time (or maybe the stomach?) to tend to his Internet love life, so Valdez hired a recent college grad who could write e-mails in English and Spanish. Soon he was going on five or six first dates a month.
“It worked for me,” he says. “And I knew so many people that could use the service.”
Last June, Valdez, now 25, founded Virtual Dating Assistants—a company that “specializes in making the dating dreams of busy individuals come true.”
Author Timothy Ferriss popularized the concept when he wrote about outsourcing his online dating accounts to teams of competing writers in his 2007 book, “The 4-Hour Work Week.”
Valdez’s Atlanta-based firm is hardly the only outfit to offer such services. Dozens of profile-writing shops such as Arlington County-based TargetLove have popped up in the past few years, and dating coaches are increasingly managing their clients’ online pursuits. Not to mention the well-intentioned friends and relatives who have taken over the process for the hapless singles in their lives.
But Valdez and his team of 45 freelance writers, including Hartshorn, do it all: write a client’s profile, pick out potential matches, send introductory e-mails and message back and forth until a date is confirmed. Then they turn over the correspondence and tell the lucky fellow where and when he’s meeting Madame X. (And it’s almost always that gender dynamic; 80 percent of the firm’s clients are men.)
Richard, a 39-year-old marketing executive who uses the service, would like to say, for the record: “It’s not like I really have a lot of problems dating people in the real world.” It’s just that he’s busy, splitting time among four cities, including Washington and Miami, and he figures it’s best to meet as many people as possible.
Online dating has worked for Richard, “but it’s all time-consuming,” so when he heard about Virtual Dating Assistants, it seemed like a convenient solution for an on-the-go guy. “Just from a cost-benefit analysis—me spending all this time on doing things that are purely almost secretarial doesn’t make any sense for me,” says Richard, who asked that his last name not be used because he doesn’t want colleagues or potential dates to know he uses the service.
After a lengthy phone interview three months ago, the company’s writers drafted a profile, let Richard tweak it and then started fishing for potential dates. Richard says they soon zeroed in on his preferences in terms of a woman’s looks, education and interests, and he feels satisfied that he’s being represented authentically in e-mails written on his behalf. (This has not been the case for everyone: Valdez described one client who came back from a date saying that “we maybe made him look a little too cool online.” From then on, prospective dates were given a heads-up that the man was shy.)
Richard doesn’t usually tell the women he dates that he didn’t write the e-mails they received. But when one woman wondered why he was constantly active on the site through which they met, he told her the truth: “Look, it’s not exactly like that—somebody’s actually doing this stuff for me.”
Ask Jared Gordon, the 30-year-old editor of A Bad Case of the Dates, a blog that collects dating horror stories, and he’ll tell you the practice is awful: “It is! It’s awful! You’re misrepresenting yourself. You’re lying about yourself.”
In Gordon’s mind, it’s tantamount to having someone else write your college term paper, or putting a picture of a more attractive stranger on your online dating profile. “You’re going to fall in love with someone because of their honesty,” he says. “And some people might say, ‘Who has the time to write a profile?’ But if something is that important to you, you make the time to do it.”
Richard knows some perceive it as callous outsourcing, but he feels he’s being represented authentically by his Virtual Dating Assistant. “These guys are really good at getting to know who you are,” he says. And he adds that the one time he confessed to using the service, his date didn’t seem to mind. “Once you have chemistry with somebody and they know you’re a genuinely good person—that’s really all that matters,” he says.
Mark Brooks, founder of Online Personals Watch, a site that tracks Internet dating trends, says this type of outsourcing is an ethically questionable form of “misrepresentation.” Still, he expects the field to grow.
Professional matchmakers often charge $5,000 or more a year and have a limited pool of matches. Online dating sites are populated with countless singles but can require more attention than some users are willing to devote. “It may look like instant gratification, like you dive into the pool and instantly come up with a fish, but it doesn’t really work like that,” Brooks says. “You’ve got to tap, tap, tap on the keyboard quite a lot to get anywhere.” (One site, OkCupid.com, found that a third of all first messages garner a response, though that doesn’t mean they are positive or that they lead to dates.)
But for many, it’s not just their time that’s at stake; it’s also their egos.
Luke Chao started having his receptionist send online dating e-mails for him after realizing that there was not enough administrative work for her at the hypnotherapy clinic he manages. It was a win-win, he thought, because “online dating is tedious—you have to send out 100 messages to get 10 responses. You have to go through 10 conversations to get one date, and that’s just the first date.” (Dianne Nubla, who writes Chao’s e-mails between her other tasks, says it’s “a good diversion” that she doesn’t mind.)
Chao, a 27-year-old Toronto resident, was soon dating one or two new women a week. In truth, he says, he has the time and writing ability for the task. But by having Nubla take over, he’s sidestepping the worst part of the process: being routinely rebuffed.
“Most women you e-mail don’t respond. Some look at your profile and don’t even read your message before deleting it,” he says. “That’s just the nature of the game—intellectually, I know that. But still, emotionally, I do feel a little small pain of rejection every time that happens.”
Sometimes these oh-so-cute things that people send on really are cute. And these are rather poignant as well. Which are your favorites?
What Love Means To 4-8 Year Olds
Money is nice. But the thing that helps keep a lot of matchmakers and internet dating workers motivated is helping people find love. What is love anyway? The question ‘What does love mean?’ was put to a group of 4 to 8 year-olds. Their answers were broader and deeper than you’d think:
‘Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.’ Karl - age 5
‘Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.’ Bobby - age 7 (Wow!)
‘Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday.’ Noelle - age 7
‘When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That’s love.’ Rebecca - age 8
‘Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs.’ Chrissy - age 6
‘When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.’ Billy - age 4
‘Love is what makes you smile when you’re tired.’ Terri - age 4
‘Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.’ Danny - age 7
‘If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate,’ Nikka - age 6 (we need a few million more Nikka’s on this planet)
‘Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.’ Mary Ann - age 4
‘When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.’ (what an image) Karen - age 7
A four year old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman’s yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his Mother asked what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said, ‘Nothing, I just helped him cry.’
Did I make your cry? You soppy thing. You’re definitely in the right profession. ;-)
Oh dear! Sometimes I read questions and profiles that are so wrong-headed and pathetic that I just want to shake the person! Then, when someone does respond with horrible advice, it’s just “Argh!” Here’s an example below. The letter writer asks the wrong question: You can’t make any man look beyond (ie not see) something as obvious as a wheel chair. So don’t try! And online dating is the best resource ever for people with disabilities, because you can either go on a mainline dating site like Match.com, make your disability clear, but also present your strengths well and see who responds. These folks will be pre-qualified and will know what they are getting into. An even better route is a site for people with disabilities. On those sites, a disability will not be an issue, because either the others have their own, or the able bodied people who are there are ready to take on such problems.
Ask Amy: How can she get men to look past disability?
By AMY DICKINSON
June 16, 2010
Dear Amy: I am a 50-year-old woman who has never been married. I have a disability from an auto/pedestrian accident when I was 25 (I was the pedestrian).
Before my accident, I can’t seem to remember a period of longer than six months when I wasn’t dating a man. Since my accident, relationships have been few and far between.
I’ve tried just about everything—Internet dating sites, dating groups, dating services, a dating counselor (she refused my application when she found out I was in a wheelchair) and even church (the last two guys I was attracted to asked me to introduce them to two other women whom they ended up marrying).
I’ve given up looking at this point, but I truly don’t want to live the rest of my life alone. I’m pleasant to look at, a good conversationalist and have my MBA. How can I get others to look past the obvious (the chair) and see me—the person?
I live alone, own my own house, drive a car, and am out and about almost every day of the week. I’m sure you’ll make the same suggestions I usually get when I pose this question (get involved in activities you like), but maybe, just maybe, you’ll point out something the others haven’t.
Amy says: Your frustrations are common to other middle-age singletons—and you have plenty of company. According to Census statistics released in 2007, there are more than 56 million American adults who have never been married.
What you need to do is to make the life you’d want under any circumstances—traveling, forming satisfying friendships and doing fulfilling work.
It’s healthy to want to share your life with a special person, but if you didn’t find a husband, then what?
During my 17 years of adult singlehood, I developed a plan to build a house with a friend and cohabit, “Golden Girls” style. That might not appeal to you, but it got me through many a rough and lonely patch. The only twist I’d suggest is for you to find a way to stop wishing your wheelchair was invisible to others and instead celebrate the life you’re actually living. Because you adapted so well to your disability as an adult, you might find fulfillment volunteering at your local VA hospital.
My response:
Internet dating sites have become a wonderful resource for all kinds of people who don’t fit the normal, middle of the road picture. Try a dating site specifically for people with disabilities. Google disability+“dating site” and see what you get. On a dating site for people with disabilities, your wheelchair will not be a problem, and your strengths will have a chance to shine. Kathryn Lord http://www.Find-a-Sweetheart.com
Internet dating has spawned a whole new set of rules for dating behavior. One subset is “When do you hide or take down your dating profile?” and “When do you drop your dating site memberships?” See the letter below about one such conundrum, and see the rational, common-sense adult-like response about radical commitment.
Radical commitment means closing all escape hatches
Posted by Steven Kalas
I am in a nine-month relationship. He said he would like an exclusive relationship. I agreed. Is checking an online dating site appropriate? I met this person from an online dating site. When he asked if I would be his girlfriend, I agreed but made it clear that I felt that, and he agreed, that online profiles should be removed and not used. I have done this and have no desire to go fishing, looking, checking, whatever. However, recently he told me that he still gets messages weekly from the site to “check his matches.” He even asked me if I would like to see them. He insists he doesn’t communicate and isn’t active. Yet it is OK to check the site. This happened in a relationship prior to this. In both cases, the man felt it was OK to have a “curiosity” for women and “just check the profiles” sent to them from the site. I understand that men are visual, but I explained to both of them, that there is a difference between a woman walking by while shopping and noticing her and making a conscious decision to push a button that opens up pictures of women who are looking for matches. What are the “rules” of the online dating game? What are men thinking? Or, am I overreacting, which I have been accused of on this issue. Maybe I am just too trusting.
—K.U., Las Vegas
Exclusivity and fidelity are not one decision; rather, a series of decisions. Commitment is not one moment in time; it is a developmental journey.
The easy part is the mechanical/social practice of exclusivity. We don’t date anyone else. We don’t have sex with anyone else. Voila! Looks like we’re in a committed relationship.
Well, yes, it is committed. Yet, to our surprise, there remain deeper and more radical commitments to be made.
When alone, we decide never to talk or behave anytime, anywhere, with anyone in a way we would not behave if our mate was standing right there. That’s the rule. That’s radical commitment.
We are transparent in all our relationships. We might have a more or less separate communion with someone, but never an undisclosed communion. All our friends, whatever their gender, are known to our mate and know about our mate. That’s the rule. That’s radical commitment.
We don’t seek, nurture, or avail ourselves to relationships trading “bumps” of sexual attraction and ego-boost. See, this, too, leaks energy that is rightly owed to the mate. A committed partner seeks the mate’s desire. Oh, sure, it’s enjoyable when the stranger or co-worker lets us know we are desired. And of course we will regularly enjoy noticing people we find attractive and desirable. But we don’t linger in those moments. We don’t “grow” them and depend on them. We “bump” with our mate. That’s the rule. That’s radical commitment.
We don’t nurture The Potential Relationship In The Hole. You’ve seen it: that friend or co-worker with whom you never officially have an affair; but, still, you grow a private and intimate relationship of “what if.” Oh, had we met years ago. Oh, if my mate died, etc. It’s an escape hatch from the work of radical commitment. So we close all escape hatches. That’s the rule. That’s radical commitment.
We don’t amen ourselves to friendships openly disparaging our mate or our commitment. Yes, we have friends who let us vent during difficult moments in the journey of love; but, after listening, those friends challenge us to do the work of great love. Further, we swiftly and decisively jettison anyone who, despite our clearly communicated status as a committed partner, continues to come on to us, tempt us or entice us. In the end, there is no room in great love for even the distraction of having to say “no.” That’s the rule. That’s radical commitment.
K.U., your man isn’t cheating. At least not officially. But his behavior “cheats” the potential of his relationship with you because he’s leaking psychic energy he could be using for the next step of commitment.
All of your questions will answer themselves, K.U., if you will but answer this question: What, for you, constitutes self-respect? Answer that, and you will know whether you are overreacting. You will know how deep of a commitment you deserve from a mate. You will either relax and lower your expectations. Or, you will confront him and demand more.
Or you will leave.
Looks like the next must-have tool for singles is the iPhone or iPad. If you don’t have one, look at how others are using theirs to aid their social life and plan dates.
Forget the Sex Apps - Users Turn To iPhone For Dating, Health
by Mark Walsh
With Apple clearing out all those sex-themed apps from the App Store, it makes you wonder what else people are doing with their iPhones. According to a new study by Greystripe, plotting romance and staying healthy are two of the more popular activities. The mobile ad network found that more than half (51%) of iPhone and iPod touch users turn to the devices to help plan a date, and 39% for health-related inquiries.
When it comes to hitting the town, 43% said map applications like Google Maps were the most helpful when planning a date, with 13% citing review apps like Yelp and 12% using banking apps. Among iPhone and iPod users who are not in an exclusive relationship, 16% turn to social networking apps such as Facebook to hook up. But apps specifically geared to dating aren’t so hot—only 2% use speed dating or online dating apps.
The iPhone is also emerging as a popular health tool. Among people who said they use their phone for health-related purposes, 48% use it to search for outdoor activities, 36% to search for doctors, 35% to look for pharmacies, and 23% to find hospitals.
Looking at health-related apps, Greystripe found fitness programs were the favorites—with 40% downloading them, followed by diet apps, at 28%, and medical apps, 27%. Between the two Apple devices, iPhone owners are 16% more likely to use their phones for health-related inquiries than iPod users. That makes sense since iPhone owners tend to skew older than iPod users, 45% of whom are under the age of 25.
iPhone users are also 17% more likely to be involved in household purchasing decisions than the iPod crowd and to be higher income-earners, according to Greystripe. Its findings were based on survey data from network users in the fourth quarter of 2009. The company serves ads in more than 2,000 applications across the iPhone/iPod and Android, Nokia and Java-based phones.
Lots of good information and research is coming out about how we chose what we chose. This of course is important for us, because choice is all about what Internet dating is about. Has more choice been better? For the most part, yes. But for some, more choice is not necessarily good. It is confusing, and/or may lead to increasing pickiness. See this article below for more information on chosing.
Too Many Choices: A Problem That Can Paralyze
By ALINA TUGEND
TAKE my younger son to an ice cream parlor or restaurant if you really want to torture him. He has to make a choice, and that’s one thing he hates. Would chocolate chip or coffee chunk ice cream be better? The cheeseburger or the turkey wrap? His fear, he says, is that whatever he selects, the other option would have been better.
Gabriel is not alone in his agony. Although it has long been the common wisdom in our country that there is no such thing as too many choices, as psychologists and economists study the issue, they are concluding that an overload of options may actually paralyze people or push them into decisions that are against their own best interest.
There is a famous jam study (famous, at least, among those who research choice), that is often used to bolster this point. Sheena Iyengar, a professor of business at Columbia University and the author of “The Art of Choosing,” (Twelve) to be published next month, conducted the study in 1995.
In a California gourmet market, Professor Iyengar and her research assistants set up a booth of samples of Wilkin & Sons jams. Every few hours, they switched from offering a selection of 24 jams to a group of six jams. On average, customers tasted two jams, regardless of the size of the assortment, and each one received a coupon good for $1 off one Wilkin & Sons jam.
Here’s the interesting part. Sixty percent of customers were drawn to the large assortment, while only 40 percent stopped by the small one. But 30 percent of the people who had sampled from the small assortment decided to buy jam, while only 3 percent of those confronted with the two dozen jams purchased a jar.
That study “raised the hypothesis that the presence of choice might be appealing as a theory,” Professor Iyengar said last year, “but in reality, people might find more and more choice to actually be debilitating.”
Over the years, versions of the jam study have been conducted using all sorts of subjects, like chocolate and speed dating.
But Benjamin Scheibehenne, a research scientist at the University of Basel in Switzerland, said it might be too simple to conclude that too many choices are bad, just as it is wrong to assume that more choices are always better. It can depend on what information we’re being given as we make those choices, the type of expertise we have to rely on and how much importance we ascribe to each choice.
Mr. Scheibehenne recently co-wrote an analysis, to be published in October in The Journal of Consumer Research, examining dozens of studies about choices. One problem, he said, is separating the concept of choice overload from information overload.
In other words, he said, how much are people affected by the number of choices and “how much from the lack of information or any prior understanding of the options?”
I know this from experience. A while back, I spent a great deal of time trying to decide which company should provide our Internet, phone and television cable service. I was looking at only two alternatives, but the options — cost, length of contract, present and future discounts, quality of service — made the decision inordinately difficult.
This was not only because I wanted to get the best deal, but because the information from the companies was overly complicated and vague. I suspected that both companies were less interested in my welfare than in getting my money — and I didn’t want to be a sucker. This was a problem partly of choice overload — too many options — but also of poor information.
Research also shows that an excess of choices often leads us to be less, not more, satisfied once we actually decide. There’s often that nagging feeling we could have done better.
Understanding how we choose could guide employers and policy makers in helping us make better decisions. For example, most of us know that it’s a wise decision to save in a 401(k). But studies have shown that if more fund options are offered, fewer people participate. And the highest participation rates are among those employees who are automatically enrolled in their company’s 401(k)’s unless they actively choose not to.
This is a case where offering a default option of opting in, rather than opting out (as many have suggested with organ donations as well) doesn’t take away choice but guides us to make better ones, according to Richard H. Thaler, an economics professor at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, and Cass R. Sunstein, a professor at Chicago’s law school, who are the authors of “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness” (Yale University Press, 2008). Making choices can be most difficult in the area of health. While we don’t want to go back to the days when doctors unilaterally determined what was best, there may be ways of changing policy so that families are not forced to make unbearable choices.
Professor Iyengar and some colleagues compared how American and French families coped after making the heart-wrenching decision to withdraw life-sustaining treatment from an infant. In the United States, parents must make the decision to end the treatment, while in France, the doctors decide, unless explicitly challenged by the parents.
This contrast in the “choosing experience,” she wrote, made a difference in how the families later coped with their decisions.
French families weren’t as angry or confused about what had happened, and focused much less on how things might have been or should have been than the American parents.
It is important to note that no one is suggesting that parents be kept out of the loop in such a crucial matter. Rather, the choice, as Professor Iyengar said, was between “informed choosers” and “informed nonchoosers.”
Since, fortunately, most of our decisions are less weighty, one way to tackle the choice problem is to become more comfortable with the idea of “good enough,” said Barry Schwartz, a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College and author of “The Paradox of Choice” (Ecco, 2003).
Seeking the perfect choice, even in big decisions like colleges, “is a recipe for misery,” Professor Schwartz said.
This concept may even extend to, yes, marriage. Lori Gottlieb is the author of “Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough” (Dutton Adult, 2010). Too many women — her book focused on women — “think I have to pick just the right one. Instead of wondering, ‘Am I happy?’ they wonder, ‘Is this the best I can do?’ ”
And even though we now have the capacity, via the Internet, to research choices endlessly, it doesn’t mean we should. When looking, for example, for a new camera or a hotel, Professor Schwartz said, limit yourself to three Web sites. As Mr. Scheibehenne said: “It is not clear that more choice gives you more freedom. It could decrease our freedom if we spend so much time trying to make choices.”
Sheesh. A big problem for habitual texters is the ready availability of their cell phones to dash off whatever occurs to them. Not good, for the most part. As one of my friends said about Twitter, “I really don’t care about your having a cup of coffee.” See this app below designed to protect people from their dumbness.
TigerText: An iPhone App for Cheating Spouses?
By Belinda Luscombe
Tiger Woods, if you’re reading this, remember that you’ve been through what mothers call a “valuable learning experience” and you’re probably a “better man for it” and so on. Having said that, an iPhone app that launched on Feb. 25 could totally have saved your hide.
Called, coincidentally enough, TigerText, it allows users to set a time limit for a sent text to hang around after it has been read. When that life span has been exceeded, the message will disappear, say the developers, from the recipient’s phone, the sender’s phone and any servers. The message cannot be forwarded anywhere, stored anywhere or sold to any tabloid for an undisclosed sum. (See a brief history of the Tiger Woods scandal.)
It works like this: when, say, a prominent politician sends his mistress an iPhone message via TigerText, the mistress will be prompted to install the app. When she has done so, she can read the message, but she can’t keep it. In fact, the message is never actually sent to her phone; it’s stored on TigerText’s servers. After the politician’s specified time span has elapsed — anywhere from one minute to five days — the message ceases to exist. There’s even a “delete on read” setting, which counts down from 60 after a message is opened and erases its text at zero. (See the top iPhone applications.)
For those who need an even more comprehensive way to cover their tracks, the “delete history” option will wipe away any evidence of a given phone call. No telltale suspicious numbers, no chance of getting caught out by the old “press redial” routine. (Comment on this story.)
While the implications for philanderers — and spies — are obvious, the app was not actually developed for them, says TigerText founder Jeffrey Evans, a former recruiter and headhunter, and not, at least on the basis of one interview, a particularly paranoid guy. The name was in place before the Tiger Woods texting scandal, he claims, and the company decided to stick with it. Evans’ real concern is about privacy. “People text like they talk,” he says. “And some of the things they say, taken out of context, can come back to haunt them.” (See the 18 best Android apps.)
He points out that the European Union ruled in 2006 that phone and Internet providers were required to keep all cell-phone and e-mail data for a certain period of time. “That just seems wrong and an invasion of privacy,” he says. “We have not caught on to the implications of all these conversations being kept for so long.” While he acknowledges that the app might also be a boon to teens who are in the habit of sexting, drunk texting or “running off at the thumb,” he thinks lawyers and their clients and business executives involved in complicated deals will be even more interested.
Obviously there are times when you just shouldn’t hit “send”; at its most basic level, TigerTexting is like paying $2.50 a month for stupidity insurance. But let’s face it: who among us has never needed a do-over?
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