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The more educated and successful a man is, the more marketable he is for love. Just the opposite for women. Ergo, the complaint of women in their 30’s, 40’s and up: Where does a high-powered, successful woman find a date, let alone a mate?
It’s a real conundrum. More women are going to college and grad school now than men. Younger women are at least as concerned and focused on their career as men have traditionally been. Men have tradionally “married down,” paired with women who were younger, less educated and career-minded, and perhaps even lower on the social ladder. Women have tradionally done the opposite: “Married up” to older, more successful men. As women rise in education, success and finances, there is a dwindling pool of men who are more and better than they are.
Then you have the “I don’t want to ‘settle’” attitude, meaning “accept less than what I think I deserve.” And then you have an gigantic demand (highly qualified women) meeting an extremely limited pool of applicants (well-qualified guys, who may be wanting to do what guys have always done, marry down).
Women need to rethink what “settling” would be. What might fit the traditional model of “more than” for the women might be nice for a date, but not so good for the longer haul. What if both parnters were heavily career focused? Who does the important support functions that a marriage and family needs? And remember that careers don’t go on forever. But hopefully a mate will.
Qualities that work better in a mate than tall, dark, handsome, and more successful might be trustworthiness, dependability, and persevereness. What women—and men—might want in a date (handsome or beautiful, exciting, fun) might wear thin rather soon in a marriage.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Logging On For Love, Part 1
Winooski, Vermont - February 14, 2007
The world of internet dating is soaring. About 30 million Americans visited a dating site last year alone.
So what is the draw to dot com dating?
Like most married couples, Helen and Dan MacAndrews love to look back at their Wedding Day.
The newlyweds were married on October 28th in a small Scottish ceremony, complete with kilts and traditional bagpipes.
But getting to the altar was not easy.
“Dating sucked,” said Helen MacAndrews, of Winooski.
As single professionals dating was often discouraging.
“The places I was looking were only in bars, I was getting really frustrated with that,” said Helen. “It wasn’t my style and I didn’t know how else to go out and meet people that had the same kind of interests that I did.”
“Everybody’s busy, your time is getting pulled in 100 directions and it’s hard to meet people,” said Dan MacAndrews, of Winooski.
That’s why these two entered the dot com dating world..
Helen and Dan subscribed to match dot com—one of hundreds of online dating services.
Six months of service costs about 100 dollars for unlimited access to area singles.
“There are definitely that when you read somebody’s profile are either red flags that there’s no way I want to meet that person or something that sparks your interest,” said Helen.
Helen was interested in Dan’s love of Celtic music.
“You want to make some kind of connection on some level and I have always loved Celtic music also, for me that was the one little hook,” said Helen.
And the rest as they say is history.
If you stick to cybersex, you shouldn’t have any problem avoiding giving or getting sexually transmitted diseases. However, if you progress to face to face meetings, and eventually get to the point of having sex, you have to have The Safe Sex Talk and then decide if you are going to take the risk.
Interestingly, I have also read that STD’s are on the rise in retirement communities, since we entered the Viagra age.
If you do have an STD, it’s possible via the Net to find support and even dating groups. Herpes, which 1 in 4 women have, and 1 in 5 men, has spawned clubs like Charlotteh.com (for people in the Charlotte area with herpes) and Atlantah for Atlantians.
Just like anyone on a dating site is identifying themselves as looking for love, someone at one of the STD sites is also self-identifying. That takes a lot of guess work out, as well as the stress of having to tell about having an STD.
So if you have a similar concern, go to Google and search on “whatever your STD"+"dating site” and see what gets listed.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Click and tell—Couples’ tale offers spectrum of experience in Internet dating
By: GARY WARTH - Staff Writer
Murrieta resident Nadine Hunter never imagined herself going online to meet a man.
“I didn’t think it was something I would ever do,” said Hunter, 52.
But after her daughter talked her into giving Internet dating a try, she met John Ross, 59, a landscape designer from Carlsbad, after dating just two other men.
Last month they celebrated their one-year anniversary of that first date.
“We’re like carrots and peas,” Ross said. “We just liked each other immediately. The more we talked, the more we realized how similar we were in a lot of different ways.”
If there is one downside to the relationship, they admit, it’s the 45-minute drive between their homes. But that in itself demonstrates much of the strength and appeal of seeking matches online: Despite their similarities, the couple likely would never have met had they not joined a dating service that spanned such a wide region.
“Where else are you going to meet people?” he said. “The bar scene never really worked for me, and even if you see someone attractive in a bar, you have no idea what their lifestyle is, what their politics are.”
Their search ended happily, but Hunter and Ross had very different experiences with Internet dating. As a couple, they may represent extreme ends of Internet dating: He sought a match for two years, and she tried for only two months; he met many women online and had good experiences dating a few of them, she met two men before Ross, and one of them was living with another woman.
They also both have something to share with people thinking about trying the service. While they quickly discovered some of the pitfalls, in the end, they found it worked for them.
Hunter needed some coaxing to get over her initial shyness, but that quickly faded once she stepped into the pool.
“Once you go in there and you see how easy it is, and you see how many other people are in there in your same area and doing the same thing, you go, ‘Hey, I can do this,’ “ she said. “It’s not as bad as I thought it would be. I thought it would be more sexual or something. It’s people wanting to meet each other.”
Hunter arranged her first two meetings in a coffee shop and then met Ross at a bank parking lot in Carlsbad.
“I liked him a lot,” she said. “He was very tall and just my type. Very athletic.”
The two felt a special connection when they noticed that they not only own the same brand of refrigerator, but also had the same food inside.
Hunter had not been very forthcoming with her friends about trying online dating, but once they started asking where she met the new man in her life, she had to come clean.
“For some reason, it was kind of embarrassing to say, but when I mentioned it, I found out how many people were also dating through the Internet,” she said. “Then I found out it wasn’t a very big deal. I know someone at work who met somebody over Yahoo Personals, and they just got married.”
Hunter and Ross also met through Yahoo Personals, one of several Internet dating services. Other large services include eMatch.com, Harmony.com and AmericanSingles.com, which lists clients of every imaginable demographic. For people who want to weed out the deal-breakers right off the bat, other sites are tailored to clients with specific political views, religious affiliations or other interests.
Before signing up with Yahoo Personals, Ross used Green Singles, a group that helped environmentalists find one another. Focusing on a like-minded demographic was promising, but the narrow search also meant fewer possible matches.
“I met some really interesting ladies online through Green Singles, but they lived in other states,” he said. “After a while, I thought, ‘This is really futile.’ I never met anyone in San Diego County on Green Singles.”
Ross found more success with the broader search of Yahoo Personals, but he still searched only for women who had similar views and values as his.
Like most sites, Yahoo Personals asks its clients to fill out a profile about themselves. While the profiles aren’t as an intense as the 436 questions required by eHarmony, Ross and Hunter were asked to describe their ethnicity, body type, hair color, activities they like in their free time, political views, astrological sign, type of humor (choices include campy, witty and sarcastic), type of television shows they watch, and what they were looking for in a mate.
They also were asked to check areas that may be potential deal-breakers such as children, smoking, drinking, educational and income level, religion, sense of humor and astrological sign.
The profiles may or may not indicate a person’s political views, which was important for Ross, but they usually give the person’s age. Ross soon discovered the pitfalls of relying on the honor system.
“I did run into quite a few women who lie about their age, and I don’t mean by just two or three years,” he said, laughing.
Almost all sites allow people to browse through pages of profiles and photos of people in their area, which Ross found a bit intoxicating.
“It’s fun to look, and you really get hooked on it and you spend more time looking than you should,” he said.
Realizing it was not practical to join all the clubs he was considering, he signed up with Yahoo Personals for about $15 a month.
Ross said he might spend a couple of hours looking at profiles on a Friday night and then sending contact messages to five or six different women.
“It’s really exciting because for the next few days you’re checking your e-mail to see if they responded,” he said.
“It’s very addictive, and I heard this from just about everybody,” he said. “As a matter of fact, when I met Nadine, it was very difficult to stop looking.”
I’ve written extensively here on True.com’s efforts to essentially legislate their business model. They are trying again here in Florida, and I have testified against the bill, as well as written this op ed piece which is in today’s local paper:
In the Tallahassee Democrat:
Article published Apr 20, 2007
Saturday My View: Law would promote careless online dating
By Kathryn Lord
MY VIEW
I am a romance coach with an international Internet-based business here in Tallahassee. I work with singles to find partners using Internet dating sites. I’m concerned that our Legislature is considering a new law that could endanger Florida singles who use Internet dating services. House Bill 531 and Senate Bill 1224 would create a false sense of security by having the state endorse an outdated and ineffective way to keep convicted criminals off of online dating sites.
The main proponent of these bills is True.com. I have been watching and writing about True.com’s attempts to legislate its business model for more than two years (read more on my blog: http://www.find-a-sweetheart.com/blog/C37). True.com has come up with a clever strategy to get publicity and hamper its competition: True.com asks state legislators for a law that requires dating sites to disclose whether they screen members for previous felony convictions (True.com claims it does).
That sounds like a good idea, until you learn that True.com’s screening is based only on the name given by a potential member, without any serious attempt to verify the person’s true identity. That’s never going to identify a convicted criminal who simply uses another name.
What’s more, the True.com screen looks only for felony convictions, intentionally avoiding the cost of checking for misdemeanors, which would pick up convictions for assault, stalking and sexual violence.
True.com encourages a false promise of security in singles, and now it wants Florida’s Legislature to hold it up as an example for other dating services.
Not only does True.com’s screenings appear to be woefully inadequate, but also, any criminal or would-be criminal with some intelligence could easily figure out how to get past the screening. I worry more about the smart folks with bad intentions, rather than the ones who have already been caught at least once. This kind of legislation encourages singles to believe that they are safe and drop their normal and reasonable precautions.
In my work, I coach Florida singles to use online dating services that I believe are wonderful resources to find a partner. I met my now-husband nine years ago on Match.com. He lived in Mississippi, and because I had never been west of Pensacola, we never would have met otherwise. When I was Internet dating, I worried about safety, but I never had an experience where I felt threatened.
If Internet dating is really as dangerous as this legislation seems to suggest, then why would singles be flocking to online dating sites in such huge numbers? Internet dating sites are more profitable than just about any other online business. Singles talk to each other, and they are telling about what a wonderful - and reasonably safe - resource the Internet is in the all-too-human quest for love.
Online dating services are inherently safer than many other dating methods. Singles remain anonymous in their own homes while asking as many questions and learning about potential dates at their leisure.
Ineffective background screens such as the one True.com offers would remove the element of Internet dating that encourages proactivity and would falsely give people the impression that their correspondent is not a criminal. Currently, many existing online dating services provide safety guidelines to their customers that are common knowledge. As well, Internet dating is rapidly evolving its own safety guidelines and rules that ironically are making traditional dating safer, too.
No other dating venues that I am aware of perform or require notification of background checking. When was the last time you went to a bar or singles social at church where warnings about background checks were posted? Yet we all know that you can meet dangerous people in bars and in church.
Again, this legislation would falsely give Florida singles the impression that they are fully informed on the background of the person they are interested in dating and would eliminate singles’ initiative to ask questions and exercise caution. True.com should not need legislation to succeed in the online dating business.
All Floridians need to take a proactive role in their safety and security online and offline and stand against this legislation by informing our legislators that HB531 and SB1224 are the wrong way to protect Floridians.
World Wide Wooing
Log on to the Internet to find love in time for Valentine’s Day
by Maya T. Prabhu
The face of dating has evolved in the past decade with the appearance of several online dating services from pay sites like Match.com and eHarmony.com, and the free sites like OkCupid.com.
Sam Yagan, co-founder and CEO of OkCupid.com, said people don’t use online dating to replace ‘‘offline” dating, but in addition to it in an effort to expose themselves to a broader array of people.
‘‘Offline, how many people do you usually meet a week? I meet maybe five people a week,” Yagan said. ‘‘There are half a million people on our site [that you could potentially meet]. That could never happen offline.”
For example, Phillip Ross of Bowie said Internet dating opened up a whole new world to him.
‘‘I didn’t go out of my way to meet people,” he said.
But through Match.com Ross was able to access a whole pool of people who were very different from him and that he never would have been able to meet otherwise. And he met the woman, Ameenah, who would later become his wife.
‘‘She is not the norm,” said the self-described introvert, who is retired military.
‘‘I’m from a world of order, and she is not from a world of order. She has taken me out of my box. And it’s an everyday thing.”
Yagan also said that the Internet allows people who are very different to meet each other.
‘‘In the offline world, you’re limited to people who are all very much like you. They’re the same religion, the same race, the same socioeconomic class,” he said. ‘‘Online those differences disappear.”
Alternative to bars
That was the case for College Park residents Chrissy Rey-Drapeau and Wayne Drapeau, who met on Match.com in July 2004 and were married in February 2005. Rey-Drapeau is a Web developer and Drapeau is a firefighter in the District.
‘‘We ran in completely different circles,” Rey-Drapeau said. ‘‘We would never have met professionally, or socially, if we hadn’t met online.”
Both said they were tired of meeting people in bars and other places where they normally met new people, which was a main reason Drapeau began to use online dating.
Rey-Drapeau said she began meeting people online in chat rooms in about 1994 and started using different Internet dating sites in about 1999, off and on.
Drapeau, who has been married twice before, began using Yahoo! Personals in 2003 but said he used a colleague’s user name to browse Match.com when he came across Rey-Drapeau’s picture.
‘‘I joined the next day,” he said.
Feb. 14 is a special day for Phillip and Ameenah Ross, who are both nurses and have both been married twice before. It was three years ago on Valentine’s Day that they had their first date.
‘‘He [Phillip Ross] e-mailed me on Feb. 1 and we had our first date on Valentine’s Day. And we’ve been together ever since,” Ameenah Ross said. They’ve been married since May 2005.
Building friendships
Ameenah Ross, who is also a dating coach whose motto is ‘‘helping hearts find a home,” said she is working on a book that will serve as a guide for finding love online. She said she used different Internet dating sites not only to find a mate, but to make friends when she first moved to Maryland about six years ago.
‘‘I met a lot of nice people and learned a lot of things about men,” she said. ‘‘And even if there wasn’t a romantic connection, I still made a lot of friends.”
Rey-Drapeau said that she was also able to make good friends with the people she met online.
‘‘One guy I met online I didn’t click with, but we were able to become friends,” she said.
Ameenah Ross said that since she was older, she was able to go into dates with men she met on the Internet knowing what she wanted and needed from a mate. And that’s what she teaches her clients.
‘‘Most of my coaching is to get people to learn what they’re looking for ... and what they have to offer,” she said. ‘‘And then be prepared for the right one when you meet them.”
Her book, ‘‘Met My Love Online,” will offer much of the same advice, she said. It will chronicle her experiences of meeting people online and teach people how to love themselves.
Ameenah Ross said she doesn’t see online dating being a fad at all.
‘‘Internet dating isn’t going anywhere.”
Rey-Drapeau said that online dating had grown tremendously since she first started using it.
‘‘I would search for someone near me back then and would only come up with five people,” she said. ‘‘If I search now it’s probably 1,000 people. Not that I’m looking.”
But Yagan said membership at online dating sites that charge is dwindling.
‘‘Most of the pay sites are shrinking because people are not going to pay for something they can get for free,” he said.
Yagan said he suspects there will only be one big online dating site in the future, similar to the way MySpace.com has taken control in the realm of online social networks.
Rey-Drapeau said she already sees people using free sites to meet people.
‘‘A lot of people are meeting on MySpace and more free sites are popping up,” she said. ‘‘I’m sure pay sites are still getting tons of business.
‘‘Maybe I’m just cheap, but if there were something [that people could use to meet people online] that was free I think that would be better.”
Protecting the ego
Phillip Ross, the self-described introvert, said online dating took the embarrassment and fear out of approaching a woman for him.
‘‘You don’t have to put yourself out there and potentially get your feelings hurt [when you date on the Internet]. Your ego can stay intact,” he said. ‘‘Whoever came up with this stuff, I owe you a debt of gratitude.”
Rey-Drapeau said the best advice she could give someone whom is just deciding to try Internet dating is to be truthful in his or her profile.
‘‘Be honest. Don’t say you’re the president of some company when you’re really the janitor,” she said. Rey-Drapeau said she also ran into people who would use old pictures.
Both Ameenah and Phillip Ross said they weren’t afraid for their safety when they searched for matches online.
‘‘You’re not going to have any different problems than if you meet someone another way,” Ameenah Ross said.
Rey-Drapeau and her husband never had any safety issues when meeting someone they met online either.
‘‘I always met people in public and was usually around many other people that I knew,” she said.
She did acknowledge that meeting people on the Internet could be a double-edged sword.
‘‘When you meet someone online ... you can get to know them very well [before you ever see them], but because of the anonymity of the Internet everything they say could be a fabrication,” Rey-Drapeau said.
Paul Falzone, co-CEO of offline dating services Together Dating and The Right One who also runs the hybrid dating site e-love.com, said there is no way to be completely safe or secure when using the Internet to meet people.
‘‘There’s a lot of deception,” he said. ‘‘You never know who you’re dealing with. The least of which [is when] people use a 20-year-old picture [from] before they gained all their weight or lost all their hair. The worst of it being they could be axe murderers.”
Falzone said that if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
‘‘Why would a 26-year-old smoking hot beautiful attractive young woman want to meet a 55-year-old guy that’s a little overweight?” he asked.
‘‘You’re probably getting set up for some type of a scam.”
In an article from the Examiner.com we find two nice folks talking about their online dating experiences. The article is in red, my comments in black.
BALTIMORE - This week, the intrepid Joan Allen has braved the wilds of online dating and returns from her dangerous expedition to tell the tale.
Joan: I went on my first Match.com date last week and would like to share some red-flag signals. First of all, the man asked very personal questions, such as “Why have you never gotten married? You’re beautiful and intelligent,” and “What red-flag signals have you observed about me?” This was our first date, and I felt like he was interviewing me. I decided I had nothing to lose, so I answered him honestly. I said, “The first red-flag signal is you’ve just had two double martinis, and I would be concerned about your drinking.” His answer? “My sister is an alcoholic, but I’m not. And I’m not going to change.” Needless to say, I never heard from him again.
Dan: Sounds like the date worked out perfectly. For me, a first date IS an interview situation: who are you, what are you about, now stand up and give us a spin. I don’t think his questions, or yours, were out of line, as you both learned what you needed to know — and isn’t it better to do that right off the bat rather than down the road after you’ve been dating this person five or six months?
I’d agree with Don about this. The first meeting/coffee date should not really be seen as a date, but as a screening to see if you WOULD want to date this person. It is a time for gathering facts and impressions, just like the email and phone contacts before the meeting.
Joan: When I told my friend Carol about my date, she offered a few of her favorite red-flag signs about Internet dating: men who’ve never been married, men who don’t call when they say they will, men who are very critical, men who say negative things about their former spouses, and best for last — after a third or fourth date with the same man, when you get home from that date and check your e-mails and find that he’s already online chatting with other women.
Beware, both men and women: It is very common practice for online daters to check on the dating site to see if their date is active on the site. Of course, checking makes you active too, so your date may be doing the same thing: checking on you. But until you have had the “Let’s be exclusive” discussion, do not assume that your date is being exclusive, even if you are. In fact, dating more than one at a time may be a very good idea. Having sex with more than one at a time may not.
Now ladies, sing it to the tune of “My Favorite Things.” “When he’s negative, when he’s sneaky, when he won’t call back, just let your account expire from Match, and then it won’t seem so bad.”
Dan: Then I’m a walking red flag, as I’m 44 and never been married ... and neither have YOU! Actually, all of these apply to women as well. And here’s a few more: women who write, express interest and then disappear off the face of the earth. Women who take you for granted. Women who can’t deal with a man’s female friends. Women who say you’re great but then start dropping comments about your clothes, hair, home — ladies, men may be lumpy, but we’re not lumps of clay for you to mold; take us as we are or take yourself elsewhere. Women who see perceived slights in every word or gesture and demand apologies, free dinners and pedicures, but have no problems dropping atom bomb-sized insults about aforementioned clothes, hair, home, and if WE demand apologies, are informed we’re being wimpy.
And I don’t think to never have been married counts as a red flag. This is usually espoused by people who HAVE been married, realized they made a dumb mistake, got divorced and now embrace that “misery loves company” concept, encouraging everyone else around them to do the same dumb thing. I think, my dear Joanie, that you and I are too intelligent to marry just for the sake of being married. We want that person who is best for us on all levels, emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually, so that if and when we do marry, it is once and for all!
Joan: Amen!
The suspiciousness about never marrieds is really about never having had and maintained a long term relationship. A person learns skills in a long term relationship that they cannot learn anywhere else. And if you have had long term relationship experience, you should be wary about someone who had not. Particularly if they are 40 or older. How does one live that long and NOT have a long term relationship? In our culture that values and pushes relationships so, not getting involved takes real work.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
These two stories came out of Janesville, WI, on Valentine’s Day, via Janesville Gazette. Go to the article to see photos of both couples.
Beth and Ryan Krenkle celebrated their first Valentine’s Day together as a married couple this year. They met on eHarmony in 2005.
Beth attributes the couple’s success to strict personality surveys that singles take when they sign up for eHarmony.com, as well as a modest charge to use the service.
“You have to fill out a lot of questions. It takes quite a while, but the honesty really comes out,” Beth said. “Plus, if people aren’t really interested, they are not going to pay the money.” Good points.
Michael Boyd met his wife Tammy in a collectors’ chat room in 1996—ancient history in Internet time. It took way over a year for them to meet in real time, on a date to New Orleans. But it took. They married on date number 4, on August 15, 1998.
Tammy’s parents insisted that Michael come to Wisconsin first to meet the family before “their little girl” could go across country with him.
He fit right in.
“They had this dog, Spike, that bit everybody,” Michael said, grinning. “Her mom said she knew I was the one when Spike didn’t bite me.”
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Here’s some info on how to protect yourself from scams… from WCBD-TV
Check Scam Tips from the Federal Trade Commission:
Protecting Yourself
Here’s how to avoid a counterfeit check scam:
* Throw away any offer that asks you to pay for a prize or a gift. If it’s free or a gift, you shouldn’t have to pay for it. Free is free.
* Resist the urge to enter foreign lotteries. It’s illegal to play a foreign lottery through the mail or the telephone, and most foreign lottery solicitations are phony.
* Know who you’re dealing with, and never wire money to strangers.
* If you’re selling something, don’t accept a check for more than the selling price, no matter how tempting the offer or how convincing the story. Ask the buyer to write the check for the correct amount. If the buyer refuses to send the correct amount, return the check. Don’t send the merchandise.
* As a seller, you can suggest an alternative way for the buyer to pay, like an escrow service or online payment service. There may be a charge for an escrow service. If the buyer insists on using a particular escrow or online payment service you’ve never heard of, check it out. Visit its website, and read its terms of agreement and privacy policy. Call the customer service line. If there isn’t one — or if you call and can’t get answers about the service’s reliability — don’t use the service. To learn more about escrow services and online payment systems, visit ftc.gov/onlineshopping.
* If you accept payment by check, ask for a check drawn on a local bank, or a bank with a local branch. That way, you can make a personal visit to make sure the check is valid. If that’s not possible, call the bank where the check was purchased, and ask if it is valid. Get the bank’s phone number from directory assistance or an Internet site that you know and trust, not from the check or from the person who gave you the check.
* If the buyer insists that you wire back funds, end the transaction immediately. Legitimate buyers don’t pressure you to send money by wire transfer services. In addition, you have little recourse if there’s a problem with a wire transaction.
* Resist any pressure to “act now.” If the buyer’s offer is good now, it should be good after the check clears.
If You Think You’re a Victim
If you think you’ve been targeted by a counterfeit check scam, report it to the following agencies:
* The Federal Trade Commission Visit ftc.gov or 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357). • The U.S. Postal Inspection Service Visit http://www.usps.gov/websites/depart/inspect or call your local post office. The number is in the Blue Pages of your local telephone directory.
* Your state or local consumer protection agencies Visit http://www.naag.org for a list of state Attorneys General, or check the Blue Pages of your local telephone directory for appropriate phone numbers.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
El Paso businessman Steve Filley and Jaclyn Kelley, living near San Antonio (500 miles away), met on eHarmony on April 12 of 2005. The two married on July 8, 2006.
Marina Stroupe met her husband Terry Stroupe in December 2004 on the INternet. Marina is Russian, and you have to read their story. And see their picture—what a cute couple! They married last fall, 2006.
Christina McLellan (76) and Stuart Down (75) met on Match.com. Both live in the UK, but 150 miles apart. “After a series of 300-mile round trips, Stuart poppe dhte question and moved in with Christina. The couple got married in Buckie register offeice with Christina making her entrance to the tune Tutti Fruitti."`
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Here’s a story from WCBD-TV that illustrates how a Nigerian-based scam works:
Janice Byers finally decided to enter the dating world after her husband of 17 years died from a heart attack. She posted her picture and a profile on Yahoo Personals on the internet. That’s where she met Joe Johnson.
“We started chit-chatting. He showed me pictures of his son, dog and cat...all kinds of things,” said Byers. “He said he’s in Nigeria and he’s refurbishing an airplane over there. He does a lot of aviation work. He’s supposed to be a pilot and according to his profile on yahoo, he was a pilot.”
After a month of online chats, Johnson told Byers he wanted to marry her—but first he needed a favor.
“He said that he got hurt on the job over there. He wasn’t able to work for a few weeks and he needed cash to get his medical bills paid.”
Through online chats, Johnson told Byers African banks put a 24 day hold on American checks, but he couldn’t wait that long. He wanted her to send him five thousand dollars and said he’d repay her when the bank cashed his paycheck. Byers cleared out her entire bank account to send him the money. When she went to cash Johnson’s pay back check—she found out it was a scam.
“I went to the bank. I put the check in on Wednesday and I expected it to clear by Friday. I went back and there was no money in my account. [The teller] said ‘this is a counterfeit check.’”
But Johnson didn’t get her money. She put a hold on the check she sent him—and was able to cancel the check when she found out it was a scam.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
I love love stories, and they are tops when they come from my home state of Maine, AND they are about couples who met on the Net.
Thers are so good that I’ll print part of each story here. The rest of the story in the Kennebec Journal. Go take a look at their picture, because these two are precious. Both have lots of gray hair as well as meat on their bones.
Stanley Frautten of Dexter was so nervous going to meet his online date that after an hour on the road, he turned around and drove back home.
He sent the woman, Sally Meader, of Vienna, an e-mail saying he had changed his mind—that they lived too far apart, he had been married several times, and he just didn’t think he could do it.
Little did he know that Meader would stand up to him.
“I was kind of mad,” she said. “I told him I didn’t want anyone who played head games.”
He liked her response.
“I said, ‘This girl’s kind of feisty. She’s responding, but she took me wrong,’” he recalled. “I wasn’t playing head games—I was just nervous.”
They decided to meet two weeks later, at Ken’s Restaurant in Skowhegan. The day before that date, his car broke down. So he took a taxi to Bangor to rent a car.
“I didn’t dare to cancel again,” he said.
He got to Skowhegan two hours early.
“I was nervous, but after a few minutes at the restaurant, I was OK,” he said. “We never stopped yakking the whole time.”
Here’s couple #2:
Mike Harnish and his wife, Laura, of Readfield, met in an online chat room three years ago. He lived in Bangor; she, in Augusta. Both had been married once before and had children.
They met at Speedway 95 in Bangor, as he is a race car driver.
“We talked, and I know I certainly wanted to talk more,” he said. “When I first saw her I said, ‘This is good.’”
Now for couple #3, and this couple is meaty, too, but the long and tall version:
Jennifer and Scott Neumeyer of Augusta also met in a chat room, about 10 years ago. He lived in Spokane, Wash.; she was attending college in New Hampshire. Friends had told her about meeting people online.
She flew to Spokane on Scott’s birthday. She says that when she saw him, she knew he was “the one.” She was attracted right away to his 6-feet-9-inch-tall frame, as she comes from a family of tall people.
“I was just like, ‘Wow, I think I’m meant to be with him,’” she recalled. “I pretty much knew. It was the height; it was the intelligence. I was going to finish the semester and transfer to Spokane. I couldn’t stand being away from him. I thought about him, I called him all the time. We had ridiculous phone bills.”
They got engaged, he moved east, and they were married in 2000 at St. Mary’s Church in Augusta. A year later, they had a baby girl. Scott, 29, works at the state Department of Labor; Jennifer, 36, at the state Department of Conservation. She says she would recommend seeking a mate online.
“It’s actually safer than meeting people at a bar—it really is—because he got to know who I was, not based on what I look like. I’m not Angelina Jolie by any stretch. He got to meet my personality first.”
Aren’t those stories wonderful??!!!
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
One reason surely is that the big sites have been spending a lot more on advertising. See this article from BrandWeek.com:
NEW YORK—Spending on advertising for online dating services has risen dramatically since 2004, according to data released today from Nielsen Monitor-Plus.
The advertising intelligence service said that while total media spend for such efforts was $149 million in the U.S. in 2004, it rose to $310 million the following year, and hit $430 million from January to November of 2006.
“The dating services industry has shown tremendous growth in terms of ad spending across all media, but most especially cable TV, online and local TV and local radio,” Brian Lane, svp-client strategy & product management for Nielsen Monitor-Plus, said in a statement.
NMP said the most recent figures for media chosen showed cable TV led the pack with $130.6 million in reported ad spending last year. The Internet was a close second at $127.3 million, and spot TV ads were third with $75.1 million spent.
Ubiquitous online dating service eHarmony.com was the biggest advertiser overall, spending $110 million in 2006. It was followed by IAC/InterActiveCorp, the parent company of Match.com, which spent $66 million on ads. In third place for overall spending was Teligence (parent company of Live Links, Tango, Redhot, Vibeline and Fonchat), which spent nearly $43 million.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Is it about love or money? Well, at least sites like SeekingArrangement.com make it absolutely clear, that on this site at least, it’s about money. Here’s what the site says about itself: “SeekingArrangement is the premier Sugar Daddy Dating site. We are a matchmaking website for wealthy benefactors, and attractive guys & gals.” And “An Arrangement is short for “Mutually Beneficial Relationship” between two people. Such a relationship is usually between an older and wealthy individual who gives a young person expensive gifts or financial assistance in return for friendship, intimacy or sex.”
This site is certainly a step or so beyond the already obnoxious millionaire matching sites I have already written about.
Okay, in some ways I can see how this can be good. Another route to get those who are not serious about looking for a long term, faithful, equal and honest relationship can go. And it is surely capitalistic: if you’ve got the money, flaunt it and buy what you want.
One of the most popular postings on my blog comment-wise is a short one about sugar mamas I have one guy after another (and at least one woman) who would love to find a woman to support them.
It is hard to believe. But look at the evidence.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
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