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According to Online Dating Insider, Match.com gets 25,000 new members a DAY! Match is always the top dating site that I recommend. Yes, you’ll see the same old profiles that get posted by non-paying members and then never taken down. What’s the risk if you are not paying anything? But a serious dater needs to check Match daily to see who is new. Do not fall into the trap of “there’s no one here that I like today, so Match.com is no good.” Keep looking! Match is the best show in town.
Internet dating is the greatest thing since sliced bread for singles. But like anything that is successful, some proportion of those who participate will have a not-so-good experience. Here’s some stories from the Aussie press that are good for a giggle—but don’t let them scare you off!
Texan bride case tip of iceberg in online love gone wrong
By Robyn Ironside
LOVE moves in mysterious ways - especially in cyberspace, where looking for a partner with a click of a mouse is anything but predictable.
Far from happy-ever-after, an online romance between an Ipswich man and his would-be Texan bride this week ended with the pair behind bars after a bloody backyard barbecue.
The extraordinary story is the latest example of online love gone wrong.
Like countless others, Liam Gaynor and Lois Perryman met on the internet and fell in love.
After dating online they were finally united last month when Perryman travelled from the US to be with Gaynor in Ipswich.
All was rosy until Gaynor took his fiance to meet his former boss, Paul Hicks, at a Sunday barbecue.
In the space of a few hours, the love affair was in tatters when Perryman and Hicks apparently became enamoured with each other.
Police alleged Gaynor then left the barbecue in a jealous rage and returned with a knife, which he allegedly used to stab Hicks.
But the plot thickened on Wednesday when Hicks told detectives Perryman was the culprit. The former cyber lovers are now in custody after both being charged with attempted murder and grievous bodily harm.
Last month, The Courier-Mail reported how online scammers using three little words - “I love you” - to unlock the bank accounts of vulnerable Queenslanders.
Purporting to be from Nigeria, the culprits used match-maker websites to fleece the lovelorn. One of the hapless victims, Ralph Thomason, lost $20,000.
And the stories keeping coming.
“Tara" went for a dream date with her online love. One thing led to another and the couple ended up in bed. Afterwards he turned to her and said, “that was great but it’s helped me realise, I still prefer men”.
“Mandy" has given up internet dating after arranging to meet an online friend for a date. After waiting for 45 minutes in the rain she gave up. He later told her that he’d met an old girlfriend on the bus on his way to the date and they decided to give it another go.
Critics of online dating say these horror stories are just the tip of the iceberg. But researcher and author Yvonne Rice says for every horror internet dating experience, there are millions of people who find their “happily ever afters”.
“I’m talking age groups from 18 to 80. I’m constantly meeting people who’ve met their partner on the net. I’m a huge fan of internet dating,” Ms Rice said.
In the US alone, 20 million people look for love online each year. And Australian dating website rsvp.com.au boasts a membership of 1.3 million singles.
“It’s becoming more socially acceptable. In my travels I’ve met everyone from the unemployed to a cardio-thoracic surgeon who have used online dating services,” Ms Rice said.
Police are not opposed to internet dating sites but members of Queensland’s Computer Crimes Unit do advise extreme caution.
“It’s not the websites that are the problem, it’s the people who use them,” said Detective Senior Constable Graeme Edwards.
The unit received “hundreds of complaints a year” from Queenslanders who had fallen victim to online romance scams at an average cost of $35,000, he said.
Dating sites were popular among scammers but not as popular as social networking and genealogy sites where criminals were not required to do much work to gain valuable information.
“The data required to open a bank account, for instance, is often freely available on these sites,” Sen-Constable Edwards said.
Perryman will face Ipswich Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday. Gaynor is due to appear on November 12.
When the Better Business Bureau puts out suggestions for online daters, it’s a good idea to pay attention.
The BBB recommends the following tips when considering a matchmaking site:
• Think with your head, not with your heart. If you’ve just signed up for a matchmaking site and you suddenly have three people contacting you before you’ve even put up a profile or picture, reconsider joining. Ask yourself if you’ve been on for a reasonable amount of time to actually have real people see your profile and decide to contact you.
• Don’t give in to high-pressure sales tactics. Watch out for sales techniques where a site claims that a price is “good for this day only” or associates may pressure consumers into signing a contract. Take the time to read over any contracts you agree to in order to make sure you know what you’re getting into.
• Watch out for automatic renewal programs. Many subscription-based sites on the Internet offer automatic renewal to make it easier for consumers to remain members without having to constantly renew their membership. However, many matchmaking services sign you up for automatic renewal by default. If you don’t want to be renewed automatically at the end of your subscription, make sure you figure out how to turn off that feature early in your membership.
• Don’t fall in love with the advertising. Beware of claims such as “an exclusive network of people,""for sincere daters only,” and “beautiful singles just like you.” Online Web sites don’t discriminate against who joins their site outside of members who pay.
If you are single and out of college or even into retirement, Internet dating is the place to be:
From an article in the Indytimes:
Dating outside the lines
If you think Gen-X and Gen-Y singles are the only ones familiar with online dating, read on. An AARP analysis of the most recent U.S. Census data found that of the 76.7 million baby boomers, 18.5 percent were divorced or separated, 10.6 percent had never been married, and 2.8 percent were widowed—for a total of 24.5 million single boomers. And according to a recent story in the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, those older, wiser and available singles aren’t sitting around waiting for “Mr. Right” or “Ms. Right” to fall from the sky. They are embracing speed-dating services sponsored by Cupid.com, and other online dating sites such as Match.com and eHarmony. Sociologist Virginia Rutter says, “The baggage is actually part of what makes the person you’re with a human being.”
Love it. The older, the better. My Mom got married at 81, the groom was 86.
Clinton Township leads the way with speed dating for seniors
BY CHRISTY ARBOSCELLO
Singles searching for love and companionship sit at tables for two decorated with flickering candles and powder-pink tablecloths. They wear nervous smiles and name tags on pressed blouses and blazers. They’re told the rules: When the bell rings, the ladies move to the next man. They have four minutes to chat and, if a connection is made, get the digits or dance to a live band later in another room.
They’re equipped with ice-breaker questions: What do you like to do on a date? What type of food do you enjoy?
Do you have any grandchildren?
This is not the usual speed-dating soirée. These aren’t 20- or 30-somethings looking to start lives together. They’re seniors whose lives have been rich with experience, careers, children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren. The approximately 20 people at the Clinton Township Senior Adult Life Center’s third monthly event are as young as 55 and old as 90. Many are widows and widowers. Some are divorced.
“I’m Jane. I’m looking for Tarzan,” Jane Brown of Macomb Township says playfully.
“Oh yeah?” responds Art Bosco of Warren.
“How old are you? Can I ask?” said Brown, who’s wearing glasses and pearl earrings.
79.
She’s 71.
“I’m a widower,” he tells her.
She’s widowed too.
“How did you make it? I’m having a hard time,” he shares.
She says she swims three times a week, stays busy with friends and now she’s looking for someone who can keep up with her on the dance floor.
“To be honest, I think the women are having an easier time. Women are more ...”
“Self-sufficient," he finishes her sentence.
She tells him of a group for people who have lost spouses that she attends. He’s intrigued.
“We all have to do something like that otherwise, we go nowhere,” Bosco says.
The center’s program coordinator, Donna Tinker, said of senior speed dating, “I was the first in the area to start it,” eyeing a stop-watch before ringing the bell.
She tried convincing her bosses it would be a smash after seeing a video of an event in Florida. It took almost a year for them to agree, and it helps a good cause. The $10 individual fee benefits center activities and projects like a recent expansion.
The new take on dating is following a national trend of older adults increasingly flocking to unconventional outlets, including the Internet, to find love. They’re often ignoring social norms they adhered to the first time around.
They’re also living together more and more. Cohabitation without marriage among older people rose 50% from 2000 to 2006, with 1.8 million elderly individuals living together full time, McClatchy Newspapers reported in July. The report, which comes from census data, also found part-time cohabiters—who travel together, share summer homes and spend weekends together—have kept pace with that trend.
Perhaps taking note of the lifestyle changes, other senior event planners in metro Detroit are interested in mimicking Tinker’s matchmaking.
“I think it’s great. I’d like to try to do it at my center,” said Kathy Jo Voight, special events programmer at the Romeo-Washington-Bruce Senior Activity Center, who checked out the August Clinton Township affair.
Speed dating will kick off for the first time at Troy Community Center at the end of the month.
“They were doing that in Clinton Township and one of the seniors put a suggestion in the suggestion box that we do that here,” said Carla Vaughan, senior program director. “We said, ‘OK, let’s give it a try.’ “
Women registered right away for the Troy program; that’s also been the case in Clinton Township. It takes a little more work for organizers to sign up the men.
Those following Tinker’s lead can note her learning curve during the premiere event in May. The biggest problem: Like a bad date, it seemed to never end.
“Some ditched us,” she said, adding that many men used the old bathroom excuse to duck out after hours of not-so-speedy dating.
But on a recent night, the room was abuzz with serious topics from gay rights to abortion to lighthearted ones like playing cards and karaoke. For some, the bell rings too soon. For others, it seems to take longer.
Frank J., a 60-year-old Shelby Township resident who declined to give his last name, taps his pen repeatedly when talking to Erika Koehler of Clinton Township. She twists the strap of her rhinestone purse.
“Are you going to the dance afterward?” he asks.
“I’m not sure yet,” she says shyly in a thick accent.
Between short, silent pauses, he asks where she’s from.
Germany, she replies.
“How long have you been here?”
“Long enough,” she says with a faint smile.
They’re signaled, with everyone else, to move on.
While some guests worried what their children would think of them moving on after losing spouses, Sandra Muklewicz said she’s glad her mom, Jane Brown, is speed dating.
“I think it’s a great idea. I think it’s difficult for people of any age to really find a person to share their common interests and I think it’s even more difficult for seniors,” said Muklewicz, 47, of Chesterfield Township, whose father died 20 years ago.
She felt comforted that the speed dating took place in a senior center as opposed to a dimly lit restaurant or bar.
“It seemed like a safe environment,” she said.
Clinton Township resident Janet Sieber said she leapt into the speed dating pool to reel in a man who likes festivals and other events.
“I’ve been dating couch potatoes,” she said.
Sieber may not have found Mr. Right right away, but she was happy to be there, she said.
“Absolutely, I’ve been meeting nice people.”
Scanning the crowd, Tinker was also delighted.
“I’m seeing smiles on everyone’s face, so I’m pleased.”
Boy oh boy, I’ve never liked the premise of AshelyMadison.com, a site for married folks to look for affair partners. Eee-yick. But at least it gives folks who want to play around a place to go other than the regular dating sites where single people should be free of come-ons from people who already have partners. But now ol’ AshleyM is not content to wait for folks to find her, she’s advertising. See the article below.
Tangled Web
Dating site for adulterers
Kelly Jane Torrance
As online dating has lost the stigma once attached to it and millions of people flood big sites such as Match.com looking for love, niche dating sites have begun to proliferate to help narrow the field.
There are services for all sorts of people looking for something specific: animal lovers, gays, vegetarians, blacks, Christians, black Christians. One of the best known is JDate, the Jewish dating site. Yet its 700,000 members are a mere third of the number attracted to another site that has been under the radar until recently.
AshleyMadison.com has 2.2 million members and just launched a million-dollar advertising campaign - but national networks think America isn’t quite ready for a dating site for the already attached.
AshleyMadison’s new 35-second television commercial features an insomniac man lying next to a slightly zaftig woman. He sneaks out of the room holding his clothes. “Most of us can recover from a one-night stand with the wrong woman,” a narrator intones. Cut to a photograph of the man and woman together - on their wedding day. “But not when it’s every night for the rest of our lives. Isn’t it time for AshleyMadison.com?”
The site specializes in connecting people who are already partnered but seeking no-strings-attached affairs.
The company bought ad time on channels including ESPN, CNN, Fox News Channel and Spike, but the networks seemed to have second thoughts. ESPN, for one, says it has instructed its affiliates to quit airing the ad.
The company’s site went live at the beginning of 2002, but the new ad campaign marks the first time it has sought a mainstream audience. It used to advertise during airings of “The Jerry Springer Show.”
It’s having trouble getting the new ads to stay in place. A billboard in New York’s Times Square showed a couple entering a hotel room and urged, “Life is short. Have an affair in New York City.” It was removed after just three days.
“They got a call from one of the hotel operators across the street,” reports Noel Biderman, president and chief executive of the Toronto-based Ashley Madison Agency. “They said they were going to burn it down if they don’t take it down.”
The CEO can’t see what all the fuss is about when those same networks air ads with tag lines such as “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”
“I am not going to convince anyone to have an affair. I don’t have that power of persuasion,” he says. “What I can do is get someone who’s made that decision to try AshleyMadison.” It’s a lot safer than messing around in the workplace or getting a “lady of the night,” the happily married father of two says rather quaintly.
“It’s like dumping raw sewage into the culture,” complains Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life, who says she has had her own ads turned down by networks. “We live in a Hollywood culture that celebrates infidelity.”
Mr. Biderman agrees on that last point: He seems to think Hollywood already has done the work of making cheating look good. He notes that some recent movies widely considered romantic - including “Titanic” and “The Bridges of Madison County” - focused on cheaters. Of course, literature has had more than its share of sympathetic adulterers - think Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” - for centuries. “It speaks to the human condition,” he says.
His site certainly has struck a chord. In just 6 1/2 years, with very little advertising, it has attracted those couple million members. On a recent afternoon in the District, just before most people are thinking about leaving work, AshleyMadison had close to 50,000 locals online.
“That’s really socially significant,” says University at Buffalo American studies professor Elayne Rapping, a media and gender expert who was shocked to hear how many people are looking for extramarital affairs online.
She’s never surprised to hear that men at the top - such as former presidential candidate John Edwards - cheat. Having a broader section of society - and particularly women - on the prowl is different.
“The divorce rate is down, and people are staying together for any number of reasons. It’s a kind of conservative period. But what this is saying is that a lot of people who are staying in their marriage are doing so not because they’re happy, but for some other reason,” she says. “Maybe for socially acceptable reasons, people are staying in their marriages and going outside of them for satisfaction.”
She thinks the possibilities of the Internet are more likely to have given rise to the phenomenon than the seemingly endless examples of big-name cheaters like Mr. Edwards. Media can play a role, though. “I do think when people see these ads on mainstream TV, those who have always fantasized may be more willing to act on it,” she says. “That doesn’t mean they don’t have the right to advertise it.”
Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America, applauds ESPN. She says national networks give the site “a sense of legitimacy” by allowing it to advertise.
“Instead of a race to the bottom, maybe we can start climbing our way out of the gutter,” she says. “This [site] could be used by blackmailers, this could be used for prostitution, and just the fact that it’s catering to married people, it’s encouraging the destruction of marriages. It encourages bringing harm to your spouse.”
Miss Wright wonders about those 2.2 million members. “It could be a calculated business move on AshleyMadison’s part to get double fees - first people who are trolling for adulterers and then those who are checking on their spouses,” she speculates.
The fact that AshleyMadison is thriving at the same time it’s finding it hard to let people know that it’s thriving points to a division in American society.
“It’s an interesting irony, because if you look historically at attitudes to adultery and affairs, we’re actually more judgmental and more negative about them than we’ve ever been,” says Stephanie Coontz, author of “Marriage, A History” and professor of history and family studies at Evergreen State College in Washington state. “I’ve taken lots of oral histories from women who were married in the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s. A surprising number said, ‘I found out my husband visited prostitutes, but what can you do?’”
The Internet and other modern conveniences make it easier for that adulterous minority to cheat, she says.
Jenny Block, author of the recently released book “Open: Love, Sex & Life in an Open Marriage,” thinks a private-versus-public distinction is at work in America today.
“In private, we’ve become very comfortable with adultery. Some people think that’s the cost of doing business: Marriage is hard, it’s work, how can you possibly get through it any other way?” says Ms. Block, who notes she doesn’t promote open relationships, only honesty within whatever relationship a couple chooses. “Publicly, we’re nowhere near accepting it.”
Here’s a little piece about turning 100—seems that centenarians are on the computers, too, and using technology to stay in touch with family and friends. Have you seen any 100 year olds on dating sites? Just a matter of time. My mother’s new husband (they’ve been married a little over three years now) turns 90 on September 11. Here they are on their wedding day. Mom and George did not meet online, but they both did know a good thing when they saw it. And I have to admit that I gave advice.
100-Year-Olds Using Latest Technology to Stay Connected to Family, Friends, Current Events, According to Third Annual Poll
MINNEAPOLIS, Jul 29, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE)—The third annual Evercare 100@100 Survey(TM) released today finds that the keys to longevity are staying connected to family, friends and current events. The poll of 100 centenarians shifts conventional stereotypes on aging by revealing that some of the oldest Americans are using the latest technologies to keep up and stay close - talking on cell phones, sending emails, “Googling” lost acquaintances, surfing Wikipedia and even online dating.
-- Love 2.0: As many Centenarians as Baby Boomers (3 percent) say they have dated someone they met on an online dating site.
Now here are two folks who know how to get lucky. If you want to get luckier, I can show you how. Try my self-study course Get Lucky at Love!
Newlyweds scoop £1.9 million on National Lottery
By Mirror.co.uk
A newlywed couple who met on a dating website have continued their internet lucky streak by winning £1.9 million on the National Lottery by playing online.
Ed and Michelle Edwards from Yeovil had been living on a shoestring before scooping a share of Saturday’s Lotto jackpot of just under £8 million.
The couple, who have four teenage children from previous relationships, currently live in a rented two-bedroom cottage in Yeovil.
They are on a list for a shared ownership property but now have their eyes on buying their own detached five bedroom house in nearby Sherbourne.
Mr Edwards, 43, who had originally deleted an email from the National Lottery notifying him of their win, managed to keep it a secret from his wife for three hours last Sunday until he was sure their numbers had come up.
The day before the couple had been celebrating winning just £7 on the EuroMillions.
Mrs Edwards, 39, who has already handed in her notice as store manager for Edinburgh Woollen Mill in Sherbourne, suggested they chance their luck on the Saturday night draw with three lucky dips and two rows of birthdays.
She has already bought a new Mini Cooper convertible after having to sell her last one to bay the bills after her divorce.
“We were standing in a field with our two dogs when Ed told me and I jumped up and down, screamed and said I didn’t believe him, I thought it was a joke,” she said.
“The first person I told was my sister, you’re told to keep it to yourself but its very difficult, you just have to share that kind of news.”
Mr Edwards, who works as a computer engineer for Avon and Somerset Probation Service, is taking a month of work to decide his next move.
But the family are determined to go on holiday and buy a bigger house in time for Christmas so that all two of the couple’s children who still live at home can have their own rooms.
Mr Edwards said: “Everyone has an idea of what they want to buy if they ever won the lottery but when you do all those ideas seem silly and you dismiss them.
“I always thought I’d like to go to the North Pole and run around naked like Billy Connolly.
“All of a sudden you have this great amount of money but you have to invest it and look after it and your family.”
The couple met through an internet dating agency two years ago and a week after their first date realised they were going to spend the rest of their lives together.
They married six months ago in Chantmarle Manor, in Frome St Quintin, near Yeovil, where they announced their win today.
Mrs Edwards said: “You don’t go on Internet dating sites to meet your husband, I went on to find someone I enjoyed spending time with but when we met that was it and 18 months later we were married.
“It has been hard the past few years, we were always in our overdraft and relying on credit cards, living from week to week.
“But we have worked through it by making the most of what we have, we could never have got together a deposit for a house and I have worked my whole life so it’ll be nice to have some time off.”
Mr Edwards said: “But we want the children to realise that we were lucky to win the lottery and that you have to work hard for your daily bread.”
If you’ve ever wondered what’s the motivation for foreign women who look for American men—or foreign men who look for American women—take a look at this article below.
Vietnam women marry foreigners to escape poverty They may not get rich, but they can help their parents get out of debt.
From the Associated Press
TAN LOC ISLAND, VIETNAM — Nearly 70 young Vietnamese women swept past in groups of five, twirling and posing like fashion models, all competing for the hand of a Taiwanese man who had paid a matchmaking service about $6,000 for the privilege of marrying one of them.
Sporting jeans and a black T-shirt, 20-year-old Le Thi Ngoc Quyen paraded in front of the stranger, hoping that he would select her.
“I felt very nervous,” she recalled recently as she described the scene. “But he chose me, and I agreed to marry him right away.”
Like many women from the Mekong Delta island of Tan Loc, Quyen had concluded that finding a foreign husband was her best route out of poverty. Six years later, she has a beautiful daughter and no regrets, she says.
From the delta in Vietnam’s south to small rural towns in the north, a growing number of young women are marrying foreigners, mostly from Taiwan and South Korea. They seek material comfort and, most important, a way to save their parents from destitution in old age, which many Vietnamese consider their greatest duty.
Quyen has not gotten rich—her husband earns a modest living as a construction worker—but the couple have paid off her father’s debts.
Young women have become Tan Loc’s most lucrative export. About 1,500 village women from the island of 33,000 people have married foreigners in the last decade, leading some to call it Taiwan Island.
Women in Tan Loc and other delta towns began marrying foreigners in the 1990s, when Vietnam opened up economically and many Taiwanese and South Korean companies set up operations in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s southern business hub.
Poverty and the proximity of foreign businessmen seem to be major reasons for the trend. The biggest complaints come from women’s groups, who consider it demeaning, and from young village men for whom the pool of potential brides is shrinking.
With money from foreign sons-in-law, many residents in Tan Loc have replaced their thatch-roof shacks with brick homes. They also have opened small restaurants and shops, creating jobs in a place where people have traditionally earned pennies a day picking rice and other crops in the blistering sun.
The luckier families received enough to build ponds for fish farming.
Western Union has opened a branch to handle the money sent by newlyweds.
“At least 20% of the families on the island have been lifted out of poverty,” said Phan An, a professor who has done extensive research in Tan Loc. “There has been a significant economic impact.”
Not all the marriages work out.
Dam Psi Kin Sa went to Taiwan nine years ago at age 20 and married a thrice-divorced carwash owner more than twice her age. She met him through a matchmaking service.
Five years later, her husband demanded a divorce and locked her out of the house. Even though she had learned his language, Mandarin, the couple had trouble communicating. “We were angry at each other in a quiet way,” she said in Taipei, where she has remained to be close to her daughter.
Last year, one Vietnamese bride was beaten to death by her South Korean husband, another jumped out a 14th-story window, and a third hanged herself on Valentine’s Day, leaving behind a diary full of misery.
“A marriage that is not based on love often brings problems,” said Hoang Thi Thanh Ha of the Vietnam Women’s Union. “How can you live happily ever after when you met your husband three weeks before the wedding?”
Nevertheless, most young women in Tan Loc seem eager to marry a foreigner. Le Thanh Lang recently went to the town hall to get papers confirming that she is single and eligible to marry.
“Any country will do; I’ll take anyone who will accept me,” she said, waving the papers. “I need to send money to my parents.”
Besides the marriage broker’s fee, the groom gives about $300 to his bride’s family, Lang said. After that, if all goes well, her husband may send as much as several thousand dollars a year to her family.
Many Tan Loc families with married daughters abroad have big homes with color TVs, new furniture and karaoke machines.
Their neighbors live in huts.
Tran Thi Sach’s concrete home, with four large rooms and shiny green tile floors, is a mansion by island standards.
“Since my daughters got married, I’ve retired,” said Sach, 59, who used to toil in the rice fields with her husband.
“We lived in a shack,” she said. “We had to work no matter how hot it was, no matter how much it rained, from 5 in the morning until 5 in the afternoon. Sometimes we could only afford rice porridge.”
When her daughter Tho first said she planned to go to a marriage broker, Sach objected. What if her in-laws abused her? Where would she turn for help?
Tho married six years ago and her younger sister, Loi, two years later.
“Their husbands are gentle, handsome and hardworking,” Sach said. “They are really fine men.”
Next door, Nguyen Thi Chin lives in a two-room shack with a roof so leaky that when it rains she must move from spot to spot to avoid getting wet. Each of her seven children married a Vietnamese, all of them poor. At 70, she is still working, pulling mussels from the muck in the Mekong River.
“I could never have a house like that,” Chin said, glancing next door. “It’s my destiny to be poor. If I had another daughter, I’d ask her to marry a foreigner.”
More than 100,000 Vietnamese women have married Taiwanese men over the last 10 years and the numbers are rising, said Gow Wei Chiou of Taiwan’s representative office in Hanoi. In the same period, about 28,000 South Korean men married Vietnamese, according to the Vietnam Women’s Union.
As more Taiwanese and South Korean women move to cities to work, many men in those countries, especially those from rural areas, face increasing difficulty finding wives, Chiou said.
“Taiwanese women want to get married when they are much older, and they are also very opinionated,” said Lin Wen-jui, 39, who met his Vietnamese wife through a Taiwanese friend in Ho Chi Minh City. She has since taken a Taiwanese name, learned Mandarin and opened a restaurant.
The overseas marriage trend has been boosted by online matchmaking services such as the Singapore-based Mr. Cupid, which offers a “comprehensive Vietnamese marriage package” and five-day matchmaking tours. “No one ever came on our trip without finding their dream bride,” the site boasts.
In 2002, not long after Quyen went through her paces for her future husband, the Vietnam government outlawed commercial matchmaking services. The news media were reporting the phenomenon in vivid detail, and authorities said they were concerned that the business could be a cover for trafficking women into prostitution.
“They take hundreds of women at a time to a hotel and line them up for the men,” said Nguyen Thi Ngoc Hanh, vice chairwoman of the Ho Chi Minh City Women’s Union, a government agency that supports women. “It’s very disrespectful.”
But although driven underground, the practice continues, abetted by village matchmakers and secluded meetings with suitors.
Half the brides in such marriages are under age 21; half the grooms are 40 to 60.
“Sometimes the men ask them to pose naked,” Nguyen said. “It’s inhumane.”
Quyen still has vivid memories of going to the matchmaker’s house in Ho Chi Minh City, a 120-mile bus ride and a world away from Tan Loc.
“I was scared,” she said.
After Quyen made the final five, the man asked a few simple questions through an interpreter: How many brothers and sisters did she have? How far did she go in school?
They had dinner and Quyen agreed to marry him on the spot.
“My life in Taiwan is good,” she said during a visit to Tan Loc. “My husband and his family treat me well.”
Life is not so good, however, for the young men in Tan Loc who watch the exodus of marriage-aged women with despair. “If all the girls leave,” said Nguyen Hoang Mong, 19, “there won’t be anyone left for us. Marriage shouldn’t be about money. It should be about love.”
Where does your city place as the best for singles?
The Best Cities For Singles
Michael Noer
For the first time ever, Atlanta tops our list of the best cities for singles. The capital of Georgia and home of Coca-Cola earns the top slot because of its hopping nightlife, relatively high number of singles and sizzling job growth.
To those who know “Hotlanta,” the ranking should come as no surprise. In the eight years that we have been ranking America’s largest urban areas in terms of their friendliness to the nation’s 74 million single adults, only once did Atlanta place outside the top 10.
To determine which U.S. cities are most comfortable for soloists, we ranked the 40 largest urbanized areas in mainland America in seven different categories: number of singles, nightlife, culture, cost of living alone, job growth, online dating activity and coolness. To determine a city’s cool factor, we partnered with Harris Interactive (nasdaq: HPOL - news - people ), who conducted a poll, asking, “Among the following U.S. Cities, which one do you think is the coolest?” (Click here for the complete methodology.)
Complete List: The Best Cities For Singles
Last year’s winner, San Francisco, came in second this year, scoring particularly high in coolness (third out of 40) and culture (fourth). Overall, the coolest city was New York, while Midwestern fly-over cities like Indianapolis (40th) and Columbus, Ohio, (35th) did poorly on the Harris poll.
Overall, New York ranked as only the eighth-best place for would-be lovers. In addition to its top score in coolness, the Big Apple was ranked as the city with the best nightlife and the third-best cultural resources. But young singles need to eat as well as party, and New York scored dead last in the cost-of-living category. The city also placed a mediocre 29th in terms of job growth. Economic factors have always kept New York out of the top spot on our list.
The nation’s second-largest city, Los Angeles, came in 16th this year, a precipitous drop from its third-place finish in 2007. Blame the cost of living in sun-drenched SoCal and a lackadaisical online dating culture.
Jacksonville, Fla., ranked dead last this year, scoring poorly in all categories except online dating, where it ranked seventh. Providence, R.I., last year’s loneliest city for singletons, fared better, tying with Memphis, Tenn., and Cincinnati, Ohio, for 33rd place. Religious Salt Lake City, a perennial at the bottom of our list, comes in 39th this year. Mormonism’s hometown is penalized for its lack of available singles (39th), dismal nightlife (39th) and its square image (coolness: 38th).
By The Numbers: The Best Cities For Singles
Some surprises: Orlando, Fla., which had never placed in the top 10 before, came in ninth place. Minneapolis-St. Paul hadn’t made the top 10 since 2002 but came in third this year. The Twin Cities scored well in culture (ninth) and online dating (sixth) and ranked surprisingly high in coolness (eighth). Perhaps some respondents thought the Harris poll was asking about the weather.
Our rankings are meant to be a guide for young, ambitious singles who, in an age of techno-mobility, can live and work wherever they want. Our methodology focuses on career-minded, “never-marrieds” under the age of 35. Older singles, divorcees, widows and widowers might find slightly different criteria more relevant to them.
The Best Cities For Singles
1. Atlanta
2. San Francisco
3. Dallas
3. Minneapolis
5. Washington D.C.
6. Seattle
7. Boston
8. New York City
9. Orlando
10. Phoenix
11. Chicago
11. Denver-Aurora
13. Miami
14. Austin
15. San Antonio
16. Los Angeles
17. Houston
18. Charlotte
19. San Diego
20. St. Louis
21. Columbus
22. Philadelphia
23. Tampa-St. Petersburg
24. Las Vegas
25. Baltimore
26. Virginia Beach-Norfolk
27. Detroit
28. Pittsburgh
29. Portland
30. Buffalo
30. Milwaukee
32. Sacramento
33. Cincinnati
33. Memphis
33. Providence
36. Kansas City
37. Indianapolis
38. Cleveland
39. Salt Lake City
40. Jacksonville
Match.com matches a couple who were practically neighbors. No long-distance relationship here....
Internet matchup leads to marriage for University of Tennessee at Chattanooga teachers
By: Holly Leber-
As teachers at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Chris Stuart and Susan Seaton worked in adjacent buildings, had mutual acquaintances and parked in the same lot.
They never met, though, until they ventured into the world of online dating.
Mr. Stuart, an English professor, and Ms. Seaton, an adjunct instructor in the art department, encountered each other on match.com. They e-mailed once, met two days later and were married six months after that. If not for the Web, they say, things would be very different.
“We were in buildings right next to each other,” said Mr. Stuart. “We knew (mutual) people but hadn’t met.”
“And probably wouldn’t have,” Ms. Seaton said.
“And probably wouldn’t have,” he echoed.
This is a typical exchange. The newlyweds — they married on June 24 of this year — have a tendency to finish each other’s sentences. If one gropes for a word, the other supplies it. Their courtship was whirlwind; it was obvious to both early on that they were headed somewhere big.
“We started talking about (marriage) way too soon,” he said.
“We just kind of knew,” Ms. Seaton said.
“We met on a Monday, right?” Mr. Stuart chattered. “She went home for Christmas on Thursday, and she told her family ‘I might have met the one’.”
They laugh as they recall their story.
Ms. Seaton and Mr. Stuart didn’t have a typical online courtship. She was the one to reach out first, sending a brief e-mail to invite him for coffee. He countered with a suggestion of dinner. There was no composing of witty e-mails, no coy instant-message flirtation. Both were divorced and ready to brave the waters once again; neither was interested in playing games.
“(I thought) let’s meet in person and let’s go or not,” Ms. Seaton said.
“When you’re 40, you’re less interested in playing the field than maybe when you’re 20,” Mr. Stuart added.
The concept of dating again was intimidating, they agree. The decision to seek out a possible partner online was partially motivated by lack of practice and social limits placed on them by geography.
“There comes a point after being in a long marriage that to start dating again is ...” Ms. Seaton trailed off, trying to formulate the right word.
“Daunting,” Mr. Stuart supplied after a beat.
“Yeah, it’s daunting,” she agreed. “I don’t know how to do it, where do I go ... Chattanooga’s not that big.”
Mr. Stuart was separated for three weeks before he went online. It took her a year. They met on her second attempt at match.com. In her prior experience, she said, she’d found that the more online preamble there was before meeting, the more disappointing the ultimate meeting was. The second time around, she said, she questioned whether she even wanted to take another shot at meeting someone online.
“I had reservations about (meeting Mr. Stuart) and about going back online in the first place,” she said.
He’s the one who brings up her prior bad dates — clingy men or pretty faces with little substance.
“I had people write me back and (say) ‘Well, I thought you were cute. What’s up?’ ” she said. “That’s not enough, and (it was) freaking me out.”
She brushes off his urging to go into detail about a particularly harrowing experience, summarizing the man with: “He was insulting, he’d been married before, I think he was a meth addict ...”
“I had (no bad dates),” Mr. Stuart said. She was the first woman he encountered online, though he had a few other offers, she teased him.
As the veteran online dater of the two, she was more aware of its pitfalls, including misrepresentation. Fortunately, their proximity afforded her the opportunity to offer a reference — a mutual acquaintance. He didn’t bother.
“I figured anyone who’s honest enough to say ‘you can go talk to this person’ is probably all right,” Mr. Stuart said.
So what if they hadn’t been so close? Would the match still have been made?
He thinks so. She doesn’t.
“I would have made the trip, probably,” Mr. Stuart said.
“Not me,” Ms. Seaton countered.
Ultimately, she said, while the proximity was good, it was the proverbial icing on the cake, not the draw and attraction. They had common interests and similar backgrounds.
“We were going to have things to talk about, even if we didn’t fall in love or whatever,” he said.
“I am an artist. I am liberal. There aren’t that many of us (in Chattanooga),” Ms. Seaton said. “It wasn’t about ‘we work at the same place.’”
“It was about the right kind of person,” Mr. Stuart said. “Which was the cool thing about (match.com) ... you can make the pool a lot smaller real fast instead of feeling like you’re looking out at this vast sea of not knowing.”
My blog entry just before this was about Steve Penner, too. This guy knows what he’s talking about. I’m ordering his book right now.
Meet the Matchmaker: Steve Penner Dating columnist and new author says don’t be too picky, singles
By Rachel Forrest
Will you only date a woman who voted for Obama? Just tall dudes need apply? Are you looking for someone with kids — but only if the kids are out of the house? What about age? No one over 50?
If you have some strict ideas about just who you will or will not go out with, Steve Penner says that just might be the reason you can’t get a date or keep one. To be successful in the dating game, you’ve got to be open-minded — so get less picky and open that dating pool, and maybe take a look at yourself while you’re at it.
After interviewing 25,000 single men and women over the course of his 23 years as the owner of Boston-based LunchDates, the dating service he started in the 1980s, Penner — now of Stratham and the writer of The Truth About Dating column for Seacoast Media Group — says he can tell you just what you’ll need to know about yourself and the people you want to date to become successful at finding the right partner. His new book, “The Truth About Dating Revealed: How to Realize and Raise Your ‘Dating Quotient,’” is a provocative and humorous look at the dating world covering topics like the old biological clock, breaking up, what being “separated” really means, and most important, how to improve your “dating quotient” and where you stand in the social marketplace.
Penner spent almost 25 years assessing the “datability” of his clients at lunch dates, he now does the same for private clients and in workshops. The key? Be flexible without lowering your standards.
“As a dating coach and in seminars, I take a brief interview like the one I would have done at LunchDates. I’ve interviewed people who have a very high Dating Quotient (DQ) and didn’t even know it ...; tall guys are very much in demand but they don’t know that. There’s also a difference between a man being separated and a woman being separated.”
Penner says women are less likely to date a man who’s separated and that when men are “separated” they sometimes are still living in the same house as their spouse. Men on the other hand are more likely to date a separated woman and women balk at getting back into the dating game even if they’ve been separated completely for more than a year.
His advice? Your dating quotient goes up if you’re willing to date someone who’s separated, shorter, or maybe even a bit overweight.
“You’re changing your priorities without lowering your priorities. A lot of things people are unrealistic about aren’t important anyway, like height. What’s important in a marriage that lasts isn’t whether someone is tall or short. That’s irrelevant.”
LunchDates began in part because of Penner’s own divorce.
“I’d gotten divorced in 1979. I was 34. I had no idea what it was like being single in your 30s. I didn’t know how to meet a woman. I started a Scrabble Club and when I was talking to people at the club, I noticed most were single. Three couples got married from that club.”
Penner also noticed that more and more people were getting divorced in the ‘80s.
“Women were marrying later, they had careers, there were more divorces. There were just many more single people.”
So Penner started LunchDates, a social networking organization where he matched singles for meet and greets and in order to do that, he had to ask a lot of questions.
“I helped people realize that they have to have expectations that are realistic and then how to raise their Dating Quotient.”
While the ‘DQ” isn’t about hard numbers, singles lose points for characteristics like smoking, having gray hair, or just not being flexible about who they’ll date.
“Those never married guys 40 and up — most of them are guys who have been players. Now they’re ready to settle down and they only want the most beautiful woman they can find.”
Age is also a factor. In his chapter titled, ‘I’m A Young 62’ he notes, “If you are 40, I guarantee you think of yourself as being a ‘youthful’ __. (Fill in the blank; it doesn’t matter if you are 42, 52, or 62!) The fact is that over the past 23 years, 99.9 percent of the over 40 single men and women I interviewed at LunchDates claimed they were ‘very young’ for their age.”
No matter how young you feel, you might just have to date someone older and, as a result, find just the right person.
“Be flexible,” Penner says, “but without lowering your standards.”
I ordered Steve Penner’s book “The Truth About Dating Revealed” after reading a couple of his articles online – which were so good that I posted them to my blog. It came in the mail yesterday and I ready it practically in one sitting. As I said in my blog, “This guy knows what he is talking about.”
Penner ran a dating agency in Boston for 23 years, and during that time, amassed plenty of information and opinion on what makes it easier or harder for singles to meet up and eventually marry. He packages his experience here in “The Truth About Dating Revealed” as Dating Quotient (DQ), and what raises or lowers a single’s “datability.”
I am a Romance Coach, and Penner’s observations totally agree with what I have seen or suspected. I work with singles to use Internet dating sites, and the advantage that Penner offers – his direct observations of what works and what doesn’t – gives us a powerful peek backstage. Penner’s clients had the additional advantage of his experience and advice, and sometimes his powerful push. Internet daters rarely get this kind of insight. Penner’s mantra is “Be flexible, be very flexible.” Read his true life stories in the last chapter “And so, in conclusion…” You’ll be glad you did. And you’ll be closer to finding love as a result.
I’m adding “The Truth About Dating Revealed” to my must-read list for clients. It’s a winner.
You wouldn’t believe how many men AND women tell me they are “Young looking and acting” for their age, and use that to justify lying about how old they are on their dating profile. Nobody every tells me they look old for their age (much as I liked to hear that when I was 13). You are as old as you are—and so what? Age is a fact, and your date is bound to find out, one way or another. Do you really want to be found out as a liar on the very first date? We usually think of men going unrealistically younger in partner choice. Now women are on the bandwagon. See below.
Older woman, younger man: A match made in cyberspace
By Abigail Trafford
What do older women want?
Younger men.
Online dating services say women of a certain age want the white-haired gent, as long as he’s not too old. Women ages 50 and older almost always tell eHarmony.com that they want a younger man - 10, 15 years younger, sometimes more. And on Match.com, a 50-year-old woman is typically seeking a man who is 48.
“This is going to surprise you,” says Craig Wax, senior vice president and general manager of Match.com North America. “It’s the woman who is going for the younger guy.”
Women have come a long way. Going for the younger guy is perhaps yet another triumph for the women’s movement, which has broken down barriers between the sexes and pushed for equal opportunity in all spheres of life. The change is buttressed by the new biology of aging. Women, according to calculations based on mortality risk, are five years “younger” than men the same age. The 65-year-old woman is the biological equivalent of a 60-year-old man. So it’s sensible, not just fanciful, for a woman to look for a younger guy.
But there’s a problem: The men don’t get it. They are stuck in the old biology of aging. They, too, are looking for younger partners. On eHarmony.com, men 50 and older are seeking women who are six to 26 years younger. On Match.com, the average 56-year-old man is looking for a 54-year-old woman. Seems reasonable, but by the time he reaches 70, he wants a 58-year-old woman.
Gender equality in the search for younger partners is creating a mating gap in gray love. A 70-year-old woman is looking for a 66-year-old man. The 65-year-old man is looking for the 54-year-old woman. And a 56-year-old woman is looking for a man who is 46! How does anybody hook up in later life with these wide differences in what men and women want?
Fortunately, age is not the most important issue in a relationship. At eHarmony, members are matched according to psychological profile and personality characteristics. What are your values? Are you an extrovert? Are you open to new experiences, or do you prefer to stick with what you know?
“The process of developing a successful relationship is the same whether someone is in the 20s or 80s. People do better if they are matched with those who are similar to them on important dimensions,” says psychologist Galen Buckwalter, chief scientist at eHarmony.com. “Age, in and of itself, is not a factor in compatibility.”
When two people find common ground in their values, interests and personality traits, “there is less need to negotiate differences. A lot less emotional wear and tear,” Buckwalter says. There’s “an implicit level of understanding.”
There is also a difference in what people say they want and what they end up finding. On eHarmony, members are encouraged to report when they are dating seriously or are getting married. Of those who share their success stories, nearly one in four involves a partner age 50 or older.
For women with such success stories, the typical age gap between them and their new partner is plus or minus four years, whether they’re in their 40s, 50s, 60s or 70s. For men, the gap inches upward from plus or minus four years at age 40 to plus or minus six years at age 60. That’s a narrower range than what members list as their initial preference.
“Everyone would like to find someone smarter, better-looking, wealthier ... and sure, younger. Why wouldn’t you start there?” says Wax of Match.com. But once you see who is out there, “you’re willing to make a number of different trade-offs. In the end, it doesn’t matter what a person’s age is. It matters how well they connect.”
Newlyweds Ruth Johnson-Mullis, 85, and Leonard Mullis, nearly 87, of Littleton, Colo., met on Match.com. Both had been widowed. Each said they weren’t interested in marriage but wanted “someone to have dinner with,” Johnson-Mullis says. She had a hard time at first with online dating: She e-mailed eight or 10 men and never got a reply. They were all looking for women in their 60s and 70s, she says. “Who wants an 84-year-old woman?”
“I did,” Mullis says. He had to drive up into the mountains to meet her. There were no restaurants, so she made him lunch. “From that point on, I was a dead duck,” he says. After a three-month courtship, they married. “At my age, I don’t believe in long engagements. No use fooling around.”
They have much in common. Both grew up in Florida. They lived through World War II. Both are in good health and go to exercise class twice a week. “We were raised in the same manner. We were raised in the same era. We have so much to talk about,” Johnson-Mullis says. And both had long first marriages.
Experience is an asset in late-life mating. As Johnson-Mullis says, “If a man stays with a woman for 59 years, he’s not going to run away from me if I’m not perfect.”
Oi, oi, oi! When to have sex the first time? Here’s what the Advice Chick says:
From the AdviceChick on what happens when you have sex too soon:
-----> Ladies, please listen. Notice the signs. Listen to your intuition. When you’re with a guy B.S. (that’s BEFORE Sex) everything is good. He calls all of the time. He responds to your emails almost instantly, he is available and is interested. Usually A.S.T.S. (AFTER sex too soon) he doesn’t (or rarely calls), ignores your emails, and isn’t available or interested. <-----
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