Here’s a new way to make some money that specifically eliminates sex from the deal (though who could stop you if both were interested?): RentaFriend.com It has a little bit of yick factor, in that people exchange money for what is usually done for free—the services friends do for each other. I guess I get itchy whenever money enters the equation, though I guess it always does, at some level or antoher. What do you think?
Popular rent a friend website allows people to pay for friendship; it’s created an internet buzz
‘Net Buzz ExaminerMarci Stone
RentAFriend.com allows people to rent friends from the US and Canada, and the site has created an internet buzz Monday morning. A friend can be rented to go to a movie, restaurant, a party, to teach you something, or show you around town, or just hang out. You enter your zip code and you can see profiles of friends available for rent in your area. In order to book that friend you must sign up on the website, and pay a small membership fee, and then you can contact the potential friends.
The site states that they are strictly a platonic friends website, and that they are not a dating website, nor are they an escort service.
A friend can be used for a variety of activities including: having a workout partner, someone to give you personal advice, go to a sporting event, or they can teach you a new language.
Many of the friends on RentAFriend.com are about $10 an hour, some are more. But most are willing to negotiate their fee depending on the activity. Once you become a member, you can contact the friend directly to speak about your plans.
Ooohh, I just don’t know how I feel about this one. The photo with the article (follow the link and maybe you can see it too) shows a very overweight man with a slim, attractive woman, and the article makes clear he is 15 years older than she is. Now, he may have gained the weight since meeting her, but this is such a clear case of a less marketable man (at least with similarly aged American women) using money and the promise of life in the USA to get a young, pretty, and desperate woman. The ick factor for me is high. What about for you?
Inter-racial couple finds true love online
By Henni Espinosa, ABS-CBN North America News Bureau
ORINDA, California – An inter-racial couple found each other 6 years ago through a dating website.
Filipina Rhoda Mae Sancho, 35, and American Rick Vincent, 50, found the love online.
Sancho was born poor in Bacolod City. She was only a high school graduate, unemployed and desperate to get out of the country. She saved P20.00 a day to go an Internet café with the goal of finding true love online.
“Kahit mahirap ako, tinitiis ko talaga na maka-Internet, makatagpo ako ng mabait na Amerikano, makapunta ako dito para maiahon ko rin ang pamilya ko sa hirap,” said Sancho.
In 2004, she found Vincent through a dating website. Vincent is a millionaire stockbroker from the Bay Area who was ready to start a family.
A few months after their first online chat, Vincent flew to the Philippines to meet Sancho and her family for the first time.
“Pinangkra ko talaga siya, sabi ko ‘I’m so sorry. I cannot speak too much English kasi I’m only high school graduate. Sabi niya, ‘It’s okay. I understand what you’re saying.’ Sabi ko, ‘Thanks God!’” Sancho recalled.
For Vincent, it was love at first sight. Because he fell in love with Sancho, he also felt the need to help her and her family out of poverty.
“I knew that if I wanted to marry a Filipina girl, I had to make her parents happy. That’s what I did my first trip. I brought my mother-in-law 2 boxes of See’s Candies,” said Vincent.
“Parang hindi ako makapaniwala na lahat ibinigay niya sa akin. Yung gusto ko lang mahalin niya yung anak ko kasi lumaki siyang walang tatay,” said Sancho.
Not only did Vincent become Sancho’s husband on January 2005, he also became a father to Juliana, her daughter from a previous relationship. Juliana is now 8.
Soon, Sancho bore Vincent 2 children—Charlotte, now 2, and Kenneth, now 10-months old.
While they live comfortably in the US, Vincent has not forgotten to take care of Rhoda’s family and relatives in the Philippines.
He now sends 22 nieces and nephews, even children of Sancho’s friends, to school.
He also bought her parents a new home where he plans to build a swimming pool for them.
Vincent said the secret to an inter-racial marriage is the same as any other marriage.
“I make sure that when she says something, I say, ‘Yes, Hon,’” he said.
“Yung love, walang pinipili yan. Kung nagmamahalan kayo talaga, hindi importante kung sino ka man, kung ano ka man,” said Sancho.
Women in our culture have traditionally tried to ‘marry up,” that is, find men of higher social or economic class. It makes sense from a biological point of view: These men should be better able to provide for a wife and family. The technical term is hypergamy. Men do the opposite: trade their money and power for youth and beauty. This kind of imbalance exists in cultures where there is gender inequality. But now as women are catching up and sometimes surpassing men career- and money-wise, there are fewer men for educated, successful women to marry up to. Ergo, a cultural shift: educated successful women are prudently considering men who could be seen as “less than.” The real consideration here is if the man is good husband material. Plenty of powerful, educated men are real jerks and poor husbands.
Education, income and relationships
By Stephanie Chen, CNN
May 17, 2010 9:12 a.m. EDT
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* Pew: Women made more than men in 22 percent of married couples surveyed in 2007
* “It doesn’t bother me one bit that she makes more money,” says one husband
* Expert: Relationships where women are more educated can work if values are the same
(CNN)—If dating is a numbers game, then single ladies should consider this: A Pew Research Center report this year noted a surge in women between the ages of 30 and 44 making more money than their husbands.
Women made more money than men in 22 percent of married couples surveyed in 2007, compared with 4 percent in 1970. While men make more money overall and hold more management positions, women are making greater gains.
“The supply of men has changed,” said D’Vera Cohn, senior writer at the Pew Research Center’s Social and Demographic Trends project. “The pool of college educated men isn’t growing as rapidly as it is for women.”
There is also a gender shift in the realm of education. Women represent nearly 60 percent of students holding advanced degrees in areas such as medicine, law, business and graduate programs, the U.S. Census reported in April.
Researchers have found educational attainment to be a higher priority among couples than ever. Popular online dating sites Match.com and eHarmony report that romances happen occasionally between educated, professional women and men who are less educated or have a lower salary.
Leah MacIsaac-Ruff, 45, works 11-hour-plus-days as a technology vice president at a Wall Street firm. She has a college degree. So does her husband, Doug, 43, who walks dogs for a living.
MacIsaac-Ruff may be the breadwinner, but she finds her husband’s career choice refreshing.
“If I were to marry a type-A personality and we sat on our computers side by side in the evenings, I think I’d die,” she says. “I think I’d be in a cold relationship. The last thing I want is to go home to an investment banker.”
Despite their job disparities, the couple share enjoyment of the opera and theater. When they attend her upscale corporate events, she isn’t embarrassed when people ask about her husband’s profession. Instead, people are intrigued by his dog-walking job.
“It doesn’t bother me one bit that she makes more money,” said her husband one morning as he was gearing up to walk 15 dogs. “I couldn’t be more proud of what she’s done in the business world.”
The recession has shaken some traditional gender expectations, said several marriage and family experts. About 4.7 million jobs were lost among men during the recession, according to April figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Two million women lost their jobs, the report said, leaving more women to become sole supporters of their families.
Particularly among the millennial generation, people are less likely to have gripes with a woman who earns more and has more education, said Nicole Johnson, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Professional Women. Her organization represents 150,000 women, with a majority working in a white-collar profession.
“At one point, the stereotype was a man might feel inferior to a woman who is at a higher point in her career than he is,” Johnson said. “I think that’s dissipated a bit, where there aren’t these built-in expectations of who should be above.”
Educated, professional women exposed to men working lower-paying jobs growing up are more likely to date them, said Amadu Jacky Kaba, a sociology professor at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. “When they see a hard-working garbage collector or different kinds of lower-level jobs, then they trust them,” Kaba said.
Robin Coates, 45, of Mobile, Alabama, found starting a relationship with her boyfriend, Sam, a 39-year-old who installs floors, to be tricky. Coates works as a creative director and has a college degree. She, too, makes more money than her boyfriend, who dropped out of school in the eighth grade.
“Many years ago he said, ‘I’m not the guy for you. You need to be dating a guy with a suit and tie,’ ” she said.
Coates said they have dated for eight years and plan to get married soon.
Dating a man who makes less money or hasn’t attained as high a level of education can be difficult, said Whitney Casey, a dating expert at Match.com, the online dating site for singles. She said the differences can work if the couple has similar goals and values.
“There are benefits, too,” she said. “It can open your world and make you become a better-rounded person.”
Men are more interested in sex than women? No surprise here, but interesting research to back it up.
Even in Old Age, Men Want Sex More Than Women Do
By John Cloud Tuesday
Spring is coming, and a young man’s thoughts turn to ... you know. Apparently, old men’s thoughts turn to the same subject. According to an article to be published Wednesday in the British Medical Journal, 67% of men ages 65 to 74 said they had been sexually active in the past year, compared with just 40% of women in that age group. Everyone knows young men think constantly about sex, but many guys remain interested in sex until they are almost dead: more than one-third of men ages 75 to 85 said they had sex in the past 12 months, compared with just 17% of women in that age group.
Some of this surely has to do with Viagra, which makes it easier for older men to be interested in sex. But the disparity in sexual activity between older men and older women isn’t entirely explained by the 1998 release of the little blue pill. One set of data presented in the new paper — taken from the National Survey of Midlife Development, involving about 3,000 adults ages 25 to 74 — was collected in 1995 and 1996. That data set shows that 62% of men ages 65 to 74 reported sexual activity in the previous six months; only 36% of women in the same age group did so.
These differences matter because having a healthy sex life is strongly associated with having a healthy life, period — and also a longer life. Scientists aren’t sure about the causal relationship here. Sexually active people tend to be healthier, and healthier people tend to be sexually active. It could be that the fulfillment of sex gives you a health boost, or that being more fit makes sex better — or, more likely, it’s a little of both.
What we do know, from this new paper, is that if you are a 30-year-old male, you can be expected to have sex for 35 more years. The authors — Dr. Stacy Tessler Lindau and researcher Natalia Gavrilova of the University of Chicago — call this measure your “sexually active life expectancy,” or SALE. A 30-year-old woman has a SALE of just 31 more years. (The study also finds that men and women who stay healthy and in good shape gain extra years of sexually active life in older age, compared with their peers in poorer health.) But women live about five years longer than men, so when you do the math, all this means that women go approximately twice as long without sex as men before they die.
Older women also enjoy the sex they do have far less than older men. Married women ages 57 to 64 who haven’t been divorced or widowed report having about as much sex as married men in the same age group. But while 77% of partnered men in that age group say they are interested in sex, only 36% of partnered women report the same interest. These figures suggest that a lot of older women may be having sex when they don’t really want to.
Lindau, the lead author on the paper, is cautious about drawing strong conclusions from this variance. “It may be that women are more likely to have sex for reasons other than fulfilling pleasure — or that they are more interested in giving a partner satisfaction,” she says. “Maybe they lack the agency, or maybe they feel marital duty, but our paper doesn’t provide an explanation.” (See how to prevent illness at any age.)
It’s a shortcoming in the paper that the journal itself notes: in a British Medical Journal editorial accompanying the paper, Texas A&M University professor Patricia Goodson says that while Lindau and Gavrilova’s new SALE measure might someday prove a useful tool for gauging an aging population’s medical and public-health needs as they relate to sex, it “sheds no light on the intriguing — and still poorly understood — question of why, even though they enjoy fewer years of sexually active life, many women do not perceive this as a ‘problem.’ “
Another problem the editorial doesn’t mention: the paper is based on self-reported data, and although the authors note that self-reported information about health is usually highly consistent with objective health data, reports of actual sexual activity simply cannot be objectively measured. Even so, the paper does confirm a large difference in sexual interest among older men and older women.
The reasons for the male-female sex disparity among the elderly may not be clear, but the paper shows that the problem in sex quality seems to worsen with age. Still, there is a silver lining for older women having bad or unwanted sex: men tend to die younger than women. Also, it is men’s increasing physical and health problems that are most commonly cited (by both men and women) as the reason sexual activity declines later in life.
The new paper raises more questions than it answers. When interviewed, Lindau avoids making any sweeping social commentary. Instead, she notes that as a gynecologist, she gets a lot of questions from older patients about whether their level of sexual activity is normal. “And I haven’t had the data to give these women answers,” she says. The new paper is a start.
Some people lie online, for sure. But it looks like the word is getting out that it doesn’t make sense to lie if you are looking for a long term relationship.
Online dating liars: Why they do it
By Jason Hanna, CNN
Those who tell you what you want to hear in real life will tell you the same online, a study finds.
(CNN)— Worried that the 27-year-old man making $70,000 as profiled on an online dating service isn’t so young or taking home that much cash?
Chances are he’s telling the truth if the site is geared toward long-term relationships.
But if he’s lying, he’s probably a people pleaser—the type of person who’d try to put himself in the best light even if you’d found him offline first, according to a University of Kansas researcher.
In professor Jeffrey Hall’s survey of 5,020 men and women who belonged to an undisclosed Internet dating site, most respondents indicated they wouldn’t lie. But those saying they were most likely to lie generally gave answers to other questions indicating they were people pleasers, or “high self-monitors.”
Such people have an acute sense of what others like and control their own behavior accordingly for social ends. Because they want to be liked and fit in, these people, whether online or off, may lie about weight, age, income and interests, Hall said.
“The type of people who misrepresented themselves online is the same type of people who do so face-to-face,” Hall, an assistant professor of communication studies and the study’s lead author, said by phone Thursday.
In the study, published in the February issue of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, respondents were asked to rate on a 10-point scale the likelihood that they would misrepresent their education, income, relationship goals, personal interests, weight and age to a potential date online. An answer of 1 indicated “not at all likely;” a 10 indicated “very likely.”
“On average, answers were close to around 2 for the most part,” Hall said.
Men indicated they were more likely than women to lie in every category except weight, according to the study.
However, the differences between men and women were small, Hall said. For example, men led women 2.01 to 1.83 when it came to lying about education and income. Women led men 3.24 to 2.37 in lying about weight.
The strongest predictor of lying wasn’t gender, but high self-monitoring, Hall said.
“Personality makes much more of a difference in how much people lie,” he said.
Hall wouldn’t name the dating site to which the respondents belonged, but he said that people interested in long-term relationships “tend to be the users that are attracted to this site” and that the site didn’t commission the study.
Hall said it added to other research showing that—particularly for people looking for long-term relationships—the amount of lying is usually small, because people want an anticipated face-to-face meeting to go well.
“Online daters shouldn’t be concerned that most people are presenting a false impression of themselves,” Hall said in a news release before Thursday’s phone interview. “What influences face-to-face dating influences the online world, too.”
The study also was authored by professors Namkee Park of the University of Oklahoma, Hayeon Song of the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and Michael Cody of the University of Southern California.
Why lie? Seems like more and more people are realizing it just doesn’t make sense.
Online dating as honest as real life
By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, March 11 (HealthDay News)—For the millions looking for love on the Internet, the nagging question remains: Is my virtual paramour the person they say they are?
A new survey of more than 5,000 U.S. online daters finds that the answer to that question is—by and large—‘yes,’ or at least as honest as they would be in face-to-face dating.
The study also found that when fibs do occur, men and women appear equally guilty.
“The concerns people have when dating online are very similar to the ones they have in their face-to-face lives. And we found that dating behavior is very similar as well,” said study author Jeffrey Hall, an assistant professor in the department of communication studies at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.
The study appears in the March 8 issue of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.
The new study comes on the heels of recent work by German and U.S. researchers indicating that users of friendship-oriented social networking sites, such as Facebook, offer up realistic self portraits when posting online profiles.
But is this true for the online dating world, where the emotional stakes are higher?
To find out, Hall and his team administered an online survey in 2007 to more than 5,000 American adults—all patrons of a “large [unnamed] online dating site”.
Participants averaged 40 years of age, more than 80 percent were white, and nearly three-quarters were women. More than half said they were single and had never been married, while just over 40 percent said they were divorced. A little over two-thirds said they were not currently involved in a romantic relationship.
After collecting demographic information, the participants were asked how likely they would be to misrepresent themselves online with respect to their personal attributes, relationship goals, personal interests, personal assets, and/or past relationships.
The researchers also ranked participants in terms of how neurotic, extroverted, conscientious, agreeable, and/or open they were.
The online daters also completed a questionnaire to assess to what degree they were capable of putting on a “social performance” and/or altering their behavior during face-to-face meetings, simply to suit particular people and changing circumstances.
As a whole, those who indulged in such behaviors—generally driven by an interest in being liked, fitting in, and/or looking good—were characterized as “self-monitors”—people who are predisposed to stage-manage the impressions they make on others.
According to the study, patrons of the online dating site were no more or less likely to lie about themselves than people who find dates the old-fashioned way via work, recreation or friends.
It was an individual’s personality that seemed to determine whether they would lie or bend the truth in the virtual world.
For example, being “adventurous” and “open” to new experiences lowered the likelihood of lying online, presumably because such individuals felt they were interesting enough to begin with.
On the other hand, while extroverts were less likely than introverts to misrepresent their personal interests, they were more likely to lie about their prior relationship history online. The authors speculated that this could be a function of extroverts having had a more “active” past then their introverted colleagues—a fact they might prefer not to highlight.
People who tended to shift their behavior to create more favorable impressions in “real-world” meetings—so-called “high self-monitors”—were most likely to try to deceive others online, the team found.
“So when these kind of people are online and looking to date they’re going to make their pictures better and their profile more exciting,” noted Hall. “By comparison, low self-monitors are going to present themselves exactly as they are in all circumstance—in person and online.”
Being a neurotic personality seemed to have no bearing one way or the other on honesty in online dating, the team found.
Demographics also played a role in online deception. Not surprisingly, older online daters were more likely to lie about their age than younger daters, and men were more likely to shave years off their age than women.
Overall, however, “we found that the differences between men and women online were very small,” Hall stressed.
“Yes, we did find that women were more likely to misrepresent their weight,” he added. “And men were more likely to misrepresent their personal interests, and more likely to misrepresent personal assets like job and money and personal attributes, like how nice and polite they are. But these latter differences were really very small.”
Hall stressed, however, that levels of online deception might change depending on the context.
“The survey was about people more interested in establishing a single romantic relationship,” he noted. “But there are sites that are exclusively dedicated to the hook-up—the short-term, casual sex experience. And in that case, you don’t really need to present yourself in a fully authentic way, because the purpose is just to enjoy yourself in a one-night stand. And a survey of that kind of online group might find very different results.”
Eli Finkel, an associate professor of social psychology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., said the study results came as little surprise.
“These findings lend empirical validation to my longstanding assumption that the typical person using modern dating approaches doesn’t differ much from the typical person using traditional dating approaches,” he said.
“There was probably a time when people using dating services were different in important ways from the general dating population,” added Finkel, “but that seems to be less and less true as modern dating approaches become increasingly popular. Online daters, speed-daters, and the like seem to be just like the rest of us in most ways. That this intuition extends to truth-telling among online daters is important validation of that general point.”
I’m “feeling” a trend: Internet dating is going to be increasingly populated by older singles, while the younger ones will gravitate towards Facebook, Twitter, mobile and video dating. What do you think?
Online and Over 50: Dating for the Dated
Posted By: Jon Sobel
Online dating isn’t just for the young. In fact, it’s not even mostly for the young.
It might come as a shock to Twitter-happy tweens, but the Web itself is a mere youth: if it were a person, it would just be graduating high school about now. Yet, in a new twist on the old saw that youth is wasted on the young, it’s older folks who are making the best use of the Web when it comes to searching for that special someone.
According to a survey conducted in early 2006, the odds an adult 40 - 58 in a relationship met his or her partner through an online dating service were just 1 in 33.33. For those 59 and older, they stood at an even slimmer 1 in 100. But this situation appears to have changed. Match.com, one of the leading online dating services, reports that 1 in 5 of its members is 50 or older—and that demographic is the site’s fastest growing segment.
A 2009 survey of adults in the UK who had dated in the past year found that the over-55’s were the most active online daters: 1 in 1.61 (62%) of them had joined a dating site, almost three times the rate of 18 - 24-year-olds. These mature singles had an average of 8.2 Internet dates and met an average of 2.4 sexual partners online.
Aligned with this trend, a 2010 US study of newlywed couples found that those who’d met online tended to be older, and less likely to be in a first marriage, than those who’d met in a more traditional way.
One might have expected the opposite—that younger people, more comfortable with technology and the Internet, would be the more active (and successful) online daters. But young people typically have more active real-world social lives, and hence more opportunities to meet people in the flesh. Older singles, by contrast, are more likely to have children, time-consuming careers—and an understandable aversion to the loud, youth-oriented bar and club scene. And as time goes by, older people get more accustomed to using the Internet.
Perhaps the greatest dating challenges await the retired. Today’s seniors are less likely than in the past to be able to count on their grown children to take them in and care for them if and when that time comes, so many single seniors are highly motivated to find a companion. But they have relatively limited opportunities to meet eligible singles. As one retiree active in online dating put it, either you move to an assisted living community with a built-in social scene, a proposition which is often quite costly, you take up bridge, or you learn how to post your profile on the Internet.
Given these choices, surfing for love and companionship seems mighty attractive.
It’s always good to get some facts and figures about what is really going on. Here are some from the over 50 crowd, who by the way, ARE crowding the dating sites.
Dissecting the Data: Best Changes in Modern Dating Etiquette
In addition to top-line results from the more than 5,000 poll respondents in total, the data reveal some intriguing differences between male and female respondents at SeniorPeopleMeet.com. Among the findings:
—Women place the most emphasis on the ease of communication via the Internet (48%), compared to men nearly splitting their opinions between the gender equality in asking for a date (39%) and the Internet’s communication ease (36%).
—Men welcome the lack of stigma about sex far more than women do (11% for men vs. 4% for women).
—Conversely, women appreciate the decreased pressure to marry more than men do (13% for women vs. 8% for men).
—Relatively few of either gender cares much about the idea that men and women can take turns paying (4% for women vs. 6% for men).
—Among those respondents who named the gender equality in asking for a date as the best change, 49% were women and 51% were men —the only evenly divided response according to gender.
—Among those respondents who named the decreased stigma about sex as being the best change, 71% were men and just 29% were women.
—Among those respondents who named the newfound equality in paying as the best change, 57% were men and 43% were women.
—Among those respondents who named the Internet makes it easier to communicate as the best change, 62% were women and just 38% were men.
—Among those respondents who named feeling less pressure to marry as the best change, 66% were women and 34% were men.
Here’s an article that really “gets it” about Internet dating and the enormous benefit it has been to older people looking for love, in particular, the never marrieds, who it appears are now getting married and never before rates.
SOME WAIT TO TIE THE KNOT
By Sharon Jayson, USA TODAY
When she was still single in her 40s, Debra Siegel made a list of qualities for her yet-elusive perfect husband: honest, family-oriented, a hard worker and physically fit.
But the years passed and the list went unfulfilled.
“When I hit 50, the bells went off,” she says. “I didn’t want to be alone for the rest of my life.”
That’s when she took what she calls “drastic action.”
Her future husband, Dan Furlin, was of a similar mind.
“I didn’t think marriage was in the picture for me,” he says. “Once you hit 50, you don’t want to go through the rest of life without your soul mate. I was a little bit more aggressive.”
Both went the online dating route and met within months. The Dunedin, Fla., couple are both fitness-conscious and vegetarian. They were also both natives of New York state, and each had lived in Los Angeles. They moved to Florida — Furlin to Clearwater and Siegel to Orlando — before meeting online. They married in 2003.
Siegel-Furlin, 56, and Furlin, 58, are among a small but growing group of older adults marrying for the first time after age 45. Years ago, these older singles would have been known as the “spinster” neighbor or the confirmed “bachelor” friend. But now, longer life spans mean 50 is the new 30 — there’s plenty of life ahead. That, coupled with the baby boomer “never-wanna-be-old” attitude and a greater number of aging singles in the population, makes it more likely that those who want to marry actually will.
A USA TODAY analysis of Census records of Americans ages 45-55 shows that the percentage of those who said they had never been married in 2006 had doubled since 1990, and the percentage of those who were currently married had dropped by 9%.
It’s fairly difficult to get a real handle on this segment of the singles population because no federal entity tracks first marriages at specific ages. The closest count is the median age at first marriage, which in 2006 (the latest year for which data are available) was at its highest point: men at 27.5 and women at 25.5, according to the U.S. Census.
A tally by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is available just for a 20-year period, 1970 to 1990, shows that in 1990, only 0.4% of women and 0.6% of men married for the first time at ages 45 to 49.
According to the most recent data from the federal Survey of Income and Program Participation, which includes marriage, 13% of those who wed in 2003 were 45 and older.
Internet dating has largely made it possible for many of these later-life first marriages. It’s only in recent years that some sites have started monitoring that demographic. Among them is Yahoo Personals, based in Santa Clara, Calif., which reports a 33% increase from January 2006 to November 2007 among users ages 45 and over who say they have never been married. Since 2005, Match.com reports an increase of almost 10% of new members 45 and older and who have never been married; these now make up almost 14% of its members.
New patterns, new people
“As people get older, they tend to find themselves in fairly established patterns, so the ability to meet new people goes down over time. They’ve got to do something new if they want to meet different people,” says Craig Wax of Dallas, senior vice president and general manager for Match.com for North America.
Brian Lebowitz, 57, and Lise Goldman, 53, are to be married June 22. They met online almost two years ago and found out at the time that they lived within blocks of each other. Lebowitz, an attorney, lives in Washington, D.C. Goldman, who works in economic development, now lives in suburban Chevy Chase, Md. Lebowitz says his job and his hobby as a book collector took up most of his free time. But when he turned 55, he decided to give online dating a shot.
“I’d pretty much given up, but then thought I would give it a try and see what it was like,” he says. “Some people — myself included — would be more comfortable starting off communication by e-mail rather than going up to somebody at a party. It’s a less threatening way to go about it.”
Goldman says she always wanted to be married. She had been engaged twice — once in her mid-20s and again more than a decade ago — but she says it just wasn’t right until she met Lebowitz, whom she says is intelligent and kindhearted.
“There are wonderful people still out there who are hiding away in their work,” she says. “He’s an international lawyer, so he needs to work evenings a lot. That’s been one of the blessings that kept him away from the dating scene.”
Dating websites have been reinventing themselves since online dating took off in the mid-1990s. They’ve refined their methods, largely emphasizing a more scientific approach, which often includes compatibility and personality testing. Others have focused on niche marketing, including Spark Networks, whose online dating sites include JDate for Jewish singles, as well as CatholicMingle.com, InterracialSingles.net, BlackSingles.com, LatinSinglesConnection.com and PrimeSingles.net. That site, as well as lavalifePRIME and BOOMj.com, is among those offering social networking for these older singles.
LavalifePRIME surveyed 1,001 adults ages 45-65 in the USA and Canada last month who are not in a serious relationship and found almost one-third (31%) have never been married.
Carl Weisman of Redondo Beach, Calif., author of So Why Have You Never Been Married?, conducted an online survey for the book and found that 48% of the 1,533 bachelors ages 40 and older who responded said they were afraid of marrying the wrong person.
“They’d rather go to the grave unmarried than marry someone wrong,” says Weisman, 49. “The No. 1 fear is marrying the wrong person — more than not marrying at all — by 10 to 1.”
In addition to the online survey, Weisman conducted lengthy telephone interviews with 30 men. He says writing the book changed his own perspective.
“I was interviewing men 10 years older than me, and I felt like I could look into my future. I was not necessarily afraid, but I realized if I didn’t change things, it was not going to change,” he says.
Just weeks after completing the book, Weisman says he met a woman at a wine-tasting event and they now live together. They’ve talked about marriage; by the time they tie the knot, he expects they will have known each other three years.
Pepper Schwartz, a sociologist at the University of Washington in Seattle who developed a personality test for Perfectmatch.com, says the Internet has given never-marrieds new hope for matrimony.
“If you were 50 and you went to a dinner party, what’s the chance of meeting a good selection, if any, of eligible people? People would show you the one person they knew who was single, and you would consider that person very closely, even if they were slightly disturbing, because you weren’t going to meet many,” she says.
Despite being engaged in her 20s, Stacey Kono, 48, of Beaverton, Ore., says she really didn’t think about looking for a husband when she was younger because she wasn’t sure a long-term relationship was for her.
Web of happiness
“It was never on my list of things to do. I just wanted to go to work,” she says. “Because I am financially stable on my own, I did not need a partner.”
Her husband, Terry Kono, 51, also was focused on his career. Because he’s in the military, he was moving at least every three years, which he says made developing a long-term relationship difficult.
But as they got older, both decided to try eHarmony, a site that matches members based on a lengthy compatibility questionnaire.
And they didn’t limit themselves on location: He lived in South Dakota; she was in Las Vegas. They dated for two years until he was transferred to Virginia. She moved to Virginia, and the couple were married last year.
Unlike the Konos, Richard Elliott,54, a software engineer from Bedford, Texas, says he had always wanted to be married, but “it just never happened.”
“I thought I’d buy a house and pool and work on an immaculate lawn, and I thought somebody would just show up. You get all these things and it makes you more attractive, but it doesn’t work that way. You have to get out there and be more proactive,” he says.
In his 40s, he says, he sold the house and bought a sailboat, which led him to meet people. He was in a short relationship with a woman 15 years younger, and after they broke up, he decided to look online. That’s where he met his wife, Cindy. They dated for a year, were engaged a year, and now they’ve been married a year and a half.
Cindy Elliott, a marketing manager, 49, says she had been in a five-year relationship during her early 30s and then figured it was too late for her.
“There was a time when I thought, ‘It’s just not going to happen.’ But the World Wide Web is a wonderful thing,” she says.
Now Forbes magazine weighs in. They touch on something I hadn’t thought of: What if two people who hired out their online dating prelims bumped into each other, that is, their virtual assistants made the dates for them, without either of them knowing that they were not dealing with the actual person?
A Surprisingly Simple Way To Date: Outsource It
Joan Indiana Rigdon, 06.03.10, 4:30 PM ET
“I wouldn’t dare speak to her, I don’t have the brains. The way people speak and write nowadays makes my head hurt. I’m just an honest, simple, terrified soldier.”
With these words, French soldier Christian de Neuvillette convinces Cyrano de Bergerac to help him pitch woo at the lovely Roxanne, whom Christian fears might be an intellectual. Christian is a man of very few letters: only four that spell “fool,” as Cyrano might say. But he is smart enough to turn to a sharper wit to help him win a woman’s heart.
Now, in the world of online dating, Cyrano-style services are for rent to any fool—er, guy—with a valid credit card. Busy guys, guys who can’t write, shy guys, guys who fear online rejection, guys who haven’t dated in years or guys who just find the process leading up to the date “really repetitive” can now pay virtual impostors to get dates for them. (Women use these services too, but for now it’s overwhelmingly a guy thing.)
These services write dating profiles, fish for prospects and perform the initial online flirting required to set up a first date. The first time a guy has to deal with his date is when he meets her in person.
Freelancer writers and companies like e-Cyrano have been offering profile-writing services for years. Dating Done for You, based in Toronto, takes it one step further by offering the services of a female staff member who will role-play a date with clients over the phone, and then give feedback. Virtual Dating Assistants is one of the few who offer initial flirtation.
What kind of guy goes for this?
Let’s be kind, and imagine a man who’s logging 70 hours a week. He has time for his career, golf and Twitter, but online dating is just too time-consuming.
There’s no village matchmaker, so he hires Virtual Dating Assistants. They get to know him and craft his perfect profile. They fish, they find, they flirt. They set up a time and place to meet. They fill him in on what exactly he said during the flirtation process, so his target will be none the wiser, unless he chooses to confess. They even tell him what to wear.
But why stop there?
For an additional fee, a dating service could offer on-site assistance, perhaps in the form of a woman who arranges to dine at the next table, so she can eavesdrop on how the client is doing. She could text him real-time advice, which he could read, say, when he excuses himself to go to the men’s room.
That’s not as romantic as Cyrano whispering lines under cover of night and foliage to a beautiful woman on a balcony in late 19th-century France, but it could work.
On their FAQ, right under the question about whether virtual dating is dishonest, services that offer on-site dating operatives could explain that all this isn’t as creepy as it sounds. They are, you could say, just like the friends their clients don’t have, who are trying to help out in any way they can.
For more money, hired dating operatives could listen in on the follow-up phone call, texting advice in real time.
Eventually, someone will figure out that this is just the tip of a virtual iceberg. If an automated dating service for busy women mated with an automated service for busy men and they could enter a virtual world where people interact through 3-D avatars to date each other in virtual bars ... what a lifeless dating world it would be.
Here we go again, another piece about outsourcing everything until the first date. This article zeros in more closely on the sense of lying and trickery.
Outsourcing Online Dating: Are We Really Okay With This?
Dear God. Single men (and a few women) are now paying strangers to find suitable dates for them online. According to a recent article in the Washington Post, they don’t have the time—or the will—to do it themselves.
So add relationships to the list of things that can be outsourced, along with cleaning your condo, detailing your car and buying and delivering your groceries.
One web-based company that provides this service, Virtual Dating Assistants, employs 45 freelance writers to pen and submit a suitor’s profile. Replies go to a writer’s inbox, thereby sparing the would-be suitor the embarrassment of not getting any responses or having to wade through, ponder, perhaps respond to, any he does receive.
The writer decides whom to answer and if a woman responds favorably, a “closer” sets up time and place.
Think about this from the point of view of the woman—and there’s a good chance it’s a woman since 80 percent of Virtual Dating Assistants’ clients are men. She is charmed by the person she reads about online and more intrigued once she starts receiving emails she presumes are from him. Does she know he’s not the sincere, soulful man he seems but actually some corporate suit who can’t be bothered to put a little thought and time into deciding whom he takes to dinner? Nope.
Say she sets aside several hours in her busy schedule to get dressed and joins him at a swanky restaurant, then by the second glass of Chardonnay realizes what a jerk he is. This could happen on a traditional first date too, of course, or on a date arranged by partners online who portray themselves as better-looking and smarter than they actually are.
But misrepresentation by surrogate seems somehow worse. Colder. Harder to detect. It has a kind of “I’ve been lied to” feeling times two.
Additionally, as my son Jeff, 26 and single, points out, the third-party setup may diminish any sense of responsibility a man might feel for making a date work.
The guy “hasn’t invested anything emotionally,” Jeff says. “So I wonder if it’s then easier for him to just get out early if there’s something that doesn’t work with the person he’s dating, rather than try to work through it. If I’ve spent a lot of energy trying to get a date with a girl, I’m likely to forgive minor eccentricities in the interest of the bigger picture. But if someone just hands me a girl that I didn’t have to work for, who knows?”
In the Washington Post story, reporter Ellen McCarthy quotes a 27-year-old man named Luke who outsourced online dating to his receptionist. Otherwise, “you have to go through 10 conversations to get one date,” he said.
Imagine having to actually communicate directly with people you might be interested in. What a concept.
Another plus in Luke’s mind? He doesn’t have to watch his online advances being turned down or worse, deleted without being read.
“Emotionally, I feel a little small pain of rejection every time that happens,” he said.
Of course it can be tedious to sort through overtures from people whom you have no interest in, and rejection is never fun. But isn’t it worth preserving some sense of personal connection to the selection?
No pain, no gain, I say.
Third-party matchmaking has been around a long time. Think of the village elder, priest, rabbi, parent.
But unlike the relationship concierge, these people of the past usually knew the couple in question and, in many cases, cared deeply about the couple’s well-being. Sometimes they were paid for their matches, but often not. The concierge, on the other hand, is in it only for the money.
The whole thing makes me incredibly sad, and reminds me of a book I reviewed last year. In A Vindication of Love, Cristina Nehring wrote:
“We inhabit a world in which every aspect of romance from meeting to mating has been streamlined, safety-checked and emptied of spiritual consequence. The result is that we imagine we live in an erotic culture of unprecedented opportunity when, in fact, we live in an erotic culture that is almost unendurably bland.”
People are not rental units or luxury sedans or oven-ready chickens and—forgive the cliché—many times in a relationship of any consequence, it’s the little things that mean the most. I can’t help thinking that regardless of how the surrogate-arranged dates turn out, these men, and the women they take to dinner, can’t possibly be getting their money’s worth.
Here’s more discussion about outsourcing your online dating work. These comments come closer to my sense that this amounts to a form of trickery, like lying, that should not be engaged in at all. If you can’t find the time, etc., to lay the groundwork, why should you get the intimacy?
Digital Cyranos: The Strangeness of Online Dating Surrogates
By Alex Eichler
A recent Washington Post trend piece describes the rise of “online dating assistants,” writers-for-hire who correspond with singles on matchmaking sites on behalf of their (mostly male) clients. Here’s how it works: Say you want to meet someone on Match.com or eHarmony, but are too busy, or otherwise disinclined, to write a profile, sort through potential partners, and exchange e-mails. You hire an online dating assistant to do all of this for you, under your name—and once the date is set up, you go out to meet someone in real life whom you may have never actually communicated with, and who thinks they’ve been talking to you all along.
Sound odd? More than a few writers think so:
* Basically Lying, is the opinion of Jared Gordon, a blogger quoted in the Post story. “It is! It’s awful! You’re misrepresenting yourself. You’re lying about yourself,” Gordon told Ellen McCarthy, the author of the story. McCarthy goes on to note that “in Gordon’s mind, it’s tantamount to having someone else write your college term paper, or putting a picture of a more attractive stranger on your online dating profile. ‘You’re going to fall in love with someone because of their honesty,’ he says. ‘And some people might say, ‘Who has the time to write a profile?’ But if something is that important to you, you make the time to do it.’”
* Equates Dating With Shopping At Slate, Amanda Marcotte muses about the attitudes that might underlie such a practice. “Hiring someone to pretend to be you, feigning interest in looking up and chatting with women through a dating Web site, isn’t cheap, of course. The customers of this service largely seem to be privileged but busy men, which only adds to the creepy sense that they see dating as a form of shopping, and shopping as a chore that can be delegated to the help.”
* Imagine How the Other Person Feels! Jezebel’s Sadie Stein lingers on a quote from one of the men in the Post story who uses an online assistant because he feels “a little small pain of rejection” when a woman doesn’t show interest. Fair enough, says Stein—“but as a woman, I can tell you that for most of the women I know, finding out we’ve been courted by a surrogate is going to lead to a much harsher - and more personal - form of rejection.”
* Sucks the Romance Out of It Mark White of Psychology Today is skeptical about the whole idea of virtual courting. “Generally, there’s just something detached and clinical about online dating, with or without an assistant. I may be a hopeless romantic… but I still cling to the ideal of two strangers meeting each other’s gaze across a crowded room while the world melts away, a la Tony and Maria in ‘West Side Story.’ The internet can be a wonderful tool to enhance our lives and expand our social networks, but it seems to me that some things are just not the same if they aren’t done in person, and meeting the love of your life (or even of this month) would be at the top of that list.”
* Another Possible Explanation What might drive people to use assistants? National Review’s Kathryn Jean Lopez gets in the best zinger. “I guess if you grew up with shortcuts to winning Super Mario Brothers, it’s only natural?”
We’ve had a new wave of innovation in the online dating sphere lately: paying someone else to do your work on the dating site—Scanning for prospects, writing the first and subsequent email, even setting up dates. Without informing the recipient. The next few postings will be reprints of pieces I have found on the wire. Let me know what you think.
Online dating assistants help the lonely and busy
By Ellen McCarthy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Max Hartshorn has pretty much mastered online dating.
It took awhile, but the 24-year-old now knows exactly what kind of message to send to pique a woman’s interest. The Montreal research assistant will come home from work, sit down with his laptop and bang out dozens of e-mails to attractive, eligible women.
He’s never needy—always charming and a little flirtatious. He keeps his missives short and usually includes a question or a subtle challenge. He’s witty, a touch aloof and not overly complimentary.
And when he gets the woman, it’s not his heart that flutters. It’s his bank account.
Hartshorn is a hired gun, ghostwriting correspondence on behalf of single men unwilling, too busy or too inept to do it themselves. His online dating is done on commission for Virtual Dating Assistants, one of the first full-scale Internet-dating outsourcing companies. For $600, Virtual Dating Assistants guarantees clients two dates a month; the “executive service” package promises five dates a month for $1,200. [that’s PER MONTH—editor}
“I get paid for each woman who writes back positively,” explains the modern-day Cyrano de Bergerac. “It’s very analogous to sales . . . like a cold-caller or a telemarketer.”
A telemarketer who toils anonymously in pursuit of love for the lonely. Darkly romantic, no?
No. “I don’t care that much if it becomes a date or not,” Hartshorn admits. His job is “lead generation” only. Sealing the deal is up to the company’s “closers.”
And going out on actual dates? That, unfortunately, the men have to do all by themselves. And the women never need know who hooked them.
* * *
The great promise of online dating is this: You sit on the couch in pajamas, click through sparkling profiles of nearby singles, fire off a few quippy e-mails or a nonchalant “wink” and—ta-da!—a series of romantic rendezvous is instantly on the docket.
It’s love through a high-speed line, a model of amorous efficiency.
For Scott Valdez it worked, but the endeavor required just a little too much effort. He was working 70 or 80 hours a week in sales for a start-up technology company and traveling constantly. Every time he tried online dating, he met interesting women, but he found the process leading to the dates “really repetitive.” So he decided to outsource it.
“Why not just teach my secretary to do it?” he thought.
She didn’t have the time (or maybe the stomach?) to tend to his Internet love life, so Valdez hired a recent college grad who could write e-mails in English and Spanish. Soon he was going on five or six first dates a month.
“It worked for me,” he says. “And I knew so many people that could use the service.”
Last June, Valdez, now 25, founded Virtual Dating Assistants—a company that “specializes in making the dating dreams of busy individuals come true.”
Author Timothy Ferriss popularized the concept when he wrote about outsourcing his online dating accounts to teams of competing writers in his 2007 book, “The 4-Hour Work Week.”
Valdez’s Atlanta-based firm is hardly the only outfit to offer such services. Dozens of profile-writing shops such as Arlington County-based TargetLove have popped up in the past few years, and dating coaches are increasingly managing their clients’ online pursuits. Not to mention the well-intentioned friends and relatives who have taken over the process for the hapless singles in their lives.
But Valdez and his team of 45 freelance writers, including Hartshorn, do it all: write a client’s profile, pick out potential matches, send introductory e-mails and message back and forth until a date is confirmed. Then they turn over the correspondence and tell the lucky fellow where and when he’s meeting Madame X. (And it’s almost always that gender dynamic; 80 percent of the firm’s clients are men.)
Richard, a 39-year-old marketing executive who uses the service, would like to say, for the record: “It’s not like I really have a lot of problems dating people in the real world.” It’s just that he’s busy, splitting time among four cities, including Washington and Miami, and he figures it’s best to meet as many people as possible.
Online dating has worked for Richard, “but it’s all time-consuming,” so when he heard about Virtual Dating Assistants, it seemed like a convenient solution for an on-the-go guy. “Just from a cost-benefit analysis—me spending all this time on doing things that are purely almost secretarial doesn’t make any sense for me,” says Richard, who asked that his last name not be used because he doesn’t want colleagues or potential dates to know he uses the service.
After a lengthy phone interview three months ago, the company’s writers drafted a profile, let Richard tweak it and then started fishing for potential dates. Richard says they soon zeroed in on his preferences in terms of a woman’s looks, education and interests, and he feels satisfied that he’s being represented authentically in e-mails written on his behalf. (This has not been the case for everyone: Valdez described one client who came back from a date saying that “we maybe made him look a little too cool online.” From then on, prospective dates were given a heads-up that the man was shy.)
Richard doesn’t usually tell the women he dates that he didn’t write the e-mails they received. But when one woman wondered why he was constantly active on the site through which they met, he told her the truth: “Look, it’s not exactly like that—somebody’s actually doing this stuff for me.”
Ask Jared Gordon, the 30-year-old editor of A Bad Case of the Dates, a blog that collects dating horror stories, and he’ll tell you the practice is awful: “It is! It’s awful! You’re misrepresenting yourself. You’re lying about yourself.”
In Gordon’s mind, it’s tantamount to having someone else write your college term paper, or putting a picture of a more attractive stranger on your online dating profile. “You’re going to fall in love with someone because of their honesty,” he says. “And some people might say, ‘Who has the time to write a profile?’ But if something is that important to you, you make the time to do it.”
Richard knows some perceive it as callous outsourcing, but he feels he’s being represented authentically by his Virtual Dating Assistant. “These guys are really good at getting to know who you are,” he says. And he adds that the one time he confessed to using the service, his date didn’t seem to mind. “Once you have chemistry with somebody and they know you’re a genuinely good person—that’s really all that matters,” he says.
Mark Brooks, founder of Online Personals Watch, a site that tracks Internet dating trends, says this type of outsourcing is an ethically questionable form of “misrepresentation.” Still, he expects the field to grow.
Professional matchmakers often charge $5,000 or more a year and have a limited pool of matches. Online dating sites are populated with countless singles but can require more attention than some users are willing to devote. “It may look like instant gratification, like you dive into the pool and instantly come up with a fish, but it doesn’t really work like that,” Brooks says. “You’ve got to tap, tap, tap on the keyboard quite a lot to get anywhere.” (One site, OkCupid.com, found that a third of all first messages garner a response, though that doesn’t mean they are positive or that they lead to dates.)
But for many, it’s not just their time that’s at stake; it’s also their egos.
Luke Chao started having his receptionist send online dating e-mails for him after realizing that there was not enough administrative work for her at the hypnotherapy clinic he manages. It was a win-win, he thought, because “online dating is tedious—you have to send out 100 messages to get 10 responses. You have to go through 10 conversations to get one date, and that’s just the first date.” (Dianne Nubla, who writes Chao’s e-mails between her other tasks, says it’s “a good diversion” that she doesn’t mind.)
Chao, a 27-year-old Toronto resident, was soon dating one or two new women a week. In truth, he says, he has the time and writing ability for the task. But by having Nubla take over, he’s sidestepping the worst part of the process: being routinely rebuffed.
“Most women you e-mail don’t respond. Some look at your profile and don’t even read your message before deleting it,” he says. “That’s just the nature of the game—intellectually, I know that. But still, emotionally, I do feel a little small pain of rejection every time that happens.”
Oh dear! Sometimes I read questions and profiles that are so wrong-headed and pathetic that I just want to shake the person! Then, when someone does respond with horrible advice, it’s just “Argh!” Here’s an example below. The letter writer asks the wrong question: You can’t make any man look beyond (ie not see) something as obvious as a wheel chair. So don’t try! And online dating is the best resource ever for people with disabilities, because you can either go on a mainline dating site like Match.com, make your disability clear, but also present your strengths well and see who responds. These folks will be pre-qualified and will know what they are getting into. An even better route is a site for people with disabilities. On those sites, a disability will not be an issue, because either the others have their own, or the able bodied people who are there are ready to take on such problems.
Ask Amy: How can she get men to look past disability?
By AMY DICKINSON
June 16, 2010
Dear Amy: I am a 50-year-old woman who has never been married. I have a disability from an auto/pedestrian accident when I was 25 (I was the pedestrian).
Before my accident, I can’t seem to remember a period of longer than six months when I wasn’t dating a man. Since my accident, relationships have been few and far between.
I’ve tried just about everything—Internet dating sites, dating groups, dating services, a dating counselor (she refused my application when she found out I was in a wheelchair) and even church (the last two guys I was attracted to asked me to introduce them to two other women whom they ended up marrying).
I’ve given up looking at this point, but I truly don’t want to live the rest of my life alone. I’m pleasant to look at, a good conversationalist and have my MBA. How can I get others to look past the obvious (the chair) and see me—the person?
I live alone, own my own house, drive a car, and am out and about almost every day of the week. I’m sure you’ll make the same suggestions I usually get when I pose this question (get involved in activities you like), but maybe, just maybe, you’ll point out something the others haven’t.
Amy says: Your frustrations are common to other middle-age singletons—and you have plenty of company. According to Census statistics released in 2007, there are more than 56 million American adults who have never been married.
What you need to do is to make the life you’d want under any circumstances—traveling, forming satisfying friendships and doing fulfilling work.
It’s healthy to want to share your life with a special person, but if you didn’t find a husband, then what?
During my 17 years of adult singlehood, I developed a plan to build a house with a friend and cohabit, “Golden Girls” style. That might not appeal to you, but it got me through many a rough and lonely patch. The only twist I’d suggest is for you to find a way to stop wishing your wheelchair was invisible to others and instead celebrate the life you’re actually living. Because you adapted so well to your disability as an adult, you might find fulfillment volunteering at your local VA hospital.
My response:
Internet dating sites have become a wonderful resource for all kinds of people who don’t fit the normal, middle of the road picture. Try a dating site specifically for people with disabilities. Google disability+“dating site” and see what you get. On a dating site for people with disabilities, your wheelchair will not be a problem, and your strengths will have a chance to shine. Kathryn Lord http://www.Find-a-Sweetheart.com
Internet dating has spawned a whole new set of rules for dating behavior. One subset is “When do you hide or take down your dating profile?” and “When do you drop your dating site memberships?” See the letter below about one such conundrum, and see the rational, common-sense adult-like response about radical commitment.
Radical commitment means closing all escape hatches
Posted by Steven Kalas
I am in a nine-month relationship. He said he would like an exclusive relationship. I agreed. Is checking an online dating site appropriate? I met this person from an online dating site. When he asked if I would be his girlfriend, I agreed but made it clear that I felt that, and he agreed, that online profiles should be removed and not used. I have done this and have no desire to go fishing, looking, checking, whatever. However, recently he told me that he still gets messages weekly from the site to “check his matches.” He even asked me if I would like to see them. He insists he doesn’t communicate and isn’t active. Yet it is OK to check the site. This happened in a relationship prior to this. In both cases, the man felt it was OK to have a “curiosity” for women and “just check the profiles” sent to them from the site. I understand that men are visual, but I explained to both of them, that there is a difference between a woman walking by while shopping and noticing her and making a conscious decision to push a button that opens up pictures of women who are looking for matches. What are the “rules” of the online dating game? What are men thinking? Or, am I overreacting, which I have been accused of on this issue. Maybe I am just too trusting.
—K.U., Las Vegas
Exclusivity and fidelity are not one decision; rather, a series of decisions. Commitment is not one moment in time; it is a developmental journey.
The easy part is the mechanical/social practice of exclusivity. We don’t date anyone else. We don’t have sex with anyone else. Voila! Looks like we’re in a committed relationship.
Well, yes, it is committed. Yet, to our surprise, there remain deeper and more radical commitments to be made.
When alone, we decide never to talk or behave anytime, anywhere, with anyone in a way we would not behave if our mate was standing right there. That’s the rule. That’s radical commitment.
We are transparent in all our relationships. We might have a more or less separate communion with someone, but never an undisclosed communion. All our friends, whatever their gender, are known to our mate and know about our mate. That’s the rule. That’s radical commitment.
We don’t seek, nurture, or avail ourselves to relationships trading “bumps” of sexual attraction and ego-boost. See, this, too, leaks energy that is rightly owed to the mate. A committed partner seeks the mate’s desire. Oh, sure, it’s enjoyable when the stranger or co-worker lets us know we are desired. And of course we will regularly enjoy noticing people we find attractive and desirable. But we don’t linger in those moments. We don’t “grow” them and depend on them. We “bump” with our mate. That’s the rule. That’s radical commitment.
We don’t nurture The Potential Relationship In The Hole. You’ve seen it: that friend or co-worker with whom you never officially have an affair; but, still, you grow a private and intimate relationship of “what if.” Oh, had we met years ago. Oh, if my mate died, etc. It’s an escape hatch from the work of radical commitment. So we close all escape hatches. That’s the rule. That’s radical commitment.
We don’t amen ourselves to friendships openly disparaging our mate or our commitment. Yes, we have friends who let us vent during difficult moments in the journey of love; but, after listening, those friends challenge us to do the work of great love. Further, we swiftly and decisively jettison anyone who, despite our clearly communicated status as a committed partner, continues to come on to us, tempt us or entice us. In the end, there is no room in great love for even the distraction of having to say “no.” That’s the rule. That’s radical commitment.
K.U., your man isn’t cheating. At least not officially. But his behavior “cheats” the potential of his relationship with you because he’s leaking psychic energy he could be using for the next step of commitment.
All of your questions will answer themselves, K.U., if you will but answer this question: What, for you, constitutes self-respect? Answer that, and you will know whether you are overreacting. You will know how deep of a commitment you deserve from a mate. You will either relax and lower your expectations. Or, you will confront him and demand more.
Or you will leave.
Lots of good information and research is coming out about how we chose what we chose. This of course is important for us, because choice is all about what Internet dating is about. Has more choice been better? For the most part, yes. But for some, more choice is not necessarily good. It is confusing, and/or may lead to increasing pickiness. See this article below for more information on chosing.
Too Many Choices: A Problem That Can Paralyze
By ALINA TUGEND
TAKE my younger son to an ice cream parlor or restaurant if you really want to torture him. He has to make a choice, and that’s one thing he hates. Would chocolate chip or coffee chunk ice cream be better? The cheeseburger or the turkey wrap? His fear, he says, is that whatever he selects, the other option would have been better.
Gabriel is not alone in his agony. Although it has long been the common wisdom in our country that there is no such thing as too many choices, as psychologists and economists study the issue, they are concluding that an overload of options may actually paralyze people or push them into decisions that are against their own best interest.
There is a famous jam study (famous, at least, among those who research choice), that is often used to bolster this point. Sheena Iyengar, a professor of business at Columbia University and the author of “The Art of Choosing,” (Twelve) to be published next month, conducted the study in 1995.
In a California gourmet market, Professor Iyengar and her research assistants set up a booth of samples of Wilkin & Sons jams. Every few hours, they switched from offering a selection of 24 jams to a group of six jams. On average, customers tasted two jams, regardless of the size of the assortment, and each one received a coupon good for $1 off one Wilkin & Sons jam.
Here’s the interesting part. Sixty percent of customers were drawn to the large assortment, while only 40 percent stopped by the small one. But 30 percent of the people who had sampled from the small assortment decided to buy jam, while only 3 percent of those confronted with the two dozen jams purchased a jar.
That study “raised the hypothesis that the presence of choice might be appealing as a theory,” Professor Iyengar said last year, “but in reality, people might find more and more choice to actually be debilitating.”
Over the years, versions of the jam study have been conducted using all sorts of subjects, like chocolate and speed dating.
But Benjamin Scheibehenne, a research scientist at the University of Basel in Switzerland, said it might be too simple to conclude that too many choices are bad, just as it is wrong to assume that more choices are always better. It can depend on what information we’re being given as we make those choices, the type of expertise we have to rely on and how much importance we ascribe to each choice.
Mr. Scheibehenne recently co-wrote an analysis, to be published in October in The Journal of Consumer Research, examining dozens of studies about choices. One problem, he said, is separating the concept of choice overload from information overload.
In other words, he said, how much are people affected by the number of choices and “how much from the lack of information or any prior understanding of the options?”
I know this from experience. A while back, I spent a great deal of time trying to decide which company should provide our Internet, phone and television cable service. I was looking at only two alternatives, but the options — cost, length of contract, present and future discounts, quality of service — made the decision inordinately difficult.
This was not only because I wanted to get the best deal, but because the information from the companies was overly complicated and vague. I suspected that both companies were less interested in my welfare than in getting my money — and I didn’t want to be a sucker. This was a problem partly of choice overload — too many options — but also of poor information.
Research also shows that an excess of choices often leads us to be less, not more, satisfied once we actually decide. There’s often that nagging feeling we could have done better.
Understanding how we choose could guide employers and policy makers in helping us make better decisions. For example, most of us know that it’s a wise decision to save in a 401(k). But studies have shown that if more fund options are offered, fewer people participate. And the highest participation rates are among those employees who are automatically enrolled in their company’s 401(k)’s unless they actively choose not to.
This is a case where offering a default option of opting in, rather than opting out (as many have suggested with organ donations as well) doesn’t take away choice but guides us to make better ones, according to Richard H. Thaler, an economics professor at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, and Cass R. Sunstein, a professor at Chicago’s law school, who are the authors of “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness” (Yale University Press, 2008). Making choices can be most difficult in the area of health. While we don’t want to go back to the days when doctors unilaterally determined what was best, there may be ways of changing policy so that families are not forced to make unbearable choices.
Professor Iyengar and some colleagues compared how American and French families coped after making the heart-wrenching decision to withdraw life-sustaining treatment from an infant. In the United States, parents must make the decision to end the treatment, while in France, the doctors decide, unless explicitly challenged by the parents.
This contrast in the “choosing experience,” she wrote, made a difference in how the families later coped with their decisions.
French families weren’t as angry or confused about what had happened, and focused much less on how things might have been or should have been than the American parents.
It is important to note that no one is suggesting that parents be kept out of the loop in such a crucial matter. Rather, the choice, as Professor Iyengar said, was between “informed choosers” and “informed nonchoosers.”
Since, fortunately, most of our decisions are less weighty, one way to tackle the choice problem is to become more comfortable with the idea of “good enough,” said Barry Schwartz, a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College and author of “The Paradox of Choice” (Ecco, 2003).
Seeking the perfect choice, even in big decisions like colleges, “is a recipe for misery,” Professor Schwartz said.
This concept may even extend to, yes, marriage. Lori Gottlieb is the author of “Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough” (Dutton Adult, 2010). Too many women — her book focused on women — “think I have to pick just the right one. Instead of wondering, ‘Am I happy?’ they wonder, ‘Is this the best I can do?’ ”
And even though we now have the capacity, via the Internet, to research choices endlessly, it doesn’t mean we should. When looking, for example, for a new camera or a hotel, Professor Schwartz said, limit yourself to three Web sites. As Mr. Scheibehenne said: “It is not clear that more choice gives you more freedom. It could decrease our freedom if we spend so much time trying to make choices.”
Sheesh. A big problem for habitual texters is the ready availability of their cell phones to dash off whatever occurs to them. Not good, for the most part. As one of my friends said about Twitter, “I really don’t care about your having a cup of coffee.” See this app below designed to protect people from their dumbness.
TigerText: An iPhone App for Cheating Spouses?
By Belinda Luscombe
Tiger Woods, if you’re reading this, remember that you’ve been through what mothers call a “valuable learning experience” and you’re probably a “better man for it” and so on. Having said that, an iPhone app that launched on Feb. 25 could totally have saved your hide.
Called, coincidentally enough, TigerText, it allows users to set a time limit for a sent text to hang around after it has been read. When that life span has been exceeded, the message will disappear, say the developers, from the recipient’s phone, the sender’s phone and any servers. The message cannot be forwarded anywhere, stored anywhere or sold to any tabloid for an undisclosed sum. (See a brief history of the Tiger Woods scandal.)
It works like this: when, say, a prominent politician sends his mistress an iPhone message via TigerText, the mistress will be prompted to install the app. When she has done so, she can read the message, but she can’t keep it. In fact, the message is never actually sent to her phone; it’s stored on TigerText’s servers. After the politician’s specified time span has elapsed — anywhere from one minute to five days — the message ceases to exist. There’s even a “delete on read” setting, which counts down from 60 after a message is opened and erases its text at zero. (See the top iPhone applications.)
For those who need an even more comprehensive way to cover their tracks, the “delete history” option will wipe away any evidence of a given phone call. No telltale suspicious numbers, no chance of getting caught out by the old “press redial” routine. (Comment on this story.)
While the implications for philanderers — and spies — are obvious, the app was not actually developed for them, says TigerText founder Jeffrey Evans, a former recruiter and headhunter, and not, at least on the basis of one interview, a particularly paranoid guy. The name was in place before the Tiger Woods texting scandal, he claims, and the company decided to stick with it. Evans’ real concern is about privacy. “People text like they talk,” he says. “And some of the things they say, taken out of context, can come back to haunt them.” (See the 18 best Android apps.)
He points out that the European Union ruled in 2006 that phone and Internet providers were required to keep all cell-phone and e-mail data for a certain period of time. “That just seems wrong and an invasion of privacy,” he says. “We have not caught on to the implications of all these conversations being kept for so long.” While he acknowledges that the app might also be a boon to teens who are in the habit of sexting, drunk texting or “running off at the thumb,” he thinks lawyers and their clients and business executives involved in complicated deals will be even more interested.
Obviously there are times when you just shouldn’t hit “send”; at its most basic level, TigerTexting is like paying $2.50 a month for stupidity insurance. But let’s face it: who among us has never needed a do-over?
Well. of course one should not dump their spouse or partner by texting. The ultimate brushoff, really. Email is slightly better, a handwritten note better still. But nothing conveys humanity in a very tough situation like delivering the news in person. See the article below for thoughts on how technology is effecting modern relationships, and the ending of them.
It’s the 21st century way: Wooed, romanced, betrayed and dumped by text
By Annie Brown
WHEN Cheryl Cole dumped Ashley she did it by text and then announced it on Twitter - a truly modern way to say “its ovr”.
No more throwing the wedding band in his face and storming out when a succinct text message will do the trick.
It was appropriate that Cheryl should dump Ashley by text. It was one of his preferred methods of playing away, using SMS to send saucy messages and pictures of him in his pants to potential bits on the side.
Texts, Facebook, cyber dating, sex sites, chat rooms and email are the way many of us are now wooed, romanced, betrayed and ultimately dumped.
The goodbye text or email is the Dear John letter of the 21st century. A recent survey found two-thirds of people would cast off their other half by text while more a third have been frozen out by email.
Cheryl reportedly texted the Chelsea footballer to end the three-and-a-half year marriage with the words: “You’ve lied and lied. You disgust me. I’ll see you around.”
Her statement, released on Twitter was unemotional. It simply said: “Cheryl Cole is separating from her husband Ashley Cole.”
No one would argue that Cheryl didn’t deserve to boot Ashley out of her life by the most ruthless means available.
But relationship expert Hillie Marshall believes it’s a harsh way to end a romance.
She said: “I think it is very cruel. It is very cold and unfeeling.
“People should have the courage to tell someone to their face that it is over, not that I think Cheryl just dumped Ashley by text.
“A lot went on behind the scenes before it got to that stage so he knew it was on the cards.”
It may be less emotional in some ways but it still hurts to be dumped by text or email.
Unlikely as it seems, the phenomenon was first made famous by 1980s singer Phil Collins, who finished his marriage to Jill Tavelman by fax - so last century.
It caused outrage in 1999 for its callousness. Now all the celebs are doing it.
Real Madrid footballer Cristiano Ronaldo told Spanish model Nereida Gallardo that their seven-month relationship was over with a text message.
She said: “I was upset by the way he finished the relationship, which to me seems 100 per cent cowardly.”
John Mayer sent Jennifer Aniston a text to call time on their romance, as did Britney Spears to hubby Kevin Federline.
Sam Ronson did the same to actress Lindsay Lohan, while American singer Kid Rock dumped model Jill Gulseth by text in 2006 after three months together.
Keeping it all virtual, the broken-hearted can even seek solace on the hundreds of websites for text dump victims.
Gone are the days of a good mate to share a bottle of wine and mop up the tears. Now there are chatrooms where strangers can offer up their tales of woe and consolation.
In one chatroom we looked at, a few dozen anonymous people were able to give instant consolation to a woman told her five-year engagement was off.
Text is all part of the same virtual world relationships are now conducted in.
We argue by text and email, we say I love you the same way and we end it all in abbreviations and cyber space.
However, Hillie said relationships are part of a virtual revolution that’s having a negative impact on human interaction.
And she fears the problem is only going to get worse.
By the time today’s youngsters reach puberty, they will have spent 10,000 hours online.
In South Korea, where the web is even more pervasive than here, the government have established computer addiction clinics for youngsters who spend up to 18 hours a day surfing the net.
Hillie said: “Younger people are becoming more and more insular, there is no social interaction, just sitting in front of a screen all day.
“People are getting to know each other by email or text but it isn’t very real. It is not the same as being face-to-face. There is time to think about what you are going to say, the real you isn’t really there.”
More than five million people in Britain are now searching for love online - and many are cheating exactly the same way.
The web, Twitter, chat and SMS are an easy way to strike up a secret relationship behind a partner’s back.
When Vernon Kay wanted to contact Page Three model Rhian Sugden, he asked to follow her on Twitter. Then came the filthy texts.
When he actually met her, he hardly had a word to say.
Online dating agencies for married men and women are now a multi-million pound business - and they are available in their thousands.
Internet sites like Illicit Encounters do exactly what they say on the tin.
The Western Isles and Dumfries and Galloway were two of the most active for love cheats on the web.
In some parts of Britain, one divorce in five is being triggered by people catching their partners cheating online through social networking sites.
Facebook has more than 350 million users worldwide and there are millions more on sites such as Bebo, Friends Reunited and MySpace. All are being cited in divorce cases.
Of course, the trendy way to start an affair is also risky.
Businesses have sprung up to catch cheaters having online affairs and geeks have produced lots of gadgets to spy on a philandering partner’s computer.
Putting everything in writing, as Ashley Cole discovered to his peril, makes infidelity impossible to deny.
Some good points here from the Atlantic Monthly that adds another perspective to problems black women and other minorities face when dating online:
The Black Damsel In Dating Distress
There are worlds, and there are worlds
—Cornelius Eady
There’s been a lot of talk over the past few months over the dating prospects for black women. Besides the occasional dip, I’ve tried to stay clear as I think this is the kind of conversation where there’s a lot of condemnation and very little exploration. One instance of claimed exploration is this study done back in October by the dating site OKCupid in which they mined their data to see how race and gender affected your chances at the site.
There’s a lot of data and conclusions up there, but for our purposes, I want to focus on the conclusions about black women:
Black women write back the most. Whether it’s due to talkativeness, loneliness, or a sense of plain decency, black women are by far the most likely to respond to a first contact attempt. In many cases, their response rate is one and a half times the average, and, overall, black women reply about a quarter more often that other women.
Men don’t write black women back. Or rather, they write them back far less often than they should. Black women reply the most, yet get by far the fewest replies. Essentially every race—including other blacks—singles them out for the cold shoulder.
At the Times’ Freakonomics blog, Ian Ayres looked at the data and offered his observations:
Men (including African-American men) write back to African-American women at about a 20% lower rate. This result is somewhat reminiscent of the famous resume study done by Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan, which found that employers who place want ads were less likely to respond to resumes from people with African-American sounding names.
But in some ways the OkCupid result is even more depressing than the racial disparities found in employment. It seems that OkCupid doesn’t match couples where the match would be inconsistent with an explicit racial preference of a user. So these racial disparities persist even after excluding users who have stated an explicit racial preference…
Ayres finds this depressing, and laments that black women have “an uphill battle.” TIME uses the study, and others of online dating sites, and concludes that black women “will be disproportionately snubbed by men of all races.”
Look, I deeply suspect that, on a national level, there are an unfortunate number of people who think black women are less attractive then women of other races. The remnants of white supremacy are not just economic, they are cultural. I also think that’s less true today then it was twenty years ago.
But that said, I think that people passing this data around need to be really careful about using this study to draw inferences about the dating world of black women. One significant problem is that, as any black person will tell you, when black folks date online they don’t go to OKcupid. They go to blacksingles. They go to soulsingles. Or if they’re truly high post, they go to EliteNoire. (Dig the sensuous piano riffs and candelabra.)
Black people who are going to a site like OKcupid are generally black people who, with some exceptions, are open to interracial dating. But the same isn’t true of white people on OKcupid.
So the game is rigged—on OKcupid you have many white men who have no interest in dating black women, but very few black men with no interest in dating white women.
That’s because all the black men who don’t want to date white women are on the African American Dating Network or Blacksinglesconnection. There simply is no real white corollary.
Stormfront excluded, there aren’t many “WhiteSingles” websites or “EliteIvory” dating sites. There is no Caucasian Dating Network, because the broader world is the Caucasian Dating Network. OKCupid is the Caucasian Dating Network. (Note that there is Jdate, though.)
This has other implications for white people. OKCupid reports a relatively high rate of white people who don’t want to date interracially. It looks shocking when you compare it to black people on the site. But it’s also an unfair comparison because, again, most of the black people opposed to interracial dating aren’t on OKCupid.
I don’t write this to be dismissive of the struggles black women face on the dating scene, or all women, for that matter. But these tales of black female woe are becoming grating, not because black women don’t have their share of struggle, but because of the lack of agency runs that through them all, this sense that black women, are there to be acted upon, to wait by the phone. There’s almost an objectifying quality to the whole discussion. We’ve been here before. And, evidently, we’ve learned nothing.
To continue our discussion of race and dating (see blog posting for May 29), here’s an article from Time magazine that discusses the subject more, using data generated by OKCupid.
Seeking My Race-Based Valentine Online
By Jenée Desmond-Harris
This Valentine’s Day, more of us than ever will be looking for love online. And if recent studies are any guide, relatively few women on mainstream dating sites will bother to respond to overtures from men of Asian descent. Likewise, black women will be disproportionately snubbed by men of all races. Yes, even though America has been flirting intensely with a postracial label for some time, color blindness is not upheld as an ideal in the realm of online romance. On some sites, it’s not even an option.
Chemistry.com requires users to identify their ethnicity; like eHarmony, it considers members’ racial preferences when suggesting matches. Match.com lets users filter their searches by race. The site’s profiles include space to indicate interest (or lack thereof) in various racial and ethnic groups. But after Jennifer House, a black woman in Los Angeles, perused one too many profiles only to find the guys had checked off every box except African American, she changed her strategy. “Now I look at that section first so as not to get my hopes up,” she says.
Racial preferences — or, as some call them, biases — are easier to observe on these sites than in offline settings. Behind computer screens and cutely coded user names, people clearly communicate things about race that few would ever say aloud in a bar.
For example, a study published last year in Social Science Research examined 1,558 profiles that white daters living in or near big U.S. cities placed on Yahoo! Personals, which, much like Match, lists 10 racial and ethnic groups users can select as preferred dates. Among the women, 73% stated a preference. Of these, 64% selected whites only, while fewer than 10% included East Indians, Middle Easterners, Asians or blacks.
The story is a little different for the men, 59% of whom stated a racial preference. Of these, nearly half selected Asians, but fewer than 7% did for black women. Why? One theory offered by the study’s lead author, Cynthia Feliciano, a sociologist at the University of California at Irvine, is that men’s choices are influenced by the media’s portrayal of Asian women as being hypersexual and black women as being bossy.
The people running OkCupid.com have a less nuanced explanation. In October, the free dating site, 80% of whose members choose to input their race, studied the messaging patterns of more than a million users and concluded on its official blog that “racism is alive and well.” (See the 50 best websites of 2009.)
After attempting to control for attractiveness (using something OkCupid calls a picture-rating utility) and compatibility (on the basis of answers to questions covering everything from spirituality to dental hygiene), the study found that black women garnered the fewest responses of any female group. White women responded at much higher rates to white men than to men of color. Asian women’s and Latinas’ response rates showed even stronger preferences for white men. (The site’s latest eye-opening study determined which types of profile pictures elicit the most responses. To all the single ladies: the older you are, the more cleavage you should show.)
But do racial preferences amount to racism? Or is overlooking an entire ethnicity as innocuous as filtering out redheads or people under a certain height? “Just because you take race into consideration in your dating preferences and are aware of race doesn’t make you racist,” says Dr. Nicole Coleman, a psychology professor at the University of Houston. Minorities who prefer to date within their own race or ethnicity — and who look for potential mates on niche sites like BlackPeopleMeet.com and Amor.com — would probably agree with her.
Even for those who hate the idea of racial preferences, such stipulations can be a useful barometer for finding a person with shared values. Says Bostonian Karen Schoneman: “I tend to have a negative reaction toward a man who indicates race preferences, whether it excludes me as a white woman or not.” When she sees evidence online of what she regards as narrow-mindedness, she skips right to the next profile. One click closer, maybe, to postracial eHarmony.
One of the great things about Internet dating has been to connect singles to the whole world of potential mates. While in many ways this makes cross-cultural and cross-ethnic pairings more likely and easier to create, the access to so many singles has also contributed to an extreme amount of pickiness. One aspect of the pickiness is racial preferences. Understandably, many people prefer a mate from their own racial background. But we are increasingly seeing cross-racial preferences that seem clearly connected to racial stereotypes. See this article below (bold my addition) for a beginning discussion about the role of race and stereotyping in dating.
Can Online Dating Include Racial Profiling?
By Camille Mendez on Feb. 22, 2010
With the innovation of new technologies, there has been a great emergence of online dating sites. But a strange aspect of these widely accepted, used and advertised sites is the racial factor.
According to studies conducted from September 2004 to May 2005 by Cynthia Feliciano, Associate Professor of Sociology and Chicano/Latino Studies, and Belinda Robnett, Associate Professor of Sociology, white men preferred Asian or Latino women instead of African-American women while white women did not prefer Asian men.
Feliciano said, “Internet dating offers a unique lens through which to understand the process of selecting a partner and how race plays into the selection. Studies point to increasingly tolerant attitudes about interracial relationships, but intermarriage rates remain relatively low.”
Most preferences are apparent in certain races more than others. While all races claim that they wouldn’t mind dating outside their race, informal factors exist that influence a person’s decision when it comes to dating, marriage, or just hooking up. The common biases include that Asian women are hypersexual, Black women are bossy, Asian men are not masculine enough, Black men are lazy, and that white women are status-oriented. What all races did seem to agree on was their preference to date a white man, a race seen superior to the others, most likely due to social status in the economy.
Recent studies by researchers at UCI’s own Yahoo! Personals dating service further points out racial preference statistics on apimovement.com: “In the UCI study, of women who expressed a racial preference (73 percent) on Yahoo!, less than 10 percent would bother to respond to overtures from men of Asian descent, particularly East Indians, somewhat behind Black and Latino men. White women in particular were particularly exclusive in racial preference. 64 percent of those with a racial preference checked whites only (93 percent excluded Asian men). In other words, nearly one out of two white women wanted to date only whites. About three out of five men expressed a racial preference. Nearly half selected Asian women, compared with 7 percent selecting Black women. Men of all races will avoid black women, and all races had a degree of racial bias in terms of dating.”
Yahoo! Personals cites the UCI case study conducted by Feliciano and Robnett and, in response, discusses some obstacles of interracial dating as well as the methods to overcome them.
1. The Traditionalists: Races who exclusively date the same races for a common cultural foundation. Resolution: Surround yourself with a diverse group of people. This opens your point of view to additional outlooks on life as well as establishing a connection with other races.
2. Stereotypes from Mass Media: The public easily absorbs over-generalized images of different ethnicities and how they interact.
Resolution: Try not to let the media influence stereotypes portrayed and instead focus on your personal opinions.
3. Offensive Family Member: Racial “jokes” add tension that makes you think twice about dating outside your own race.
Resolution: Prepare for confrontations and think of persuasive ways to respond to demand respect in your dating decision.
4. The Gazers: People who blatantly stare at interracial couples.
Resolution: Instead of assuming the attention is a bad thing, bask in it. Their opinions shouldn’t matter to you or your date.
Feliciano and Robnett have released other studies on similar subjects including “Gendered Race Exclusion among White Internet Daters” in 2009 with graduate student Golnaz Komaie.
Figures in from the Aussies: Surveys are coming in from all over the world about the prevalence of online dating as the preferred way to look for love, and now here come the Aussies. There, one in four have used the Internet to look for love, and 37% are considering it.
One in four adults have used internet to find a mate
MARY-ANNE TOY
April 17, 2010
AUSTRALIANS are changing the way they date and mate, a survey shows. A Nielsen poll found one in four adults have used the internet to find a partner and another 38 per cent are considering using online dating.
The other 37 per cent – many presumably in relationships – said they would never go online to meet someone.
Of those who had used online dating, 33.6 per cent reported a short-term relationship, 16.2 per cent said they had a long-term relationship, 8.9 per cent said they had married or were in a defacto relationship, and 2.7 per cent had children.
RSVP.com (owned by Fairfax Media, the publisher of the Herald) commissioned Nielsen to conduct the first comprehensive survey of online dating habits. The initial results suggest that online dating is now part of the mainstream.
The survey shows that:
* Of those who had used online dating, 62 per cent had dated someone they met online;
* Men were slightly more likely than women to use online dating services; and
* Most of those polled (72 per cent) were seeking a serious relationship, but many were looking for friendship or just sex.
Nielsen polled 3057 people online in November and 3764 in January, with the data weighted to the general population.
The full results of the survey will be released later this year but NSW and Victorian data so far shows that while there were fewer NSW online daters (57.5per cent had tried online dating, compared with 64 per cent in Victoria), they appeared to be more successful.
Almost 20 per cent of NSW online daters had a serious long-term relationship, compared with 16.6 per cent in Victoria, and 8.5 per cent had married, compared with 5 per cent in Victoria. Almost a third of both Victorian and NSW online daters made a good friend whom they remained in contact with.
Asked what kind of relationship they were seeking (multiple responses were accepted), 72.7per cent nationwide said a serious, long-term relationship, 39 per cent friendship, 18.5 per cent marriage and 27 per cent casual relationships.
Of those who had used online dating, almost half had a profile and were monitoring it. Another 19 per cent had a profile but didn’t check it often and 31per cent had removed a profile.
The Fairfax Digital group marketing director, Lija Jarvis, said when she began working on RSVP four years ago, online dating was still something that was vaguely embarrassing.
“That stigma has definitely dropped because people are advocating for it, talking with their friends, sharing stories with families,” she said.
Since RSVP began tracking marriages in 2003 more than 8000 members have contacted them to report they had married someone they met online.
The poll shows that the biggest group dating online were those had been single for five or more years (38.4 per cent), followed by those who had been single for one to two years (26.7per cent), those who had been single for less than six months (17.6 per cent) and those who had been single for seven to 12 months (16.5 per cent).
The most popular dating websites among those polled were RSVP (54 per cent), Adult Match Maker (21 per cent), eHarmony (20 per cent) and Oasis Active (19per cent).
I don’t like to see other’s misfortune or say “I told you so,” but I did: In my May 2006 blog posting about sites with “executive” in the title, in this case, ExecutiveChristianDating. And here we’ve got evidence in the article below: the owner of the sites has been arrested for fraud. In general, it is a bad idea to go for any site whose title and premise is based on assumed affiliation, like all Christian or all millionaires. That simply draws false hope and unrealistic sense of security. No way that the sites can guarantee the presence of only Christians (and what does that mean if it could?) or only millionaires? Both Christians and millionaires can be lousy people. Beware.
Canadian owner of online dating site arrested for fraud
The Canadian owner of a site offering online dating services has been arrested for fraud.
Barrie Turner,65, from British Columbia, Canada is alleged to be in connection with the operation of more than 200 web sites offering “executive dating” services. The accused is the owner of Executive Dating LLC, a company which offered online dating services through various linked websites such as Executive Catholic Dating, Executive Gay Dating and Executive Seattle Dating.
Each of his sites demographically targets a particular group of customers, according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court by officials with the U.S. Postal Inspection Services.
Turner was arrested Friday, after he crossed the border into the United States to pick up mail at a Point Roberts post-office box - the address where payments for his sites’ services were addressed to.
Customers said they paid as much as $997 for a six month membership and were told the fee would pay for “two to seven introductions or ‘matches’ per month.” Most of them received the same “match” profile and sometimes fictitious ones, and when they attempted to date this person, the system replayed that the person had chosen to date someone else.
Since 2005, more than 100 people filed consumer complaints accusing Turner of fraud for failing to provide any legitimate matchmaking services which they had paid for. Investigators estimate that Executive Dating received more than $1.2 million in mailed and wired payments.
Do you know what moved Internet dating out of the shadows and into the mainstream? 9/11. Traffic and membership on dating sites soared after the 9/11 tragedy as people yearned for more meaningful connection with others. The recent financial downturn has repeated the pattern. While none of us want another disaster, when one happens (and it will), your dating site will be the place to be as the activity jumps.
People Turn To Online Dating In Times Of Stress
Find-love-131059 OPW - Apr 12 - When you hear about tragedies such as the Polish president’s plane crash this weekend that took 100 lives, your mind tends to think of your loved ones. However, if you don’t have that special someone in your life, what do you do? History has shown that in times of crisis, be it of September 11th proportions, a devastating earthquake, or even the stock market, people tend to turn to dating sites in times of need. The stock market crash of 1998 is a perfect example of this. For example, Manhunt recorded three times as many new memberships than usual on September 29th when the stock market fell 700 points. It was the best single day in their entire history. According to Gian Gonzaga, senior research scientist at eHarmony, “It makes a lot of sense. People seek out companionship in times of stress. Studies repeatedly show that being in a relationship can help a person’s psychological and physical health.” A poll done by Opinion Research Corp. also found that younger, single people who were stressed about the economy and its impact were more likely to seek out a relationship. Thomas Enraght-Moony, former CEO of Match.com, said it best, “During these trying times, people are looking for hope in their inbox.” As an industry, we certainly do not hope for bad things to happen, but it is good for the bottom line.
A recent survey of Swedish singles ages 25-60 found that the Internet was the tops cited resource for looking for love. All the numbers I have seen lately point in the same direction: going online has moved into the lead in the mate search marathon. See below:
Single Swedes finding love on the internet
Published: 16 Apr 10
Swedes are increasingly using electricity to fuel their chemistry as 23 percent of respondents in a survey report finding love online.
Participants in the poll were asked just one question: “Where did you meet your partner?”
Websites topped the list of meeting places for those polled in the study carried out by Sifo on behalf of online dating service match.com.
“Sweden has seen a dramatic change over the last ten years. Internet dating has gone from being a marginal phenomenon to one of the most common ways of meeting people in the country,” said match.com marketing director Hanna Bergholm in a statement.
“Nordic singles have always been among the most active when it comes to internet dating but this is remarkable and incredibly gratifying.”
More traditional forms of courtship still held sway in the poll, however, with a majority of couples hooking up through friends and acquaintances, work, dinner parties and a combination of other offline scenarios.
Sifo spoke to 1,111 men and women in the 25-60 age group who had entered into a relationship over the last four years.
Where did you meet your partner?
- Via an internet dating site, 23%
- Via friends and acquaintances, 21%
- At work, 14%
- At a pub or nightclub, 13%
- At a dinner or party, 8%
- Other, 8%
- At school/university, 4%
- Through a hobby/interest, 4%
- On a trip or holiday, 3%
- In a public place, 2%
- Through a newspaper contact ad, 0%
Woweekazowee! Here is a FASCINATING article about choice and why it is harder to find a mate in a big city. And it’s got a great little video included that explains the math. Yikes.
The tyranny of dating choice We have more romantic options than ever—is it making us miserable?
By Mary Elizabeth Williams
The romantically pathetic urbanite, the one with a full dance card but an empty love life, is as familiar as Seinfeld or Carrie Bradshaw. And that sad image got a boost of validation earlier this week when Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist with the London School of Economics, explained on BigThink.com that “Dating in any large city is difficult.”
Why? It’s just simple math, you neurotic, bagel-eating, rent-overpaying person who will die alone, you. When faced with choices, humans tend to give the thumbs down to the first third of their options before making a decision. Ergo, “You have to reject the first 30% of all the people you date, and then you marry the one who is better than all the ones you’ve dated before.” And if you live in a place with a few million people, well, “The larger the pool, the more people you have to reject, more people you have to date and evaluate and then reject.”
Kanazawa isn’t the first to point out the potentially sabotaging tyranny of choice. At a packed-to-the rafters reading in New York City this winter, “Marry Him” author Lori Gottlieb spoke on the problem as well. Why go out on a second date with someone who is, as Gottlieb says, “a seven,” when there’s a city teeming with tens? She expounded on the concept in a recent Examiner.com interview: “There’s this illusion that we have so many interesting, accomplished and appealing people to choose from. People think maybe there’s something better out there.” (Subtext: There isn’t.) It’s a theory also embraced in the title-says-it-all book by Jimi Izrael, “The Denzel Principle: Why Black Women Can’t Find Good Black Men.”
The idea that a glut of options—the kind we city folk take for granted when we’re choosing where to get pizza tonight or where to get laid—make us unhappy first gathered steam via Barry Schwartz’s 2004 book “The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less.” In it, Schwartz explains what anyone who’s ever wasted an evening channel surfing knows—that the sneaky suspicion that something fantastic is around the corner can keep you from enjoying what you’ve got right in front of you.
But when it comes to matters of the heart, who says this alleged “difficulty” is limited to city folk? As Gottlieb has noted, online dating is all about that veritable buffet of choices. At her reading, she mentioned how some sites, in the spirit of iTunes and Amazon, will recommend people you might like based on other profiles you checked out. Enjoy downtown banker? Check out divorced vegan! You don’t have to live in a place with a subway line to have access to those abundant options; you just need a computer and a Match.com profile. Click, click, click—it’s channel surfing, but for tail.
The notion of “maximizers,” those souls eternally unsatisfied even when it’s raining men, certainly has merit, even if it does seem to get invoked an awful lot to chastise women for being so picky. That’s not to say they don’t exist—everybody has the friend who’s quick to dismiss a guy for a misspelled e-mail or not being tall enough. (And let’s not forget the man who strings you along with an eye to upgrade, shall we?)
There are deeper questions, however, to be considered here. First, let’s get rid of the idea that playing the field is a miserable, self-defeating experience. For some, dating a thousand people before landing on that mythic one sounds nightmarish. For others, it’s pretty freaking awesome. Kissing a lot of frogs is only grim if you’re doing so in a bid to pair off for eternity. Sometimes it’s just nice to, as a friend calls it, “Frankendate” a circle of lovers without fretting that any one of them will complete you as a human being.
Now let’s think about all the people crammed in at those Lori Gottlieb readings, the ones who say they really do want to meet the right person, but keep striking out. I didn’t go to the London School of Economics, but I’ve got a theory here: I don’t think they all mean it.
There’s huge cultural pressure to mate, to breed, to get all of one’s questions in life settled and answered—especially for women. But you know, maybe not all of these “maximizers” who are out there turning down the guy in the bow tie really want all of that. It’s easier to keep up the appearance, even to oneself, of being on a romantic quest for true love than admitting, yeah, actually, I might prefer what I already have. Being in a real relationship with a fellow flawed individual isn’t all picnics and reliable sex; it’s also challenging and fraught with annoyance. It’s not for everybody. But that doesn’t sell books.
Consider also the geography-specific personalities that factor in when considering as sticky a wicket as romance. If you live in a city, you probably enjoy variety—you’re good maximizer material. If you live in the little town where you grew up, you’re likelier to be a satisficer—to make your choices and not second-guess them much. You may also have more traditional criteria for a mate than someone who’s hobnobbing with Lady Gaga tonight. Which type has a higher probability of reaching that diamond anniversary with a high school sweetheart? You tell me.
Of course, there are plenty of city folk who sincerely do want and enjoy coupledom. And a whole raft of research on the science of happiness suggests that if that’s what you’re truly after, perpetually pecking around won’t do the job. In that regard, I actually agree with Kanazawa—and Gottlieb. Maybe, however, it’s time that when crunching the numbers, we freed ourselves from the notion that dating has to be some conveyer belt of hopeless suck, something that people who get around more are doing wrong. Giving yourself over to love shouldn’t mean lowering your standards or limiting your hopes; it just means you’ve got to be willing to quit shopping. But if there’s one thing we urbanites know, it’s that the shopping part can be pretty damn fun.
Heaven knows, we all have dry spells, whether it’s the weather or our own need for a stiff drink. Here’s a list of very good suggestions to get things moving again if your dating forays have stalled. I particularly like 8. Hire a dating coach. How about you?
10 On-line Dating Success Tips
By Bob Strauss
Sometimes, the hardest part of online dating is convincing women to write back to you (if you’re a guy who’s just contacted them out of the blue) or getting guys to contact you in the first place (if you’re a gal who’s just posted her profile). It’s hard to define when a “cold streak” starts, but as a rule, if you’ve written to a few dozen women without receiving a single reply — or if you’ve had your profile up for a month and haven’t received so much as a nibble — you might want to consider the following advice.
1. Update your picture.
“Look at your picture from your date’s perspective,” says relationship expert Janice Hoffman. “Would you want to date you, based on your photo? You’d spend an easy $50 on dinner, so why not spend that same money and get a new picture? If you don’t have the cash, ask a friend to take some digital photos and pick a couple of good ones, including a head shot and a full-body shot.”
2. Narrow your focus.
Some job hunters mail out hundreds or thousands of resumes to every single help-wanted ad, whether they’re qualified for the position or not — then wonder why they never hear anything back. In the online-dating world, many guys are guilty of the same behavior, pinging every available female within 500 miles and a 20-year age range. Remember, if you take the time to locate someone truly compatible, the odds of receiving a response shoot way up.
3. Write an engaging email.
“Look at your opening letter to women,” says dating expert Dr. Hu Fleming. “Make sure it’s personal and includes comments specifically about her profile, what you like about it, why you contacted her (other than that picture of her in a bathing suit), and why she should want to get to know you.”
4. Mix it up.
While you’re at it, Dr. Fleming suggests, “Change your tactics. If your opening letter has been factual, make it funny or vice versa. See what works!”
5. Rewrite (and repost) your profile.
Has your profile been up for a while and not getting much play? “Take an objective look,” says dating columnist April Masini. “It’s just like real estate: If a property is on the market too long, people assume there’s something wrong with it. A trick among realtors is to take a property off the market and relist it as a new property.”
6. Dive into the right pool.
While highly targeted sites can be helpful for some people, most of us are better off at least starting in a big pool with lots and lots potential matches. Think about it: “A site that includes the words ‘Sugar Daddy’ might be appropriate if you’re a younger woman looking to meet older men, but lousy if you want to meet a 30-something male who’s not necessarily a millionaire,” suggests Dr. Fleming.
7. Ease up on your requirements.
Guys are an easily intimidated bunch, so if you go out of your way to specify that your potential date has to be at least six feet tall and make over $100,000 per year, you’re going to receive fewer emails than a gal with less-stringent expectations. By the same token, announcing that you expect to date a “gentleman” with “traditional values” screams one thing to most guys: “Gold-digger!”
8. Hire a dating coach.
This is an extreme step, to be sure, but as Liz Kelly, author of Smart Man Hunting, says, “If you ask your friends to review your profile, they’ll tell you what they think you want to hear, whereas an outsider is paid to help you look great online.” Needless to say, a coach can help you with many of the points above, such as crafting a great profile, posting your most flattering pictures and writing your opening letter.
9. Take a break.
“All business ventures have active spells and cold spells, and so does the process of finding a mate online,” says Wendy Allen, author of How to Survive the Crisis of an Affair. If you’re not getting any responses — or if no one is noticing your profile — “try a spiritual exercise. Visualize an ideal partner, not by looks or money, but by qualities and characteristics.” Let that renewed focus sink in for a while and then get out there again. You might be surprised by who shows up for you to date!”
10. Don’t give up.
As someone who’s done a fair amount of online dating myself, I can testify to the fact that even the worst cold streak — say, 10 or 20 consecutive email messages gone unanswered — is usually followed by an unusual percentage of nibbles (say, 4 out of 8 messages eliciting a positive response). In that way, at least, online dating is a lot like gambling — you have to endure the bad-luck streaks to earn a chance at the jackpot.
Eeuw. Rejections by email? Is that okay? Well, consider the alternative, right? Internet dating has spawned a whole lot of manners and procedures that weren’t around before, from Starbuck’s first meetings to texting and how to say no. For sure, when you are meeting as many people online and off as you will if you are seriously looking for love, you’ll need to refine your no-saying skills. Here’s an article that gives some very good hints.
The Art of Email Rejection
By Bob Strauss
There’s a classic episode of The Simpsons in which Homer ghost-writes a rejection letter to Bart’s teacher, Mrs. Krabappel: “Dear Baby, welcome to Dumpsville. Population—you!” It’s a bit lacking in tact, perhaps, but Homer’s missive is a vast improvement over most email kiss-offs, which are so bland and impersonal that they might as well have been drafted by a human resources department (that is, if the person you’ve been seeing even has the class to write to you one, rather than simply disappearing into the ether).
The question isn’t whether it’s polite to dump someone via email—for better or worse, this has become a common strategy, especially for young folks who’ve only been together a short time. “If you’ve been out on a few dates and you’re not interested in taking it any further, it’s a good idea to end things simply and cleanly, for both your sakes,” says B.J. Gallagher, author of Yes Lives in the Land of No. “It’s not good karma to leave unfinished business and disappear into cyberspace. You want to be clear, but also gentle.” How, you may ask? Well, if you are going to email your “Thank you, but no…” here are some tips that can lessen the sting and help you take the somewhat high road:
Don’t go into detail
“There’s no need to list the specifics about why you’re ending a relationship,” Gallagher says. “If you explain too much in your email, you simply invite the other person to try to talk you out of it. Don’t argue, don’t explain, and don’t blame. The very best date-ending line I’ve read is, ‘I just don’t sense that ‘special something’ that would tell me that we’re a match.’ Isn’t that lovely? No harm, no foul.”
Stay positive
“You want to keep your message upbeat, so you give the other person as little as possible to form negative feelings about,” says Caroline Kaufman, a psychology professor at Otterbein College in Ohio. “But even if you do your best to reject the other person respectfully and kindly, remember that everyone makes his own interpretations—and it’s not your responsibility to fix someone if he gets upset.”
Don’t use the F word (that is, friend)
Here’s one from my own experience: If there’s no genuine affection behind the gesture, emailing “let’s be friends” to someone you’ve been dating for two or three weeks is like kicking a wounded puppy. Think about it: If you were really meant to be friends, you wouldn’t be dumping the person via email in the first place, would you?
Originality counts
“You should be very careful about standard rejection lines like ‘I’ve just gotten out of a relationship and I guess I’m not ready to date’ or ‘I’m just too busy with other things,’” Kaufman says. “First, these don’t work very well if your online profile is still up. And second, you should always be careful about what you say to other people—no matter how big your town is, the excuse you give in your email could find its way to someone else you’d like to date, and he might think you’re not available.”
Don’t be a weasel
“If you’ve been intimate with the person you’re rejecting, at least pick up the phone and do the job that way,” Gallagher says. “Email is the least personal form of communication we have, with the possible exception of text-messaging, which is an even worse way to dump someone. And if your relationship became very intense very quickly, you should have the terminating conversation in person, in a public place so there isn’t likely to be a big scene.”
You know, when I was first starting out as a Romance Coach back in 2002, it was practically impossible to find mentions of Internet dating at all in the media, much less find any good numbers. So I am a sucker for facts and figures that relate to online dating and romance. Here’s an article that is full of numbers, some of them good and factual, some just opinions, but interesting nonetheless.
Online dating by the numbers
By Kimberly Dawn Neumann
Online dating can truly be as easy as one, two, three (i.e., create a profile, search for matches, send an email “hello”). But there are some other numbers you might want to think about when seeking a true cyber-connection. Though each person’s online process is as unique as his or her profile, check out the following by-the-numbers guidelines. Because with the right numbers in place, your online success ratio just might turn out to be a positive equation.
87 million = the number of single people in the United States.
And guess what? According to the U.S. News & World Report, nearly 40 million of those are dating online (or have at least visited an online dating site) at any given time in the last year. That kind of number definitely increases your chances of meeting someone (and should encourage you that you’re not the only single person left on the planet).
120,000 = the number of marriages per year that result from Internet matches.
In other words, the stigma is gone, gone, gone. “If you are looking for lasting love, work on your online dating program,” says Dr. Diana Kirschner, author of Love in 90 Days. Invest the time needed to create a top-notch profile, search often and reply to promising profiles.
2007 = the year midlife men and women made peace with online dating.
Dr. Kirschner says that 2007 is the year it all changed for people over 45. “More of them found lasting love through online dating as compared to the traditional method—through their network of family, coworkers and friends,” says Dr. Kirschner. “So if you are in this age group, your chances are now better online.”
100 = the maximum distance (in miles) in which you should search for serious matches.
Unless you own a private jet, emailing people 3000 miles away is just silly. “You want to keep looking within a certain mile radius and should start close by,” says dating guru David Wygant (http://www.davidwygant.com). “Don’t waste time with people when they say they want to meet somebody within 10 miles and you live 500 miles from their hometown… it’s about being efficient, and the more people you find that you can actually meet in person, the better your chances of finding a match!”
20 = the number of words you should use to describe your match.
“You don’t want people to feel they can’t measure up to a long list of qualities… you want to cast a wide net and gather many types of potential partners,” says Dr. Kirschner. “Love almost always comes in a surprise package!”
15 = the number of profile compatibility matches you should seek.
You know that thing about oil and water not mixing? Yeah, that’s why Match.com has mutual matching. You don’t have to be identical to your date, but knowing that there is some degree of compatibility in what you are seeking is a really good start. So before you email, check this little tool on the right-hand side of every profile you view and see how your compatibility odds add up. Shooting for (at minimum) 15 of the 25 criteria in common is a good gauge.
6 = the maximum number of potential dates you should chat with at once.
If you’re serious about finding a match online, keep in mind that chatting with more than six people at a time can get seriously confusing! Do yourself a favor and be a little discerning. This isn’t an all-you-can-date buffet.
5 = the number of emails you should exchange before giving out any personal information.
Remember, we live in the age of online searching, so if you give out too much info too fast, you may be giving away more about yourself than you realize. But after a couple of nice emails, feel free to move forward. “Two emails between the two of you, and by the fifth, you should say you’d like to chat over the phone,” says Laurie Puhn, J.D., author of Instant Persuasion. “It shows confidence, and there is no reason to email for weeks.”
5 = a good number of photos to post.
“You should aim for three body shots and two head shots; every single one of them has to be current,” suggests Wygant. “They need to be clearly defined and showcase who you are and what you are about.” The absolute minimum number of photos you should post? Two—one headshot and one full-body photo. Otherwise, people will think you’re hiding something.
4 = the number of weeks you should wait to contact someone again.
“Just because you contacted somebody a month ago or two months ago or three months ago, that person may not have responded because he or she may have been dating somebody else and just happened to have a picture/profile still up online,” says David Wygant. “So, it’s okay to re-contact, but don’t do it with the exact same email… type something different or ask a question. Remember, online dating is about starting a conversation!”
3 = the number of searches you should conduct per week.
You don’t have to be a fanatic about online dating to find a match, but being proactive helps. Commit to searching at least three times per week, since you never know when Mr. or Ms. Right will post a profile—and you don’t want to miss out!
3 = the maximum number of weeks before you meet in person.
“Why waste time in a fantasy email relationship with someone who turns out to have absolutely no chemistry with you?” says Dr. Kirschner. Better to find out sooner rather than later (and then have to plan an awkward escape!).
2 = the length of time in months that you should give a relationship to develop once you’ve met.
“Give promising connections at least two months to show consistently improving contact,” says Dr. Kirschner. “This is an indication, although not a guarantee, that this relationship is not just a hot encounter that will fizzle out.”
1 = the number of matches you are ultimately seeking.
Before you get frustrated or overwhelmed, keep in mind that the ultimate goal is finding just one person who is your match, whether you’re searching for a lifelong partner or just some to get to know in the weeks ahead. And the odds are in your favor… just look at the numbers!
Evan Marc Katz has more good stuff to say to singles than just about anyone I can think of, except me, possibly, and Lori Gottlieb, who he coached and she wrote about the experience in “The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough” (I reprinted here the article by the same name that Lori expanded into the book). I stumbled on this article by Evan that was too good to pass up, so here it is for you, below. Evan gives some good takes on rejection that every Internet dater needs to have.
Bounce Back from Rejection
By Evan Marc Katz
If you’ve dated, you’re probably more familiar with rejection than you’d care to be. And that holds true online, too. Think about it: When millions of people search for millions of people, there are bound to be a few missed connections. Then why does it hurt so much? Why do we take it so personally? It may be human nature, but it’s sure not healthy. So if baseball players don’t lose sleep that they’re going to miss 7 out of 10 pitches, how can you, as a single person, make peace with the process of being rejected? Keep reading for a whole new perspective.
The issue: The paradox of choice Those who take online dating seriously get the best results.
Match.com may well be the world’s biggest meeting place for single people. I can’t think of anywhere else that offers more opportunities to find love. So you search and browse and make your favorites list and see that there are 45 people in your area who interest you. And those 45 people are trying to narrow down thousands of people to form their own favorite lists. So while you’ve got a terrific pool of people to choose among, you have to recognize that everyone else is doing some choosing, too.
Your new view: The first thing you need to do is adjust your expectations. Due to sheer volume, you’ve got some competition, but it’s not insurmountable. Hundreds of thousands of people find love on Match.com every year. Here’s how to boost your chances for success: Take online dating seriously. As a dating coach, I can tell you firsthand that most people don’t do so. Those who do get the best results. So get yourself a new, close-up, smiling digital photo. Work on your profile as hard as you’d work on your resume. Read people’s essays and respond directly to what they wrote to break through the “Hey, check out my profile” clutter. Log on regularly. You’ll be on your way to success.
The issue: Going after only the most popular people
Think about it this way: if you think someone is super-attractive, everyone else does as well. When I’m coaching my male clients, I’m constantly reminding them that a gorgeous 29-year-old woman literally has every single guy from 25 to 60 within 100 miles of her zip code contacting her. These women can choose whomever they want—most likely a guy who is very attractive, very successful, very close to her age, and very nearby. Why? Because she can.
Your new view: Instead of investing your time writing to people who are not looking to date you, focus your energies on the people who are. Match.com has a Reverse Match function which shows all the people who are open to meeting you. Writing email after email to strangers who ignore you is both exhausting and demoralizing. Why put yourself through that when you can see whether you offer what the other person is looking for? Put your time into charming the right folks, and your dating success will take a quantum leap.
The issue: People who pull a disappearing act
Because everyone on Match.com has so many choices, you may experience people dropping out of touch—sometimes in the middle of an email conversation. It’s not nice, but it happens. It’s similar to that experience of having someone ask for your phone number and then never calling… or going out for what you thought was a great night only to never hear from your date again. Too many experiences like this can make a dater feel jaded and quit. But being negative and giving up doesn’t put you any closer to your goal. You have to keep on going!
Your new view: Let’s cut through the hypocrisy. Have you ever stopped talking to someone when another love interest captured your fancy? Well, if you can drop someone like a hot potato without an explanation, you shouldn’t be too shocked or hurt when it happens to you. It’s truly nothing personal. And the same holds true online. Because we’re sitting behind computers, juggling anywhere from 1 to 20 correspondences at once, there’s bound to be collateral damage. Recognize that good people can be overwhelmed with choices and forgive them for not handling things in an ideal fashion. It happens to many if not all of us, so don’t take it personally. Don’t feel you must have closure; just get over it and move on to next.
The issue: Recognizing long-term vs. short-term investing
I think we can all agree that love is pretty rare and special. If you’re 40 years old, you may only have found it a couple of times in your whole life, if at all. So is there any logical reason to expect an online-dating site to deliver the goods instantly? Of course not. Yet we get on Match.com, experience a few setbacks and rejections, and call it quits. And quitting isn’t a long term strategy—it’s a one-way ticket to failure.
Your new view: Don’t be discouraged by a rejection or two. Incorporate online dating into your life. Like joining a gym for a year, rather than a month, this is a door that needs to constantly be kept open. You can still go to bars and parties, get set up, sign up for classes, volunteer and talk to strangers. This is just a supplement to expand your universe to people you wouldn’t meet every day. Match.com gives you opportunities that your real-life routine can’t provide. And who knows? Maybe Mr. or Ms. Right will be signing up for the first time tomorrow. You’ll never know if you quit today.
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