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Back in January 2006, I wrote a blog post that said eHarmony claimed 90 singles a day were marrying because of eHarmony. This article below says the numbers are now 236 people marrying a day who met on eHarmony. I’m not a big fan of eHarmony, but you can’t argue with success. What are the stats for Match.com and Yahoo! Personals?
eHarmony says its goal is not just to find users dates—It wants them to get married. In fact, the company claims that 236 people a day in the U.S. are married as a result of meeting through their site.
Part of a comment on OnlinePersonalsWatch by Evan Chase:
...while some men find eHarmony a pain in the butt due to all its hoops in guided communication, I actually like it and find it a must have for men dating online.
It’s actually more efficient due to the fact that you don’t have to be creative about your answers until long in to the communication process. How many different ways can you answer, “Your Idea of adventure is?”
I like this article that just came out in the Boston Globe. It features just the folks I write for and coach, those singles over 35 or 40 who want to find the love of their lives. Too bad the author didn’t find me, because as you all know, I found my love on Match.com, am a Romance Coach, and am from Maine—so is Stacey Chase! Oh well, maybe next time. But anyway, back to the article. I LOVED how the author treated the gay male couple exactly as she would have a heterosexual couple, right down to the question of getting married. I do think that the women’s expectations of the guys at the dating event were too high. Go easy, ladies. Thye may not see you as that much of a catch, either.
Older, Wiser, and Available The middle-aged dating scene, filled with singles weighing one another’s emotional baggage, isn’t for the weak of heart.
By Stacey Chase
July 27, 2008
IT’S A MONDAY NIGHT AND Gretchen Grufman, a home remodeler with freckles and strawberry-blond hair, has just met eight men in a series of six-minute “predates” - the romantic round robin better known as speed dating - at a Portsmouth, New Hampshire, sports bar. There was the soft-spoken, baldheaded Briton; the goateed general contractor who loves ballroom dancing; the 48-year-old grandfather of seven in a suit; and the Harley-riding IT manager who divorced a second time three months ago. * Single since 1992, Grufman is herself twice divorced with two grown sons. “I’ve been engaged a few times, but I haven’t worked up the courage to get married again,” says the 55-year-old who recently moved to Amesbury from Wells, Maine. Still, middle-aged dating is not for the faint of heart. Baby boomers like her, born between 1946 and 1964, are more likely than previous generations were to find themselves - graying and with badly bruised egos - on the youth-obsessed dating scene. The high incidence of divorce, declining marriage rates, and longer life spans have contributed to the single-boomer phenomenon. An AARP analysis of 2007 US Census Bureau data found that of the 76.7 million baby boomers, 18.5 percent were divorced or separated, 10.6 percent had never married, and 2.8 percent were widowed, making nearly a third of the generation (24.5 million) single.
“Fifty, 60 years ago, dating among this age group would be unheard of,” says 46-year-old Mary Elizabeth Hughes, a demographer at Johns Hopkins University and coauthor of a 2004 study The Lives and Times of the Baby Boomers. “Most people would already be married, and if they weren’t married they probably weren’t dating.”
For those looking for love with like-minded and like-aged people today, it’s a brave new world often complicated by love-gone-wrong histories with ex-spouses or lovers, and by children and grandchildren, dependent elderly parents, careers, health problems, and emotional baggage that won’t fit into the overhead compartment. Framingham State College sociology professor Virginia Rutter says all that can be good: “The baggage is actually part of what makes the person you’re with a human being, and you have this opportunity to connect with them in the middle of the plot of their story.”
Many older daters, like those at the speed-dating event sponsored by Cupid.com/PreDating, are embracing Cupid and other online dating sites like Match.com and eHarmony.com. Though helped along by modern technology, much of the conversation Monday night was painfully predictable: weather and work. One man mentioned the diarrhea outbreak at his mother’s assisted-living facility. Another told Grufman afterward that he’d frequented a strip club in her old town.
Sally LaRochelle, a 49-year-old two-time divorcee and administrative assistant in Dover, New Hampshire, sporting ultra short white hair and dark-rimmed glasses, was turned off by the potential suitors. “On a scale of one to 10 . . . they’re probably like twos,” she says. “They seemed a little desperate, and some of them just seemed to be too old.”
The newly re-divorced IT manager, Charlie Petrikas, 56, from South Berwick, Maine, confesses: “I still think I do need to heal a bit, but I don’t want to sit around.”
Susan Fox owns Personals Work in the South End, a matchmaking service that provides its largely female boomer clientele with tools such as ghostwriting personal ads and flirting and style tips for finding a mate. Says Fox: “I’ve even told women who’ve come in that they need to color their hair.” She helps singles to first figure out who they are and what they’re seeking - physical characteristics, occupation, religion, interests, smoking habits - and then create a list of “non-negotiables” for Mr. or Ms. Right, often disregarding a client’s “wish list.” (One client rattled off 142 deal breakers and, needless to say, was not a success story.)
Her advice? Forget love at first sight. Take a second look - and a third, and a fourth.
“We’re not all pulled together with the same level of hormonal urgency that we were when we were 27 or 33,” says the 50-something Fox. “People really need to be able to say, `OK. I like this person well enough to see him or her again and see if something develops here.’”
Bostonian Beverly Summer is a slender brunette in her mid-40s, never married, childless, Ivy League-educated, and runs her own financial-services company. “If I were a guy,” she quips, “I would be the most eligible bachelor in Boston.”
Having tried everything from charity events to pub crawls, Summer turned to Personals Work two years ago in her hard-charging hunt for a husband. Since then, she has viewed dozens of profiles and dated two men from Match.com, going out for several months with each of them, but she still hasn’t met The One. “There’s no science to it,” she says. “It’s a just a matter of time, kissing frogs.”
THEY SPARKED THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION, but for many boomers - those in the first wave are turning 62, while late boomers are hitting 44 this year - reentering the dating game, sometimes after decades, or continuing to search despite long odds, is both unnerving and liberating in ways that hooking up in their younger days was not. “The romance of your 20s - whether you actually decide to have children or not - is the script about how, especially in the heterosexual ideal, we get together, and we make a family, and we have our little dream world,” says the 44-year-old Rutter, who became a widow at age 35. “That is no longer on the table when you’re in your 40s, 50s, and 60s.”
By shedding stereotypical gender roles, Rutter says, midlifers have a lot more freedom to be themselves, and romance becomes less of a fantasy than a practicality that involves negotiating complexities such as child-custody arrangements, retirement planning, and medical directives. “That isn’t less romantic,” she says, “but the romance is different.”
Michael Walsh, a 50-year-old landscape designer in Braintree, and his partner, David Richman, 52, of Aventura, Florida, had a whirlwind courtship after viewing each other’s profiles on Match.com on October 2, 2006. That Monday night, they exchanged e-mails. Tuesday morning, they talked by phone. On Friday, Walsh was picking up Richman, a commercial property manager, at Logan Airport. By Sunday, they were in love.
The blissful pair, who currently maintain separate homes in their respective states (and another in Seattle), are together roughly 70 percent of the time. They have yet to decide whether they’ll marry, or to work out the logistics - primarily their careers and assets - in order to live in the same city. “My home is where David is,” Walsh says, “and his home is where I am.”
“It’s such a relief [not to be looking anymore] because that was my life - I was always looking for a partner,” continues Walsh, who eats only organic food and advertised himself on Match as Upbeat Buddhist Jock Seeks Attachment. “Other people stop looking; they give up.”
Boomers still on a quest for a mature, meaningful relationship say they have learned from their mistakes and heartaches and - though the peer dating pool is significantly smaller - seem to even cherish the peculiar bittersweetness of middle-aged love: that the biological urge to reproduce is typically over, that expectations of love are more realistic, that women tend to have a greater level of equality, that partners understand neither person will be molded to fit the other’s desires.
“With the mush comes the gloom,” Richman says. “I want to be able to be naked in front of somebody . . . and be completely comfortable. And naked in even more than the physical sense, emotionally be naked.”
Annie McCormick, a 51-year-old graphic artist in Burlington, Vermont, has had her heart repeatedly ripped out in a series of long-term, monogamous relationships since her 1984 divorce. “I tend to choose men who have addiction problems,” she says. “One cheated. One was violent. One was an alcoholic who drank. And, then, the last one was a pothead.”
McCormick blames herself, not the men. “I’m not honest from the start, as far as: `This is me. These are my needs,’ “ she says, “I’m a people pleaser.” Five years ago, after she and her last, live-in boyfriend split, McCormick says she “kind of went into hiding” but is timorously ready to seek love again. “I do get lonely lately, a little bit.”
Boomers, who took the first birth-control pills and campaigned for women’s rights, are leading active sex lives, surveys show, but those out of practice and on the prowl can be as nervous as fumbling teenagers when it comes to physical intimacy. “Generally, for people who are widowed or gone through a really painful divorce, there’s a fear,” says Fox, the matchmaker and a trained psychologist. Others are free-lovebirds who want “to get back out there and have sex to kind of get them in the swing of things again.”
“I’ve worked with women clients who regularly have sex on the first date!” she adds. “And older boomers!”
In 2004, a sexuality study by AARP revealed that slightly more than a third of the midlife and older respondents - and half of those with regular sexual partners - reported having sexual intercourse once a week or more. In addition, 53 percent said they engage in sexual touching or caressing, while 69 percent reported they kiss or hug their partner on a regular basis.
Leonard Steinhorn, a communications professor at American University and author of The Greater Generation: In Defense of the Baby Boom Legacy, predicts boomers will continue to transform American society even as they age. “Boomers are going to also reinvent the idea of what it means to be elderly,” says the 52-year-old former political speechwriter. “They’re going to look at being elderly as being vital, as vigorous, as still irreverent. Boomers are going to grow old but stay young.”
They may, or may not, decide one is the loneliest number. Cathy Chamberlain, a 59-year-old human resources manager in South Burlington, Vermont, has had boyfriends but never gotten married or had children and says she’s committed to her singlehood. “The loss I feel is more the sense of family,” she says. “I have it with a variety of girlfriends - you create your own family - and I just don’t know what that’s going to look like 10, 15 years from now.”
Meanwhile, Grufman, the speed dater from Amesbury, continues her pursuit of a mate. On her Cupid.com score card, she selected the option “Let’s Talk!” over “No Thanks” for five of the eight men she’d recently met; three men indicated they would like to hear from her again. (She believes some of them didn’t pick her because they thought she was an actress or model hired as a ringer.)
“My uncles, and my dad, and my grandfathers all treated their wives like they were on pedestals,” Grufman says. “I don’t really expect to be on a pedestal, but I sure expect to be treated pretty good.”
Looking wistful in a dark corner of the bar, she adds: “I’m not an unhappy person, but I definitely don’t want to grow old alone.”
Here’s an article that highlights one of the advantages—and distinct changes—that online dating has brought to courtship and mating. And one of Internet datings BIG advantages: You know a lot about a person before you even make the first contact, because so much is revealed in their profile.
And just as so often a plus is also a minus, you can find out too much, as the article points out.
Facebook deletes much of the mystery from dating
By Heidi Stevens
Chicago Tribune
Article Launched: 06/04/2008 12:04:06 AM PDT
Oliver Pangborn hates Dave Matthews Band.
If you looooove Dave Matthews Band, Pangborn probably doesn’t want to date you. If you share his loathing, eh, drop him a line.
Gone are the days when it took a date, maybe two, to find out a person’s resume of likes and dislikes — favorite movie, favorite quotes, special causes. Online matchmaking sites rendered that notion quaint years ago, and now social networking sites are doing their part to obliterate it. “Facebook and MySpace are kind of robbing the mysteries out of dating,” said Pangborn, 30, who lives on Chicago’s Gold Coast. “You find out all these little things about people that you might otherwise let go. If I see someone’s favorite quote is a Dave Matthews lyric or favorite band is Jimmy Buffett, I automatically have an image of them. And it kind of lingers.”
Thanks to online profiles that list everything from salary range to current reading selections, we’ve gotten used to knowing someone’s vital stats before we even meet face to face. Has this changed the qualities we look for in a partner?
Are we becoming a society of mirror-image seekers?
Not quite, say some experts. But we are becoming more adept at linking ourselves to kindred spirits — and that’s a good thing.
“We know from research that opposites don’t really attract,” said Les Parrott, author, psychologist, family therapist and, most recently, online marital counselor for eHarmony Marriage. “The truth is we’re drawn to people that are like us, and the more we have in common — especially on matters that mean the most to us — the easier time we’re going to have.”
That doesn’t mean you should seek out your doppelganger. For one thing, he or she doesn’t exist. “There’s no such thing as the perfect match,” Parrott said. “Human beings are so complex. No matter how much you have in common, you’re going to have differences.”
Vive la difference
And besides, those differences are half the fun.
“We help each other become better human beings,” Parrott said. “You’re the proverbial sandpaper for each other’s rough edges. If you’re well-matched, you’re going to expand each other’s horizons.”
Pangborn admits he sometimes longs for the days when we weren’t armed with quite so much information.
“It kind of takes away those certain peccadilloes that become endearing later on,” Pangborn said. “If you see right away that they have an Elvis collection, you say ‘Oh, what a freak,’ instead of finding it out as this charming bit later on.”
Louise Baker, 43, met her boyfriend, Bob, on Match.com a little more than a year ago. She says she scanned profiles for a good lifestyle match, rather than a reflection of her own interests.
“I wanted to first find someone that was interested in making a commitment and getting married, then go from there,” said Baker, an artist who lives in Roscoe Village, Ill. “So if they listed that they love to run marathons and spend vacations rock climbing, I knew that our lifestyles were different. But if they listed that they love a glass of red wine with a steak, I knew that the restaurant would also serve white wine and fish for me.”
Helen Fisher, a noted anthropologist at Rutgers University and author of numerous books, including “Why We Love” (Holt Paperbacks), says savvy matchmaking is crucial for 21st century relationships.
Seeking a companion
“We’re looking for a companion,” she said. “One hundred years ago a man needed a woman who would bear him healthy babies and take care of the home. Now we’re looking for a marriage between equals.”
That means carefully interpreting whatever data are in front of us.
“If you discover he’s reading a book about Bertrand Russell, that makes you think he’s educated, he’s curious, he’s therefore productive,” Fisher said. “The mind builds on these little pieces of information.”
Especially, she says, in a time when we’re less likely to pair ourselves with someone we’ve known since childhood.
“We don’t have our family and community to send signals,” she said. “You can’t sell your reputation, you can’t sell your upbringing. Suddenly the book you’re reading becomes magnificently important.”
Of course, the real work begins after a match is made.
“You still need the skills to make the relationship work,” said Parrott. “It’s not like you match up and you’re on easy street. You still need communication and conflict resolution and all the rest.”
Baker says her pre-Bob dating experience bears that out.
“It’s kind of like the housing market,” she said. “Because there’s so much on the market right now, people always want to see what else is out there. But I don’t like house-hunting. I find it very stressful. To me, I feel like I can live in a lot of different places. You make a place yours.
“It’s like that with dating,” she said. “A lot of people are looking for that perfect thing, you know? But it’s never going to be. You just have to have the same dreams and the same goals.”
Last weekend, Drew and I were in New York City (or more precisely, Weehawken, NJ, which is right across the river from Manhattan) at the “Worldwide Conference” of Matchmakers. This was the first one ever, or at least in recent memory, and what an interesting group of people to spend some time with! Graciously, or perhaps to improve the attendance, the matchmakers also included dating coaches, which is why I was there.
I’ve written about matchmakers here in my blog before. Frankly, I am such a do-it-yourselfer that I just can’t see paying someone else to do the work for me. It’s hard for me to take people seriously when they complain about how much Internet dating costs. It’s CHEAP, particularly when you start looking around at matchmakers. One guy at the conference was with a business that charges $60,000 to $120,000!!! Yup, that’s the right number of zeros you are seeing.
Matchmakers have seen a surge in business by riding on the coattails of Internet dating. While dating sites do take a chunk of business that matchmakers might have gotten before, Internet dating has paved the way for people to actually think about hiring someone to help them find love. And the theme I heard over and over was the potential market for matchmakers in frustrated online daters.
Still, the fantasy that many may have about matchmakers being able to find you a mate when you can’t find one yourself has many limitations. First, you still better be pretty marketable yourself: Attractive, in good health, not too old, and with something to offer. Particularly if you are female. ALL the matchmakers complained about the shortage of men, where do you find dates for these ladies?
And remember, matchmakers can only match you with people they have on their own roster. What if your perfect mate lives outside the matchmaker’s area, or would never sign up? Most matchmakers do not allow browsing through their roster either. You are subject to who they pick for you. Me? Uh uh.
Matchmakers also remind me of eHarmony, in that they do not take on people they don’t think they can match. Or the less ethical may take a client regardless of their match-ability, simply for the money. Yick. In fact, matchmakers used to routinely reject all women Over a Certain Age (like 40 or 45). For sure, the older you are if you are female, the greater your chances of being turned down by the matchmaker. Let alone a date.
So if you are male, have the bucks to spend, and no time to waste, you might do okay with matchmaking. However if you are female and over 40, you’d do much better getting online and doing the work yourself. That’s where the guys are.
Here we go again: Yet another article about how online dating is now mainstream and THE place to find love. Not that I am complaining about the positive coverage. Far from it. After all, it’s good for my business, right? And more importantly, good news for singles looking for love. This article also throws in a couple of cybercouples just for fun.
Finding your love at online dating site
We have become a society of high-tech people. The internet has changed the way we do business, how we learn and how we find love. Alicia Hansen, a 36-year-old mother of three, has been dating online, on and off, for a couple years. She does not care who knows. “People who don’t understand that it is part of our new world are like, ‘oh, you’re doing that?’” Today millions of people are “doing that,” trying to find their match online. In fact, online dating has become so main stream it’s even part of a class taught at the University of Minnesota.
“We don’t have the same connections that we used to have through church or family or neighborhood,” James Caron, U of M Social Science Professor said. There are plenty of sites on the internet that cater to those looking for love. Each one works a little differently. Most sites charge a fee, make you fill out a profile about yourself and then help you find people with whom you are most likely to be compatible. The rest is up to you. Dr. Elizabeth and Eileen parks met two years ago on MillionaireCupid.com.
“I did it for about four or five months before I winked at Ryan,” Elizabeth said. “I went on a lot of first dates, but I guess Ryan was my only second date.” Two weeks ago, they tied the knot. Certainly not every match ends up in marriage, but for a budding industry, the number of success stories might surprise you. It’s estimated that anywhere from 8 - 10 percent of all marriages are the result of people meeting online. There is a downside to dating online. It’s hard to tell someone’s tone in an email. Also, you have to trust that the people you meet are being truthful about themselves.
Not a problem, says Vince Turk. He met his wife Karen on eHarmony.com. “As somebody who is looking at profiles, you know the people who have invested time in it and put some money into it are pretty serious about wanting to meet somebody.” Karen couldn’t have been more honest. “I lived in a small town. I was approaching 40 and I had six kids,” Karen said. “There were just not a lot of options for me.” Vince lived in Minnesota. Karen lived in Iowa. But after a push from their combined eight children, the two decided to move from the cyber world to the real world. “We have two 15-year-olds, two 13-year-olds, a 12-year-old, 10-year-old, nine-year-old and a five-year-old.” This month, the Turks are celebrating their one-year anniversary.
Articles like the one below about how Internet dating is “in” have been popping up all over everywhere lately. While they are similar in tone and get repetitious, I find them so welcoming after what I have seen over the years. Five years ago when I was just getting started as a Romance Coach, searches yielded practically nothing, and what did show up tended to be scary. Not so with articles like this. Yea!
The Many Faces of Online Dating
By Erika Morphy
“Match.com is not for everybody,” says Todd Creager, a licensed clinical social worker and coauthor of Finding Life’s Passions. “There are those that thrive on generalized dating sites, but typically those are people who ‘show well’—whether it is due to looks, an extroverted style of writing, a natural sense of humor, social confidence or some combination of these qualities.”
Shoshanna Berman, an intern in New York City, is happily dating her ideal future husband: a nice, young—and tall—Orthodox Jewish man who is also outgoing and easygoing.
On date two, they bonded while scalping tickets at a Knicks game. Date ten, she remembers, was an all-night drive to Philadelphia.
“I would have married him if he asked me after the first date,” Berman tells TechNewsWorld, “but it took him a few months to realize the truth.” Now they are unofficially engaged.
Take away a few details here and there, and this could be anyone’s “how we met” story—including the fact that Berman met her beau at SawYouAtSinai.com, a dating Web site.
“My friend met her husband there, so I thought I would give it a try,” Berman says.
These days, anyone who scoffs at online dating is either married or in the priesthood. The U.S. online dating market—typified by such Web sites as Match.com and Yahoo Personals—will reach US$932 million in 2011, according to figures from JupiterResearch.
Soul Mate Search
More than 20 million Internet users visited such a site last December, reported comScore. The top destinations were Yahoo Personals, Match.com, True.com, Spark Networks and Singlesnet.com. In short, from 18-year-olds in college (where there should be no dearth of potential suitors) to senior citizens, multitudes are logging on in search of love or companionship.
To be sure, not everyone who goes online finds a happy ending. Horror stories abound from the horrifying—stalking incidents and worse have befallen many online daters—to the annoying. (Hint: Using photos more than a year or so old always backfires.)
Sometimes it just takes a little patience to find your soul mate, says Robert Schwartz, author of Courageous Souls: Do We Plan Our Life Challenges Before Birth? Schwartz met his partner at JDate, another popular Jewish dating site. Several years ago, he posted a profile there but nothing came of it. Recently, though, in the most serendipitous manner possible, he connected with a woman, and they’re about to move in together.
“I had been living in Oregon but thinking about moving home to Cleveland to look after my father, who was needing assistance,” he tells TechNewsWorld. Idly, he perused the profiles in Cleveland and immediately gravitated toward the woman who would become his partner. “What I loved about her profile is that I could tell immediately she is spiritually aware. That is very important to me.”
Fast-forward over several months of phone calls and visits. Schwartz is now moving to Cleveland.
Specialized Sites
It may be no accident that both Schwartz and Berman met partners on specialized dating sites. Mainstream dating site memberships are stagnating—or, in some cases, shrinking. The proportion of paying customers has stayed the same—5 percent—over the last five years, according to Jupiter.
Another Jupiter metric that suggests interest is beginning to decline: Only 10 percent of Internet users visited an online dating site in 2006—a decrease from 16 percent in 2005 and 21 percent in 2002.
One way the online dating industry is counteracting these trends is by introducing specialized Web sites that focus on commonalities that would-be daters hope to find. Many focus on religion; some focus on hobbies or professions.
Sparks Network, currently one of the top online destinations, operates over 30 online personals—all but one of which is targeted toward a specific religious, ethnic or special interest group. JDate, launched in 1997, was its first site.
It makes sense, some say.
“Match.com is not for everybody,” Todd Creager, a licensed clinical social worker and coauthor of Finding Life’s Passions, tells TechNewsWorld. “There are those that thrive on generalized dating sites, but typically those are people who ‘show well’—whether it is due to looks, an extroverted style of writing, a natural sense of humor, social confidence, or some combination of these qualities.”
Singles who do not make great first impressions end up feeling frustrated, he continues. “On a specialized dating site, one attraction may be the similarity of interests, vocation, religion, life challenges and so on.”
Next Evolutionary Step
Specialized sites are the way to go for today’s daters, says Steve Monas, author of several books about online dating and social networking, including Chemistry and Numbers: The Online Dating Guide.
“When I used JDate, there was already a feeling of comfortability, knowing that there will be some commonality moving forward,” he tells TechNewsWorld.
However, the specialized sites may follow the path of the generic dating Web sites, he cautioned—unless they evolve once again.
“Dating Web sites are now trying to get appealing features that will compete with free social networking sites such as MySpace.com and Plentyoffish.com,” Monas notes. These sites, after all, are de facto meeting places and have come to compete with some of the larger, specialized dating sites.
Revenue from major sites will have to come from more personalized services—such as selecting and contacting potential matches on behalf of members, he suggests.
Indeed, some of the newer specialized sites are focusing on what happens once you get past the third or so date and become a couple. eHarmony, a dating Web site known for its hour-long application—and, more controversially, for not matching gay people—has launched a Web site aimed at married couples who want to strengthen their relationship.
On the other end of the spectrum—the far end—is HoochyMail, a service that “brings couples closer together by safely and securely allowing them to create and share their mutual fantasies,” according to site spokesperson Rob Frankle.
Basically, HoochyMail allows each couple to compose and e-mail Email Marketing Software - Free Demo fantasies customized with their own details. There are about 35 different occasions—from Christmas to Thanksgiving to basketball playoffs—in the system Manage remotely with one interface—the HP ProLiant DL360 G5 server..
Thus far, the site has been very successful, judging by almost every metric, Frankle says, including opt-in numbers and click-through advertising rates. “Plus, we have never received even one hate mail.”
In the online dating world, that’s as good as it gets.
You know, it wasn’t that long ago that I couldn’t find anything at all online or otherwise about Internet dating. I love it when mainstream magazines come out with great articles like the one below. The author here is a firm supporter of online dating and knows why—she does it herself. But she also treats the issue off lying and deception, and interestingly, the willingness of the receiver of the deception to believe it. Have a read and let me know what you think.
Best, Kathryn Lord
Your Romance Coach
Online Dating Not Just a Trend
Your computer as effective matchmaker. But beware, the internet leaves plenty of room for deception.
By:Hara Estroff Marano
Surely you heard about the Kassem Saleh, the “Army Romeo” who while married and making Afghanistan safe for democracy found time to propose to 50 or so women electronically, all of whom he had “met” via email.
The internet leaves plenty of room for deception on both ends. On the sending end, anybody can describe himself falsely, although I’m not sure why he would—if a flesh-and-blood meeting is the ultimate goal. Sooner or later there has to be a reckoning. This aspect of the internet has received a lot of attention, maybe more than it deserves.
More intriguing is the deception that occurs at the receiving end of e-mail. It’s there that the power of emotions and belief and need can commingle to deceive one into believing that a real and durable relationship exists purely in unverified words.
Part of the problem is that you read e-mail in private. It’s just you alone with your own psyche, its dreams and its hungers. Many of the usual brakes on human behavior are absent. There are no friends around to reality-test against. Your mind is free to run away with itself.
And there is in fact something about the my turn/your turn rhythm of exchange of e-mail, and the slow revelation of self it allows, that is exciting. I think of it as slow dancing at the cyber café. It’s truly seductive.
All the more reason why critical faculties should go online as well as hopes and dreams. Hopes and dreams are not enough to build a relationship on anytime, anywhere, on or off the internet. Colonel Saleh isn’t the first to dupe women; it started long before the internet was ever conceived.
I am concerned less with Saleh than I am with the women he toyed with, although there has to be some psychic flaw that would encourage someone to a) spend that much time online and b) get his kicks by deceiving, and thus harming, others. It’s called sociopathy in the psych biz. I’m not sure that it’s punishable by court martial, as his contacts are now demanding.
The sad part may be that the wooed women were drawn from tallpersonals.com, targeted because they were guaranteed to be needy, placed by the accident of height in a Darwinian social universe that made them less sought after as potential mates. And of course, that would have given them a whole lot less practice at love and a lot less knowledge about it.
I consider myself a romantic, but romance for me isn’t glass slippers and overwrought declarations, as it seemed to be for Saleh’s conquests. “He made us feel like goddesses, fairy princesses, Cinderellas. We had all found our Superman, our knight in shining armor,” said one disappointed bride-to-be.
Maybe it’s because I have had long-term experience with the real thing, enough to know that love isn’t about finding Superman. Superman doesn’t exist. We love in spite of someone’s flaws. It’s much sexier and allows moments of unalloyed transcendance.
I would throw up if any guy said to me, whether to my face or in an e-mail, as Saleh reportedly did to his correspondents, “You and the thought of you have created a desire so deep within my soul that I cannot fathom a time I will ever be without you.” I would be embarrassed to tell another human being that I might actually have fallen for such a line. I would wonder about the sanity of any guy who proposed to me online without ever having met me.
Most of all, I don’t want someone who can’t live without me; I want someone who can live without me but chooses not to. Someone with a stronger sense of self than Saleh’s messages suggest. That’s what real love demands.
If Saleh’s declarations didn’t seem overblown on their own merits, there was a dead giveaway to deception. He told at least one woman that as a result of parachute jumping he had actually shrunk from over six feet to about five foot nine. I’m sorry, that’s just a howler. Still no suspicion?
I suppose that I am truly annoyed at Kassem Saleh—but mostly for giving internet dating a bad name. Online daters are not all losers longing for Superman. I demand a personal apology.
I not only think posting an online personals ad is a great idea, I’m actually doing it. I’m a 60-year-old widow who is busy working, volunteering, living a life. I had a great long-term relationship; I know how good love can be. I want to go through life with a partner.
By the time one reaches adulthood, one is hopefully spinning down some reasonably interesting, possibily individualistic, path in life. You have some special facets you’d like to more or less align with someone else’s interests. So the pool of possibilities shrinks considerably. I just don’t encounter that many eligible males now in the course of a day. The intelligent use of the internet opens up possibilities of people who might live a block away but whom I might not ordinarily encounter.
Before I leapt online, I researched personals sites, read ads posted by males and those posted by females. Most were boring (is there a guy who doesn’t want to cuddle by the fire, walk barefoot on the beach or believe in “chemistry,” whatever that is?)
I wanted my profile to work hard for me, to entice the kind of guy I might actually like—while screening out unsuitables. A good profile, I decided, provides an accurate picture of a person, in words.
I have met a few extraordinary guys. There are definitely some world-class guys out there. So successful was the first profile I posted online that I urged a newly divorced friend to follow suit. I drafted her profile, an appealing—and accurate—verbal snapshot of her. Four months ago I was matron of honor at her wedding.
I am now back in the market, and I’ve posted a new personals ad. I like to think it captures my essence, conveys my wit and spunk—demonstrates it rather than my having to declare it—and so keeps away the humorless and the insecure.
ROAD-TESTED. HANDLES WELL!! I’ve been around the block but I’m in excellent condition. Maybe even better than new. Powerful, smart and very lively engine. Fully automatic, .... You get the picture.
Warped Romeos need not reply.
Ya’ll know I have my problems with True.com (see my postings here), but I am not above quoting their surveys (minus their self-promoting ya-ya). This is from a True.com press release:
Survey results showed that most single fathers agree that online dating is a safer and easier method for meeting other singles:
—75 percent of respondents said that online dating is the easiest way
for single parents to meet others
—67 percent said that online dating is a safer way to date
And:
The survey also revealed that saving time is considered the most popular convenience of online dating:
—37 percent said that online dating helped them balance time between
work, dating and family
—More than half (53 percent) go out on traditional dates less than once
a month
Thinking about love is a lot different than experiencing the real thing. When you are thinking, you can fantasize, make all the details perfect.
It’s sort of like a rape fantasy: No sane woman or man wants to be raped. But many enjoy the fantasy of not having to take responsibility for sexuality. A fantasy rape allows you to do that, while having complete control of the messy details like who the rapist is and whether you will really get hurt.
Many people spend a good deal of time thinking and fantasizing about finding a Sweetheart and falling in love. Those fantasies are always better than reality. A real man or woman has a very hard time measuring up to a juicy creative fantasy.
Add the Internet, with its limited information (the printed word and maybe a very nice attractive photo or two), add a reasonably good writer, and you’ve got the recipe for real life disappointment.
“Getting to know you” has a tendency to disappoint. We fill in the gaps of what we don’t know, and usually we fill those gaps with what we want. Reality does not measure up.
And then, the not-so-nice realities mount up and the disappointment takes over.
Internet daters, like all romantics, need to recognize the power of fantasy and imagination. Both are great, but not real. People, wives and husbands are real people, not any more perfect than you are. And the fantasy—and resulting disappointment—that you have painted is yours.
Get grounded. Get real. Look around you at the real people who are roughly your age and see what they look like. See what you look like, too.
Assess what you are bringing to the table, and do not be unrealistic about what you can expect in exchange. Be charitable, and at least kind and polite to those who don’t meet your inflated expectation.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Ever since I started working to help singles find love using the Internet, I have been astounded at the numbers of people who get impatient at the process and try to hurry it along or quit altogether. “Three emails and then meet for coffee or I am done.” “I met three different guys and they all lied about their age, so I pulled my profile.”
Folks who rush the process are depriving themselves of one of the chief advantages of meeting online: The ability (if you use it) to prescreen potential dates.
Because you get information via a person’s online dating profile that you would seldom get before a traditional date with a relative stranger, and because you are meeting online rather than in real time and space, you can study what the other presents, ask questions, look for gaps or inconsistencies, and read the lines as well as between them. You can learn a lot by what and how a person writes, as well as what they don’t. And all without dealing with the nerves and worries of a first date.
You are bound to waste a lot of time (and drink a lot of coffee) if you move too fast from first contact to first “real time and space” meeting. You could also be inviting trouble. Move gradually, starting with emails through the website, then through a safe email address (Have you set up a Yahoo! or Hotmail email account that is not traceable to you? You can email me for instructions on how to do so). Then, phone contact: Use a cell phone, block your phone number using *67, or set up an anonymous phone number (see my blog piece on how to do so)
We all have the responsibility to prove that we are normal, real and truthful people to potential dates—and they have that responsibility to us, too. Regular, predictable contact over time will allow you both to build trust—or not.
From Your Romance Caoch, Kathryn Lord
A study by a German Internet dating site (www.single.de) found that older singles did better with online dating than younger folks. The figures quoted in a posting on IOL Technology are a bit confusing, but interesting. The site (which has more than 2.4 million visitors monthly) found that 15% of people age 40 to 50 said they had found a lasting partner on the Internet, while the figure was 11% for those 31 to 40 and only 10% for those 21 to 30.
Buried in an article in Forbes were these figures from Jupiter Research: Online dating is a $494 million industry, expected to reach $642 by 2008. The big three dating sites (Match.com, Yahoo! Personals and eHarmony) account from between 2/3’s and 3/4’s of the total online dating traffic.
Also quoted in the Forbes article was the results of a February 2005 survey by WeddingChannel.com that 12% of engaged or recently married couples met online.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Here’s a great Q & A on About.com about online dating and seniors, so good that I posted a comment. Here are my words below:
This link to “Is Online Dating Right for You?” gives a great positive overview of the wonderful resource that Internet dating has provided for singles of all ages, but for seniors in particular. Where are all the nice older men (and women)? Online and looking!
I am a Romance Coach working mostly with singles over 50. Internet dating is THE best resource, and best of all, online, it is okay for women to make the first move. Men LIKE it.
I would also add that singles should be prepared to devote plenty of time to their search. We often wish that finding romance should be easy and “just happen,” but we should expect that the older and more certain of ourselves that we become, the fewer the “right” partners there will be.
Please visit my website at http://www.Find-a-Sweetheart.com and feel free to brouse the copious information there. And subscribe to my free email newsletter *eMAIL to eMATE*
Best, Kathryn Lord
Your Romance Coach
James Silver writes about his return to dating at age 35 (a youngster!) in a lengthy article “Dating game? It’s more like a war zone” for the London Daily Mail. Mostly, the article is a description of first date disasters which began online and off, but I thought one of his observations was particularly apt:
Until a couple of years ago, online romance was a freak show peopled by drooling creeps, social misfits with teddy-bear collections still living with their mothers at 43 and those let out on day-release.
Anyway, in just five years that has changed entirely. While no doubt you would still be able to root out a host of oddballs on every dating site, now many attractive, functional single men and women, who hold down good jobs and don’t live with their mums, are at it, too. And, most significantly, they talk about it openly, compare notes and laugh about their (many) dating disasters.
Since I met my husband on Match.com in 1998, I can’t agree with Silver that up 2004, online daters were members of a freak show, but I do agree that in the last five years, Internet dating has arrived. The turning point was 9/11/2001. Remember what we all went through? Suddenly, we had an almost universal awareness of the brevity of life and an aching for family and connection. People FLOCKED to online dating sites looking for partners. Suddenly, looking for love online was mainstream, and the cyber-closet was no longer needed.
Yes, dating sites have their share of weirdos and misfits, just like in the general population. Yes, you have to weed through to find the gems. But now you know where they are hanging out. And focus on the jewels, not the garbage around them.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Caitlin O’Neil wrote in the Boston Globe article “Just Saying No” on May 28, 2006, that Internet dating really freed up her dating, creating an “obligation-free zone” that gave her privacy from friends and family. While singles still prefer meeting a prospective partner through friends and family, O’Neil correctly puts her finger on a little described facet of dating online: the privacy to succeed - or fail - without an audience. Unsuccessful match-ups and blind dates arranged by people who care mean that they care about the results, and this can cloud your judgement about the date themselves. If you prefer privacy when negotiating your love life, keep Internet dating in mind when charting your course.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
You wouldn’t believe the percentage of people, even on the biggest dating sites, who are not paid members. I’ve written about this before. On Match.com, I’ve been able to extrapolate that the percentages are anywhere from 7:1 to 11:11, paid to unpaid. That means that only 1 in 7 or 1 in 11 of the people you contact can email you back without paying the fee—a powerful disincentive to returning your email, unless you are clearly a “10.”
I can’t understand this unwillingness to pay your share for what is clearly a top knotch service. Particularly when the prices are so good when you sign up for more than a month.
Match.com currently is charging $12.99 per month when you sign up for six months. Yahoo! Personals is $12.49 per month for the six month contract. Yahoo! Premier (recommended—here’s why) comes to $20.83 per month for the same period of time.
Don’t worry about the six month factor: It’ll probably take you at least a month or two to get your feet wet on the dating site and get some experience in weeding out potential candidates. Chances are very good that you will not meet Mr. or Ms. Right in your first month. And so what if you do? For an investment of under $100 that gives you access to scads of people looking for partners, even if you find your Life’s Love on the first DAY, it would still be a great deal.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
PSD According to an article on biz.yahoo, Match has over 600,000 paid members and over 3,000,000 profiles (even those figures give a 5:1 unpaid to paid ratio). 60% of users are men (good news, ladies!), and Match has the highest percentage of over 35 users making $100,000 or more (7%).
A little over a year ago, I wrote about 9/11 being a tipping point (a la Malcolm Gladwell) for Internet dating, when going online for love and romance suddenly came out of the closet and into our living rooms.
I think we are at another Internet dating tipping point: Going online to find a romantic partner is about to be the #1 option for singles. Right now, “friends and family” is the only method of meeting a Sweetheart that beats out going online. And the attitude that I have been hearing and feeling coming around to is “Why WOULDN’T you be listing online? You are crazy if you AREN’T!”
Just as telegraphs and telephone and then email trumped each other as preferred methods of rapid communication, so too online dating. The access that a good sized site like Yahoo! Personals and Match.com gives an individual to large numbers of interested others, in privacy, is too good not to take first place.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
http://www.blognewbie.com/contentzsystem/index.php?S=0&C=edit&M=new_entry
Have you happen to have watched the three part “Secrets of the
Sexes” on Public Broadcasting. Catch them if you can—a
tremendous amount of helpful information about love, dating, and
sexual attraction.
Here’s one tidbit: Researchers set up a speed dating event with
40 men and women. They tested various strategies and elements,
trying to predict who would be attracted to whom. Almost all
their theories were blown out of the water. The only factor they
could find that determined who was the most attractive to the
other sex was height in men (the three tallest men got by far the
most date offers), and the ratio of waist to hip size in women
(the smaller the waist in comparison to hips is correlated to
fertility, which men seem to unconsciouly know).
Before the speed dating, the researchers tried to improve the
luck of a couple of the participants. One guy, who by his own
description was short, skinny, and not good looking, was put in a
store front window and women passing by were asked to guess his
profession, how much money he made, and whether they would date
him.
Not only was he short, skinny, and not good looking, he was made
more unattractive by his clothing: layered and badly colored T
shirts, jeans, and very odd shoes. The women guessed he worked
in a shop, made less than 30,000 pounds (the study was in
London), and sometimes rated him below 0 in attractiveness. Most
said they would not date him.
Then the researchers set him up with a stylist who dressed him in
a dark jacket and slacks, white dress shirt (open collar, no
tie), nice shoes and designer sunglasses. Then they put him back
in the store window.
This time, the women guessed that he was a professional or
business owner (in fact, he was a university lecturer), upped his
income to 40,000+, his attractiveness level by several points,
and were much more likely to agree to a date.
BTW, this same guy in the speed dating event (where he wore his
new outfit) did quite well. He indicated interest in ALL the
women, and two indicated enough interest back that he got dates.
He was very pleased and visably excited.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
The one religious group I hear from regularly looking for spouses of the same faith are Jewish. Actually, who I hear from are Jewish women, usually 40 and over. The slice of this subgroup having the most difficult time seem to be never married women in their 40’s. Women in their 50’s and 60’s, even those never married, have an easier time.
Several demographics problematically come together for these age 40’s women: The national trend of both men and women to put of first marriages well into their 30’s; The proverbial ticking clock (approaching menopause) which combines with the seeming heavier-than-average stress on marriage, family and children for Jewish adults; Men’s awareness (and avoidance) of women’s growing pressure to get on with marriage and child-bearing; The fact that both men and women in this group have successfully avoided getting married yet; And the low proportion of Jews in the general population (2%). If you add in that the individual in question may live outside the geographical concentrations of Jewish population (rural, sparsely populated areas are the worse), these women have a big problem.
Jared Shelly in “The Jewish Exponent” describes the demographics and problems succinctly in his article “Search for a mate gets complicated.” Shelly writes: “But while age can present a barrier to Jewish daters, it is not the only obstacle to finding one’s match. In a growing trend, as college graduates find jobs or seek graduate degrees outside their native regions, the Jewish community’s net has both expanded across the country and thinned out. There are now a smaller number of Jews in the places where they once traditionally lived.” Take a look at Shelly’s article for an extensive treatment of this subject.
Internet dating seems made for this spread-out group, and Jdate.com, with its more than 70,000 members, fills a big gap. Speed dating was INVENTED by a rabbi, for goodness sake, and speed dating events for Jewish singles are very popular. Speed dating, in fact, seems to have taken a place right beside Internet dating in popularity for all singles. Seems like the rabbi was onto something.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Reporter Melissa Rayworth article “Romance lost in love found on dating sites” is interesting, if rather odd. While Rayworth is married, and to a man she met “in real life” and not through the Net, she is alternately curious, respectful, and appalled by Internet dating.
Probably, the basic weakness of the article is that Rayworth has not experienced Internet dating herself. How else could she title the article “Romance lost in love found on dating sites”? Who lost the romance? Online meetings and courtships can be VERY romantic. Just ask me. I had one. Actually three, if you count the two that went nowhere.
Rayworth quotes an expert: “The technology has increased the ability of people to meet others who are similar and meet a much greater number of people who are potential mates for them than has ever been true in human history,” says Robert E. Rosenwein, professor of social psychology at Lehigh University, who researches the connection between technology and human interaction.
Sounds right to me.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Gumtree.com, a London, England, site, surveyed 1600 of it’s members about their Internet dating experiences. While it doesn’t mean much for U. S. singles to know that Glasgow came out on top for dating site usage and success (almost 3/4 of the men and over half the women reported having a “fling” with someone they met online), still, the numbers indicate the growing importance of dating sites for singles to connect. Glasgow men and women also reported high percentages of longer term romance: 68% of men, 71% of women reported at least one serious or long-term relationship stemming from an Internet meeting.
Here’s the figures that I found most interesting: 77% of men and 33% of women from Glasgow said they found Internet dating more comfortable for connecting than a bar or the workplace. Wow.
This all points to the growing acceptance of online connecting. Singles like the ease, simplicity, and privacy. Not to mention the ability to meet many, many more eligible singles than has ever been possible before.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Did you know that Match.com and the controversial book “The Rules” both came out in 1995? Just about everyone one of my female clients (and virtually all of them are strong, independent working women used to running their lives) seems to have read “The Rules” and then gotten thoroughly confused.
Internet dating sites have thoroughly trashed The Rules, thank goodness, and Ladies and Gentlemen, be on notice. Women do not have to play the extraordinary coquettish games that “The Rules” suggested.
Dating sites put men and women on an even keel. I ALWAYS encourage my female clients to look around and contact men they find interesting. After all, you are much more likely to get what you want if you do the picking. And an Israeli survey noted that women never make the first move 25% of the time, but a shocking 34% of men never do! Can you believe it???
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Now I do think that women have to be careful to let men do some pursuing. But I also think that it is not smart for a woman to leave all the “getting in touch” to the guy. It is just too risky.
My, things have come a long ways since I first heard of Match.com and this thing called Internet dating, way back in 1997. And those singles in Great Britain seem to be taking to finding their mates in cyberspace like a good cup of tea. Maybe even better than us…
On January 31, an article in the Mirror (a UK company that bills itself as “The Best Newspaper on the Web") listed tips for finding a partner. Look at what tops the list, and what author Flic Everett say about it:
DO IT ONLINE
THIS method of finding a partner offers the highest chance of success.
There are hundreds of good websites featuring literally millions of profiles - try www.mirror.co.uk/dating, where you can specify how near you’d like your matches to live, alongside age, interests and appearance. Online dating has a high success rate because you can check out a photo first and decide how much information to reveal - or not.
BEST FOR: Busy people looking for long-term love, because it offers a huge number of potential partners and allows you to communicate before you actually meet.
Even more interesting is the “Don’t try” list:
NIGHTCLUBS The people you meet will be drunk and on the pull.
YOUR MUM Mother does not know best when it comes to dating - and she’s still going on about that lovely boy/girl you dumped when you were 14.
THE CINEMA How are you going to get chatting in the middle of a film? If you like movies, join a film club to meet a partner.
BLIND DATES You’ll only be insulted by what your friends consider suitable date material.
WORK Although most Brits meet their partners at work, it’s not easy - because if you split up, there’s no place to hide.
I saw recently that more than 60% of British singles are looking for love online. That’s astonishing! I wonder if it has anything to do with how small the country is geographically? Searching all of British singles for possible mates would not pose as difficult a problem as it does here. The country is so small that even if your Sweetheart were at the opposite end of the country. likely you could get there in a day’s drive. Or an easy train ride.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Want some great points to make with anyone who is shocked that you are considering Internet dating? Read this article. The writer interview Melanie who makes the best arguments for going online that I have ever read. Here’s a sample:
“You’re right, the Internet’s a cesspool. I’m going to stop looking for love online and go to that seedy bar down the road where all the smart, intelligent, good-looking single men hang out. Oh yeah, I forgot, all the men in there are drunk. And married. And not that intelligent. The only thing I know about them is that they’re at a bar, not on the Internet.
“Online I can Google them, I can do a background check, I can see their picture,” she continued. “Try that in a bar. Yes, guys can lie online. But guess what? Guys can lie to you offline, too. I dated a guy named Gus I met at a traditional Christmas party for three weeks before I found out his real name was Allen and his wife’s name was Maureen.”
There’s more. You’ll love it. Check it out.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
After you get your profile in perfect shape and posted on one or two dating sites, then comes the task of searching for likely mate candidates and sorting through the responses and results. Laura Gilbert of Match.com’s online magazine “Happen” has written an excellent article full of suggestions that will help singles in their search techniques. The fact that Gilbert quotes me in the article makes it no less fantastic. (You need to read through to end—I’m quoted in section #5).
Read the whole article for her in-depth discussion, but here are the points she made that I particularly liked:
#2 Go easy on height and weight constraints.
#3 Expand your age and location limits.
#5 Don’t get discouraged.
So may people are now listing online that it can be easy to get overwhelmed by so many choices. It’s all too easy to cut down the numbers by going for your ideal, ie: Tall, dark, and handsome, rich, and lives within a five minute walk. But every parameter you set ELIMINATES many wonderful candidates. The very best thing about online dating is that you have so many choices! Don’t eliminate the variety in an attempt to simplify your search. Take the time to thoroughly consider all types of potentials.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
I just came across this article, and it is so good that I am copying it in it’s entirety.
Millions of Seniors Use Online Dating Services
Dear Savvy Senior: Do you know much about senior dating services on the Internet? My two daughters have been urging me to try it, but I have some concerns. I am 59 years old, have been divorced for nine years and would like to meet some interesting new men, but the Internet seems a little strange. What can you tell me? - Single Senior
Dear Single: Online dating has become wildly popular among the Boomer and senior populations over the past few years. In fact, more than 16 percent of those active on the top-five dating sites are over age 55, and more than 5 percent are over age 65. Here’s what you should know:
Online dating: Not since high school or college will you find such a large number of potential dates and mates in one place. If you’re interested in dating again or, are just looking for a friend to spend time with, and have access to the Internet, online dating services can be a nice option. Here are some things to know.
* Convenience: You can meet hundreds of single people that tickle your fancy without ever leaving your home. Also, by exchanging e- mail you get to know each other slowly, without the awkwardness that comes with first dates. Most sites also offer instant messaging and chat rooms.
* Costs: Most online dating services allow you to create your own personal profile, post photos and search for compatible members for free. But, when you’re ready to start contacting people, you’ll have to become a member, which typically costs between $20 and $50 per month.
* Safety: When you sign up with a dating or matchmaking service, you remain anonymous. No one should ever get access to your full name, address, phone number or e-mail address until you decide to give it out at your own discretion. Be very prudent with giving out your personal information!
* Informative: Most sites offer personality profiles of their members that include things like photos, hobbies, interests, family history, political beliefs, dreams, goals and favorite activities so you can get to know members online before you decide whether or not you’d like to meet.
* Pictures Can Lie: Unfortunately, some people post photos that were taken many years ago, or that are extremely flattering and not very true-to-life. If you remember that they probably won’t look as good as their photo, you won’t be as disappointed.
* People Can Lie: In an effort to get more responses, or in some cases to deliberately mislead, some people lie in their profiles, so don’t believe everything you read. If they sound too good to be true, they probably are.
Senior dating sites
More and more online dating sites are recognizing the growing number of single Boomers and seniors who would love to find love and friendship with a suitable partner. Here are some top sites that specialize in senior matchmaking.
* SilverSingles.com: Owned by MatchNet, this is a great senior dating Web site with more than 8 million members worldwide.
* eHarmony.com: With more than 6 million users, eHarmony has been courting older singles by teaming up with ThirdAge (a Web site for Boomers) and attending last year’s AARP convention.
* SeniorFriendFinder.com: A senior dating site and part of the FriendFinder network. It draws upon a database of more than 2 million members.
* PrimeSingles.net: This site says it is for single men and women 40 and up, but the age group tends to be more in their late 50s and 60s.
* Match.com: While they don’t offer any special services just for seniors, Match.com is the world’s largest online dating service (for people of all ages), with more than 15 million members, many of whom are over age 55.
Send your senior questions to: Savvy Senior, P.O. Box 5443, Norman, OK 73070, or visit http://www.savvysenior.org. Jim Miller is a regular contributor to NBC’s “Today” show and author of “The Savvy Senior” book.
Source: Charleston Gazette, The
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