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Kathryn's Blog: Where are the Good Men and Women?
And she got married! Essence Atkins married the guy she met on Match.com two years ago. If you wonder about the quality of the men and women on dating sites, it’s hard to argue with this pairing:
ESSENCE ATKINS MARRIES HER INTERNET BEAU: Couple jumped the broom Saturday in Pasadena. G. Garvin provided the food.
*Actress Essence Atkins, best known for her role on the UPN sitcom “Half and Half,” has married her boyfriend Jaime Mendez after meeting him less than two years ago through an online dating site.
According to People.com, the wedding took place Saturday at the Ambassador Mansion and Gardens in Pasadena, Calif, The couple met on Valentine’s Day of last year through Match.com.
“I wrote him a quick little note that I had read his profile, and then I signed off, Happy SAD Day – that’s Single Awareness Day,” says Essence, 37. A week later the couple went on their first date, and they were engaged a year later.
The bride wore a Stephen Yearick gown for the ceremony and an Angel Rivera dress for the reception, according to People. “I felt like a princess,” she says.
Her former costar Valerie Pettiford performed original music at the reception. Plus, the bride surprised her husband with a salsa band to celebrate his Puerto Rican heritage.
“We’ve been taking salsa lessons. It’s part of what we’ve been doing together as a couple,” she says.
TV One personality, chef G. Garvin, blended Puerto Rican and traditional soul food dishes, which included mac and cheese, roasted pork, peach cobbler and plantains.
As party favors, guests received match books and travel-sized candles. But singles guests were given six-month memberships to Match.com.
If you think it is only losers who use online dating, get a load of this story:
ESSENCE ATKINS ENGAGED TO MATCH.COM DATE:
Actress puts profile on Internet dating service and strikes gold (as in a ring).
Actress Essence Atkins got herself a fiancé through Match.com.
The former “Half and Half” star got engaged to Jaime Mendez in February following a year-long courtship that started when they came across each other on the popular Internet dating site, reports TMZ.com. Their wedding is set to take place on Sept. 26.
Atkins, who started her career on “The Cosby Show,” says she preferred using Match.com because she didn’t have to post a picture of herself. She ended up sending Jamie a message on Valentine’s Day because they were 97% compatible.
It’s official - farmers are sexy
By Tim
To be or not to be?
That is obviously the question when it comes to revealing your identity if you’re a farming and entering the world of online dating.
New research from mysinglefriend.com reveals that more and more women want to date a farmer.
Has what you are looking for in a mate changed with your financial picture? Has the economic hard times gotten you to think about more practical mates? See this article about a British dating site for farmers that has seen an upsurge of business since the economy has tanked.
“Eighteen months ago, the city boy was much in demand - but now farmers, plumbers, sparkies and carpenters are seriously hot property,” says a spokesperson for the firm. Apparently, they’re so in demand they’re “flying off its virtual shelves”.
The change in the dating trend is, they reckon, a result of the current economic climate.
“Women want stability and to feel safer in the knowledge that their partners will not only reliably bring home the bacon, but be handy round the house too,” says Sarah Beeny, co-founder of the site.
“Since the recession began, we’ve seen a change in what women on mysinglefriend.com are looking for. Forget the previously most popular bankers and financiers, electricians, carpenters and farmers seem to be the most wanted men today. Women want men who can do.”
This paints a different picture to that suggested by a recent analysis of figures by extra-marital dating agency Illicit Encounters.
That revealed farmers seemed to be covering up their identity in order to boost their appeal to members of the opposite sex, preferring instead the term ‘self-employed’ which they believed made them sound more attractive.
If you lead a muddy-boots lifestyle and want to meet like-minded people, be it for friendship, shared interests or dating, check out FWMuddyMatches.
For all you not-so-smart people out there, it’s consoling to know that smart people have a rough time. They do. For example, I know from years of doing psychotherapy with all sorts of folks (in my practice in Maine I had lobster fishermen and world class scientists), the smarter you are, the better you are at making yourself crazy and your life miserable. I’ve seen similar problems with smart singles: They are very good at eliminating perfectly good candidates because the person can spell or doesn’t have a graduate degree or know much about some obscure topic. And they are good about complicating what should be a simpler process. After all, if birds and bees do it, why can’t they figure it out? This article below, though sassy and a bit cutting, sums up the dilemma well.
Why The Smartest People Have The Toughest Time Dating by Dr. Alex Benzer
I have a mini-confession to make: I wrote the Tao of Dating books specifically for really smart people. The writing of the books was precipitated by the endemic dating woes on the Harvard campus, as I observed them as an advisor and earlier, indulged in them as a student.
Those kids graduate and pretty much continue to have the same dating woes—only now with fewer single people around who happen to live in the same building and share meals with them every day. So if they had challenges then, it gets about 1000 times worse once they’re tossed from the warm womb of their alma mater.
From my observations, the following dating challenges seem to be common to most smart people. In fact, the smarter you are, the more clueless you will be, and the more problems you’re going to have in your dating life. Once upon a day I used to be pretty smart, and believe me, I had a lock on clueless.
On the one hand, this makes no sense. Smart people can figure stuff out, right? And this stuff is simple!
On the other hand, it makes total sense. For simple things, it takes someone smart to really screw it up. So whether you went (or should have gone) to the likes of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, Columbia, Cornell, Swarthmore, Amherst, Dartmouth, Brown, Oxford, Cambridge, Berkeley, Penn, Caltech, Duke, read on:
1. Smart people spent more time on achievements than on relationships when growing up.
Smart kids usually come from smart families. And smart families are usually achievement-oriented. Bring me home those straight As, son. Get into those top colleges, daughter. Take piano, violin, tennis, swimming and Tibetan throat-singing lessons. Win every award there is in the book. Be ‘well-rounded.’
Well, you’re a talented little bugger. Of course you should develop those talents. At the same time, there’s an opportunity cost associated with achievement. Time spent studying, doing homework, and practicing the violin is time not spent doing other things—like chasing boys or girls, which turns out is fairly instrumental in making you a well-rounded human.
The upshot of all that achievement is that you get into a top college—congratulations!—and then continue doing even more of what you were doing before. Dating is at best another extracurricular, #6 or #7 down the list, somewhere between Model UN and intramural badminton.
I’ve been co-hosting young alumni events for name-brand schools for long enough to know that these kids come out a little lopsided (which sounds so much better than ‘socially awkward’, don’t you think?). All they need is a little tune-up, or a little dating textbook like The Tao of Dating for Women or Men, to get them going—plus a little practice.
Of course, as noted above, things only get worse once you graduate. And if you’re frustrated with your love life, you just might try to compensate by working harder and achieving even more to fill that void. Left untreated, this condition can go on for decades. I know people in their 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond who still haven’t figured out how to create an intimate connection with another human being.
It’s because they’ve been going at it the wrong way. Which brings us to…
2. Smart people feel that they’re entitled to love because of their achievements.
For most of their lives, smart people inhabit a seemingly meritocratic universe: if they work hard, they get good results (or, in the case of really smart folks, even if they don’t work hard, they still get good results). Good results mean kudos, strokes, positive reinforcement, respect from peers, love from parents.
So it only makes sense that in the romantic arena, it should work the same way. Right? The more stuff I do, the more accomplishments and awards I have, the more girls (or boys) will like me. Right? Please say I’m right, because I’ve spent a LOT of time and energy accumulating this mental jewelry, and I’m going to be really bummed if you tell me it’s not going to get me laid.
Well, it’s not going to get you laid, brother (or sister). It may get you a first date, but it’s probably not going to get you a second date. And it certainly won’t bring you lasting love and fulfillment.
Here’s the thing: your romantic success has nothing to do with your mental jewelry and everything to do with how you make the other person feel. And making someone feel a certain way is a somewhat nonlinear process that requires a different kind of mastery than that of calculus or Shakespeare.
In other words, you need to earn love (or at least lust). Sadly, no mom, dad or professor teaches us about the power of the well-placed compliment (or put-down), giving attention but not too much attention, being caring without being needy. I wrote a whole 280-page book about that, so that’s a story for a different day.
3. You don’t feel like a fully-realized sexual being, and therefore don’t act like one.
At some point in your life, you got pegged as a smart person. From then on, that was your principal identity: The Smart One. Especially if you had a sibling who was better-looking than you, in which case she (or he) was The Pretty One.
Now you could be absolutely stunning (in which case you’re both smart AND pretty and everyone hates you except for me—call me, like, immediately), but your identity is still bound up in being The Smart One. So maybe you dress frumpy and don’t pay a lot of attention to your appearance. Or never bothered to cultivate your sensuality as a woman. Or your sexual aggression as a male.
Attracting a partner is all about the dance of polarity. Energy flows between positive and negative electrodes, anode and cathode, magnetic north and south. Unless you actually convey femininity as a woman or masculinity as a man, you’re not going to attract a suitable companion of the opposite sex.
Part of the issue is this: when all of your personal energy is concentrated in the head, it never gets a chance to trickle down to the heart, or, god forbid, the groin. By virtue of being born of the union of male and female, yang and yin, you are a sexual being. Deal with it. Now do what you need to do to perpetuate the race already. Use what mama amoeba gave you.
That brings us to…
4. You’re exceptionally talented at getting in the way of your own romantic success.
Here’s an incontrovertible fact: every one of your ancestors survived to reproductive age and got it on at least once with a member of the opposite sex. All the way back to Homo erectus. And even further back to Australopithecus. And even further back to monkeys, to lizards, to the first amphibian that crawled out of the slime, the fish that preceded that amphibian, the worm before the fish and the amoeba that preceded the worm.
And you, YOU, in the year 2009 C.E., the culmination of that miraculously unbroken line of succession, you, Homo sapiens sapiens, not just thinking man but thinking thinking man (or woman), are the only one smart enough to SCREW THE WHOLE THING UP.
Perhaps you should consider thinking a little less then.
Because heaven knows that the amoeba, worm, fish, amphibian, monkey and primitive hominids didn’t do a whole lot of thinking. Their DNA had a vested interest in perpetuating itself, so it made sure that happened.
Turns out your DNA works the same way, too. And maybe when you’re really sloshed at a party and your whole frontal lobe is on vacation in the outer rings of Saturn, you’ve noticed that your lizard brain knows exactly how to grab that cute girl by the waist for a twirl on the dance floor. Or knows exactly how to arch your back, flip your hair and glance at that handsome hunk just so such that he comes on over to say hi.
To put it plainly, you are programmed to reproduce. Now quit thinking you’re smarter than the 3 billion base pairs in your genome and 4 billion years of evolution. Actually, just stop thinking altogether. Let the program do its work.
5. By virtue (or vice) of being smart, you eliminate most of the planet’s inhabitants as a dating prospect
Let’s say by ‘smart’ we mean ‘in the top 5% of the population in terms of intelligence and education’. Generally speaking, smart people seek out other smart people to hang out with, simply because they get bored otherwise. And if they’re going to spend a lot of time with someone, intelligence in a partner is pretty much a requirement.
Well, congratulations—you’ve just eliminated 95% of the world’s population as a potential mate, Mr or Ms Smartypants. Now, luckily, the world’s kinda big, so the remaining 5% of the gender of your choice is still a plentiful 160 million or so people. Even if only 1% of those are single enough, good-looking enough, local enough and just all-around cool enough for you, that’s over a million people you can date out there.
Still, that’s less than one in five thousand people. And if you live in a smaller city, it may be just a handful of folks who are going to meet your stringent criteria.
At this point, you have three choices:
A) Loosen up
B) Do a very thorough search all over the planet and be prepared to move to Duesseldorf OR
C) Join a monastery.
My hearty recommendation is choice A. The purpose of relationship (and perhaps all of life) is to practice the loving. No partner is going to be 100% perfect anyway, so learn to appreciate people for what they have to offer, not what they don’t. And love them for that. That’s what real loving is.
Nobody’s asking to lower your standards here; you should still spend time only with worthwhile company. But do question the standards to see whether they’re serving you or you’re serving them.
When you open your heart to love, you may find fulfillment in ways you never imagined possible—like the day you tried sushi or beer in spite of your trepidation, found it surprisingly alright, and expanded your personal envelope of pleasure. Taking that into consideration, given a choice between happy-go-lucky and picky-but-lonely, happy sounds like more fun.
Garrison Keillor is so wonderfully prolific. His “Dear Mr. Blue” column on Salon.com is a little-known gem. See here Mr. Blue’s excellent advice to this 63 year old woman looking for love in Mississippi (I’ve underlined the part I particularly like):
Dear Mr. Blue,
I am a 63-year-old woman blessed with incredible genes. My mother is 81 and looks like my sister; my father is 86 and looks like he is maybe 50. I look great. I’m a size 4. I have great bones. I love men, and I love sex. But no one ever asks me out, except a couple of old friends and a few lovers who are married to other women. They tell me that I should just enjoy life with them but I want to meet interesting, sexy men who are not married. A considerate man who loves sex, good food, good movies, classical music. I could delight such a man indefinitely. What is wrong with me?
Perplexed in Mississippi
Dear Perplexed,
Nothing is wrong with you whatsoever, but perhaps Mississippi is low on unmarried, sexy men who are interesting and who are interested in 63-year-old women with great bones, so, as when you search the woods for your car keys, you must cover a great deal of ground and look closely. Look for “interesting” first and then cull the marrieds from the herd. An interesting man is one who can talk and when he does, doesn’t talk about his pickup, or football, or hunting. Football is a depressant, like most sports, and hunting is mostly about drinking and male bondage, and pickups are not suitable friends: They are motor vehicles.
You might feel differently, but I don’t know any interesting people who don’t read books, so you might start nosing around bookstores and the library. You can spend hours in these places and not spend a dime and nobody blinks at it. Avoid the auto-repair section; hew toward nonfiction, history, biography, and when you see the zebra come to the water hole, approach him and ask an innocent question about whatever section he seems to be browsing in—e.g., “Do you know any good books about World War II?”—and if he leaps away in alarm, let him go, and if he answers appropriately, scan his left hand, and if it’s clear of ringage, tell him in a quiet voice that he is awfully good-looking.
Tell him this as a preface to something else, e.g., “I suppose you hear this all the time, but you’re what I call a blanket man. Speaking of which, do you know where I’d find the poetry section?” The vanity of men should never be underestimated, and women, for some reason, have given up playing to men’s vanity, thinking perhaps that in the 12-Step Era, frankness and empathy are the key. Nonsense. Men go to pieces if a woman compliments their appearance, their overall sexiness, because it almost never happens. So this man, dazed, not knowing exactly what “blanket man” means (neither do I, I just made it up), follows you into the poetry section where you are browsing, and, as he approaches, you look up and smile and you ask him, “What do you think of this?” and you read him a poem—like Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” or James Wright’s “A Blessing” or, if you are brave, something sexy by Sharon Olds—and you judge this man by his response. If he can say that he likes it and sound plausible, then he’s worth looking into. Good luck, and remember that good advice can be magical: Sometimes you do the exact opposite and achieve the same result.
The period between New Year’s and Valentine’s Day is always the BEST for online dating. The economic slump has interestingly magnified that good news. People look for relationships and love in times of stress, and we are stressed.
Depressed Dow Drives Americans into Arms of Online Dating
A handful of online dating sites are reporting activity spikes following September’s global financial crisis.
“On days when the US Dow Jones industrial went down […] by more than 100 points, more people were likely to log in and spend more time on the site,”
stated Senior Research Scientist Gian Gonzaga in an interview with Reuters.
“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.”
CEO Thomas Enraght-Moony of Match.com corroborates Gonzaga’s view. “During these trying times, people are looking for hope in their inbox,” he said.
November brought Match.com its largest membership increase in the last seven years.
But even lesser-known dating sites, like Perfectmatch.com, are seeing bounty. The latter reported a 47% hike in membership in the three months to November compared to the previous quarter.
An Opinion Research Corp. poll, sponsored by eHarmony, found 57% of Americans worry more about their love lives amidst the credit crunch. Married men were most affected, with 63% stressed over love.
And 75% of poll-takers between 25 and 34 worried whether the economy would negatively impact their love lives. Younger, single respondents were more likely to pursue a relationship as a result of these concerns.
Older respondents, which were more likely to be married, still worried financial issues would harm their existing relationships. “There are often more fights over bills and household budgets” among couples in climates like this one, Gonzaga pointed out.
The Opinion/eHarmony poll comprised 1,092 users. Meanwhile, a survey by Avalanche LLC — which operates date.com, matchmaker.com and amor.com — found 84% of people are spending more time online or over the phone before meeting face-to-face.
With all that in mind, it bodes well for the online dating industry that the Dow is down 35% this year.
Online dating services became aggressive advertisers in ‘07, with eHarmony spending the most: $110.1 million in total as of February last year. Match.com followed, spending $66.4 million in total.
Their efforts weren’t wasted. Prior to 2008, Mediamark Research found US adults were increasingly receptive to online dating, which was previously stigmatized as an arena for the desperate and unloveable. Men were slightly more likely to log onto an online dating site (52.2% versus 47.8%), and people between 18-34 consisted of over half of the online dating population. Single parents were significantly more likely than average to pursue a ‘net-based romance.
The face of online dating in general has evolved since then. Online speed dating debuted late last year. And last month, online dating conglomerate eHarmony lost a three-year-old suit for refusing to match gays, lesbians and bisexuals. The company will launch a gay dating site, “Compatible Partners,” in early 2009.
For all the guys who worry that women only want white collar professionals, maybe they should try cruising Australian ladies:
Love those tools ....
“Tradies” have it in spades - new poll shows Aussie women want their men back
Single women have declared the trend for dating metrosexuals is well and truly a thing of the past. The down to earth, cheeky Aussie bloke is want woman really want, according to a survey which found that single women are much more interested in dating tradesmen than men in suits.
The survey of over 700 female members of RSVP.com.au, Australia’s largest online dating site, saw 93 per cent of respondents saying they would like to date a “tradie”. Almost half the women surveyed (49 per cent) believe tradesmen are “more relaxed and fun than men in stuffy suits”.
RSVP’s Customer Support Director, Lija Jarvis said that this was a clear indication that the time of the ‘metrosexual’ was over. “Australian women are wanting real men – guys with a sense of humour, an outdoorsy attitude and a man who is prouder of his tools, not his tie collection. Women are over sharing their hair products, moisturisers and mirror time. Clearly, it’s more sexy to know how to fix a tap or change a tyre.”
According to single women, the appeal of a tradie lies predominately in sex appeal, “sexy and strong” was the most popular reason (28 per cent), followed by “not afraid to get their hands dirty” (20 per cent) as well as “handy around the house and garden” (15 per cent).
When asked which of the trades they thought was the sexist, builders came out on top (47 per cent) followed by chippies (21 per cent).
You know, I’ve been helping folks find love online for a long time now, and watched as online dating moved from the shadows into full respectability. But I am still astounded that some singles resist the best show in town for finding love. Here’s a good basic article for those who remain to be convinced....
Love online 20 million people visit at least one online dating service every month. What are they all looking for?
By CAROLINE DOHACK of the Tribune’s staff
Published Sunday, November 2, 2008
Traditionally, we meet our partners through venues that serve as common bonds — school, work, church — or through family and friends. But as many are discovering, online dating has its own advantages.
Find your match
How many fish are in the sea? Probably as many as there are online dating services. Here is a breakdown of a few of them:
eHarmony: After filling out a lengthy personality survey, the site will find potential matches using a patented compatibility matchmaking system. This is a subscription-based service geared toward people seeking long-term relationships. http://www.eharmony.com.
Craigslist: Craigslist is a great way to find a sofa, concert tickets or lawn-mowing service. It also has personal ads. But because users can post in anonymity, you might find a little bit more than you were looking for. In other words, don’t cruise these ads at work. columbiamo.craigslist.org.
OmniDate: If you find instant messaging potential paramours to be a little impersonal, this site allows you to chat using animated avatars. There is a limited selection of avatars, so your virtual date will probably look more like a fantasy date. But if you’ve always wanted to be a blonde but feared the peroxide, this might be the way to go. http://www.omnidate.com.
Crazy Blind Date: For the truly brave, this site sets you up with someone at the last minute and arranges a time and place for you to meet. This service is only available in certain cities, but if you find yourself lonely when you go out of town, keep this one bookmarked. http://www.crazyblinddates.com.
Geek 2 Geek: The name says it all. In addition to some of the usual online profile questions, you get to pick your favorite video game console and tag interests such as anime, superheroes, sci-fi and computers. http://www.gk2gk.com.
Passions Network: Hey, you know what you like. This site allows you to set up niche dating accounts. If you’re looking for a vegan bicyclist who loves pirates and punk music, you can be as picky as you want here. http://www.passionsnetwork.com.
According to data from Online Dating magazine, a consumer watchdog publication for online daters, more than 20 million people visit at least one online dating service a month, and more than 120,000 marriages occur each year as a result of online dating.
“Online dating is the best thing to ever happen to shy people,” said Joe Tracy, publisher of Online Dating. “They get to know someone via the computer, and then they feel more comfortable meeting them personally.”
Furthermore, there might not be many people looking for partners at those traditional meeting venues, Tracy said. “When you go online, you know there are people looking for the same thing,” he said.
Dave Evans, founder and editor of onlinedatingpost.com and a consultant to online dating consumers and industry members, likens dating to job hunting. You still want to meet people, but you also look for other ways to make yourself known. “Your profile is your résumé. You want to get out there and share it,” Evans said.
Online dating also gives people the chance to search for people with similar interests.
“If you’re the type of person who dresses up as a Klingon on Halloween and you actually know the Klingon language, you can find somebody who matches those exact interests,” Tracy said.
And for many, finding a partner with similar interests and attributes is important. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that online daters often seek partners with qualities similar to those they reported on their own profiles. It’s not that people are looking for carbon copies of themselves. Rather, they want to feel comfortable with a potential partner. Someone with blue eyes won’t be going outside his or her comfort zone by dating someone with brown eyes, the study said, but smokers might have a more vested interest in seeking other smokers.
But getting outside those comfort zones opens up more possibilities. Maybe you like hip-hop, and she likes classical music. “Does that mean we’re not right for each other?” Evans said.
Still, some people prefer niche dating services, which narrow the selection by focusing on a hobby, lifestyle, religion or other aspect of life. For instance, JDate.com is a popular site for Jewish singles.
What kind of dating site is best for you? Consider your goals. If you’re just looking for something casual, free services such as Yahoo! Personals have the most users. But for those seeking serious, long-term relationships, paid sites such as eHarmony.com tend to attract like-minded people.
Once you decide on a site, here are some tips for making the connection:
● Get a new e-mail address specifically for online-dating correspondence, and don’t use your full name. You don’t want anyone using that information to track you down.
● For safety’s sake, don’t include identifying information such as phone number, last name or place of employment. If you have children, don’t post their photos or include too much information about them. “You’re putting this information out, and anybody in the world can read it,” Tracy said.
● Post a photo, preferably one that actually looks like you. Researchers at the University of Chicago found women who posted photos received twice as many e-mails than those who did not, and men who posted photos received 50 percent more e-mails.
● Write for whom you hope to attract. If you value a sense of humor, convey it through your profile. If you like a certain genre of movies, include little references. Your best matches will understand what you mean.
● Avoid clichés. This will help you stand out. “What people don’t realize is you’re seen in a series,” Evans said. “I’ve looked at 20 women before you, and I’ll look at 20 women after you.”
● Be truthful. You never know when a lie will come back to bite you.
● Be positive. Statements like “my last relationship left me emotionally scarred and cynical” won’t get you anywhere.
● Use spell-check.
Finally, if you’re worried about being judged for looking online, a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project Report found that only 29 percent of Internet users surveyed believe online daters “are in dire dating straits.” But these respondents, according to the report, tend to have less online experience and are less trusting of people in general.
Most view online dating as a way to use technology to enhance their lives.
“It’s another arrow in the quiver of opportunities to meet somebody,” Evans said.
Ladies, if you are really serious about finding love, an Irish accent turns you on, and the thought of moving does not terrify you, buy a ticket to Lisdoonvarna.
SARAH IN THE CITY: Luck of the Irish . . . ?
by Sarah Swain
I WOULDN’T normally trust a 65-year-old man with a Father Christmas beard to find me a date.
But I made an exception for Willie Daly.
I was in Lisdoonvarna, an Irish spa town with a special attraction - its annual matchmaking festival.
It’s a time for the single farmers of County Clare to attend to a much more pressing matter than milking - finding a wife.
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First set up to help farmers find love 150 years ago it still serves that purpose today - and a massive 40,000 people will arrive from all over the world during the five weeks of the festival which runs until October 5.
The local newspaper even reports a “Pamela Anderson lookalike” from Texas is in town looking for a hunky Irish husband - and she also happens to be an oil heiress.
As Lisdoonvarna’s official matchmaker, Willie knows what he’s talking about.
He’s matched hundreds of couples and claims to have a 90% success rate.
From a little booth in the corner of the Matchmaker Bar, Willie introduces people he thinks would be suitable for each other.
Men pay 20 euros to go on his books, while the cost for women is “negotiable”.
But could he help me?
“For you I would find a man with a strong build, daftish hair and blue eyes,” Willie told me.
“Not very tall, but strong. And a handsome man.”
And just half a glass of wine later, Willie beckoned me over to introduce me to someone.
“I’d like you to meet Sean.”
A small bloke with a cheeky smile got to his feet, swayed dangerously towards me like a Weeble Wobble.
His eyes lit up like the runway at Shannon airport when he saw me.
“Are you REALLY single?” he said in his lovely accent, not letting go of my hand for about 20 minutes.
But, after chatting with Sean, who had been enjoying plenty of the black stuff that night, I decided he was a little too young for me.
So I decided to take things into my own hands and look for a man in The Matchmaker myself.
But, you see, in Lisdoonvarna, the usual rules don’t apply.
It’s assumed everybody is there for one reason only - and there’s no time to lose.
An innocent trip to the toilet saw me get chatted up three times - but sadly they all looked like they’d parked their tractors at the door (as they probably had).
On another walk to the bar a dozen men looked up from their pints like meer cats, stretching their necks to make sure they didn’t miss a potential Mrs passing by.
Though, again, most of them looked like they’d just sailed in from Craggy Island.
But then I spied a stag night. I could tell they were a stag night as they’d all grown matching moustaches and were wearing cowboy hats in different animal prints.
And I wouldn’t usually approach a bunch of stags.
But I’m glad I did, as I was soon holding court with a hot lawyer from Dublin who looked a lot like American actor Adrien Brody.
His latest case, he told me, was between two rival hair growth drug companies - maybe that was the daftish hair Willie was on about.
He was a strong, silent type, taller than me - and he definitely did have blue eyes.
And I was thrilled when he let me gaze into them.
I might not have found a match for life but, to be sure, it was a great night...
# Thanks to http://www.tourismireland.com, http://www.fernhillfarm.net and http://www.matchmakerireland.com.
Publication date 19/09/08
My blog entry just before this was about Steve Penner, too. This guy knows what he’s talking about. I’m ordering his book right now.
Meet the Matchmaker: Steve Penner Dating columnist and new author says don’t be too picky, singles
By Rachel Forrest
Will you only date a woman who voted for Obama? Just tall dudes need apply? Are you looking for someone with kids — but only if the kids are out of the house? What about age? No one over 50?
If you have some strict ideas about just who you will or will not go out with, Steve Penner says that just might be the reason you can’t get a date or keep one. To be successful in the dating game, you’ve got to be open-minded — so get less picky and open that dating pool, and maybe take a look at yourself while you’re at it.
After interviewing 25,000 single men and women over the course of his 23 years as the owner of Boston-based LunchDates, the dating service he started in the 1980s, Penner — now of Stratham and the writer of The Truth About Dating column for Seacoast Media Group — says he can tell you just what you’ll need to know about yourself and the people you want to date to become successful at finding the right partner. His new book, “The Truth About Dating Revealed: How to Realize and Raise Your ‘Dating Quotient,’” is a provocative and humorous look at the dating world covering topics like the old biological clock, breaking up, what being “separated” really means, and most important, how to improve your “dating quotient” and where you stand in the social marketplace.
Penner spent almost 25 years assessing the “datability” of his clients at lunch dates, he now does the same for private clients and in workshops. The key? Be flexible without lowering your standards.
“As a dating coach and in seminars, I take a brief interview like the one I would have done at LunchDates. I’ve interviewed people who have a very high Dating Quotient (DQ) and didn’t even know it ...; tall guys are very much in demand but they don’t know that. There’s also a difference between a man being separated and a woman being separated.”
Penner says women are less likely to date a man who’s separated and that when men are “separated” they sometimes are still living in the same house as their spouse. Men on the other hand are more likely to date a separated woman and women balk at getting back into the dating game even if they’ve been separated completely for more than a year.
His advice? Your dating quotient goes up if you’re willing to date someone who’s separated, shorter, or maybe even a bit overweight.
“You’re changing your priorities without lowering your priorities. A lot of things people are unrealistic about aren’t important anyway, like height. What’s important in a marriage that lasts isn’t whether someone is tall or short. That’s irrelevant.”
LunchDates began in part because of Penner’s own divorce.
“I’d gotten divorced in 1979. I was 34. I had no idea what it was like being single in your 30s. I didn’t know how to meet a woman. I started a Scrabble Club and when I was talking to people at the club, I noticed most were single. Three couples got married from that club.”
Penner also noticed that more and more people were getting divorced in the ‘80s.
“Women were marrying later, they had careers, there were more divorces. There were just many more single people.”
So Penner started LunchDates, a social networking organization where he matched singles for meet and greets and in order to do that, he had to ask a lot of questions.
“I helped people realize that they have to have expectations that are realistic and then how to raise their Dating Quotient.”
While the ‘DQ” isn’t about hard numbers, singles lose points for characteristics like smoking, having gray hair, or just not being flexible about who they’ll date.
“Those never married guys 40 and up — most of them are guys who have been players. Now they’re ready to settle down and they only want the most beautiful woman they can find.”
Age is also a factor. In his chapter titled, ‘I’m A Young 62’ he notes, “If you are 40, I guarantee you think of yourself as being a ‘youthful’ __. (Fill in the blank; it doesn’t matter if you are 42, 52, or 62!) The fact is that over the past 23 years, 99.9 percent of the over 40 single men and women I interviewed at LunchDates claimed they were ‘very young’ for their age.”
No matter how young you feel, you might just have to date someone older and, as a result, find just the right person.
“Be flexible,” Penner says, “but without lowering your standards.”
These numbers speak for themselves. Internet dating is THE way to find love, particularly if you are over 45.
LOOKING FOR TRUE LOVE..GO ON INTERNET
Single men and women are more likely to find true love on the internet than at work or at a party - especially if they are over 45. A poll of 10,000 married couples in 2006/2007 found 19 per cent met online compared with 17 per cent who got together at work and 17 per cent who paired up through pals. Of these, 31 per cent aged 45 to 54 met online, against 18 per cent of 20 to 44-year-olds. Galen Buckwalter of online matchmaker eHarmony, California, said: “Wanting to get married and not going online will soon be seen as equivalent to trying to find an address by driving around randomly - rather than using a map.” In contrast a similar poll of 5,000 couples who married between September 2004 and August 2005 found that 14 per cent met online, compared with 20 per cent at work and 17 per cent through friends.
You wouldn’t believe how many women I work with who want to only date men over 6 feet tall. That’s the height of heightism, as far as I am concerned, and not a good idea for women to insist on anyway. Did you know that only 15% of American men are 6 feet or taller? That means that any woman insisting on over 6 feet is ELIMINATING 85% of perfectly good men. Seems pretty dumb to me.
Dating column: Women hypocrites for refusing to date short men
By Steve Penner
The first column I wrote three years ago dealt with the single issue that bugged me the most during the 23 years I ran the dating service LunchDates. Frankly, it was the aggravation caused by this issue that partially motivated me to start writing these columns.
I am referring to single women’s prejudice against meeting short men. Since I doubt that too many current readers actually saw that column, I decided to revisit the topic. After all, this is one area in which many women display all the shallowness and superficiality that they love to accuse men of possessing.
The same woman who is 10-20 pounds overweight, and who cannot understand why a man might not want to date her because of those few extra pounds ...; that same woman often will refuse to meet a man who is 2 inches shorter than her “ideal.”
During my years at LunchDates I interviewed women who were very flexible about a man’s religion, his hobbies, and even whether he was divorced. But the one criterion they would not budge on was his height!
I am not just talking about tall women. It is certainly understandable that a woman who is 5 feet 10 inches might want to meet a man over 6 feet tall. (In fact, though, the few women who stated that they were open to meeting men shorter than themselves tended to be taller women.)
What really perplexed me was the number of short women who insisted that they only would date men considerably taller than themselves. It was very common for women 5 feet 4 inches or under to state that they “absolutely” only wanted to meet a man at least 5 feet 10 inches, and they really preferred 6 feet.
I find it amazing how many women have attached an almost magical meaning to the height of 6-feet tall. If society tended to describe people in terms of inches rather than feet, I wonder how attractive it would sound to hear a man described as “72 inches tall,” rather than “70 inches.”
If you are skeptical, have a single man you know place an ad on an Internet dating site saying that he is 6 feet. Than have another man place an identical ad except for stating that he is only 5 feet 10 inches. I guarantee that the first ad will attract nearly twice as many responses from women!
Now many of the women I interviewed at LunchDates were “modern” women who insisted on equality in every way ...; except height. That is, they were educated, had good jobs, and earned a decent income. They only wanted to meet men who also were educated, had good jobs, and earned a decent income.
But those men also had to be tall! When pushed to the wall and asked their reasons, they replied with some of the following excuses:
* “I usually wear shoes with at least three to four-inch heels,” some women responded very naturally. They also frequently pointed out that many boots have even higher heels. So these women would add at least three to four inches to their own height just to pull even, then another few inches to make sure that the man on their arm was still taller.
* “My father, my brother, and all the men in my family are over 6 feet, so that is what I am used to,” one women stated, insisting that she KNEW that the average height of men was around 6 feet. When I tried to tell her that the median height of men was between 5 feet 8 inches and 5 feet 9 inches, she got up and angrily marched out of the interview room!
* “I am short, and I am looking for a man to father my children, and I don’t want to have short children,” a number of women told me, with a straight face, I might add.
* “I just feel safer when I walk down the street with a man who is much taller than me,” was also a common response.
* “I am only attracted to tall men, I just can’t help it!”
So where does this height bias leave short men? Behind the proverbial eight-ball, I am sad to say. After all, take a woman who is only 5 feet 2 inches, add three to four inches for her “heels,” another two to three inches so she can feel safe, and lo and behold, it is not unusual for such a women to refuse to meet any man under 5 feet 9 inches. That means she is eliminating about one-half of the male population.
I was especially disheartened when interviewing a man under 5 feet 6 inches. After all, it is easy to tell a single man or woman who smokes a pack a day that he or she would have a much higher Dating Quotient (that is be easier to match) if he or she quit smoking. It is a little more awkward to tell a woman who is very overweight that she will be difficult to match unless she drops a few pounds.
But a smoker can quit, and an overweight woman can lose weight. But there is not much a short man can do.
Fortunately I am not referring to all women. There are (and were) exceptions.
For research purposes, I occasionally would glance through my dating service’s “married file,” (a file that obviously contained the profiles of couples who met and married through LunchDates). I noted that many of the women in that file had stated in their interview that they really cared very little how tall their matches were, and that flexibility had translated into a very successful membership.
Then I looked through the file of people who had completed their membership at LunchDates without meeting anyone. Sure enough, it was full of those women who had insisted they would only meet men much taller than themselves.
Over the years I became increasingly frustrated by many women’s lack of flexibility in this area. Once I decided I was really going to “negotiate” with a short woman who was insisting that she only wanted to meet men over 6 feet. The woman had just stated that she was looking to get married and have children.
“You realize that if you are talking about growing old with a man, most people shrink a couple of inches as they hit old age,” I said.
The woman paused, thought about what I said, then responded “Well, if he’s going to shrink, all the more reason to only meet someone very tall!”
I’m a big fan of looking wherever you need to to find the love of your life. I looked all over when I was single, and in fact, Drew was the closest at 482 miles away. But the current economics of travel are making people think twice about starting up the old car or buying a plane ticket. That’s sobering when it comes to finding a mate. What do you think this will mean for your own search for love?
The toll on long-distance love As fuel prices climb, couples choose between breaking the bank and breaking hearts.
By Lini S. Kadaba
Inquirer Staff Writer
Love has its price.
Every few weeks for the last six months, Amanda Sheronas has paid $120, even $180, in airfare to see her sweetie 760 miles away.
But this month, Sheronas, 37, reached her limit.
The $219 cost of a one-way plane ticket to visit Jaime Alvarez, 40, in Jacksonville, Fla., broke the bank.
“I couldn’t afford it,” said Sheronas, who lives in Devon and works as a director at bridal gown company Alfred Angelo in Fort Washington.
Bad enough that the climbing cost of fuel has hurt school budgets, fire companies, and everyone’s grocery tab. Now, long-distance lovebirds are feeling the pinch on wallets - and hearts.
“It’s put a hold on us,” said Sheronas, who is unsure when she and her boyfriend of six months will rendezvous. “We’re seeing if we can wait it out. It’s not easy. . . . We’ve had to dial things down a little bit.”
The couple, like others, is fueling the flame - and easing the financial burden - with technologies such as texting. Others are cutting corners or choosing to meet at a halfway point.
According to an online poll conducted this month for The Inquirer at dating site OkCupid.com, nearly two-thirds of 1,179 clients said they would see a faraway mate less often as a result of higher gas costs.
About 65 percent text, call or e-mail more. More than 70 percent would cut back on extras, like a night out or gifts.
Locally, a philly.com poll posted two weeks ago found that 41 percent of 472 respondents had gone so far as to break up a long-distance relationship due to travel bills.
That might reflect Philly grumpiness more than actual love lost.
Still, said Kimberly Flemke, a couples and sex therapist with the Council for Relationships in Philadelphia, long-distance love, already complex, is “tougher now than ever before because gas prices are out of control. It really does force people to prioritize relationships. Who’s worth the money, the time? Where is my payback? . . . Who do I want to invest in, and who do I not?”
About 3.5 million dating couples consider themselves long distance, according to the Center for the Study of Long Distance Relationships, a Web site affiliated with author Dr. Gregory Guldner, who wrote the self-published Long Distance Relationships: The Complete Guide. An additional 3.6 million couples have commuter marriages, the Web site notes.
Experts say the number of LDRs, as they’re known, has grown with the rise of online dating - which increases the likelihood that Mr. Right lives three states away. The average LDR couple lives 125 miles apart, visits one to two times a month, and calls each other every three days for 30 minutes, according to a Guldner study.
As gas prices reach a nationwide average of $4.11 a gallon - more than a third higher than a year ago - nearly 60 percent of OkCupid.com poll takers would look for a match in a smaller geographic area and 70 percent would not date someone more than 50 miles away. The price of jet fuel has soared even more. In the last year, it has doubled, according to the International Air Transport Association.
Ironically, the same weak economy that might force LDRs to fizzle also could lead the number of love commutes to multiply, according to Caroline Tiger, author of The Long-Distance Relationship Guide. As jobs become scarcer, one half might have to move to chase employment, she said.
Jim Donohue and Christia Gordon, both 26, saw the financial stress mount when he left the San Diego area in late 2006 to come East, where he has family and landed a job.
“We don’t have a ton of disposable income,” said Gordon, a publicity manager. Recently, she worked the Web for a bargain to Philly. Fares hovered above $400 - double what she had paid just 18 months ago, she said. “Basically, right now, you could go to Mexico or the Caribbean for the same money.”
Even worse, those bucks go for a too-short turnaround. Donohue, who lives in Media, spent $450 for a West Coast drop-in over the July Fourth weekend - an expense he found “hard to justify” until he considered the prospect of “not seeing her for three months.” (Awww!)
Gordon was ready to quit her job and join him. Instead, she negotiated a deal as part of a promotion: She can work out of Philly for a week once a month, easing the situation.
Martha Blackburn, 29, lives in Marlton. Her boyfriend, David Williams, 25, a freelance TV station engineer, resides outside St. Louis. The couple bridges the 800 miles with video.
“It was his Valentine’s present to himself and to me,” said Blackburn, membership coordinator at the American Association of Teachers of German in Cherry Hill. “He got a little video camera, and we can see each other over Skype.”
The software allows free phone calls and videoconferencing over the Internet. Alas, “you can’t give someone a hug over Skype,” Blackburn lamented.
Ultimately, said Lisa Chase Patterson, a relationships expert at JustAnswer.com, LDR couples need to resolve the distance.
“Love is love,” said Patterson, who has seen an uptick in queries that mention the toll of gas prices on relationships. “But the reality is that you can’t do this for another five years. The person who does most of the traveling is going to get resentful.”
Tiger, the author, has had three LDRs of her own. The last, with Jon Dunsay, 36, an attorney and now her fiance, worked beautifully: He moved from Washington, D.C., to Center City, a block away from her.
“There’s really no substitute for seeing each other,” Tiger said. Besides, “we can use the money we’re saving . . . to actually travel places together.”
Others, in the meantime, are cutting corners to fund road trips and flights.
“We eat in more often and watch movies at home instead of going out as much,” said Katie Delach, 26, a public relations account manager who lives outside Boston and drives - round-trip: $120 - two, three times a month to Morristown, N.J., to spend time with Will Stokes, 24, a management associate with Subaru of America.
If she drives down more than he drives up, they split the cost of gas and tolls. “Sometimes,” she said, “we meet halfway in southern Connecticut. It gets to the point where, as much as you want to make the drive, we’re both starting out, and we can’t afford it.”
“It’s been a shock,” he said.
A few days ago, the couple caught a break (of sorts) on gas. Stokes’ company moved him to Chicago - and spontaneous, frequent drives are no longer possible.
The couple plan to rely on once-a-month flights. “We’re just going to have to see each other less,” he said. “It’s the only feasible, financially responsible option.”
Karlene Lihota, 25, a graduate student at Thomas Jefferson University who lives in Bella Vista, is luckier than most LDRers.
In another year, she’ll complete her degree and plans to join boyfriend Michael Salguero, 27, an entrepreneur, in Boston.
For now, she watches “100 percent” of income from a part-time Internet job go toward travel between the cities.
“You’ve really got to like the other person to do this,” she said.
For those of you who have wondered “What happened?” to the date you had last weekend who never called back, or to the guy or woman who seemed one way in emails, on the phone, or on a first date, then radically different the next time, this article that was in the New York Times a few months ago might explain what was going on:
Modern Love
January 13, 2008
AS a bipolar woman, I have lived much of my life in a constant state of becoming someone else. The precise term for my disorder is “ultraradian rapid cycler,” which means that without medication I am at the mercy of my own spectacular mood swings: “up” for days (charming, talkative, effusive, funny and productive, but never sleeping and ultimately hard to be around), then “down,” and essentially immobile, for weeks at a time.
This darkness started for me in high school, when I simply couldn’t get out of bed one morning. No problem, except I stayed there for 21 days. As this pattern continued, my parents, friends and teachers grew concerned, but they just thought I was eccentric. After all, I remained a stellar student, never misbehaved and graduated as class valedictorian.
Vassar was the same, where I thrived academically despite my mental illness. I then sailed through law school and quickly found career success as an entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles, where I represented celebrities and major motion picture studios. All the while I searched for help through an endless parade of doctors, therapists, drugs and harrowing treatments like electroshock, to no avail.
Other than doctors, nobody knew. At work, where my skills and productivity were all that mattered, I could hide my secret with relative ease. I kept friends and family unaware with elaborate excuses, only showing up when I was sure to impress.
But my personal life was another story. In love there’s no hiding: You have to let someone know who you are, but I didn’t have a clue who I was from one moment to the next. When dating me, you might go to bed with Madame Bovary and wake up with Hester Prynne. Worst of all, my manic, charming self was constantly putting me into situations that my down self couldn’t handle.
For example: One morning I met a man in the supermarket produce aisle. I hadn’t slept for three days, but you wouldn’t have known it to look at me. My eyes glowed green, my strawberry blond hair put the strawberries to shame, and I literally sparkled (I’d worn a gold sequined shirt to the supermarket — manic taste is always bad). I was hungry, but not for produce. I was hungry for him, in his well-worn jeans, Yankees cap slightly askew.
I pulled my cart alongside his and started lasciviously squeezing a peach. “I like them nice and firm, don’t you?”
He nodded. “And no bruises.”
That’s all I needed, an opening, and I was off. I told him my name, asked him his likes and dislikes in fruit, sports, presidential candidates and women. I talked so quickly I barely had time to hear his answers.
I didn’t buy any peaches, but I left with a dinner date on Saturday, two nights away, leaving plenty of time to rest, shave my legs and pick out the perfect outfit.
But by the time I got home, the darkness had already descended. I didn’t feel like plowing through my closet or unpacking the groceries. I just left them on the counter to rot or not rot —what did it matter? I didn’t even change my sequined shirt. I tumbled into bed as I was, and stayed there. My body felt as if I had been dipped in slow-drying concrete. It was all I could do to draw a breath in and push it back out, over and over. I would have cried from the sheer monotony of it, but tears were too much effort.
On Saturday afternoon the phone rang. I was still in bed, and had to force myself to roll over, pick it up and mutter hello.
“It’s Jeff, from the peaches. Just calling to confirm your address.”
Jeff? Peaches? I vaguely remembered talking to someone who fit that description, but it seemed a lifetime ago. And that wasn’t me doing the talking then, or at least not this me — I’d never wear sequins in the morning. But my conscience knew better. “Get up, get dressed!” it hissed in my ear. “It doesn’t matter if she made the date, you’ve got to see it through.”
When Jeff showed up at 7, I was dressed and ready, but more for a funeral than a date. I was swathed in black and hadn’t put on any makeup, so my naturally fair skin looked ghostly and wan. But I opened the door, and even held up my cheek to be kissed. I took no pleasure in the feel of his lips on my skin. Pleasure was for the living.
I had nothing to say, not then or at dinner. So Jeff talked, a lot at first, then less and less until finally, during dessert, he asked, “You don’t by any chance have a twin, do you?”
And yet I was crushed when he didn’t call.
A couple of weeks later, I awoke to a world gone Disney: daffodil sunshine, robin’s egg sky. Birds were trilling outside my window, a song no doubt created especially for me. I couldn’t stand it a minute longer. I flung back the covers and danced in my nightie — my gray flannel prison-issue nightie. I caught one glimpse of it in the mirror, shuddered, and flung it off, too.
I rifled through my closet for something decent to wear, but everything I put my hands on was wrong, wrong, wrong. For starters, it was all black. I hated black, even more than I hated gray. Redheads should be true to their colors, whatever the cost. I dug deeper, and there, shoved way in the back, was a pair of skin-tight jeans and something silky and sparkly and just what I needed: an exquisite gold sequined shirt.
I slipped it on and preened for a minute. Damn, I looked good. Then I tugged on the jeans. I had gained a few pounds during the last couple weeks of slothlike existence, but once I yanked really hard, they zipped up fine. Although something was sticking out of the pocket: a business card, with a few words scribbled across the back: “Call me, Jeff.”
Jeff?
Jeff! I kicked the nightie out of my way and grabbed the bedside phone. Was 6:30 a.m. too early to call? No, not for good old Jeff! It rang and rang. I was about to give up when a thick, sleepy voice said “Hello?”
“It’s me! Why haven’t you called?”
It took a while to establish who “me” was, but eventually he remembered. “You sound different,” he said. “Or no, maybe you sound more like yourself. I’m not sure. It’s so early.”
Soon I had him laughing so hard he got the hiccups and had to get off the phone. But before he did, he asked me out for Friday, three nights away.
No, I insisted, it had to be tonight, or even this afternoon. I didn’t want to lose another chance to get to know him. I knew that Cinderella had only so much time left at the ball.
We compromised on dinner that evening at 8. I spent the afternoon ridding my house of all evidence of depression. I soaped and scoured and dusted and vacuumed, using every attachment, even the ones that frightened me. Then I ran out and bought a dozen Casablanca lilies to hide the smell of ammonia and bleach.
When the house looked perfect, I turned on myself with the same fury. I buffed and polished and creamed and plucked and did everything in my power to recreate Rita Hayworth’s smoky allure in “Gilda.” As I was shadowing my eyes, I remembered her poignant line about the movie: “Every man I’ve known has fallen in love with Gilda, and wakened with me.” It gnawed at me, to the point that my hand started trembling and I couldn’t finish applying my mascara.
Suddenly I didn’t look radiant. There were lines around my mouth and a hollowness to my eyes that aged me 10 years. My skin, despite the carefully applied foundation and blush, was so deathly pale I recoiled from my reflection.
I sat on the toilet and started to cry. I had met the enemy enough times to know it by sight. Not now, I prayed. Please not now. Globs of mascara ran down my cheeks, and I wiped them away, heedless of the streaks they left. It was 7:57. I had three minutes to wrestle my brain chemistry into submission. Oh, sure, I knew there was another option. I could tell Jeff what was going on. But this was a man who didn’t even like his peaches bruised. What would he think of a damaged psyche?
Maybe he would understand. Maybe I would find the courage. Maybe they would invent a cure.
Maybe, but not tonight. As the doorbell rang and rang, I huddled in the bathroom, shivering. I was terrified — not just of Jeff finding me there, but of me never once finding love.
When it was finally quiet, I rinsed off the rest of my mascara and tossed my cocktail dress into the hamper. Then I buttoned up my gray flannel nightie, and settled in for the long night to come.
I never heard from Jeff again.
THAT was five years ago — five long years of ups and downs, of searching for just the right doctor and just the right dose. I’ve finally accepted that there is no cure for the chemical imbalance in my brain, any more than there is a cure for love. But there’s a little yellow pill I’m very fond of, and a pale blue one, and some pretty pink capsules, and a handful of other colors that have turned my life around. Under their influence, I’m a different person yet again, neither Madame Bovary nor Hester Prynne, but someone in between. I have moods, but they don’t send me spinning into an alternate persona.
Stability, ironically, is so exciting I have decided to venture into dating again. I have succumbed to pressure from friends and signed up for three months of a computer dating service. “Who are you?” the questionnaire asks at the start.
I want to be honest, but I don’t know how to answer. Who am I now? Or who was I then?
Life seems so much tamer these days: deceptively quiet, like a tiger with velveted paws. Every so often the sun shines too bright and I think, for a moment, that I own the sky. I think, how wonderful it was to be Gilda, if only in my own mind. But then I remember the price of the sky. So I take off my makeup, rumple my hair and go to the supermarket in sweats. The gold sequined shirt languishes in my closet. I’m thinking of giving it away.
Not just yet.
Terri Cheney is the author of “Manic: A Memoir,” to be published by Morrow/HarperCollins in February.
Okay, this is a very long reprint, and I apologize in advance, but I thought that this article which appeared in a recent “Atlantic” was too good not to put here in it’s entirety. A dilemma that I hear all to often is from women who fret about “settling,” staying with the less-than-perfect guy rather than continuing their search for the ideal. Here’s a long and thoughtful piece from the other side. Author Lori Gottlieb went ahead and had her baby, since Mr. Perfect had not shown up. Here what she is thinking now:
The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough
by Lori Gottlieb
Marry Him!
About six months after my son was born, he and I were sitting on a blanket at the park with a close friend and her daughter. It was a sunny summer weekend, and other parents and their kids picnicked nearby—mothers munching berries and lounging on the grass, fathers tossing balls with their giddy toddlers. My friend and I, who, in fits of self-empowerment, had conceived our babies with donor sperm because we hadn’t met Mr. Right yet, surveyed the idyllic scene.
“Ah, this is the dream,” I said, and we nodded in silence for a minute, then burst out laughing. In some ways, I meant it: we’d both dreamed of motherhood, and here we were, picnicking in the park with our children. But it was also decidedly not the dream. The dream, like that of our mothers and their mothers from time immemorial, was to fall in love, get married, and live happily ever after. Of course, we’d be loath to admit it in this day and age, but ask any soul-baring 40-year-old single heterosexual woman what she most longs for in life, and she probably won’t tell you it’s a better career or a smaller waistline or a bigger apartment. Most likely, she’ll say that what she really wants is a husband (and, by extension, a child).
To the outside world, of course, we still call ourselves feminists and insist—vehemently, even—that we’re independent and self-sufficient and don’t believe in any of that damsel-in-distress stuff, but in reality, we aren’t fish who can do without a bicycle, we’re women who want a traditional family. And despite growing up in an era when the centuries-old mantra to get married young was finally (and, it seemed, refreshingly) replaced by encouragement to postpone that milestone in pursuit of high ideals (education! career! but also true love!), every woman I know—no matter how successful and ambitious, how financially and emotionally secure—feels panic, occasionally coupled with desperation, if she hits 30 and finds herself unmarried.
Oh, I know—I’m guessing there are single 30-year-old women reading this right now who will be writing letters to the editor to say that the women I know aren’t widely representative, that I’ve been co-opted by the cult of the feminist backlash, and basically, that I have no idea what I’m talking about. And all I can say is, if you say you’re not worried, either you’re in denial or you’re lying. In fact, take a good look in the mirror and try to convince yourself that you’re not worried, because you’ll see how silly your face looks when you’re being disingenuous.
Whether you acknowledge it or not, there’s good reason to worry. By the time 35th-birthday-brunch celebrations roll around for still-single women, serious, irreversible life issues masquerading as “jokes” creep into public conversation: Well, I don’t feel old, but my eggs sure do! or Maybe this year I’ll marry Todd. I’m not getting any younger! The birthday girl smiles a bit too widely as she delivers these lines, and everyone laughs a little too hard for a little too long, not because we find these sentiments funny, but because we’re awkwardly acknowledging how unfunny they are. At their core, they pose one of the most complicated, painful, and pervasive dilemmas many single women are forced to grapple with nowadays: Is it better to be alone, or to settle?
My advice is this: Settle! That’s right. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection. Don’t nix a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling “Bravo!” in movie theaters. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go. Based on my observations, in fact, settling will probably make you happier in the long run, since many of those who marry with great expectations become more disillusioned with each passing year. (It’s hard to maintain that level of zing when the conversation morphs into discussions about who’s changing the diapers or balancing the checkbook.)
Obviously, I wasn’t always an advocate of settling. In fact, it took not settling to make me realize that settling is the better option, and even though settling is a rampant phenomenon, talking about it in a positive light makes people profoundly uncomfortable. Whenever I make the case for settling, people look at me with creased brows of disapproval or frowns of disappointment, the way a child might look at an older sibling who just informed her that Jerry’s Kids aren’t going to walk, even if you send them money. It’s not only politically incorrect to get behind settling, it’s downright un-American. Our culture tells us to keep our eyes on the prize (while our mothers, who know better, tell us not to be so picky), and the theme of holding out for true love (whatever that is—look at the divorce rate) permeates our collective mentality.
Even situation comedies, starting in the 1970s with The Mary Tyler Moore Show and going all the way to Friends, feature endearing single women in the dating trenches, and there’s supposed to be something romantic and even heroic about their search for true love. Of course, the crucial difference is that, whereas the earlier series begins after Mary has been jilted by her fiancé, the more modern-day Friends opens as Rachel Green leaves her nice-guy orthodontist fiancé at the altar simply because she isn’t feeling it. But either way, in episode after episode, as both women continue to be unlucky in love, settling starts to look pretty darn appealing. Mary is supposed to be contentedly independent and fulfilled by her newsroom family, but in fact her life seems lonely. Are we to assume that at the end of the series, Mary, by then in her late 30s, found her soul mate after the lights in the newsroom went out and her work family was disbanded? If her experience was anything like mine or that of my single friends, it’s unlikely.
And while Rachel and her supposed soul mate, Ross, finally get together (for the umpteenth time) in the finale of Friends, do we feel confident that she’ll be happier with Ross than she would have been had she settled down with Barry, the orthodontist, 10 years earlier? She and Ross have passion but have never had long-term stability, and the fireworks she experiences with him but not with Barry might actually turn out to be a liability, given how many times their relationship has already gone up in flames. It’s equally questionable whether Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw, who cheated on her kindhearted and generous boyfriend, Aidan, only to end up with the more exciting but self-absorbed Mr. Big, will be better off in the framework of marriage and family. (Some time after the breakup, when Carrie ran into Aidan on the street, he was carrying his infant in a Baby Björn. Can anyone imagine Mr. Big walking around with a Björn?)
When we’re holding out for deep romantic love, we have the fantasy that this level of passionate intensity will make us happier. But marrying Mr. Good Enough might be an equally viable option, especially if you’re looking for a stable, reliable life companion. Madame Bovary might not see it that way, but if she’d remained single, I’ll bet she would have been even more depressed than she was while living with her tedious but caring husband.
What I didn’t realize when I decided, in my 30s, to break up with boyfriends I might otherwise have ended up marrying, is that while settling seems like an enormous act of resignation when you’re looking at it from the vantage point of a single person, once you take the plunge and do it, you’ll probably be relatively content. It sounds obvious now, but I didn’t fully appreciate back then that what makes for a good marriage isn’t necessarily what makes for a good romantic relationship. Once you’re married, it’s not about whom you want to go on vacation with; it’s about whom you want to run a household with. Marriage isn’t a passion-fest; it’s more like a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane, and often boring nonprofit business. And I mean this in a good way.
I don’t mean to say that settling is ideal. I’m simply saying that it might have gotten an undeservedly bad rap. As the only single woman in my son’s mommy-and-me group, I used to listen each week to a litany of unrelenting complaints about people’s husbands and feel pretty good about my decision to hold out for the right guy, only to realize that these women wouldn’t trade places with me for a second, no matter how dull their marriages might be or how desperately they might long for a different husband. They, like me, would rather feel alone in a marriage than actually be alone, because they, like me, realize that marriage ultimately isn’t about cosmic connection—it’s about how having a teammate, even if he’s not the love of your life, is better than not having one at all.
The couples my friend and I saw at the park that summer were enviable but not because they seemed so in love—they were enviable because the husbands played with the kids for 20 minutes so their wives could eat lunch. In practice, my married friends with kids don’t spend that much time with their husbands anyway (between work and child care), and in many cases, their biggest complaint seems to be that they never see each other. So if you rarely see your husband—but he’s a decent guy who takes out the trash and sets up the baby gear, and he provides a second income that allows you to spend time with your child instead of working 60 hours a week to support a family on your own—how much does it matter whether the guy you marry is The One?
It’s not that I’ve become jaded to the point that I don’t believe in, or even crave, romantic connection. It’s that my understanding of it has changed. In my formative years, romance was John Cusack and Ione Skye in Say Anything. But when I think about marriage nowadays, my role models are the television characters Will and Grace, who, though Will was gay and his relationship with Grace was platonic, were one of the most romantic couples I can think of. What I long for in a marriage is that sense of having a partner in crime. Someone who knows your day-to-day trivia. Someone who both calls you on your bullshit and puts up with your quirks. So what if Will and Grace weren’t having sex with each other? How many long- married couples are having much sex anyway?
“I just want someone who’s willing to be in the trenches with me,” my single friend Jennifer told me, “and I never thought of marriage that way before.” Two of Jennifer’s friends married men who Jennifer believes aren’t even straight, and while Jennifer wouldn’t have made that choice a few years back, she wonders whether she might be capable of it in the future. “Maybe they understood something that I didn’t,” she said.
What they understood is this: as your priorities change from romance to family, the so-called “deal breakers” change. Some guys aren’t worldly, but they’d make great dads. Or you walk into a room and start talking to this person who is 5’4” and has an unfortunate nose, but he “gets” you. My long-married friend Renée offered this dating advice to me in an e-mail:
I would say even if he’s not the love of your life, make sure he’s someone you respect intellectually, makes you laugh, appreciates you … I bet there are plenty of these men in the older, overweight, and bald category (which they all eventually become anyway).
She wasn’t joking.
A number of my single women friends admit (in hushed voices and after I swear I won’t use their real names here) that they’d readily settle now but wouldn’t have 10 years ago. They believe that part of the problem is that we grew up idealizing marriage—and that if we’d had a more realistic understanding of its cold, hard benefits, we might have done things differently. Instead, we grew up thinking that marriage meant feeling some kind of divine spark, and so we walked away from uninspiring relationships that might have made us happy in the context of a family.
All marriages, of course, involve compromise, but where’s the cutoff? Where’s the line between compromising and settling, and at what age does that line seem to fade away? Choosing to spend your life with a guy who doesn’t delight in the small things in life might be considered settling at 30, but not at 35. By 40, if you get a cold shiver down your spine at the thought of embracing a certain guy, but you enjoy his company more than anyone else’s, is that settling or making an adult compromise?
Take the date I went on last night. The guy was substantially older. He had a long history of major depression and said, in reference to the movies he was writing, “I’m fascinated by comas” and “I have a strong interest in terrorists.” He’d never been married. He was rude to the waiter. But he very much wanted a family, and he was successful, handsome, and smart. As I looked at him from across the table, I thought, Yeah, I’ll see him again. Maybe I can settle for that. But my very next thought was, Maybe I can settle for better. It’s like musical chairs—when do you take a seat, any seat, just so you’re not left standing alone?
Back when I was still convinced I’d find my soul mate, I did, although I never articulated this, have certain requirements. I thought that the person I married would have to have a sense of wonderment about the world, would be both spontaneous and grounded, and would acknowledge that life is hard but also be able to navigate its ups and downs with humor. Many of the guys I dated possessed these qualities, but if one of them lacked a certain degree of kindness, another didn’t seem emotionally stable enough, and another’s values clashed with mine. Others were sweet but so boring that I preferred reading during dinner to sitting through another tedious conversation. I also dated someone who appeared to be highly compatible with me—we had much in common, and strong physical chemistry—but while our sensibilities were similar, they proved to be a half-note off, so we never quite felt in harmony, or never viewed the world through quite the same lens.
Now, though, I realize that if I don’t want to be alone for the rest of my life, I’m at the age where I’ll likely need to settle for someone who is settling for me. What I and many women who hold out for true love forget is that we won’t always have the same appeal that we may have had in our 20s and early 30s. Having turned 40, I now have wrinkles, bags under my eyes, and hair in places I didn’t know hair could grow on women. With my nonworking life consumed by thoughts of potty training and playdates, I’ve become a far less interesting person than the one who went on hiking adventures and performed at comedy clubs. But when I chose to have a baby on my own, the plan was that I would continue to search for true connection afterward; it certainly wasn’t that I would have a baby alone only to settle later. After all, wouldn’t it have been wiser to settle for a higher caliber of “not Mr. Right” while my marital value was at its peak?
Those of us who choose not to settle in hopes of finding a soul mate later are almost like teenagers who believe they’re invulnerable to dying in a drunk-driving accident. We lose sight of our mortality. We forget that we, too, will age and become less alluring. And even if some men do find us engaging, and they’re ready to have a family, they’ll likely decide to marry someone younger with whom they can have their own biological children. Which is all the more reason to settle before settling is no longer an option.
I’ll be the first to admit that there’s something objectionable about making the case for settling, because it’s based on the premise that women’s biological clocks place them at the mercy of men, and that therefore a power dynamic dictates what should be an affair solely of the heart (not the heart and the ovaries). But I’m not the only woman who accepts settling as a valid choice—apparently so do the millions who buy bestselling relationship books that advocate settling but that, so as not to offend, simply spin the concept as a form of female empowerment.
Take, for instance, books like Men Are Like Fish: What Every Woman Needs to Know About Catching a Man or Find a Husband After 35 Using What I Learned at Harvard Business School, whose titles alone make it clear that today’s supposedly progressive bachelorettes aren’t waiting for old-fashioned true love to strike before they can get married. Instead, they’re buying dozens of proactive coaching manuals to learn how to strategically land a man. The actual man in question, though, seems so irrelevant that, to my mind, these women might as well grab a well-dressed guy off the street, drag him into the nearest bar, buy him a drink, and ask him to marry her. (Or, to retain her “power,” she should manipulate him into asking her.)
The approaches in these books may differ, but the message is the same: more important than love is marriage. To achieve that goal, women across the country are poring over guidebooks that all boil down to determining, “Does he like me?,” while completely overlooking the equally essential question, “Do I like him?” In other words, whatever compromises you have to make—including, but not limited to, pretending to be or actually becoming an entirely different person—make sure that you get some schmo to propose to you before you turn into a spinster.
Last year’s Why Smart Men Marry Smart Women makes the most blatant case for settling: if women were more willing to “think outside the box,” as one of the book’s married sources advises, many of them would be married. The author then trots out tales of professional, accomplished women happily dating a plumber, a park ranger, and an Army helicopter nurse. The moral is supposed to be “Don’t be too picky” but many of the anecdotes quote women who seem to be trying to convince not just the reader, but themselves, that they haven’t settled.
“I should be with some guy with a vast vocabulary who is very smart,” said Heather, a 30-year-old lawyer turned journalist. Instead, she’s dating an actor who didn’t finish college. “My boyfriend is fun, he’s smart, but he hasn’t gone through years of school. He wanted to pursue acting. And you can tell—he doesn’t have that background, and it never ever once bothered me. But for everyone else, [his lack of education] is what they see.” Another woman says she dates “the ‘secrets’ … guys other women don’t recognize as great.” How’s that for damning praise?
Meanwhile, in sugarcoating this message, the authors often resort to flattery, telling the reader to remember how fabulous, attractive, charming, and intelligent she is, in the hopes that she’ll project a more confident vibe on dates. In my case, though, the flattery backfired. I read these books thinking, Wait, if I’m such a great catch, why should I settle for anyone less than my equal? If I’m so fabulous, don’t I deserve true romantic connection?
Only one popular book that I can think of in the vast “find a man” genre (like most single women confounded by their singleness, I’m embarrassingly well versed) takes the opposite approach. In He’s Just Not That Into You, written by the happily married Greg Behrendt and the unhappily single Liz Tuccillo, the duo exhorts women not to settle. But the book’s format is telling: Behrendt gives perky pep talks to women unable to find a worthy match, while Tuccillo repeatedly comments on how hard it is to take her co-author’s advice, because while being with a partner who is “beneath you” (Behrendt’s term) is problematic, being single just plain “sucks” (Tuccillo’s term).
Before I got pregnant, though, I also read single-mom books such as Choosing Single Motherhood: The Thinking Woman’s Guide, whose chapter titles “Can I Afford It?” and “Dealing With the Stress” seemed like realistic antidotes to the faux-empowering man-hunting manual headings like “A Little Lingerie Can Go a Long Way.” But the book’s author, Mikki Morrissette, held out a tantalizing carrot. In her introduction, she describes having a daughter on her own; then, she writes, a few years later and five months pregnant with her son, “I met a guy I fell in love with. He and my daughter were in the delivery room when my son was born in January 2004.” Each time I read about single women having babies on their own and thriving instead of settling for Mr. Wrong and hiring a divorce lawyer, I felt all jazzed and ready to go. At the time, I truly believed, “I can have it all—a baby now, my soul mate later!”
Well … ha! Hahahaha. And ha.
Just as the relationship books fail to mention what happens after you triumphantly land a husband (you actually have to live with each other), these single-mom books fail to mention that once you have a baby alone, not only do you age about 10 years in the first 10 months, but if you don’t have time to shower, eat, urinate in a timely manner, or even leave the house except for work, where you spend every waking moment that your child is at day care, there’s very little chance that a man—much less The One—is going to knock on your door and join that party.
They also gloss over the cost of dating as a single mom: the time and money spent on online dating (because there are no single men at toddler birthday parties); the babysitter tab for all those boring blind dates; and, most frustrating, hours spent away from your beloved child. Even women who settle but end up divorced might be in a better position than those of us who became mothers on our own, because many ex-wives get both child-support payments and a free night off when the kids go to Dad’s house for a sleepover. Never-married moms don’t get the night off. At the end of the evening, we rush home to pay the babysitter, make any houseguest tiptoe around and speak in a hushed voice, then wake up at 6 a.m. at the first cries of “Mommy!”
Try bringing a guy home to that.
Settling is mostly a women’s game. Men settle far less often and, when they do, they don’t seem the least bit bothered by the fact that they’re settling.
My friend Alan, for instance, justified his choice of a “bland” wife who’s a good mom but with whom he shares little connection this way: “I think one-stop shopping is overrated. I get passion at my office with my work, or with my friends that I sometimes call or chat with—it’s not the same, and, boy, it would be exciting to have it with my spouse. But I spend more time with people at my office than I do with my spouse.”
Then there’s my friend Chris, a single 35-year-old marketing consultant who for three years dated someone he calls “the perfect woman”—a kind and beautiful surgeon. She broke off the relationship several times because, she told him with regret, she didn’t think she wanted to spend her life with him. Each time, Chris would persuade her to reconsider, until finally she called it off for good, saying that she just couldn’t marry somebody she wasn’t in love with. Chris was devastated, but now that his ex-girlfriend has reached 35, he’s suddenly hopeful about their future.
“By the time she turns 37,” Chris said confidently, “she’ll come back. And I’ll bet she’ll marry me then. I know she wants to have kids.” I asked Chris why he would want to be with a woman who wasn’t in love with him. Wouldn’t he be settling, too, by marrying someone who would be using him to have a family? Chris didn’t see it that way at all. “She’ll be settling,” Chris said cheerfully. “But not me. I get to marry the woman of my dreams. That’s not settling. That’s the fantasy.”
Chris believes that women are far too picky: everyone knows, he says, that a single middle-aged man still has appealing prospects; a single middle-aged woman likely doesn’t. And he’s right. Single women are painfully aware of this. I hear far more women than men talk about getting married as a goal to be met by a certain deadline. My friend Gabe points out that this allows men to be the true romantics; when a man breaks up with a perfectly acceptable woman because he’s “just not feeling it,” there’s none of the ambivalence a woman with a deadline feels. “Women are the least romantic,” Gabe said. “They think, ‘I can do that.’ For a lot of women, it becomes less about love and more about what they can live with.”
Not long ago, Gabe, who is 43, dated a woman he liked very much one-on-one, but he broke up with her because “she couldn’t be haimish”—comfortable—with his friends in a group setting. He has no regrets. A female friend who broke up with a guy because he “didn’t like to read” and who is now, too, a single mom (with, ironically, no time to read herself) similarly felt no regrets—at first. At the time, she couldn’t imagine settling, but here’s the Catch-22: “If I’d settled at 39,” she said, “I always would have had the fantasy that something better exists out there. Now I know better. Either way, I was screwed.”
The paradox, of course, is that the more it behooves a woman to settle, the less willing she is to settle; a woman in her mid- to late 30s is more discriminating than one in her 20s. She has friends who have known her since childhood, friends who will know her more intimately and understand her more viscerally than any man she meets in midlife. Her tastes and sense of self are more solidly formed. She says things like “He wants me to move downtown, but I love my home at the beach,” and, “But he’s just not curious,” and “Can I really spend my life with someone who’s allergic to dogs?”
I’ve been told that the reason so many women end up alone is that we have too many choices. I think it’s the opposite: we have no choice. If we could choose, we’d choose to be in a healthy marriage based on reciprocal passion and friendship. But the only choices on the table, it sometimes seems, are settle or risk being alone forever.That’s not a whole lot of choice.
Remember the movie Broadcast News? Holly Hunter’s dilemma—the choice between passion and friendship—is exactly the one many women over 30 are faced with. In the end, Holly Hunter’s character decides to wait for the right guy, but he (of course) never materializes. Meanwhile, her emotional soul mate, the Albert Brooks character, gets married (of course) and has children.
And no matter what women decide—settle or don’t settle—there’s a price to be paid, because there’s always going to be regret. Unless you meet the man of your dreams (who, by the way, doesn’t exist, precisely because you dreamed him up), there’s going to be a downside to getting married, but a possibly more profound downside to holding out for someone better.
My friend Jennifer summed it up this way: “When I used to hear women complaining bitterly about their husbands, I’d think, ‘How sad, they settled.’ Now it’s like, ‘God, that would be nice.’”
That’s why mothers tell their daughters to “keep an open mind” about the guy who spends his weekends playing Internet poker or touches your back for two minutes while watching ESPN and calls that “a massage.” The more-pertinent questions, to most concerned mothers of daughters in their 30s, have to do with whether the daughter’s boyfriend will make a good father; or, if he’s a workaholic, whether he can provide the environment for her to be a good mother. As my own mother once advised me, when I was dating a musician, “Everyone settles to some degree. You might as well settle pragmatically.”
I know all this now, and yet—here’s the problem—much as I’d like to settle, I can’t seem to do it. It’s not that I have to be dazzled by a guy anymore (though it would be nice). It’s not even that I have to think about him when he’s not around (though that would be nice, too). Nor is it that I’m unable to accept reality and make significant compromises because that’s what grown-ups do (I can and have—I had a baby on my own).
No, the problem is that the very nature of dating leaves women my age to wrestle with a completely different level of settling. It’s no longer a matter, as it was in my early 30s, of “just not feeling it,” of wanting to be in love. Consider the men whom older women I know have married in varying degrees of desperation over the past few years: a recovering alcoholic who doesn’t always go to his meetings; a trying-to-make-it-in-his-40s actor; a widower who has three nightmarish kids and who’s still actively grieving for his dead wife; and a socially awkward engineer (so socially awkward that he declined to attend his wife’s book party). It’s not that these women are crazy; it’s that the dating pool has dwindled dramatically and that, due to gender politics, the few available men tend to require far more of a concession than those who were single when we were younger. And while I have a much higher tolerance for settling than I did back then, now I have my son to consider. It’s one thing to settle for a subpar mate; it’s quite another to settle for a subpar father figure for my child. So while there’s more incentive to settle now, there’s less willingness to settle too much, because that would be a disservice to my son.
This doesn’t undermine my case for settling. Instead, it supports my argument to do it young, when settling involves constructing a family environment with a perfectly acceptable man who may not trip your romantic trigger—as opposed to doing it older, when settling involves selling your very soul in exchange for damaged goods. Admittedly, it’s a dicey case to make because, like the divorced women I know who claim they wouldn’t have done anything differently, because then they wouldn’t have Biff and Buffy, I, too, can’t imagine life without my magical son. (Although, had I had children with a Mr. Good Enough, wouldn’t I be as hopelessly in love with those children, too?) I also acknowledge the power of the grass-is-always-greener phenomenon, and allow for the possibility that my life alone is better (if far more difficult) than the life I would have in a comfortable but tepid marriage.
But then my married friends say things like, “Oh, you’re so lucky, you don’t have to negotiate with your husband about the cost of piano lessons” or “You’re so lucky, you don’t have anyone putting the kid in front of the TV and you can raise your son the way you want.” I’ll even hear things like, “You’re so lucky, you don’t have to have sex with someone you don’t want to.”
The lists go on, and each time, I say, “OK, if you’re so unhappy, and if I’m so lucky, leave your husband! In fact, send him over here!”
Not one person has taken me up on this offer.
Guys, women of all ages find it creepy when you state that you are looking for a female partner 10 or more years younger than you are. It’s not uncommon to see profiles where men are looking for a woman half their age or less. While women who are age mates of the guys in question find the desires for young and nubile flesh offensive, so do the young women in question. The most common explanation is that the guys have money to offer in exchange for youth and beauty: that in itself is creepy. Not a far step from what made Eliot Spitzer lose his job.
Fellas, get real: Take a look at your license and figure out how old you are, and then go out and take a good look at women in the range of 5 years on either side of your own age. That is your target market, women most likely to appreciate you, along with your wrinkles and gray hair. They’ll also understand why you don’t want to go to night clubs, have to take Viagra, and don’t want to support them while they finish their education.
Read below an excerpt from a piece by Moniqa Paullet, a young 20-something, about approaches from older men:
Age is more than just a number in relationships
By: Moniqa Paullet
Everyone has heard the adage “Age is just a number.” Young women use it to prove they aren’t immature idiots and older men to show they are not creepy or lecherous. There is some truth to it in that every individual is at a different place in life and cannot necessarily be lumped into the stereotypes of a particular age group. I’ve met some more mature people my age once or twice.
But on the same note, every individual is different and should be judged individually without the bias the lines on a face may instill.
Does that mean I’m so open-minded as to be flattered by middle-aged men checking out my online profiles on networking sites? No.
Simply put, a 21-year-old woman is definitely in a different place in her life than an older person and is going to need different things from a relationship than he needs or is looking for.
I plan to graduate in May and go on to graduate school, better myself through education and hopefully learn more about myself and what I want in life along the way. Though smart and often mistaken for someone in her mid to late-20s because of my demeanor, I am not looking for a mature, committed relationship because I do not even know what I really want from a relationship yet. I do know I don’t want to help someone have a good time and feel young again.
I’m sorry to judge like that. And I’m also sorry if you are different and you are on a much younger emotional level than your years belie because I’m pretty sure I don’t want to help you grow up either.
Some will forever argue age is nothing more than a number, but it’s still a pretty good indicator of where a person is or ought to be in his or her life and needs in the dating world.
I try to be open-minded, but I still think people ought to at least act their age.
If you are over 40 and don’t think that that online dating “works,” take a look at the piece below, the “Vows" section of the Sunday New York Times, March 23. Diane Cole and Philip Barnett found each other on JDate in 2002. Now 55 and 61 respectively, they had each been married and widowed. If you can still access the Times article, take a look at the little video that accompanies the write-up. It’s sweet, but you’ll get to see that these are two ordinary people with an extraordinary story.
You’ll also get a perspective on the experience of a 50ish widower on a dating site: These guys are pretty popular. Just like pretty women under 35, single men, particularly those who are widowed or divorced, are desirable commodities. Older men who have been married tend to like being so, and will go about getting themselves married again in pretty short order. As Philip says in the video, there are many more widows than widowers, so even though ideally, men and women should have some time between a divorce or death and a remarriage, these folks are good risks, since they are experienced at being coupled and want to do it again.
Vows
Diane Cole and Philip Barnett
By SANDEE BRAWARSKY
WHEN an armed band of American Muslim militants invaded several buildings in Washington on March 9, 1977, Diane Cole, then 24, became one of more than 100 hostages. The gunmen threatened to decapitate captives before she and the others were released 39 hours later.
As Ms. Cole sat in fear, pondering her fate, Philip Barnett was in Spring Valley, N.Y., and unable to sleep; his wife’s uncle was also one of the hostages. He recently recalled how he had wondered about the others being held, and how he had prayed for all of them. Dr. Barnett, now 61, would eventually come to know Ms. Cole, 55, but only after they both found themselves widowed and alone after long marriages.
Even before those frightening hours in Washington, Ms. Cole, who became an author and a contributing editor for U.S. News & World Report, had been tempered by heartbreak. Her first husband, Peter Baida, nearly died of cancer while they were dating as students at Harvard. As Mr. Baida fought for his life, her mother died of cancer. From that crucible came her 1992 memoir, “After Great Pain: A New Life Emerges.”
That book ended on a note of optimism. Yet for a living memoirist, there are always new chapters. When Mr. Baida died in 1999, he left her with a 10-year-old son, Edward, and a message: grief should not trump joy.
“All the things she has endured could have crushed someone with less fortitude and spirit,” her cousin Judy Rousuck said. It was two years before she was ready to “move away from the cold terrain of grief,” Ms. Cole said. “I wanted warming up. I wanted romance.”
She turned to the Web, but men she encountered were filled with bitterness about past relationships. “I needed someone who spoke in tones less bitter and more sweet,” she said.
When she saw Dr. Barnett’s online profile in April 2002, she sent him an e-mail message. In his response, he offered understanding, noting that his own son and daughter were grown when his wife, Sarah, died, whereas Ms. Cole was left to fend for a young child. He also explained he was busily fielding e-mail from other women. “I never had such attention,” he wrote. “I married the only girl I ever dated, and the only one who really spoke to me.”
Nevertheless, they began an e-mail exchange that uncovered that both had longstanding interests in baseball, classical music and Jewish philosophy. But when she offered her phone number, he replied, “I feel more comfortable writing rather than speaking.”
In that same exchange he again mentioned the long list of women, but then dangled encouragement. “Few of these women are as interesting as you are,” he wrote.
In May they agreed to meet for dinner on the Upper East Side. For her, it was “comfort at first sight,” she said. Before parting she gave him a copy of her memoir, which Dr. Barnett, a professor and science reference librarian at City College in Manhattan, stayed up into that night reading.
They started seeing each other regularly, sometimes with Edward. Ms. Cole was touched by Dr. Barnett’s “sweetness, honesty, modesty and sense of humor, not to mention his intellectual curiosity,” she recalled. Comfort and healing grew to love, leading the three of them to take trips to Iceland and Norway.
“Diane has a big heart; we’re so compatible,” Dr. Barnett said. “She teaches me Shakespeare. I teach her science. I didn’t think I’d ever be happy again, and I am.”
Last summer they decided to marry. Explaining the timing, Ms. Cole said: “As a mother, my priority was to see my son settled into college life. And then we decided it was time for us to move into the next phase of our lives, too.”
Rabbi Julie Schonfeld led the couple’s ceremony at Bayard’s in Manhattan’s financial district, a party space in a 19th-century mansion that is filled with nautical accents. Ms. Cole, in an off-white cream satin Escada gown with gold sequin straps, stood with Dr. Barnett under the wedding canopy, bringing together past and present for their future.
The parents of her late husband sat up front as Ms. Cole, who wears their son’s wedding band on her right hand, held out a forefinger, on which Dr. Barnett placed the band once worn by her late mother. (The Baidas refer to Dr. Barnett as “their new son-in-law.”) The bride then gave Dr. Barnett a wedding band, one from his first marriage.
“Although many people already thought of us as an old married couple, we wanted to affirm in public our love for each other and this unexpected happiness in our lives,” the bride said before the March 9 ceremony, which happened to fall 31 years after the siege in Washington. “Now I can reframe the anniversary from one of terror to one of joy.”
These stories below are from the comments section attached to the article in the NYT that I wrote about in my previous posting. Really, I could have copies dozens and dozens of wonderful stories that folks posted about meeting their Sweeties online. What a testimony for the wonderful tool of the Internet and dating sites. I stopped scanning about posting #80, and there were 210 when I was writing this post. See below for the stories of people for whom looking for love online WORKS!
My husband and I met 4 and a half years ago using eHarmony and we can’t say enough good things about them! We both found the matchmaking approach to be preferable to the select-a-partner approach in that we had a lot in common at the outset and it wasn’t based purely on physical chemistry. We are highly compatible with enough differences to keep it interesting. We have recommended eHarmony to friends and family who are interested in finding partners and will continue to do so because we believe it works!
— Posted by Dawn M. Smith
Dear John,
I too was skeptical about “finding love” online. I heard so many horror stories from friends who tried online dating sites like match.com, yahoo personals, etc…. So when my friend Megan told me to try eHarmony, after many failed blind dates set up by my parents, friends, and colleagues, I was totally against it. How can an online site know who is the “right guy” for me, when the people who know me are not able to find that “right guy?” But what she said next hooked me, she said that not only did she find the love of her life on eHarmony, her two other friends are married to their eHarmony matches and are now trying to have children. What are the odds in that happening? Three sets of friends finding love on eHarmony. Well I must say, I am now the fourth friend who has found the love of my life on eHarmony. The personality test took me 2 hours to fill out and I was sent matches right away. And John, you are right, I did NOT get a lot of communication requests or replies to my communication requests until I posted my picture. I think men are more visual. To make a long story short, all the matches that I finally met up with were people I would date or hang out with, had I not been matched up with them on eHarmony. It was just that the level of chemistry or attraction was different. When I met my husband, it was after being on eHarmony for 8 months. I knew right away from his online answers, from his voice, from his physical appearance, and from our chemistry… that he was the one. Two months after we met we got engaged and 8 months later we were married. We are now happily married for about three years. I would highly recommend eHarmony for anyone who is seriously about finding a soulmate. –Nikki, California
— Posted by Nikki Kwan
I wrote this 6 years ago … “been there (in match.com) for 7 months, profile viewed over 6200 times. I lost the count of how many guys contacted me when I reached the 100 mark a few months ago; out of politeness I have responded to all, the majority with a “thanks for writing, but I am not the right one for you”. Have talked on the phone with 30 or more, have met 16 guys - all of them very nice, most of them rather good looking, but the elusive chemistry decided not to be present on those dates. Interestingly, I was told that I look better than my posted pictures by a large majority of them - those were nice guys. I went out more than once with 4 of those… just giving ourselves and romance the chance, as some connection was there, but romance, decided not to bloom in us. I have written to 9 guys, 3 of those politely rejected me, 4 just ignored me and did not even acknowledge my mail, and I eventually meet one of the other two, with no luck either. Why am I still there? because my single friends that are not on-line are not even meeting quality people… at least I have enjoyed the company of very nice individuals, plenty of nice conversations, I have even made some few new friends… and I am still convinced the one for me is out there, I just need to continue searching…”
The end of the story is that shortly thereafter I found what I was looking for, almost exactly to my specifications, and we have lived happily ever after. It takes work to find the needle in the proverbial haystack, and I get the feeling that online dating works much better for those with good written communication skills, and those with certain analytical capacity to separate the wheat from the chaff, by just reading a paragraph. Those who work in recruiting or as college admission officers surely have an advantage.
— Posted by IMF
I am in a wonderful commited relationship resulting from online dating. I am also a biology researcher who spent a lot of time analyzing the online dating scene for the year and a half I was involved in it. I tried a number of different dating sites, though never one where I couldn’t make the choice. Nonetheless, I did not even meet men that I wanted to date on most of the sites. Then, a few weeks after I signed up for fast cupid/salon.com personals, I met the man I fell in love with. For me, it was all about the balance of meeting a select group of people with similar ideals/interests and having a large enough pool of online dates. Most of the sites that are specific to liberals or Jews or what have you, have a very small number of users. Then the general sites have an incredibly huge number of users who have little in common. I feel lucky that I found something in between.
That said, online dating also gave me the opportunity to date people I would not have met or thought to date otherwise. This was eye-opening. For instance, my boyfriend is certainly someone I would have been friends with had I met him, but I don’t think I would have dated him. Because we were dating as soon as we met, I gave him a whole month before I made any serious judgement about his dateability. Now I’m very happy and I’m happy to recommend online dating to certain people in the right situations. It’s not for everyone, but it broadens the possibilities considerably.
— Posted by A. Yelton
I have tried so many dating services and have spent a small fortune. I met my wife Karen through EHarmony.com and I cannot say enouigh good words about them. On many sites I had read bios, looked at pictures and sent out requests for introductions, and usually got no responses. Now I know I am no Adonis but I felt what harm could there be in meeting a nice guy. Many of my initial EHarmony matches went the same way. But the Eharmonty process allowed us to get a sense of each other before we could decide about meeting. In particular the 3 short essay questions really clued me in to a connection. It told me that there was a solid base from which to work. Our bond developed and 18 months later we were married, and now after 8 months, it just keeps getting better. We are a match for each other that would never have been discovered save at EHarmony. I only applaud EHarmony for doing the hard work and allowing Karen and I to become aware of each other. It worked for me.
— Posted by Jeff Beck
My husband and I met 3 years ago on eHarmony. I, too, was skeptical…but I figured..what the heck…give it a try!! I had been divorced for years and I certainly wasn’t going to go to a bar to “meet someone.” We lived about 1 1/2 hours away from each other and we would have never met otherwise. And it is definately not just for the “younger crowd!” I’m 51 and my husband is 60! We were married this past June! We are both so happy that we found each other! Both of us enjoyed the process of meeting each other. The questions on eHarmony really make you think about what is really important. Meeting on eHarmony DOES NOT mean that we do not have any marital woes and all is Nirvana. I feel, though, that because we have such compatibility, it makes it a little easier to get through “sticky times”. I highly recommend it!!!
— Posted by Cathy Haskins
I met my husband on match.com in 2003, we married in 2005. For me the draw to internet dating was the ability to focus on how compatible our values were and be able to screen out all of the things it would have taken me longer to discover. I’m in my middle years and didn’t want to waste time with another decade of dating. I never tried any of the sites that used an algorithm and I read his profile the first time I used match.com. I think the picture of my husband with a dog was the hook and that he had 2 kids about the same age as mine (young adults). We told my cousin (who is in his 70’s) about match.com and he recently married the woman he met online, who is 68. His profile photo was of him on his horse. They are now roping and riding their way across California.
— Posted by Connie
While I haven’t used eharmony (nor would I be able to because I gay), I did post a personal on Craigslist. I received many replies but decided to only meet one of those replies. We met and instantly clicked.
We’ve been together now for over 10 months.
And you know what the best part was (in addition to meeting the love of my life)? The whole post was free !
-Erika c/s
— Posted by Erika Carlsen
I subscribed to eHarmony for three months. I was “perfectly matched” with 296 women in the central Ohio area by the service. I am in love with the first woman who responded to my questions, who had left eHarmony but continued to receive “matches” from the servie. She took a chance and re-subsribed to gain fuller information about me. I am so grateful that she made that choice and look forward to building a lasting relationship with her.
— Posted by Tony
My boyfriend of 2 years & I met on eHarmony, & contrary to what #28 found, an unexpectedly high percentage of my matches were Indian and worked in some kind of science field. I could not figure this out until it occured to me that eHarmony throws a lot of data together & comes up with a result, which is the whole nature of scientific discovery. And yes, the love of my life did turn out to be both Indian and a scientist. We’ve recommended eHarmony to many friends.
— Posted by Christina Gertig
My experience suggests that the unscreened Match.com approach can work, at least for some people. In 1998, inspired by a colleague who had met her husband through Match.com, I tried it and within six months met the man whom I would marry in 2000. (Neither of us posted photos, by the way.) Then, a couple of years later, inspired in turn by my example, another colleague of mine met her future husband in the same way. All three marriages are still flourishing today–and for the last few years my stepmother has been dating a man she met through Match.com. . . .
In our case, Match.com facilitated a meeting between my husband and me that might very well have–but didn’t–occur through other means. One of my husband’s cousins knew my brother in college; two other of his cousins attended the same college that I did, at about the same time; and my husband and I are both PhDs who went on to work outside academe. Thus, the online introductions service functioned almost as a natural extension of existing social networks, and perhaps that is a key to many other successful outcomes as well.
It’s certainly true that our marriage is an example supporting the hypothesis that similar educational backgrounds, values, tastes, etc., help promote compatibility. One can imagine, though, that a screening mechanism might have ruled out us out on the basis of some relatively trivial differences. Perhaps those seeking a mate might want to try both the screened and unscreened approaches–after all, the whole point is to increase your opportunities!
— Posted by Nora
I met my now-husband through Match.com. We have been married about 4 years now. He was my 4th Match date. I almost did not accept it because Date #3 was a freak. Dates #1 and #2 were perfectly nice, just no sparks.
DH and I told everyone who asked how we met that “We go to the same gym”, which was true, but not how we met.
I finally got the nerve to confess the on-line truth to my family. My sister-in-law said she would “absolutely try” on-line dating if she were still single (much to my brother’s surprise). My 75 year old widower father confessed that he thought about trying it but figured he was “way too old to find anyone”. So much for the stigma of on-line dating.
— Posted by Elizabeth
My husband and I met via Match.com but I believe our success story is more of a coincidence (or fate, depending on your beliefs) than a result of their algorithms. As some other posts have noted, the Match site produces so many obvious fakes or desperate profile hits that I was ready to take my profile down after one week. I was 20 years old and was receiving messages from men who were either married or old enough to be my father. I’m dubious about online matchmaking in general but believe that with patience and a pre-established “perfect mate wish list” these services can work. Fortunately before I gave up, my husband found my profile, and his initial email was short and intelligent enough to get my attention. We talked over the phone for about three weeks, and seven months after we met in person we were engaged. We cohabited for a little over two years before tying the knot. I can’t imagine a more perfect companion.
— Posted by Sarah
I used several websites in the past and found my current partner on chemistry.com a year ago and we are incredibly well-suited to each other. I believe it was a matter of casting the net wide enough (through online dating) to be selective in meeting possible matches until I found that ideal combination of “the right match” and chemistry.
As I know, from my own experience, what it’s like to go through the ups and downs of online dating, I am forming support groups so that online daters can provide support and feedback to each other. Some groups will meet in-person, in Montclair, NJ. Other groups will meet virtually, by phone.
More information is available at http://www.onlinedatingcoaching.com
— Posted by Jonathan Sibley
Here’s the companion article from the NYT that I referred to in my blog posting of 1/30/2007. In the next posting, I’ll print a few of the great love stories of real people who wrote the author.
January 28, 2008
Wanted: Single or Married Adult with Online Matchmaking Story
By John Tierney
I’m ready to hear your online matchmaking success stories — and, of course, the horror stories, too.
I got interested in online matchmaking, the topic of my latest Findings column, while doing a column last year about the other kind of online dating in which you pick out your partners. Researchers who’d analyzed the traffic on the online sites told me they’d love to know more about the eHarmony approach because it might avoid the manifest problems of the online dating they’d studied.
When people look for their own partner, they can be absurdly picky as well as unrealistic about their own appeal. One result is the “lightning-rod effect,” in which the most attractive candidates get swamped with offers. A beautiful woman who posts a picture might hear from a thousand guys. She’s frustrated because she’s swamped with too much information; the guys are frustrated because most of them never get a reply. An online matchmaker like eHarmony, Chemistry.com or Perfectmatch.com can sort through huge numbers of people and pick out more realistic matches — in principle.
But where’s the evidence that their matching algorithms can really help you find love? Two eHarmony researchers, Steve Carter and Chadwick Snow, did a study concluding that married couples who were matched by eHarmony “indicated a higher degree of happiness, optimism and commitment to the success of their relationship” than did married couples in a control group.
That study was presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Society in 2004, and researchers at eHarmony tell me they plan to publish a more comprehensive version with more data. But other scientists, naturally, are skeptical of any report until it goes through the peer-review process, particularly when, like this one, it’s a cross-sectional study that takes a snapshot comparison of two groups at one point in time. Researchers at the new eHarmony Labs have started another, more rigorous, longitudinal study that will track eHarmony-matched couples and a control group over time, but it will be some time before there are results.
In a subsequent post I’ll discuss a little more of the science of compatibility and present some thoughts about eHarmony and other companies from researchers in this field. Researchers who’ve looked into these topics are welcome to post comments or e-mail me at (). And I invite everyone, scientists or laypeople, single or married, to report their experiences with online matchmaking. I realize, as ever, that the plural of anecdote is not data, but given the paucity of independent evaluations of these online matchmakers, anecdotes are at least a start.
January’s almost over now, but there is still two weeks to catch the surge that occurs every year on dating sites after the winter holidays. Just like joining the gym to work off those holiday pounds, the six weeks or so between New Year’s and Valentine’s show a huge jump in the numbers of singles joining a dating site. January and February is the best possible time to get online to find love, and to cruise all the new faces. See the movement described in this article that appeared in the Seattle Times:
It’s hunting season… for love
By Tan Vinh
Seattle Times staff reporter
When it comes to finding love, even Cupid can’t spur singles to action faster than a New Year’s resolution.
January marks the busiest and most profitable month for online dating services, with singles going online in record numbers to find soul mates or dates for Valentine’s Day, many industry watchers say.
“You get this massive surge. People start to re-evaluate their lives. They don’t want to marry this person. Or they want to break up with their boyfriends. Or they haven’t had a date in a while. And they all set their New Year’s resolutions to find someone,” said Markus Frind, founder of plentyoffish.com in Vancouver, B.C., one of the largest dating sites in North America.
Plentyoffish.com, with 10,000 members in Washington state, projects a 30 percent spike in traffic from new and current members this month.
Perfectmatch.com in Bothell, the largest dating site based in Washington, expects a 15 percent jump.
“We have an annual poll that we do relative to New Year’s resolutions, and finding love is at the top of the list,” said Perfectmatch.com founder Duane Dahl, one of the pioneers of online dating.
Hitwise, which tracks Internet traffic, found that more singles visited dating sites in January 2006 than in any other month that year, mostly due to New Year’s resolutions.
As a result, many dating sites now start major advertising campaigns around New Year’s Eve.
For the online dating industry, this time of year is like a perfect storm, serving up the family holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas, then the going-out holidays, New Year Eve’s and Valentine’s Day.
“You have the November and December effect with family gatherings, and all those questions get asked — ‘Who are you dating? Are there wedding bells?’ “ said Mark Brooks, editor of onlinepersonalswatch.com, which tracks the online dating industry. “And New Year’s Eve, people want to go out with their other halves. And of course, you have that build up toward Valentine’s Day and you get the loneliness factor rising.”
The surge is similar to the gym phenomenon, where a record number of shorts-and-spandex-clad newbies will hit the treadmills and Pilates classes every January to fulfill their resolutions to lose weight.
Of course, as any gym rat knows, most of those resolution-inspired members will eventually fall to the lure of happy hour or return to their old after-work routines.
Same with online dating. Traffic starts to drop after the week of Valentine’s Day and faces a steep decline by summer, Brooks said.
Robert Glover, a Bellevue-based therapist and dating coach, explained: “By spring, you start to go outside. There are things to do. All of the sudden, you are not sitting at home on a holiday such as Christmas, New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day, thinking ‘I’m a loser.’ I strongly believe that the holidays bring out a person’s strong sense to feel connected to somebody. When the holidays come and go, it’s not on our minds as much.” Feeling lonely “might still be there, but not [with] quite the same intensity.”
Danell Long, a 37-year old single mother from Federal Way, didn’t find Mr. Right in 2007. But January, she said, marks a new beginning. With all the singles logging on this month, “That’s good news,” Long said. “Hopefully, the choices will be a lot better, because I’m tired of seeing the same old faces online.”
Was it just last week that we’d all accepted workplace romances as taboo? Now it seems that “on the job” is again becoming the place to meet and mate, at least according to this article below…
Love on the Job: Breaking the taboo at Bay Area companies
Stephanie Losee,Helaine Olen
Sunday, November 11, 2007
“We met on my first day of work; we were friends for about 3 1/2 years before we started dating. He grew on me.”
- Esther Pearl, Pixar
“We were all basically 25 and single, and we worked long hours and went out for drinks as a group afterward - the lines between work life and social life were blurred.”
- Jessica Sisto, Virage
“I started joining this group of people at work who would get together at lunch and Dana was one of the regulars. We sat and had lunch every day and talked about what was going on for about five years.”
- Sharon Hanna, Schwab
These are the standard beginnings of every great office romance story in the Bay Area. And there are legions of them. A 2007 Careerbuilder survey reveals that almost half of all American workers will date a colleague at least once. And as the three no-longer-single women above discovered, 1 in 5 such couples will end up married or in some other form of a committed long-term relationship.
You’re not alone if this surprises you. The phrase “office romance” is so stigmatized that its very mention can elicit smirks. But the reality is about as far from its sleazy reputation as one can imagine. Workplace dating is the taboo that wasn’t. Finding a mate on the job has become downright respectable. After all, if Bill Gates can meet Melinda French at the office, what’s to stop the rest of us from doing the same thing?
It’s likely that the greater acceptance of workplace romance has a lot to do with its inevitability, given the changing nature of American society. The most recent figures from the Census Bureau show that the median age of marriage for women is just shy of 26; for men, 27. In 1970, those numbers were 21 and 23, respectively. It follows that the older you are, the less likely you are to marry your college sweetheart. Says Renee Banks, human resources director at Chronicle Books (no relation to The San Francisco Chronicle): “I definitely think it’s a reality that work is where people meet these days. When you don’t meet at college, that’s a pool of people that’s taken away from you.”
After college, the pool of candidates moves to the office, and since Expedia.com statistics show that 40 percent of employees log more than 50 hours of work a week, their personal lives are chopped down to virtually nothing. Work is the place where people spend the majority of their days, make their friends and yes - meet mates. Said Ann Fishman, president of Generational Targeted Marketing, a New York- and Louisiana-based marketing firm: “People move to New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco for work, so they are disconnected from family and friends. Where else are they going to meet people if not the office? A health club?”
The Internet, you might respond. But even bloggers - many of whom spend their lives online - are beginning to dismiss online dating services as an ineffective way of meeting a significant other. “People my age are sick of the impersonal nature of Internet dating,” says Jessica Valenti, 28, the voice behind the popular blog Feministing.com and author of the book “Full Frontal Feminism.” Valenti is now dating a man she met through work; he hired her to write for the Web site where he works. “It’s nice to be around people who care about the same things as you do. My blogger boyfriend understands if I am on a computer at 2 a.m., and isn’t offended.”
Office romance gets a bad rap because the phrase conjures up images of Christmas party hook-ups and Clintonesque gropings, but potential couples tend to take months, if not years, to recognize and act on the vibe between them. (This is in no small part because of an understandable instinct to protect their paychecks.) As a result, people who form an emotional attachment at work often won’t make a move until they’re absolutely sure there’s something substantial between them that might go the distance, which is precisely why it so often does.
Since office couples are colleagues first and friends second, their relationships turn to romance so slowly that it isn’t a surprise to discover that many couples find that rumors of their liaison precede its actual occurrence. So it was with Jessica Sisto and her husband, Mike Heilmann, who met at Virage in 1999 and married last year (Sisto is now at the Gap and Heilmann at StrongMail Systems). Sisto would cry on Heilmann’s shoulder about her romantic mishaps, so her colleagues concluded they were dating on the sly. “We were just platonic friends,” Sisto said. But when Heilmann was invited to the wedding of a co-worker, he asked Sisto to come with him. They kissed for the first time that night.
They kept the relationship a secret for a year - or so they thought. “There was no company policy against it; we just wanted to keep our personal life separate from our work,” Sisto said. “But when the CEO asked me about a trip Mike and I had just taken, I thought, ‘Well, when the CEO mentions it, you’re keeping up a facade that’s completely transparent.’ “ So Sisto and Heilmann started openly commuting together and making casual references to their relationship.
Companies are the unwitting matchmakers, putting the Sistos and Heilmanns of the Bay Area together. Their assistance begins when they vet every person who is hired at the company - assembling a group of like-minded, talented people whose references have been checked. Then companies promote both a collegiate and collegial atmosphere by calling their office parks “campuses” and adding lifestyle enhancements to support their hardworking employees. This is a particular factor in the spate of office couples represented here. Google provides its employees not just with the usual on-site cafeteria/health club combination, but with a doctor, a dentist, a dry cleaner, a masseuse, a mechanic, a financial adviser and lunchtime entertainment in the form of book readings. Genentech’s campus has a gift shop, a florist, a hairstylist and an oil change shop. Pixar’s campus has an atrium containing a cafeteria, a separate brown-bag-lunch kitchen, a game room, and tables and sofas where employees can mingle.
Acknowledging that its workers need hardly go home creates an environment where employees feel more comfortable not only doing their everyday chores at the office but also finding love on-site. Office romance is so much a part of the company culture here that it has worked its way into the vocabulary. At Genentech you’ll find “Genen-couples” and at Charles Schwab you’ll hear about “Schwupples” going to each other’s “Schweddings.”
When Esther Pearl was hired by Pixar to be the story coordinator on “Monsters, Inc.,” she joined a department so tightly knit that after working long hours, the employees would extend their time together by going out for drinks as a group. One of the gang was Nathan Stanton, a storyboard artist.
“Nate and I didn’t have anything more than a straightforward friendship, a good friendship,” Esther said. She was surprised when Nate asked her on an actual date years later, while both were still working there. It took her several weeks to say yes. “My only hesitation was that I didn’t want us not to be friends anymore, and when I weighed the pros and cons that seemed like a really silly reason not to have a relationship,” she said.
They became engaged in the summer of 2003 and didn’t feel the need to notify their supervisors about their relationship until shortly before they were married in 2005. They knew many couples who met and continued to work together at Pixar without difficulty, and several married teams had been hired together because of the creative nature of the work. “Pixar basically has a town square feel with lots of places to congregate and chat; they want people to communicate in that way, so not only is office romance not looked down upon, there’s a very supportive atmosphere. As long as it’s not going to get in the way of the work that you’re doing, no matter what you do is not going to be looked down upon, including wearing your pajamas. It’s not an atmosphere of anything other than creative encouragement.”
When Pearl and Stanton mentioned their relationship to a supervisor, it was because “castings” for crews who would work on the next film were going on and they decided the couple didn’t want to talk about nothing but Pixar at home. So Pearl went to her boss and said she preferred not to be cast in the next film with Stanton. They were married soon after, and even though only 25 people were in attendance, so many of the couple’s closest friends are co-workers that several of the guests were from Pixar. They continued to work at Pixar until March of last year, when Pearl went on maternity leave and subsequently resigned. Stanton still works there.
“I think my husband and I censored ourselves more than Pixar would have because of our own fear that working together would mean we spent too much time together. We recently held an Alzheimer’s benefit together and we discovered, ‘Hey, we could have worked together after all!’ “
Pixar, like most of the companies we contacted for this article, would not discuss its workplace romance policy, if any. But if Pearl’s and Stanton’s perception that there is none is correct, Pixar is in the majority. Nearly 70 percent of companies have no policy at all. Sometimes emphatically so. Said Netflix spokesman Steve Swayze: “We like to think of ourselves as rule-averse. We hire adults and we expect adult behavior. Personal stuff is personal, and if it isn’t interfering with work, it’s not worth spending any time on.”
Very few companies ban workplace romance entirely, probably for a very pragmatic reason: Enforcing such a ban is nearly impossible. Says Robyn Zazulia, 27, who met her fiance Alex Rogin, 34, when they worked on a project together at Wells Fargo: “I have a very good girlfriend who worked for a small company of 200 people, but there were very clear rules, explicit rules prohibiting intercompany dating. But nobody followed it; there was a lot of inter-company dating there because they worked together at far-flung places without friends or family around.” And why would companies want to try to outlaw behavior that enhances so many employees’ lives? Each couple interviewed for this story said that they were only one of many at the same firm.
The companies that do have a written policy on office romance commonly prohibit supervisors and subordinates from being romantically involved in an effort to avoid conflicts of interest and charges of sexual harassment. For example, Schwab restricts management or supervisors from having a close personal relationship with employees they supervise. In the event such a relationship forms, the parties are required to report it to their superiors or to human resources. Said Sarah Bulgatz, Schwab’s director of corporate PR: “They can work together - absolutely - as long as one is not the direct or indirect supervisor of the other.”
Nevertheless, as we found when we did the research for our book “Office Mate: The Employee Handbook for Finding - and Managing - Romance on the Job,” there is an enormous disconnect between the attitude of HR directors toward office romance and the paranoia of corporate attorneys and public relations departments when it comes to discussing the topic, which may be why people believe that companies frown on interoffice dating. In the example of one company we contacted for this story, an executive said that in-house counsel would not allow him to discuss the firm’s office romance policy on the record. We had intended to interview a young female employee of one of the company’s subsidiaries, but when she sought permission she was told she couldn’t even voice her opinions on the topic - let alone talk about her own experiences dating colleagues - if we said where she worked. Which means that it’s fine to date the people you work with, but talking about it could get you fired.
Chris Edmonds-Waters, head of HR for SVB Financial Group, a diversified financial services firm of 1,600 employees in San Francisco, says companies should stop being afraid of talking about office romance, whether within or without the company. “It’s good corporate hygiene,” he says. “All companies should have a policy on workplace relationships and should communicate that policy because it guides people’s behaviors and gives them a resource to use if they run into a sticky issue. It’s the fair and right thing to do.”
Policy or none, managers who find couples forming where they see potential risk occasionally ask them to sign a legal document pioneered by a San Francisco law firm called - you can’t make this stuff up - the “love contract.” According to Stephen Tedesco, a partner at the firm of Littler Mendelson, they do “steady business” writing contracts that confirm there is a romantic relationship between the two parties, that it is consensual, that no offensive conduct has occurred and that they agree to conduct themselves in a professional manner. Says Tedesco, “The love contract does prevent someone from rewriting the past if the behavior goes from non-offensive to offensive.”
It also guards against the possibility that an office romance - particularly between people who are highly placed - does not become fodder for a claim of sexual favoritism in response to the sort of behavior made famous in the early 1980s by William Agee, CEO of the manufacturing conglomerate Bendix. Agee hired a fresh grad from the Harvard Business School named Mary Cunningham and proceeded to promote her up the ranks so quickly that a national scandal ensued. They later married. Thanks to a 2005 California Supreme Court ruling, co-workers who witness such favor-granting are free to file a third-party claim of sexual harassment.
But outside of such blatant misbehavior, colleagues have no problem with co-workers who couple. According to a new survey from Yahoo! HotJobs, almost half of the respondents said they don’t really care if two co-workers become involved. If anything, they approve; 56 percent say they support colleagues becoming romantically involved, as Jennifer Taylor and Eliza Laffin discovered. When Jennifer Taylor was hired at Macromedia in the spring of 2003, her boss kept talking about a colleague named Eliza. “You and Eliza are going to love each other,” the boss would say. “You’re from Vermont; she’s from Vermont; you went to Brown; she went to Brown - you’re just going to love each other.”
Says Taylor, now 35: “I don’t think she realized how much we were going to love each other.”
In spite of their supervisor’s cheerleading, the two colleagues initially kept to their corners. “Eliza is super smart,” Taylor explained. “I was kind of intimidated by her. She had been at the office longer than I had and I was the new kid on the block, so I was afraid of crossing her. When you’re curious about someone but also afraid of them, you give each other a wide berth.” But after working together for a few months they filled in the details of the long list of commonalities their boss had described. They had grown up 45 minutes apart and gone to rival high schools. They had been at Brown at the same time while Laffin was completing a combined bachelor’s-master’s program. In San Francisco they owned apartments a block and a half apart.
“It’s amazing we didn’t meet earlier,” Taylor said.
At the office, the two friends would sometimes get signals that they didn’t know how to interpret. They were scheduled to go to a business conference in Los Angeles, and the assistant who arranged the travel asked if they wanted to share a hotel room. “We had gone from giving each other a wide berth to being inseparable, but it was before there was something to pick up - right before we admitted having feelings with each other.”
Their first date was after Laffin’s 35th birthday party, six months after they met, when Taylor asked if she could take Laffin out for a drink after the dinner. “It was then we acknowledged what was going on and we’ve been together ever since,” Taylor said.
“I’m so thankful that I live in San Francisco and that I work in high tech at places like Macromedia and Adobe (Adobe acquired Macromedia in late 2005) because they’re so accepting. We’re not just an office couple; we’re a queer office couple.”
At first they kept the relationship under wraps so that they could see where it was going. “But after a while we started to get excited about telling people,” Taylor continued. “We told someone on our team and she was really excited. Telling our boss, we said, ‘Remember when you said we’d love each other? Well, we do!’ And she was thrilled.” A year after their first official date, Taylor and Laffin gave up one of their neighboring apartments and moved in together. When they noticed they were bringing work home too much, Laffin moved to a different business unit in the company that drew more on her strengths, and they continue to work at Adobe without a hitch.
Such ease can continue for years and years after a couple meet, marry and remain working for the same employer - especially if they treat their situation with respect. Marvi and Gary Choy met at Genentech back in 1991, when Gary moved into Marvi’s department and she was asked to train him. They worked side-by-side wearing white jumpers in a clean environment for three years, taking care to keep public displays outside the department and marrying in 1994. Marvi moved to a chemical-free department after having their first child in 1995; they are both still working at Genentech. “We’d never show affection even now, and when we got married we didn’t say anything officially, but they knew.”
The benefits of all this discretion? Their supervisors make it possible for the Choys to schedule their vacations at the same time so they can take longer trips as a family. Then there’s the daily couple time. Says Choy: “We have one-on-one time in the car because we carpool, and my boss would sometimes say, ‘I have to come late to work because my husband and I have to have a meeting since we haven’t talked in a week. You’re so lucky.’ “
In a city where single women chronically complain about the shortage of available men, the matter-of-fact acceptance of workplace relationships by Bay Area companies offers unattached workers a new way to look for love. And interestingly, it’s just as effective for older singles - men and women, gay or straight. When Careerbuilder.com broke down its office romance stats by age, they found that the numbers of workers who said they have had an office romance is virtually the same from ages 25 to 64. Schwab’s Sharon Hanna, 56, is living proof. She had met Dana Jones, 52, back in 1990 when Jones joined the department where Hanna worked as a supervisor. They were lunch-break friends for years before she launched into a dinner-party-giving phase immediately after breaking off a relationship. “One night the date I’d invited for myself was a total dud and after the party my girlfriend said, ‘Ditch him; the interesting guy at the dinner was Dana!’ That was a pivotal moment; until that moment I was oblivious.”
They had been friends for so long, Hanna didn’t know how to initiate the transition. “Dana was still in platonic mode, but now I’m starting to get butterflies,” Hanna said. “It was absolutely one-sided for quite a while, but I didn’t say anything. It was excruciating. I’d go to work and hear his voice somewhere and I’d get a tingle. It was maddening; I felt like a teenager. And since I had a very strong feeling that an office romance was the wrong way to go, this was red lights going off everywhere - warning, warning, warning.”
Hanna bought a GPS for a backpacking trip and claimed that she didn’t know how to use it. Says Jones: “I, of course was intrigued by this - she was a friend, a colleague, but as a computer support person I had something to prove by showing her how it worked.”
Soon after that, Jones invited her to Burning Man, where they became a couple. Not that their close-knit office gang noticed. “What was so funny is that our colleagues did not have a clue,” Hanna said. “We were kind of an unlikely couple just in the fact that I appeared a bit more conservative than Dana. Even when we went to Burning Man nobody thought a bit about it.” After a year, they told certain intimates about their relationship, but they kept it under wraps to the rest of the department for nine years, until the day they eloped. That night, they e-mailed wedding photos to the entire department with the subject line Sharon and Dana XOXOX. “People told me afterward that it was one of those e-mails that everyone opened at the same moment and there was an audible collective gasp,” Hanna said. “Our bosses, our co-workers, they were all really happy for us. The other day somebody said, ‘You know, when I first knew you guys I thought you were the most unlikely couple in the world, but after I got to know you, it makes sense.’
“If we hadn’t met at work we would never have gotten together,” Hanna added.
And that’s the ending of every great Bay Area office romance story.
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.
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
42% Find Love on the Net???
Market researchers Synovate found that 15% of Americans have used the Internet to find love, but of those, a whopping 42% have found what they were looking for: a spouse or life partner.
Wow.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
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
The more educated and successful a man is, the more marketable he is for love. Just the opposite for women. Ergo, the complaint of women in their 30’s, 40’s and up: Where does a high-powered, successful woman find a date, let alone a mate?
It’s a real conundrum. More women are going to college and grad school now than men. Younger women are at least as concerned and focused on their career as men have traditionally been. Men have tradionally “married down,” paired with women who were younger, less educated and career-minded, and perhaps even lower on the social ladder. Women have tradionally done the opposite: “Married up” to older, more successful men. As women rise in education, success and finances, there is a dwindling pool of men who are more and better than they are.
Then you have the “I don’t want to ‘settle’” attitude, meaning “accept less than what I think I deserve.” And then you have an gigantic demand (highly qualified women) meeting an extremely limited pool of applicants (well-qualified guys, who may be wanting to do what guys have always done, marry down).
Women need to rethink what “settling” would be. What might fit the traditional model of “more than” for the women might be nice for a date, but not so good for the longer haul. What if both parnters were heavily career focused? Who does the important support functions that a marriage and family needs? And remember that careers don’t go on forever. But hopefully a mate will.
Qualities that work better in a mate than tall, dark, handsome, and more successful might be trustworthiness, dependability, and persevereness. What women—and men—might want in a date (handsome or beautiful, exciting, fun) might wear thin rather soon in a marriage.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
From The New York Times, 2/26/2007:
Drilling Down
On Niche Dating Sites, Many More Women
By ALEX MINDLIN
During the week of Feb. 5, men and women visited online dating Web sites in nearly equal numbers, according to Hitwise, which measures online traffic. And to look at the 10 most popular sites not directed toward gay people, you might think that every dating site on the Internet was rigorously gender-balanced. All but one of the 10 largest sites came within 10 percentage points of being evenly split.
But among the smaller dating Web sites, many were drastically skewed. SeniorPeopleMeet, the 41st most popular site, had 80.8 percent women. BBW Datefinder, for “big beautiful women and admirers,” was No. 63, and had 76.3 percent women; and Catholic Match, No. 81, had 72 percent.
“It is a problem for them,” said Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise. “It’s like any market; you want an equal number of buyers and sellers.”
But Greg Waldorf, the chief executive of eHarmony, the sixth most popular site and one with 68.6 percent women visitors, begged to differ. “If you asked me would I rather have more women or men, I’d rather have more women. If you have a good healthy population of women, I think men are attracted to that.” ALEX MINDLIN
My comment about this article that I posted on Mark Brooks’ Online Personals Watch
“If you asked me would I rather have more women or men, I’d rather have more women. If you have a good healthy population of women, I think men are attracted to that.” Well, duh! Yes, it’s good news for dating sites who want to increase their memberships, and great for guys who want easier pickings. But it is disaster for women, particularly those in the older age ranges, when the numbers are skewed enough as it is.
It’s so important that this kind of information (the gender ratios on sites) becomes available. Sites like eHarmony and Chemistry appeal to women because the are more “passive,” in that the site does the work of the matching and women do not need to put themselves so much on the line. What women don’t understand is that the numbers are so bad for them.
Openness and transparency (big buzz words nowadays) would go a long ways with Internet dating. Keeping women happy and on dating sites will be key to success. If all singles understood the gender ratios and the paid vs. unpaid numbers, then they could pick sites that would be most likely to work for them. The gender ratios would balance out, singles would get more responses to their emails, more matches would be made, customers would be happier, which would be great advertising, and dating sites would get more business. What could be better?
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Very interesting figures from Mark Brooks’ Online Personals Watch:
Male/Female Quantcast Ratios of Top Dating Properties
MalefemaleOPW—Feb 26th—Here are the male/female ratios, most popular age range, and proportion of visits from ‘regulars’ and ‘addicts.’ Ranking courtesy of Hitwise. Ratios, age range and addiction levels courtesy of Quantcast. ‘100’ represents the ‘internet average.’
1 Singlesnet
Male 112, Female 88, age 45-54, 91% of visits from regulars and addicts
2 Yahoo Personals
Male 114, Female 85, age 45-54, 78% regulars and addicts
3 TRUE
Male 116, Female 83, age 45-54, 77% regulars and addicts
4 Match
Male 100, Female 99, age 45-54, 94% regulars and addicts
5 eHarmony
Male 73, Female 125, age 25-34 and 35-44, 95% regulars and addicts
6 Plentyoffish
Male 112, Female 87, age 45-54, 98% regulars and addicts
7 Mate1
Male 97, Female 102, age 45-54, 74% regulars and addicts
8 Blackpeoplemeet
Male 94, Female 105, age 35-44, 96% regulars and addicts
9 Manhunt.net
Male 177, Female 24, age 35-44, 99% regulars and addicts
10 Adam4Adam
Male 170, Female 31, age 35-44, 99% regulars and addicts
11 American Singles
Male 120, Female 89, age 45-54, 82% regulars and addicts
12 Gay.com
Male 171, Female 30, age 35-45, 96% regulars and addicts
13 Hot or Not
Male 122, Female 78, age 18-24, 95% regulars and addicts
14 MSN Match
Male 103, Female 97, age 45-54, 71% regulars and addicts
15 Cupid
Male 110, Female 89, age 45-54, 95% regulars and addicts
How to read this information:
Note that the numbers following “Male” and “Female” add roughly up to 200 for each site. I read that as meaning for Singlesnet, for instance, that for every 112 men on the site, there are 88 women. Therefore, the numbers on Singlesnet favor women.
The age ranges are the sites’ most popular, so Yahoo! Personals and Match.com attract heavily from the 45-54 age group, while Hot or Not draws the kiddos at 18-24.
The percentage figures indicate regular visitors vs transients. So Yahoo! at 78% has much more transient traffic than Match.com at 94%
The sites with very large numbers of men are gay male sites (like gay.com). (What are those 30 ladies doing doing on gay.com? Are they real ladies?)
What that means for you: If you are a man, it would pay you to go to a site that is more heavily female dominated, like eHarmony (73 men to 125 women). Not such a good site for the ladies.
Look for a site that has large numbers in your age range.
A high percentage of “regulars” says to me that the site has a loyal and active membership. With few browsers. Good news.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
From Mark Brooks’ Online Personals Watch:
OPW—Feb 26—Chemistry.com has done a great job of reeling in the ladies. Possibly too good a job. Here’s an email that was sent to Match.com members today. - Mark Brooks
“We have too many women* and we need your help. We created a marketing campaign to attract as many of the most captivating women to our site as possible. And it worked! Actually, it worked so well that our ratio of women to men is way off. So men, come visit Chemistry.com and see what it’s like to have the odds in your favor! *Disclaimer: We know you see a lot of disclaimers at the bottom filled with all kinds of legal mumbojumbo, however, we just want to use this space to reassure you, we really do have too many women and need your help.”
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
It’s Good to Know: If You’re Looking for Love on Valentine’s Day
* For 20-somethings: There are 119 single (never married, divorced, or widowed) men for every 100 single women.
* For the over-65 crowd: There are 34 single (never married, divorced, or widowed) men for every 100 single women.
* To find those singles: There are 904 off-line and online dating services in the U.S.
(Source: The U.S. Census Bureau’s “Facts for Features")
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
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