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Here’s a rather long article from the British press about Internet dating taken to its illogical extreme—oh so casual sex, and the deadening of sex in general. Not to mention the encouragement to people in committed relationships to cheat. What do you think?
The web of desire or just deceit?
The internet has made it easier than ever to find a partner for casual sex, but having it all on a plate could mean that we end up losing our appetites. By David Smith
* David Smith
* The Observer,
* Sunday October 26 2008
Attractive college professor wants good student for fun hookup Fri.’ ‘Very Hot American in town looking for someone to show him the ropes.’ ‘Monday night - in Edinburgh on business.’ ‘Looking for some fun.’ ‘Inexperienced but curious?’. ‘Sophisticated pleasure for busty lady.’ ‘Ladylike Asian submissive wanted.’ ‘One night stand.’
Just another typical week in Edinburgh, as glimpsed in the ‘casual encounters’ section of the popular website Craigslist. Residents, tourists, businessmen and women passing through - anyone who fancies a bit of sex with ‘NSA’ (no-strings-attached) can announce it to the world and watch the offers roll in. On Craigslist, they don’t have to pay anything or even go through the motions of registering a username and password. This is internet sex: as free and easy as it comes.
The homepage of Craigslist, one of the world’s most popular listings sites, offers flats and houses, holiday rentals, bikes, boats, books for sale, and jobs in just about every sector imaginable. Alongside this classic classifieds fare are personals, some romantic, some for one night only. Just a few mouse clicks away, it seems, the logical conclusion of a consumer age where time is short and convenience expected. Or as the title of Mark Ravenhill’s play had it: Shopping and Fucking.
‘It’s like ordering a pizza,’ says Emily Dubberley, author of Brief Encounters: The Women’s Guide to Casual Sex, and founder of the charity campaign Burlesque Against Breast Cancer.
‘In the past if someone suddenly felt horny they probably wouldn’t bother going to a pub, or even joining a dating site to say, “Do you fancy it?” because that would be a bit weird, so they’d just sort themselves out. Now it’s very available and convenient. But there’s something a bit more sordid about it when you don’t even have to make the remotest connection such as, “Do you fancy a pint?” At least then there would be a flirtation and catching of the eye. Now you can just go online and order genitalia. It’s taken sex to its absolute base level.’
Entire histories have been written about how the growth of the internet had nothing to do with knowledge and everything to do with pornography. But just as the net has transformed from a passive one-way street into an interactive ‘Web 2.0’ where users are creators, so the days of computers being little more than digital porn magazines are gone.
The web has become a place through which to contact, meet and have sex with real people, to fulfil the wildest fantasy in the flesh. Cybersex is no longer about merely looking; it is about doing. What no one can yet understand is how this will change the social etiquettes of the past, or how fundamentally it is shifting the dynamics of sex and relationships.
Some sites are quite explicit about their offerings. AdultFriendFinder claims to be the world’s biggest adult social network and sex personals site. Its homepage proclaims, ‘Meet real sex partners tonight!’ beside a picture of a young woman taking off her bra and pouting at the camera. Below there are a series of photos and videos of women with names like ‘sexygirl’, ‘freakychick’, ‘angelfirelady’ and ‘sugarbabe’. The site claims to have more than 2.5 million members registered in the UK, and that tens of thousands are logged in at this very moment. Just log in and you could meet your match.
Other sites quite evidently do as they promise, such as Hookuparea.com and BeNaughty.com. And when a marriage is under strain, spouses no longer have to go very far out of their way to cheat. Illicit Encounters asks on its homepage: ‘Married but Feeling neglected? In need of some excitement? A discreet and confidential extra-marital dating service for women and men… Whatever your reason, we can help. You may be locked in a loveless marriage, starved of attention and affection, partner away or too tired to pay you the attention you deserve, nonexistent love life? Or just looking for some excitement in your life? But you don’t want to end your marriage either. Here you can meet people just like you, in absolute confidence.’
Peter Lines, 43, from West Yorkshire, met his current partner through the site when he decided that his marriage was loveless and beyond salvation. He did not want to ruin his children’s lives so continues to live with his wife in an entirely platonic relationship. He says his current partner was in an identical predicament. ‘Morally, we haven’t got a leg to stand on, but what’s a person to do?’ he asks.
Lines has since become a co-owner of Illicit Encounters, which launched in October 2003 and now has 245,000 members, mostly in the UK. Sixty-five per cent of them are male, and 35 per cent female, a smaller disparity than most dating sites. Women are on average 36½ years old, men 38½. Applicants are required to answer up to 50 questions and fill in a profile. Of around 800 applications received every day, on average 550 are rejected for reasons such as age (people under 25 are discouraged) or personality (self-evident sex maniacs are not welcome).
Lines says that the site is made up of very ordinary people like you and me. ‘It’s the man and woman in the street, the person in the Sainsbury’s queue, the person in the office you would never expect. There are no raging tarts or slobbering lotharios. The membership are primarily people trapped in a marriage and they can’t get out for all sorts of reasons. We did a survey and 71 per cent of people said that if they weren’t having an affair they’d be getting a divorce.’
The internet has made it possible in ways that would have been unthinkable 15 years ago. Lines adds: ‘People in this situation are far more active online than they would be in real life. They wouldn’t go to a bar or another public place to chat to people for many reasons, some of them obvious.’
The site provides a guide on how to conduct an illicit affair, with advice tips including using a separate SIM card in their mobile phone, paying with cash instead of credit cards and never giving their surname, exact location or workplace. But he denies the site is providing an immoral cheats’ charter. ‘We say to everyone that we don’t encourage them to have an affair. We make it very clear on every page that you’ve got to think hard about this; it’s not a substitute for working on your marriage; only do it if your marriage cannot be saved and there’s no way back.’
Not for the first time, homosexuals have been at the cutting edge of sexual and social trends. Gaydar, the networking site for gay men - tagline ‘What you want, when you want it’ - has arguably done more than any other site to make casual sex an integral part of the web. Founded in 1999 by Gary Frisch and his partner Henry Badenhorst in a tiny office in south-west London, it soon became the online equivalent of the gay bar, a safe place to meet, talk and, of course, ‘get laid’. Gaydar is now one of the biggest dating sites on the web with millions of members around the world. The ‘A’ countries alone with registered users are Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Aruba, Australia, Austria and Azerbaijan.
Gaydar is sex shopping writ large, with every specific taste catered for. A user’s profile has a basic checklist: height, body type, ethnic origins, out (of the closet, that is), dick size, body hair, orientation (gay or bisexual), role (active, passive or versatile), safer sex (yes or no), smoke and drink. Anyone who fails to
...#8592; post a photograph is less likely to be successful in finding an assignation. Those who do can turn up in a new city anywhere in the world, advertise their availability and be having sex an hour later.
This is perhaps the most spectacular illustration of how the internet has changed everyday behaviour. Gays bars and clubs are said to have suffered a downturn because men are sitting at computers instead; an article in the Economist magazine attributed a slump at Manchester’s Canal Street gay quarter directly to Gaydar. Cottaging in toilets or bushes, in places such as Hampstead Heath, has reportedly declined or even vanished because sex is so readily available via broadband. The author and Gaydar user Mark Simpson once observed: ‘If Joe Orton had his time again his diaries would have been just printouts of thousands of Gaydar profiles and alarming digicam photos.’
The process even formed the subject of a one-man show, Sex Addict, which caused controversy in 2004 when author Tim Fountain invited Edinburgh Festival audiences to watch him trawl Gaydar each night to arrange a sexual encounter, then report back the following day. Fountain has since admitted that the site can become addictive, a confusion of ends and means. ‘I know so many gay men who will literally have Gaydar ticking away all the time, wherever they are, in the corner of the room while they are watching TV,’ Fountain, the author of a new book about the sex lives of the British, Rude Britannia, told the Guardian last year.
‘That’s the worst thing, it’s a terrible time waster. You can very quickly think, “Oh, I’ll just log on and check my messages,” and four hours later you find yourself weeing on someone’s pillow in Willesden Green wondering, “What the hell am I doing here?” Sometimes you think, “Christ, am I still online? I was meant to being doing something else.” The whole web dating thing, gay or straight - on the one hand, it does link people up, but they are not socialising, they are not meeting in bars. They are just sitting talking down a line, ordering what they want, when they want it. That can be a very narrow thing.’
For all its popularity, Gaydar can be regarded as a niche. Not so Craigslist or its rival, Gumtree, which published research last year showing that one in 10 British adults between the ages of 25 and 40 had gone online for casual sex. Nor, indeed, the darlings of the web, social networking sites such as Facebook. This runs the gamut, bringing together business contacts, old school and university friends and former lovers. At one end of the spectrum, a site which invites members to ‘poke’ each other and features countless photos of drunken revelry inevitably features casual sex too.
Earlier this year it emerged that Laura Michaels, 23, had set up a group called ‘I Need Sex’ on the Facebook site and, she claimed, slept with 50 men. Within 10 minutes the group had 35 members and soon attracted 100 men, 50 of whom Michaels slept with after vetting their pictures. One of her Facebook conquests was called Simon from Swindon, whom she met for drinks in a bar in her hometown of Bristol before going back to his hotel room for sex. Facebook later removed the page.
Michaels told the Sun about her experiences: ‘We always met somewhere like a bar first and I would get dressed up and treat it like a date. I know that some people will really look down on me for it. They might even say that I may as well have been a prostitute because then I would at least have been paid for sleeping with so many different blokes, but I don’t see it like that at all. I was satisfying my own desires by setting up the group. I feel like a free, liberated woman and I think it’s fantastic that the internet gave me a chance to do this. I know that it was risky behaviour but that was part of the thrill. I always made sure to tell a friend I trusted where I was going.’
Facebook, MySpace and Bebo’s tens of millions of members can communicate with each other via Zoosk, which claims to be the biggest social dating network in the world. It offers the chance to ‘choose a network and start mingling with thousands of cute singles in your area’. It could well appeal to people who would never dream of visiting an all-out casual sex site but don’t see the harm of a simple mouse click which adds the Zoosk application to their profile page, the first step on a slippery slope. The web abounds with questions such as ‘What would you do if you found your husband added the “zoosk” application on Facebook?’ and ‘Does Zoosk randomly flirt with people’?
The online sex revolution is posing new questions for experts who have not seen anything quite like this before. Phillip Hodson, a psychotherapist and broadcaster, says: ‘I do believe the internet is the world’s largest sex aid, largely functioning to augment, magnify and super-speed the processes of dating. Therefore it does represent a “step difference”, a difference of kind and not just one of degree over traditional mating behaviour. You could never flirt with so many people in your entire life in, say, the Fifties as you can today in one un-enchanted evening. The web - soon to be the instantaneous grid - allows people of high libido (and flexible morals) to find each other as never before.’
But, according to Hodson, the web might be making sex too easy, so we end up having less rather than more. ‘All new media have pros and cons, pluses and minuses,’ she says. ‘Undoubtedly adultery is easier to organise by email but there is a new risk of detection given the electronic trail and the dangers of interception or misdirection - for example “Hello Lover!” ending up in your boss’s inbox.
‘I think that the internet, by providing pornography and promiscuity on a plate, does tend to lower the nation’s overall libido. In order to feel sexy, we need a few more challenges than unlimitedporninanyposition.org or Hookersin30minutestoyourdoor.co.uk. Men in particular seem to me to be in danger of becoming “sex lazy” as well as more fickle.’
Indeed the paradox of the throwaway, instant gratification subculture could be that, like a drug, gratification becomes less and less satisfying. No one can share the sentiment expressed in Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest: ‘This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last!’ It is not only romance that is dead but also the theatre of seduction, the hint of stocking replaced by a brazen sexuality that is about as erotic as a prostitute’s calling card in a phone box. Cinema and restaurant dates are replaced by profiles and pokes.
The era when you married the boy or girl next door, or your childhood sweetheart, in the same village church as your parents, has long been on the wane. But when love is cheap, the internet generation may be less inclined to get married at all.
Dr Aric Sigman, a psychologist and biologist, says: ‘I would be concerned that what we are seeing is unrealistic. Yes, you can have sex, but you are now having more people than ever living alone and never getting married. Even as the technology advances, men and women are less engaged than ever before. There is something about chemistry and nuance that is not conveyed by this IT.
‘This is doing something odd to the human condition that isn’t clear yet. In luring people away from strong personal relationships, it could be that people are having less sex, not more. I’m not convinced that it’s making us any happier.’
How to identify cheating spouses
1 They touch their nose often. Research suggests that internal nose tissues swell with blood when one lies. Beware of this when they communicate with you.
2 They avoid looking directly at you. Lying takes concentration and makes them suddenly divert their line of sight.
3 They stare at you too much. They do this to make sure you believe them.
4 They lean forward and get close. Closeness is usually a sign of trust. But sometimes it can be a sign of deceit. They try to exaggerate how close you are by leaning forward when they lie.
5 They pull their earlobe. Some police forces are trained to watch for this very mistake when interrogating criminals.
6 They give you too much information. Their stories are too complex, structured, polished or complete.
7 They tend to give you multiple ‘reasons’. If they were honest, they would have the confidence to give just one reason.
8 They stumble in speech, with mistakes in the story to try and cover it up.
9 They use ‘um’ and ‘ah’ more than usual, where they have to think of lies quickly.
10 They are hesitant at the start of a sentence. They have to come up with lies fast and they hesitate.
Mistakes many cheaters make
1 They forget about a ‘love note’ left in their pocket.
2 They come home smelling of a lover’s scent.
3 They are too protective of their handbag or wallet.
4 They come home wearing different clothes from when they left.
5 They choose too many different excuses too often.
6 They forget about itemised mobile phone bills.
7 They spend too much money on their affair and less on bills at home.
8 They come home smelling of smoke, but they don’t smoke.
9 They use a friend as an excuse but don’t tell the friend.
10 They forget about the caller ID and redial button.
Occasionally I have a client who has decided to look for a mate overseas. While the reasons may differ, the risks are the same. And dating outside the US is risky. Take a look at this article for a few eye-openers:
Disappointment Awaits Men Seeking Foreign Brides Online
Sites promising exotic Asian, Russian women are often scams ... or worse
By Tom Glaister
I was in an internet café in Thailand last year, trying to work out which continent I should fly to next, when my attention was entirely absorbed by an attractive Thai girl who sat down next to me and logged in. She gave me one of those Thai smiles that could mean anything at all and then concentrated on her correspondence. I was beginning to wonder if Thailand had its merits after all and couldn’t help stealing repeated glances at her.
She was totally absorbed in her online conversations with four messenger windows going at once, however, and in each of them I could see the photo of a Western guy. The youngest had to be 45 at least.
I miss you.
When you coming back?
I wait for you but I no have money for my rent.
I looked at her again and realized she was wearing too much makeup and revealing clothes for the average Thai girl. She almost certainly worked in a bar as a hostess for Western guys looking for Eastern romance and now that their holidays were over, her “boyfriends” were back home at work, dreaming of the month or two they’d spent in Thai heaven. They’d be coming back as soon as they could afford it — if their “girlfriend” didn’t drain their bank accounts dry in the meantime.
Thailand, like Brazil or the Philippines, is full of Western guys trying their luck with women half their age. With terrible dress sense that betrays the serious lack of a woman’s touch, it can be pitiful to watch them trying to mend their hearts under flashing neon signs, sharing a common vocabulary of maybe 500 words with the women they meet.
It’s not easy getting old. Along with worrying about balding, beer guts and prostate cancer, many American men suffer the flip side of the national individualistic character — they end up feeling quite alone.
As school friends move away and get married, opportunities to make new social contacts tend to diminish with age. And our modern lifestyles often dictate that we work alone in front of a computer, shop alone in a supermarket and go home alone to apartments where neighbors don’t talk to one another.
Until the Internet came along, the natural desire to meet the opposite sex did much to boost the attendance at bars and evening classes in the hope of meeting that special someone. Drinking too much beer and pretending to be interested in learning Italian were the only options left open to the millions of Americans who simply didn’t know how else to meet anyone new.
Out of the bars
photo of dating siteBut then the advent of online dating sites meant the American guy could go hunting without having to get out of his dressing gown. Unshaven and unwashed he could woo any number of women by complimenting them on their profile photo and including the right kind of charismatic emoticon in the message to show his sensitive side. It made the first step in dating safe, voyeuristic and cheaper than buying drinks all night while searching for the courage to approach the blonde on the other side of the bar.
Which explains why some 40 million American men logged onto dating sites last year.
Yet there remained the fact that most of the women on American dating sites were … well, American.
“They’ve lost their femininity!” an American expat once told me when explaining his choice to move south to Mexico. “American women these days dress like men, talk like men and call you a chauvinist if you ask them to make you a cup of coffee.”
I thought of the aggressive, sexless look of the supermodels and the passing of the days when men tipped their hats to women in the street. Then the expat’s Mexican wife came in, brought us each another beer, wiped the table and went off to calm the crying children and prepare lunch.
Talk to American men who have married foreign women and 90 percent of them will have been attracted to the old-fashioned values of another culture. Dinner on the table, clean clothes in the cupboard and strong maternal instincts.
“Western women have been campaigning for equality for so long that happiness went out of the picture long ago.” another friend married to a Thai wife told me.
I initially thought this was a bit over the top until I learned that even complimenting a female co-worker can be considered grounds for sexual harassment. Have feminism and political correctness taken all the fun out of American love?
Well maybe. But there’s also the fact that, for many, exotic is erotic and there’s nothing like a foreign accent or complexion to hide the personality faults that stop domestic relationships getting off the ground.
Where to look?
I get asked this all the time by guys everywhere I go when they hear that I’m always on the road. Surely by now I must have found that paradise where sultry babes spend all day topless on the beach, ready to trade their bodies for a cocktail and a cheap pick-up line.
In fact, guys tend to be such suckers for this fantasy that Russian scam artists send out millions of emails allegedly from hot girls called Tanya or Olga. Accompanied by alluring photos, the messages promise eternal friendship, physical relationships or marriage.
In realilty, the people sending out these snares are often hairy Mafioso guys in their dressing gowns who know just how to talk to the average male libido. Should they convince someone that they really have found love, an actress is employed to turn on the emotional blackmail by phone and initiate the first in a series of requests for money to arrange her visa/buy a flight ticket/pay off kidnappers or any number of absurd pretexts. Naturally, she never gets on the plane.
But can true love be found abroad?
According to the senators who sponsored the recently-enacted International Marriage Broker Regulation Act designed to protect foreign women from stealthy male American predators, some 8,000 to 12,000 U.S. men marry foreign wives each year. The divorce rate of such couples is up to three times lower than the national average and hundreds of agencies exist to introduce American men to these Russian, Colombian or Filipina beauties. I just typed ‘Russian girls’ into Google and 9 of the first 10 results turned up mail order bride or dating services.
Introduction agencies can serve a valid role. The honest ones can put you in touch with women in the destination country looking for long-term relationships. They can arrange tours and help with translation and bureaucratic difficulties. Surfing around some of the sites I had to wonder about the motives of some of the women involved, however.
“My name is Ludmila and I am student of psychology. I am looking for man to care about me, care about our children and make my dream come true.”
Her script might have been a little more convincing if the accompanying video hadn’t shown her walking down a main shopping street in the Ukraine in lingerie. Other videos showed Russian student girls in bikinis, draping themselves around national monuments while they talked about their hobbies. I was somehow reminded of Miss World contestants talking about world peace. Then of course my girlfriend walked in and point blank refused to believe it was all part of my journalistic research…
Gold diggers?
So were these beautiful girls really looking for true love or were they just in it for the money?
Any American guy looking to marry a woman from a poorer country is always going to have the doubt at the back of his mind that she’s only going through the whole ordeal to get her hands on his bank account. And even if he’s too enamoured with the hobbies of his new love to think about it, the social stigma of a ‘mail order bride’ can make him the laughing stock of the community.
Thanks to the Beatles, we all know the money can’t buy you love and why else would a young woman choose to leave home and marry a stranger?
Before I left Thailand last year I found an interesting guide on the shelf of the airport bookshop that was a manual for foreign men and their Thai wives. On the left hand side of the book the text was in English and opposite the same content was written in Thai. The idea being that couples could read the book together and navigate their way through the cultural minefield which can sink mixed marriages before they get started.
Particularly enlightening was the section on money. Thai women were informed that ‘love and money are seen as separate and distinct concepts in Western society’ and that if their husbands seem stingy it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t care.
The men, on the other hand, were encouraged to understand that husbands in Thailand are expected to take care of the families of their brides. It’s simply a form of gratitude for having raised the wonderful woman they have now married.
It seems that sometimes we get so caught up in looking for ulterior motives that we forget some of the basics of human nature.
Since the beginning of time marriage has had a strong economic aspect in cultures all over the world. How long ago was it in the West that a young man’s suitability was based on his “prospects” and his ability to keep his bride “in the manner to which she has become accustomed?”
Many of us announce our wealth every day in the cars we drive, the clothes we wear, the places we frequent. And it’s not unreasonable to suppose that most women would prefer their partners to be reasonably solvent. Naturally, try to buy a feminist a drink and you might receive a knee to the groin but these are strange times…
Asking for trouble
Many Americans who marry foreign wives do end up getting scammed, cheated or abandoned once her visa comes through but they’ve usually invited trouble on themselves.
After years of loneliness they often step right off the plane into a bar in Bangkok and start dating the first girl who approaches them. Or else they choose a woman half their age who fulfills all their fantasies but who doesn’t speak English and who sees them only as a walking wallet.
Finding love abroad is mostly about common sense. For a start, you’re unlikely to find the woman of your dreams in a bar with girls doing pole dances in the corner.
Whether in Colombia, Russia or Thailand, respectable women with serious intentions live normal lives and it takes time to get to know them. You need to be able to speak at least some of the same language and have something in common. And if you expect her to emigrate, you might first want to live for a while in her country to appreciate what kind of culture she comes from.
And if you get to know her first on an Internet dating site, remember that no one who’s honest will ever ask you to send money upfront. Period. And if the first couple of telephone calls go well, jump on a plane and go to meet her — if you discover she has a bad drinking habit and she can’t stand your body odor … well, at least you’ll have found out in time.
Finding love abroad can be thrilling. Hell, it’s one of the things that keeps me on the road all the time.
But while the average Vietnamese girl might be half the weight of her American counterpart, she may not be able to get your jokes and a festival like Christmas probably won’t mean anything to her. She may cook food you’re not used to and hate the weather but hey, at least you probably won’t be able to understand what your mother-in-law says.
And lastly, before you go running overseas to look for love, ask a female friend if there’s any way you could make yourself more attractive before you go. Terrible body odor, drinking before noon and an inability to listen are turn-offs to women anywhere you go.
Now even New Zealand has a dating coach. When I was doing online dating back in 1998, there was no one no where to be found.
How to bag a bloke… and other dating tips
By Kim Knight - Sunday Star Times | Sunday, 03 August 2008
Dating can be a tough time - and good advice helps.
Related Links
SINGLE? CHECK. Happy? Check. Really?
New Zealand’s first self-proclaimed dating coach is not sure she believes you.
“People won’t initially say they want a long-term relationship, or marriage,” says Denise Corlett. “They’ll say, `oh, it would be quite nice to meet someone’...”
The reality, she says, is once people hit their late 20s, they’re looking for someone special. Someone significant. Permanent. Someone but not just anyone.
Corlett found her second husband on the internet. He was the only man she dated. Friends tell her she got lucky. She says it’s because she got specific.
“I think I filtered out people incredibly quickly. Not in a nasty way, but I was pretty clear about what I was looking for.”
Corlett, 46, trained as an occupational therapist before working in psychological health. She set up as a life coach in 2001 and has most recently worked in the recruitment sector. She encountered many people who were having difficulty finding potential partners.
“People were getting into internet dating, going to agencies and the like, and I just felt there was no one in New Zealand who was addressing the issues that constantly came up: it’s not working, I can’t seem to find anyone.”
And so Dating Advice was born. Corlett won’t set you up with a partner but she will try to equip you with the skills to attract the potentials.
“I promote the idea of saying, `I’m single, and I’d like to be a in a relationship’. It’s OK to let your intentions be known.”
Her Auckland office is all Valentine’s Day reds and creams. There is a box of tissues on the bench and a whiteboard against the wall.
Tell me why I’m single, I demand.
“Why don’t you tell me why you’re here,” she suggests, gently.
(Because my editor made me). But, OK, since I’m here… All men are bastards. I am perfect. Nobody really understands me. Why the hell am I telling you this over a glass of water? Where’s the sauvignon blanc?
I’m kidding. Except for the bit about the liquor. How many women, I ask Corlett, go out on a date that lasts, say, three hours and then embark on a three-day analysis of said date, assisted by 15 assorted best friends and several bottles of wine?
She laughs. “Women are so good at analysing. We love sitting around and talking with our girlfriends, about what he did, and what he said and what does that really mean. But men are simpler creatures. They don’t do that.
“The best approach women can take is to ask them outright, or take it just as it is. Do something else, see other people. If that person’s interested in you, they will pursue you.”
Men, says Corlett, like to take charge of this process ("I might be a bit old-fashioned in that"). Women, she says, must reciprocate by being available, “or making the opportunity for the man to initiate something”.
OK fine. But how do you meet someone who wants to ask you on a date in the first place? Corlett says there’s no one approach. Busy, shyer people might have more luck online, for example.
“The thing with internet dating is initially, it’s such a visual thing, and I’m not just talking about how you look, but also your screen name, and the first few phrases you use if that’s not bringing people in, you might have to change it.”
Singles with wide social networks that put them into regular contact with others could try maximising their opportunities to meet people. Or, says Corlett, who will work with clients on a personalised plan of, er, attack, you could just smile at that man/woman you’ve walked past on your way to work every day for the past three years. “And then the next time you see each other, you might say, `hi, it’s a nice day’.”
Because here’s the thing: “If you want to get into a relationship or do anything new in your life, there’s always some risk involved. At the end of the day, even if you have a fabulous relationship, your partner is going to die, or you’re going to die. To the greatest couples, that’s what happens. Someone is going to have pain at the end of the day.
“You do have to open up, you do have to be vulnerable and even if 10 men or women have broken your heart, you need to learn from that but you still need to open up and be vulnerable to the 11th. There is no connection with someone if you are distant, untrusting and aloof.”
Corlett’s business which includes modules that can be completed online is attracting more male than female clients. “Guys often have this perception they have to be funny, or know the lines, or whatever, to approach a woman. They don’t need to be like that. They need to be themselves.”
Corlett says singles of both sexes need to value themselves more. “To be attractive, you need to value yourself and you need to see yourself as deserving. No matter how you look, what actually is attractive at the end of the day is how you come across. You need to see yourself with the best eyes first.”
The United States Embassy in Moscow clearly gets frequent reports about US citizens who are victims of Russian based dating scams. Here’s what the Embassy has put out in response, good advice no matter what country you are dealing with:
Internet Dating Scams
The U.S. Embassy receives reports almost every day of fraud committed against U.S. citizens by Internet correspondents professing love and romantic interest. Typically, the Russian correspondent asks the U.S. citizen to send money or credit card information for living expenses, travel expenses, or “visa costs.” The anonymity of the Internet means that the U.S. citizen cannot be sure of the real name, age, marital status, nationality, or even gender of the correspondent. The U.S. Embassy has received many reports of citizens losing thousands of dollars through such scams. American citizens are advised never to send money to anyone they have not met in person.
The internet dating scams include some common elements:
* Misrepresentation about the costs and requirements of a U.S. visa,
* Claims that they must buy airline tickets only in Russia,
* Use of professional models’ photos gleaned from internet web sites,
* Sudden financial hurdles to leaving Russia,
* Requests to send money only through a specific company,
* A scan of a (usually fraudulent) U.S. visa to prove intent to travel.
Please keep in mind that, while the U.S. Embassy in Moscow does not have the authorization to initiate investigations of these scams, the Fraud Prevention Unit can verify the authenticity of any U.S. visa via e-mail at . In addition, complete and authoritative information on applying for a U.S. visa is available on the Department of State’s webpage on Visa Information for Temporary Visitors.
Goodness, leave it to the French to strip away the layers and get right to the nitty-gritty. We’ve known all along that Internet dating was about quick hook-ups and not about finding a mate, right? NOT! But I do think that the author has the slant wrong here: The French are more about seduction than romance, and they are much more frank about it. As this article implies.
Flirting and fornicating
Agnes Poirier
“Forty-one encounters, 39 penetrations,” stated an elegant Parisian art dealer when asked by a journalist from Marie Claire about his gallivanting on Meetic, the first European dating website. This French company has, in only six years, spread its cupid wings to 17 countries, including China and Brazil; made online dating available in 12 different languages; boasted 22-million users; and is now No 2 in the world just behind the United States’s match.com. Last January it bought DatingDirect, Britain’s No 1 dating website, and on Valentine’s Day announced a rise in profits of 70%, to £18-million.
In France alone, five million people spend precious hours chatting every day, flirting, meeting and fornicating with perfect strangers. It has become such a social phenomenon that teams of screenwriters are competing to get the first film done on the subject. Meetic has become an egalitarian hub, visited by as many women as men. Surveys and statistics have proved that Meetic is the most “efficient” of all online dating websites. Many of the users I know would agree.
“Meetic is the best. And it’s a super ego-booster. Every evening I’m on it, I have at least 30 men wanting to chat with me and meet me,” says a French senior civil servant, a single woman in her early 30s. Before contacting her, the 30 men have clicked on the “flash” icon to let her know that they find her especially attractive. Before condescending to reply, she double-checks their profile: age, picture, education, income and marital status.
She chooses them like a discerning consumer, and only replies to married men. “For the moment, I am looking for fun, not love. I do a first pre-selection, and send a standard reply to the unlucky ones out of courtesy. As for the selected few, according to their wit and their language skills ... I draw a shortlist of perhaps three and agree to meet them. If I like them, we usually go straight from the cafe to my flat.”
It’s a simple issue of supply and demand: pre-select candidates, test sales pitch, draw a shortlist, have a face-to-face interview, hire on the spot, dismiss without notice, voila—a case of ultra-liberalism meets romance. And low-cost sex.
But perhaps the most unsettling thing about the whole affair is that Meetic is operating from France, supposedly the country of romance and gallantry. French films of the past century have all conveyed a grand idea of l’amour a la francaise: the penetrating gaze, the blushing, the first words, the long walks, impassioned silences, a steady crescendo of desire fuelled by months of courtship.
“I have no more time to waste trying to charm girls in cafes ... the process is too long and too arduous,” says a 25-year-old Parisian man. “With Meetic ... I often score on the first date. Not long ago, when I was a teenager, girls kept me salivating for weeks. Forget it.”
Instant success, instant reward; flirt as you go, pay later, at the shrink’s. An older man sounds less enthusiastic. “When I was looking for a girlfriend, I used Meetic and had a few affairs,” he says. “One in particular was great, I was falling in love. Then one evening, she said: ‘Let’s be friends, you’re not rich enough for me.’ This was such a shock; I felt like a commodity, I had to start therapy.”
The irony is that Meetic’s founder, Marc Simoncini, insists that the site’s success lies in its being distinctively “European and Latin”. “People can meet freely on Meetic, they can talk to each other directly across Europe.” Unlike Match.com, which does the matching for you. Americans would be horrified at the idea of married people dating freely, but making adultery and sex as easy as buying a croissant shouldn’t necessarily be France’s only gift to online dating.
Will the last romantic to leave France please turn out the lights?
Men seeding foreign brides are now having to comply with the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act (IMBRA) which went into effect in March 2006. IMBRA is an effort to to protect women from potential abuse from American men who look for foreign wives on the Internet. IMBRA requires that men provide the government and dating agencies with information about criminal records and marital history before bringing a woman into this country. Figures given in an article from the New York Times seem to support the concern: During fiscal year 2006, 9,500 woman applied for permanent residence in the U.S. under the Violence Against Women Act, as opposed to less than 2,500 in 1998. At the same time, the increase of women entering the U.S. to marry has skyrocketed: 37,500 in fiscal 2006, a 50% increase from 2002, and a fourfold increase since 9,500 in 1998. This would translate into roughly 25% of foreign women in 1998 and 2006 who left American men because of potential abuse.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
If you are interested in what kinds of men use dating sites to find Russian brides, here’s an article with lots of facts and figures.
Here is a little of what the article has to say:
Country-wise, most paying members are from United States, with United Kingdom holding sizable second, which is no surprise as those countries are also the leaders by the number of registered users. Other countries in top 10 include: Australia, Canada, Norway, Germany, Netherlands, France, New Zealand, and South Africa. Turkey, which is number 3 for the number of users registered on ElenasModels.com website, didn’t make it into the top 10 by the number of paying users, as well as Italy and Spain (number 6 and 10 respectively by the number of registered users); Norway, New Zealand and South Africa replaced them in the top 10. Apparently, hot-blooded European Southerners prefer looking while men from distant and cooler countries are jumping into action.
The average age of paying members seeking Russian ‘mail order brides’ is 42.9 years vs. 37.8 years for non-paying members, with only 5.1% of paying members being under 30 years old compared to 21.1% for non-paying members. Under-30 men do not appear particularly serious about marrying someone halfway around the world.
From Your Romance Coach,
Kathryn Lord
I’ve written before about the dangers of looking for mates through sites offering women from Russia, Nigeria, or other economically distressed countries. Not only are American men easy targets for scams, the women are easily manipulated by men who are not the kind of wholesome mate material that they’d like us to think.
Keli Dailey in “I Wish They All Could Be Mail-Order Girls” writes about the newly enacted International Marriage Broker Regulation Act (IMBRA), which was passed as a rider to the Violence Against Women Act, all of which took effect this last March. While I had felt squeamish about the whole idea of men going abroad to find wives (often openly courted by the sites or marriage brokers with allusions that the women being offered were old-fashioned in their values and not like modern American women), this article tells some of the distasteful stories, along with the implications of IMBRA for men still looking abroad.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
I have had a number of clients who were born outside of the United States, now living and trying to date in the USA. Not only do these folks often have the different cultural norms of courtship to figure out, if English is their second language, understanding and being understood can pose major problems. Even acquired fluency in English still can leave the speaker with a strong accent that makes being understood difficult. Also, when it comes to finding marriage partners, usually people look for more similarities than differences. Anything that smooths the bumps helps.
I saw in today’s paper (7/29/06) an article by Dionne Walker of the Associated Press about people and businesses emerging that help such folks sound more “American.” Also mentioned in the article is the online based service Accent Master While I can’t vouch for the quality of any of these services, I was surprised to read about the existence of them at all. If you speak heavily accented English, you might want to check them out.
From Your Romance Coach,
Kathryn Lord
James Silver writes about his return to dating at age 35 (a youngster!) in a lengthy article “Dating game? It’s more like a war zone” for the London Daily Mail. Mostly, the article is a description of first date disasters which began online and off, but I thought one of his observations was particularly apt:
Until a couple of years ago, online romance was a freak show peopled by drooling creeps, social misfits with teddy-bear collections still living with their mothers at 43 and those let out on day-release.
Anyway, in just five years that has changed entirely. While no doubt you would still be able to root out a host of oddballs on every dating site, now many attractive, functional single men and women, who hold down good jobs and don’t live with their mums, are at it, too. And, most significantly, they talk about it openly, compare notes and laugh about their (many) dating disasters.
Since I met my husband on Match.com in 1998, I can’t agree with Silver that up 2004, online daters were members of a freak show, but I do agree that in the last five years, Internet dating has arrived. The turning point was 9/11/2001. Remember what we all went through? Suddenly, we had an almost universal awareness of the brevity of life and an aching for family and connection. People FLOCKED to online dating sites looking for partners. Suddenly, looking for love online was mainstream, and the cyber-closet was no longer needed.
Yes, dating sites have their share of weirdos and misfits, just like in the general population. Yes, you have to weed through to find the gems. But now you know where they are hanging out. And focus on the jewels, not the garbage around them.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Gumtree.com, a London, England, site, surveyed 1600 of it’s members about their Internet dating experiences. While it doesn’t mean much for U. S. singles to know that Glasgow came out on top for dating site usage and success (almost 3/4 of the men and over half the women reported having a “fling” with someone they met online), still, the numbers indicate the growing importance of dating sites for singles to connect. Glasgow men and women also reported high percentages of longer term romance: 68% of men, 71% of women reported at least one serious or long-term relationship stemming from an Internet meeting.
Here’s the figures that I found most interesting: 77% of men and 33% of women from Glasgow said they found Internet dating more comfortable for connecting than a bar or the workplace. Wow.
This all points to the growing acceptance of online connecting. Singles like the ease, simplicity, and privacy. Not to mention the ability to meet many, many more eligible singles than has ever been possible before.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Now, here’s a good idea, though Matt Katz, writing about www.singelringen.com, doesn’t sound sure. Singelringen’s Swedish founders are trying to start a movement linking being single to being cool, and signifying one’s single status with a ring, turquoise with a silver lining. No instructions on what finger or hand to wear it on.
Here’s what I think is so great about it: If this became a movement, then singles would have a pretty reliable way to identify other singles. Now, folks scan to see if someone’s wearing a wedding ring, but the absence of a ring doesn’t mean that a person is single. Particularly with men, for whom wedding rings are optional, even if they are married.
What Internet dating sites do that makes so much sense is that it helps singles identify easily other people who are looking for dates. Unfortunately, you can’t assume that these folks are really available (as in legal), but they are self-identifying as looking.
The rings do the same offline, in the real world. And it is a little hard to imagine someone wearing a singelringen if they weren’t single. Though of course it is possible. But what if it falls out of your pocket in the washing machine and your spouse finds it? Gotcha!
Wasn’t there some attempt a few years ago to sell single women diamond rings for their right hands? Can’t remember what they called the rings, but I am pretty certain that the diamond industry was hoping it would catch on. Frankly, that felt a little pathetic, like, if no guy gives me a diamond, I’ll buy one for myself.
Singelringen’s sound different, signaling single status for both men and women. Very handy.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
If you writhe under the pressure of getting just the right Valentine’s Day gift or card, be glad you aren’t living in South Korea. There, merchants have Seen the Light of money-making possibilities in holidays devoted to love and have come up with about 20 per year.
Here are just a few:
January 14 is Diary Day, when lovers are encouraged to buy calendars and mark all their special days.
February 14 is—you guessed it—Valentine’s Day. Only women buy men chocolate.
March 14 is White Day. Now the guys buy candies for the ladies.
April 14 is Black Day. This is the love holiday for singles, who eat black food that day.
Got the picture? Be glad that February 14th occurs only once a year.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Here’s an article out of Uganda about Online dating etiquette, most of which I absolutely agree with. Except #4. For heaven’s sake, why not look online for information about your correspondent? What is Googling all about, anyway? Click here for my earlier postings about Googling.
Rule no. 1: Respond politely and quickly to any expressions of interest.
Rule no. 2: Be honestHonesty is sign of respect.
Rule no. 3: Don’t move too fast.
Rule no. 4: Don’t go digging for information on your new friends.
Rule no. 5: Don’t treat the website like a porn site.
Rule no. 6: Don’t ask for favours. Never ask for money, credit cards, gifts, airline tickets or accommodation, no matter how close you are with your on-line friends.
It’s good to see these kind of guidelines from anywhere, but since so manyof the dating scams seem to be originating in Nigeria, Ugandan behavior suggestions are much appreciated.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Rich men in Australia are now signing up for dates with “stunning and savvy” women—at up to $2995 per year. Millionaire Matchmaker International has claimed the territory that the 4M Club and the Millionaires’ Club here in the states is working: busy, very rich men and the women who want them.
Sounds like being rich does not necessarily mean tall, dark, and handsome, because Millionaire Matchmaker International also counsels the guys, if necessary, on wardrobe, dating skills, and the need for dentistry and plastic surgery, even. Short on the romance? Millionaire MatchmakerInternational will even do the creative work on the date, complete with ordering flowers and the limo.
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
If I ever find myself single again, I’m going to Paris. Actually, I’d just as soon not wait for Paris until I am single (Are you listening, Drew?), but a new idea for those looking for love is bubbling on the stoves in France.
French cooking schools have come up with “cook-dating,” cooking classes for singles only, three of each, male and female, and once a month, gays only. Yippee! Classes are booked up weeks in advance, and why not? Fun, food, and maybe romance. Who can beat that?
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
PS If you want to find out more, you have to be able to read French. Do a Google search using “cook-dating” and you should find some links.
In July, I wrote a posting here about
Here’s another story about unsuspecting daters getting hooked for money from scammers with a Nigerian connection. Don’t, I repeat DON’T, get caught up with anyone who asks you to cash checks or money orders for them, ESPECIALLY if there is a Nigerian connection.
And for guys who usually feel safer, here’s an article out of Sydney, Australia, about a series of abduction/robberies of men. Apparently, these men (in their early 20’s) were lured to meetings with blind dates they had met on the Internet. When they went to the meeting, they were ambushed at knife point, kidnapped, and taken to the nearest ATM. After emptying theirATM accounts, the robbers took the money and drove off in the car, leaving the victim stranded.
I don’t know if Australian men are particularly over-confident,because this reminds me of another of my earlier postings about an Australian man who was particularly dumb about his own safety. But what I wrote there applies here too: Pay attention to basic safety rules. Arrange first meeting(s) in public places where there will be people around. Men, don’t assume that because you are a guy, you are safe. Don’t make stupid mistakes with your life. From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
I stumbled on this great column and writer this morning—Dear Gringo by Dr. G. Looks like Dr. G writes on various relationship issues for gringoes (Americans?) living in Brazil. This article deals just beautifully with a brief history of matchmaking and where Internet dating fits in, and also men’s superficiality (not all men, I know, but some—the 35 year old guy looking for 18-25 year old nice bodied females).
Dr. G hyperlinks to another article by a German man who met a lovely Brazilian lady on the Internet (sort of by accident, it seems. thinking she lived in Germany too), and without ever planning to, now lives in Brazil. Talk about backing into a long-distance relationship!
From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
Sunday mornings at Romance Headquarters are pretty quiet, but a couple of interesting pieces came via email. The first from my brother Bill: Stephen King, who was president of my class at the University of Maine in Orono, spoke to the current graduating class yesterday. King, who is probably the most financially successful UMO grad ever, told graduates to read voraciously (I do), give 10% of your income away (I’m working on it), and stay in Maine (we’ll be there six months a year starting in 2006). I never met King, but I do have a signed copy of “Cujo” somewhere, and I hear that my debate partner in high school (Warren Silver) is his attorney. I guess that’s one degree of separation, right?
The other piece of interest was about Russian brides and fraud. Mikhail Vanin lives in Samara on the Volga River, and has made himself a business tracing down the would-be girlfriends of foreigners. “Vanin, a 44-year-old romantic at heart, said he doesn’t want to sound pessimistic, but ‘eight out of 10 times the women I investigate turn out to be nonexistent or even a gang of criminal Internet scammers.’’’ I’ve written about Russian brides and Ukrainian grooms before, my advice is still the same: Buyer beware. Generally, that’s what you are: a buyer, and you will be putting up the money without any assurance of getting the goods.
Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord
PS I just did a Google search on Warren Silver and see that he was nominated to the Maine Supreme Court ‘just last month. All right, Warren! And Warren, if you see this, I’ve got a different last name now. Get in touch, I’d love to hear from you!
Sometimes I think that on any given day, only three or four interesting ideas are bouncing around the world, and everyone is thinking and writing about those same three or four things. Like when I started writing about True.com. Suddenly, articles everywhere! Yesterday, it was Russian brides. Jane Ganahl wrote a fascinating article called ”Turning the tables on male order” for http://www.sfgate.com/ (or maybe she works for the San Francisco Chronicle—it’s hard to tell). Ganahl says that more than 400 Internet sites are devoted to connecting up American men and foreign women, mostly from the former Soviet Union, the Philippines, Colombia, Costa Rica, and China.
Then last night, I get an email through my website from a guy who says he has met a Russian woman who wants to come here and live with him. His question? Is this real or a scam? My answer? Well, it could be either, but beware. There are women all over the world in desperate enough situations to try to marry an American to get here. Any American.
Interesting that eHarmony matches people up to be as similar as possible, and here are matching sites that inherently match people who are massively different. I’d like to see some stats on how well marriages between people of different nationalities, cultures, and languages fair.
Ganahl also included a couple of sites for the ladies: One (http://www.alovinghusband.com/) matches American women with foreign men. Intriguing idea, right? I looked up the site and did a couple of searches. No men at all over 50, and 11 between 40 and 50, every one from the Ukraine. Those guys ought to hook up with the Russian ladies. Not so far to travel for that first coffee date. The other site was http://www.mailorderhusbands.net/—a spoof, but definitely worth the visit.
So “Buyer beware!” about sites offering foreign pairings. Note that the matches come from countries where the financial situations are pretty bad, which would make financial incentives for matching with Americans likely.
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