Kathryn's Blog: Search Smart

Marrying up or down

Women in our culture have traditionally tried to ‘marry up,” that is, find men of higher social or economic class.  It makes sense from a biological point of view: These men should be better able to provide for a wife and family.  The technical term is hypergamy.  Men do the opposite: trade their money and power for youth and beauty.  This kind of imbalance exists in cultures where there is gender inequality.  But now as women are catching up and sometimes surpassing men career- and money-wise, there are fewer men for educated, successful women to marry up to.  Ergo, a cultural shift: educated successful women are prudently considering men who could be seen as “less than.” The real consideration here is if the man is good husband material.  Plenty of powerful, educated men are real jerks and poor husbands. 

Education, income and relationships
By Stephanie Chen, CNN
May 17, 2010 9:12 a.m. EDT
STORY HIGHLIGHTS

  * Pew: Women made more than men in 22 percent of married couples surveyed in 2007
  * “It doesn’t bother me one bit that she makes more money,” says one husband
  * Expert: Relationships where women are more educated can work if values are the same

(CNN)—If dating is a numbers game, then single ladies should consider this: A Pew Research Center report this year noted a surge in women between the ages of 30 and 44 making more money than their husbands.

Women made more money than men in 22 percent of married couples surveyed in 2007, compared with 4 percent in 1970. While men make more money overall and hold more management positions, women are making greater gains.

“The supply of men has changed,” said D’Vera Cohn, senior writer at the Pew Research Center’s Social and Demographic Trends project. “The pool of college educated men isn’t growing as rapidly as it is for women.”

There is also a gender shift in the realm of education. Women represent nearly 60 percent of students holding advanced degrees in areas such as medicine, law, business and graduate programs, the U.S. Census reported in April.

Researchers have found educational attainment to be a higher priority among couples than ever. Popular online dating sites Match.com and eHarmony report that romances happen occasionally between educated, professional women and men who are less educated or have a lower salary.

Leah MacIsaac-Ruff, 45, works 11-hour-plus-days as a technology vice president at a Wall Street firm. She has a college degree. So does her husband, Doug, 43, who walks dogs for a living.

MacIsaac-Ruff may be the breadwinner, but she finds her husband’s career choice refreshing.

“If I were to marry a type-A personality and we sat on our computers side by side in the evenings, I think I’d die,” she says. “I think I’d be in a cold relationship. The last thing I want is to go home to an investment banker.”

Despite their job disparities, the couple share enjoyment of the opera and theater. When they attend her upscale corporate events, she isn’t embarrassed when people ask about her husband’s profession. Instead, people are intrigued by his dog-walking job.

“It doesn’t bother me one bit that she makes more money,” said her husband one morning as he was gearing up to walk 15 dogs. “I couldn’t be more proud of what she’s done in the business world.”

The recession has shaken some traditional gender expectations, said several marriage and family experts. About 4.7 million jobs were lost among men during the recession, according to April figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Two million women lost their jobs, the report said, leaving more women to become sole supporters of their families.

Particularly among the millennial generation, people are less likely to have gripes with a woman who earns more and has more education, said Nicole Johnson, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Professional Women. Her organization represents 150,000 women, with a majority working in a white-collar profession.

“At one point, the stereotype was a man might feel inferior to a woman who is at a higher point in her career than he is,” Johnson said. “I think that’s dissipated a bit, where there aren’t these built-in expectations of who should be above.”

Educated, professional women exposed to men working lower-paying jobs growing up are more likely to date them, said Amadu Jacky Kaba, a sociology professor at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. “When they see a hard-working garbage collector or different kinds of lower-level jobs, then they trust them,” Kaba said.

Robin Coates, 45, of Mobile, Alabama, found starting a relationship with her boyfriend, Sam, a 39-year-old who installs floors, to be tricky. Coates works as a creative director and has a college degree. She, too, makes more money than her boyfriend, who dropped out of school in the eighth grade.

“Many years ago he said, ‘I’m not the guy for you. You need to be dating a guy with a suit and tie,’ ” she said.

Coates said they have dated for eight years and plan to get married soon.

Dating a man who makes less money or hasn’t attained as high a level of education can be difficult, said Whitney Casey, a dating expert at Match.com, the online dating site for singles. She said the differences can work if the couple has similar goals and values.

“There are benefits, too,” she said. “It can open your world and make you become a better-rounded person.”

posted by Kathryn Lord on 07.15.10 at 5.05 am
permalink | Categories: • For and About Men • Dating Tips • Where are the Good Men and Women? • Search Smart • What the Research Says • 0 Comments

Executive Dating Site CEO arrested for fraud

I don’t like to see other’s misfortune or say “I told you so,” but I did: In my May 2006 blog posting about sites with “executive” in the title, in this case, ExecutiveChristianDating.  And here we’ve got evidence in the article below: the owner of the sites has been arrested for fraud.  In general, it is a bad idea to go for any site whose title and premise is based on assumed affiliation, like all Christian or all millionaires. That simply draws false hope and unrealistic sense of security.  No way that the sites can guarantee the presence of only Christians (and what does that mean if it could?) or only millionaires? Both Christians and millionaires can be lousy people.  Beware.

Canadian owner of online dating site arrested for fraud

The Canadian owner of a site offering online dating services has been arrested for fraud.

Barrie Turner,65, from British Columbia, Canada is alleged to be in connection with the operation of more than 200 web sites offering “executive dating” services. The accused is the owner of Executive Dating LLC, a company which offered online dating services through various linked websites such as Executive Catholic Dating, Executive Gay Dating and Executive Seattle Dating.

Each of his sites demographically targets a particular group of customers, according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court by officials with the U.S. Postal Inspection Services.

Turner was arrested Friday, after he crossed the border into the United States to pick up mail at a Point Roberts post-office box - the address where payments for his sites’ services were addressed to.

Customers said they paid as much as $997 for a six month membership and were told the fee would pay for “two to seven introductions or ‘matches’ per month.”  Most of them received the same “match” profile and sometimes fictitious ones, and when they attempted to date this person, the system replayed that the person had chosen to date someone else.

Since 2005, more than 100 people filed consumer complaints accusing Turner of fraud for failing to provide any legitimate matchmaking services which they had paid for. Investigators estimate that Executive Dating received more than $1.2 million in mailed and wired payments.

posted by Kathryn Lord on 05.02.10 at 5.05 am
permalink | Categories: • Dating Tips • Search Smart • Scams and Scam Protection • Beware! Bad Stories, Bad Advice • 0 Comments

Fat phobia

It’s an unfortunate truth that as wonderful a resource as Internet dating has been for adult singles, it also has increased the pressure to be perfect, especially in the looks and weight department.  One of the thing that dating online encourages is the fantasy that every beautiful woman OR man is equally available to you, no matter what your relative looks are.  Add in that most people overrate their own attractiveness, and you have a gold rush of business to the 10’s online, and nothing or next to it if you are a 5 or below.  Large women have the most difficult time of all.  In my experience, if you are female and on the heavier side of average or higher (and average is 165 pounds and size 14), either lose some weight or get on a site for larger folks.  The lack of traffic and attention to you on the mainstream sites like Match.com and Yahoo! Personals will be deafening. 

BBW can’t find SM: Plus-size online dating is hard

Each day, Match.com sends Christie Hyde five potential mates based on preferences in her profile—age, height, education, religion, smoking.

But then she reads “slender” or “athletic and toned” for their preferred body type.

She’s a size 24.

“It literally happens every day on that site,” said Hyde, 33, who works in public
relations in Daytona Beach, Fla. “I am open on the sites about my size. I am who I am.”

The dating show “More to Love” suggests that love comes in all shapes and sizes, but plus-size singles say their weight sometimes gets in the way of finding love online, even though two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese.

Cynthia Colby, 55, who works in multimedia marketing and promotions in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, said she tried eHarmony and Match.com with no luck.

“Either I was overlooked or I would sometimes get someone who didn’t read the part where I said how heavy I was,” said Colby. She included that she was a large woman (size 20) in her profile and posted photos, but typically when she reminded matches about her size, they’d say, “‘Oh. I didn’t know. That changes things.’”

Cheryl Sellick, 54, of Cherryville, N.C., who has been on Match.com and Plentyoffish.com, doesn’t say she is a BBW (big beautiful woman), size 26, in her profile, but does post photos.

She sends the men an e-mail before meeting in person: ” “I want to remind you I am a big beautiful woman. Are you sure you want to do this?’ Some guys are gracious about it, she said, but “most of them are just gone.’ “

Sellick is now looking for matches on the MoretoLove.com dating site, and feels more comfortable knowing the men are looking for larger women.

Studies show that people who are overweight face discrimination in many areas, including work, education, health care and even from families and friends, according to Peggy Howell of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. Dating seems to be no different.

A Wake Forest University study earlier this year found that men find thin, seductive women the most attractive. Researchers surveyed 4,000 men and women aged 18 to 70-plus and asked them how attractive they found photos of members of the opposite sex.

The men had similar body type preferences, while the women had a more diverse range of responses, said lead researcher Dustin Wood.

No wonder some women lie on their profiles, choosing a “few extra pounds” instead of “heavyset” or posting photos from younger, thinner years.

Laura Triplett, an assistant professor of communications at California State University, Fullerton, who studies fat discrimination, said many larger-sized women are rejected once they meet a potential mate in person, even if they are upfront about size in profiles and photos.

She said in one instance, a man flew a woman across the country for a meeting, was disappointed when he saw her and asked her to refund the price of the ticket, claiming he flew her there under false pretenses.

“With online dating, I think that people invest themselves with emotion and fantasy of who the other person is,” said Triplett. “The actual facts fall by the wayside. When they actually see the person, taboo takes over. Simply being near someone who possesses a socially undesirable trait is enough to trigger fear of public outcry.”

Triplett suggests overweight women use a niche site like MoretoLove.com, BBPeopleMeet.com and BBWRomance.com. But she does not advise including weight or size in profiles. “People are going to use your physical characteristics to judge you,” she said. “Why not focus on other things about yourself?”

It’s one of the reasons eHarmony doesn’t ask about weight in its questionnaire. Matching focuses on psychological characteristics, such as shared values, beliefs, attitudes and interests rather than looks, said Paul Breton of eHarmony.

But people should be honest, said James Houran, columnist and spokesman for Online Dating Magazine, whether it’s about size, height or how much hair they have. He calls the eHarmony approach naive; men are visual creatures, he said.

“By sharing who you really are, you are increasing your odds of finding someone who will genuinely have an attraction to you,” he said.

Some men, of course, want to date large women. Bill Fabrey, 68, of Mount Marion, N.Y., owner of Amplestuff, which sells accessories for large people, prefers women who are a size 20 or more. He himself is 5 foot 8 and 220 pounds. He complains that some women on plus-size sites are reluctant to post photos. “Most of the matches that are successful result from photos,” he said.

Linda Arroz, 50, of Los Angeles, a lifestyle expert and former plus-size spokesmodel, said a lot of online success comes from confidence. When she used the headline “Smart, Successful BBW seeks SWM for fun, wine and dine” on Craigslist, she received 100 responses. She vetted six, met five and ended up dating two of the guys.

“I realize that many, if not most men, do not want to date a fat woman,” said Arroz, who is divorced and a size 16-18. “If they like the woman first, they don’t notice her size, they just notice her.”

posted by Kathryn Lord on 12.19.09 at 9.01 am
permalink | Categories: • Dating Tips • Search Smart • Weighty Issues • 1 Comments

Steve Penner urges men to get real about age

Steve Penner is my favorite dating columnist.  He is so “right on” (to use a term that probably dates me) with so many dating issues.  Here in this entry and my next one, you’ll see two of Steve’s columns on men’s desire to date younger women.

I’d add to Steve’s thoughts on why men (or women) would try to date someone years and years younger than themselves: They are being totally unrealistic.  They are agist.  They are not accepting of their own aging (no matter how “young” they feel they look and act).  No one has EVER told me that they are older looking and acting than their actual age.  Not since they were 13 anyway.  As Gloria Steinem said. “This is what sixty looks like.”  I think it has to do with folks getting “stuck” on what people looked like the last time they were dating.  When they start again, they are attracted to men or women who look like the men or women they were attracted to years ago.  Plus they have not REALLY looked in the mirror themselves lately. 

I remember how startled I was to meet the new boyfriend of my 50ish friend to find him completely bald.  And to get a sober comeuppance from her, too, when we were together at a conference in Boston: It was snowy and icy and several times, handsome college guys helped us across the streets.  I loved the attention, but she simmered me down with “Don’t flatter yourself.  We are old enough to be their mothers.”  Wham.

Go out and look around and find people your own age.  See what they look like.  That’s what you look like too.  That’s your market.  Get used to it.

The simplest way to raise your dating quotient The Truth About Dating

By Steve Penner

“How can I make myself more marketable to single women?” (Translation for regular readers of this column: “How can I raise my Dating Quotient?”) That is a question (in one form or another) I am often asked by single or divorced men. Obviously, for many men the answer is quite complex.

But for men over 45 or so, there is one shortcut that will immediately and dramatically increase their DQ. So I am writing this column specifically for them. (If you are a woman, make a copy and send it to every single, divorced, or widowed man over 45 that you know.) OK guys, you don’t have to get a hair transplant, dye your goatee, develop abs of steel, or even insert lifts in your shoes. Nor do you have to develop a sparkling personality. (Just don’t come across as a totally self-centered jerk.) All you have to do is be yourself (unless you are a totally self-centered jerk) and do one teeny, tiny thing.

Just open yourself up to meeting women close to your own age. And if you really want to raise your DQ, be willing to date women a few years older than yourself!

I know, many of you would prefer meeting much younger women. After all, in every movie, television show, and commercial you see, the men are always considerably older than their wives and girlfriends. But those shows and movies are produced primarily by wealthy Hollywood moguls whose power, fame, and most of all, their pocketbook, are the prime reasons they attract much younger trophy wives.

The fact is that today’s 50-year-old single woman is not “your father’s 50-year-old woman.” To use another worn out expression “50 is the new 35.” Have you guys noticed what many 50-year-old women look like these days?

Improved diet and fitness workouts have kept them in much better shape than women of a similar age from previous generations. Many if not most of these women also have careers, which further motivate them to lead a healthy lifestyle and to look good in the work place.

Unfortunately though, when filling out your profiles at online or personal dating services, so many of you guys foolishly list a “strong preference” for meeting women 10-20 years younger than yourselves. Then you wonder why you have little success.

Moreover, if you are a 50-year-old man who wants to meet a woman 25-39, please keep in mind that not too many 25-39 year-old women will say they want to meet you! Also please understand that by doing so, you are placing yourself in direct competition with much younger men.

To be honest, I realize that so much of what I have written sounds silly, even to me. Age is only a number, and I don’t want to hear excuses like “I am such a youthful 50, I can’t imagine going out with a woman my own age.” Interestingly, I hear those exact same claims from women.

Everyone these days looks, acts, and feels young for their age, but that is because we are comparing ourselves to our parents’ generation. That was a generation that, for the most part, was unaware of (or ignored) the health risks and appearance consequences associated with cigarette smoking and excessive sun worship (both of which produce premature signs of aging). Moreover, fitness clubs were few and far between, as were home gyms. Let’s face it, except for golf and bowling, most of our parents lived a sedentary lifestyle, while puffing away on their Kents, Lucky Strikes or Winstons. And of course active women were encouraged to smoke Virginia Slims.

Today, I implore single middle-aged men to try the following. The next time you complete a dating service profile, list a desired age range that is plus or minus five years of your own. That’s right, state that you are willing to meet women who are (gasp) older than you. Come on; give it a shot. You might be surprised at the quality (and quantity) of the pool of women who will suddenly become available to you.

But then be very strict about every other criterion. If you work out almost daily, state you only want to meet women who do the same. If you ski every weekend in the winter or you are an avid hiker, golfer or tennis player, state that you only want to meet women who are avid outdoors enthusiasts. If you are a Fred Astaire on the dance floor, state very clearly that you must meet a Ginger Rogers. If being youthful to you means that you are open-minded, liberal and love to “rock ‘n’ roll,” then just say you only want to meet women who at least have heard of Woodstock.

I recently received an e-mail from a woman who wrote “I ...; wonder if you could address a topic of dating discrimination that is so obvious and widespread that it affects most of the women I know, yet hasn’t made it into your column nearly as much as your pet peeve of women who shun short men. The discrimination I would like you to discuss is men who refuse to date women their own age.” She went on to say “So, please, I’d love to see this issue in a column of yours. Being shunned for age is as unfair as being shunned for height, both of which are factors beyond one’s control.” I couldn’t agree with her more. Besides guys, if you really are into rock ‘n’ roll, why would you want to meet a much younger woman who thinks The Who is just a strangely worded pronoun?

posted by Kathryn Lord on 05.29.09 at 4.57 am
permalink | Categories: • For and About Men • Over 50? • Dating Tips • Search Smart • 2 Comments

Smart people may not have much fun

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.

posted by Kathryn Lord on 05.03.09 at 5.26 am
permalink | Categories: • Dating Tips • Where are the Good Men and Women? • Search Smart • Too Smart? • 0 Comments

Big and small

Women want tall men and men want little women, but only 15% of men are six feet tall or more, and roughly 1/3 of adults are obese.  So think of all those good ones you are passing by, just because you are prejudiced against the vertically or horizontally challenged.

The big and small of dating
By Dusan In General |

Most of us think up the most ideal situations when it comes to dating is a petite girl and a tall, dark and handsome man. But what happens when the guy is shorter than girl, or the girl weighs a few more pounds than her man?

This is an important question to be asking — obesity is rampant in the United States with more than 31% of the dating population being overweight.

Dating a short guy should no longer cause a problem, as we are no longer fighting for survival - so the height and strength of a man is not a question of life and death. But it seems that the guys are more self-conscious about this. If you want to date a short guy, you should consider measuring up his self-confidence first.

Though it seems that the bigger ladies will have more of a problem finding a date, as there is much more of a stigma around dating big women. This is met with rude stares and a lack of acceptance. However, this does not mean the big and tall ladies do not deserve just as much love as the men. The ratio between overweight women and men is fairly even, so why all the hang-ups?

Basically, those who have been wading through the dating pool for a long time and just haven’t found anyone, should try opening their horizons. A few inches more here and few less there does not mean that someone does not have the kind heart and love that you are looking for.

posted by Kathryn Lord on 04.23.09 at 9.44 am
permalink | Categories: • Dating Tips • Search Smart • Weighty Issues • 0 Comments

Faceless on the Net?

Ah, the dilemma of whether to post a photo or not—that is the question.  For sure, a photo, any photo, will get you more attention than not having one—stats suggest seven times more viewings.  And that is an old stat.  Now, with the ability to search “photos only,” likely profiles with no photos get little if any attention at all.  For sure, as this article points out, those with no photos leave themselves open to suspicion: What is this person trying to hide?  Of course, it may be that the person is not so good looking, or he or she doesn’t want their spouse or the neighbors to know they are two-timing.  But the most frequent reason for non-posting a photo that I hear is that the poster is high-profile in his or her community and does not want to mix their professional life with their personal.  While I understand this reservation (I had a similar one when I was looking on Match.com and was a prominent psychotherapist in my small city), still, what’s wrong with looking for love?  Being recognized on a dating site is like seeing someone you know in a gay bar.  No use worrying, because you are there for the same reason.  Also, the possibility of being recognized would likely keep everyone more honest and humble.  Would you want your boss and co-workers to see you bragging or exaggerating in your profile essay? 

See this article below for more musings:

No photo available! What’s the story behind online facelessness?

By J. Michele Brown For the St. Louis American
Wednesday, February 18, 2009 8:04 PM CST

When you visit an online social network like iseecolor.com or a dating website like blackpeoplmeet.com and you come across a profile with no photograph, what do you think?

Is it just me, or do you wonder what the story behind the facelessness is?

Online social networking allows us to get to know people we may otherwise not have contact with and exchange thoughts and ideas. It’s one of the most exciting ways to communicate, when done responsibly.

Many people have a tough time meeting people face to face without judging, so how much more difficult would it be to communicate with a faceless profile online?

It is hard enough, when we do get a picture, especially on a dating site. We hope that the face and the description are genuine. Katt Williams may make us laugh about this subject in the movie Internet Dating, but some of us have found out, this really happens!

So I asked around. Most people thought the faceless profiles had something to hide and what they were hiding probably wasn’t good. What I also learned was many people had an immediate prejudice toward these profiles.

Wow, that was amazing to me. It did not matter how good looking a man or woman profiled him/her self to be, most did not buy it. Others felt there maybe another issue going on, like perhaps the person was in a committed or secret relationship.

The general consensus was if we hide our face, we are probably hiding something else.

In all fairness, some beautiful people and some professional people told me they simply did not want the world viewing their pictures. Some create profiles just to see who’s online or what one of these online sites is like. Others feel they want someone to get to know them before seeing them, which made them freer to express themselves. I personally respect these positions as well.

Are we really so superficial or insecure? If we check out the sites that attract people between the ages of 15 and 29, we almost always see photos in their profiles. They are far less self-conscious. Sometimes we see more than we ever wanted to. However, when we check out sites that attract a mature audience over 30, there tends to be more faceless profiles.

But don’t be fooled – some of us over 30 can get down like we were still in our college days on our profiles!

This new age of internet communication brings about new opportunities to enhance our socialization skills. So, the next time you are online hanging out with more friends than you ever had in your lifetime, before you deem the faceless profile a social outcast, remember prejudice is rooted in what we do not see and what we do not understand …

posted by Kathryn Lord on 03.02.09 at 7.11 am
permalink | Categories: • Dating Tips • Proactive Dating • Search Smart • Perfect Profiles • 4 Comments

Dollars down but dating up

Some good news in the economic woes…

No recession for online dating sites

Maybe misery loves company? The sour economy is driving scads of singletons online to look for love. But money worries mean people are scaling back on actual dates.
By Susan Carpenter

Housing prices are plummeting. Jobs are evaporating. And the economy, as a whole, is in free fall.

But despite—or perhaps because of—such relentlessly bad news, there’s an up side—for daters, at least. Singles are wading into the online dating pool in record numbers, giving virtual matchmakers their best traffic figures in years—and users even better odds for finding a snuggle buddy, a fling or the One.

In addition to “This Cougar is looking for her prey” and other bootylicious come-ons, lonely hearts are now headlining their posts with more somber come-hithers, such as “its a gloomy time of year and im not talking about the rain” or “need hot girlfriend, will provide food.”

Whether they charge by the month or accept free posts, online personals websites are experiencing a major boost, even if their users seem to be scaling back on the cost and quantity of their actual dates. Craigslist personals postings and eHarmony.com registrations have each seen 20% increases in 2008. Match.com has seen an even larger spike; its memberships were 22% higher in December than they were in the same period last year. Even more interesting, both eHarmony and Match.com reported especially high traffic on days when the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted.

“We had our third busiest weekend of the year following the five-year low in the stock market,” said Mandy Ginsberg, general manager of Match.com North America.

That was in mid-November, a historically slow time for Internet dating. But ask people who were brave enough to check their 401(k) balances at that time: November was historic for other reasons too. Not only did the Dow dip below 8,000, but the unemployment rate in California also climbed well above the national average (to 8.2%) and housing prices were down 40% from their peak just 18 months prior.

Those disturbing trends aren’t likely to end any time soon. In fact, they’re likely to continue, bringing twin results: even higher anxiety levels, and impulses to entwine one’s life with that of another.

“Stressful times can have a big effect on people’s desire to be in relationships,” said Gian Gonzaga, an eHarmony research scientist. “When people are feeling stressed about the economy and feeling stressed about their love lives, they’re more likely to want to be in a relationship than when they’re not feeling stressed.”

Gonzaga was part of the eHarmony team that analyzed the results of a new relationship anxiety survey conducted by Opinion Research; 92% of 1,092 respondents reported feeling stressed about the economy. How does that manifest in individuals’ desire for long-term relationships? About 19% of unmarried men and 25% of unmarried women said they wanted one even more.

Jamie Fields is one of those women. The 42-year-old from Santa Monica rejoined Match.com the weekend after Thanksgiving, having broken up with the guy she’d been seeing the last few months.

While Fields had attempted to find men more organically, i.e. in the real world, the last few times she’d been to wine bars with a girlfriend in the hopes of meeting someone new, she said, “We were like, ‘Where are all the people?’ There aren’t any.”

For Fields, it was the relatively recent void-of-people-in-public-places that led her to spend more time with her keyboard. But for a lot of other Americans, it’s decreased wealth—both real and perceived—that’s keeping them home, inspiring them to spend less money and more quality time with their computers.

Money worries are even making them more picky. While Match.com reported a 50% increase in profile views from November to December, a recent survey of 1,500 members found that 84% of them were “being more selective about first dates in today’s economy.”

“There’s this underlying anxiety I feel energetically everywhere I go,” Fields said. “Everybody I meet, there’s this tentativeness.”

That tentativeness is extending beyond a singleton’s willingness to seal the deal and make a first date. It’s also manifesting as a hesitancy to reach for the check at the end of an outing.

“Guys aren’t jumping on it anymore,” Fields said. “It’s uncomfortable.”

Wendy Rice, a 33-year-old chef from Hollywood, said she’d also experienced an unusually high frequency of daters playing “chicken” with the bill.

“Some guy took me out to dinner at Benihana’s and he only brought $100. I was like, ‘Hello. You’re taking me out,’ ” said Rice, who, on the Craigslist ad she posted last week, asked, “What happened to date night?” “Another guy took me out and said he forgot his wallet.”

Rice didn’t believe him.

“You left your house. You picked me up. You put gas in your car. You bought yourself cigarettes,” she said.

Men ages 25 to 44 are feeling the most stressed about the effects of their personal economic situations on their love lives, according to the eHarmony survey. Psychologist Diana Kirschner speculates it’s because American men derive so much self-worth from their jobs.

“A lot of self-esteem and self-love and the identity of being a powerful person is tied up with work in this culture,” said Kirschner, a New York City relationship expert and author. “It can really stress people out if they’re out of work or financially challenged or feel like they can’t do their normal courting routine.”

But even though less income often means lower self-esteem, it doesn’t have to be that way, Kirschner said.

“When there’s less money available to go on fancier dates, people can have a very simple connection that’s even more fulfilling,” she said.

Doing things like going for a walk means there’s more talking. And where “there’s more talking, there’s more sharing, so there’s intimacy. There’s more closeness. You wind up being more real with each other,” she said. “It’s not about impressing the other person, because you can’t [afford] to impress them.”

That’s been the experience of Johnnie Hobbs of North Hollywood. The 26-year-old aspiring actor, tap dancer and writer has a full-time job at the Apple Store in Pasadena and says the economy “hasn’t affected me that much.”

Still, he said, when he goes out, “You’re trying to save money as best you can without telling the girl you’re saving money.”

“It’s a very thin line between sort of being that man and also understanding that I may not have the money right now,” he added.

Financial stress is a difficult topic to discuss, regardless of relationship status. Hobbs said he has “never had that kind of conversation” with a date. Instead, his tack is to steer the date toward activities he can afford.

“It’s not that I want to disguise it. It’s just something like, ‘Look. Let’s do this.’ You balance out the money you have,” said Hobbs, who likes taking dates to the movies, which costs him $23, or dinner at Olive Garden, for which he spends $30 to $50.

“You can find fun things to do without spending money,” he said. “Even if I had money, like billions and millions of dollars, I’d still probably do sort of the same thing.”

posted by Kathryn Lord on 02.10.09 at 1.33 pm
permalink | Categories: • Dating Tips • Search Smart • Money Matters • 0 Comments

Foriegn brides?  Why do they do it?

If you’ve ever wondered what’s the motivation for foreign women who look for American men—or foreign men who look for American women—take a look at this article below.

Vietnam women marry foreigners to escape poverty They may not get rich, but they can help their parents get out of debt.
From the Associated Press

TAN LOC ISLAND, VIETNAM — Nearly 70 young Vietnamese women swept past in groups of five, twirling and posing like fashion models, all competing for the hand of a Taiwanese man who had paid a matchmaking service about $6,000 for the privilege of marrying one of them.

Sporting jeans and a black T-shirt, 20-year-old Le Thi Ngoc Quyen paraded in front of the stranger, hoping that he would select her.

“I felt very nervous,” she recalled recently as she described the scene. “But he chose me, and I agreed to marry him right away.”

Like many women from the Mekong Delta island of Tan Loc, Quyen had concluded that finding a foreign husband was her best route out of poverty. Six years later, she has a beautiful daughter and no regrets, she says.

From the delta in Vietnam’s south to small rural towns in the north, a growing number of young women are marrying foreigners, mostly from Taiwan and South Korea. They seek material comfort and, most important, a way to save their parents from destitution in old age, which many Vietnamese consider their greatest duty.

Quyen has not gotten rich—her husband earns a modest living as a construction worker—but the couple have paid off her father’s debts.

Young women have become Tan Loc’s most lucrative export. About 1,500 village women from the island of 33,000 people have married foreigners in the last decade, leading some to call it Taiwan Island.

Women in Tan Loc and other delta towns began marrying foreigners in the 1990s, when Vietnam opened up economically and many Taiwanese and South Korean companies set up operations in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s southern business hub.

Poverty and the proximity of foreign businessmen seem to be major reasons for the trend. The biggest complaints come from women’s groups, who consider it demeaning, and from young village men for whom the pool of potential brides is shrinking.

With money from foreign sons-in-law, many residents in Tan Loc have replaced their thatch-roof shacks with brick homes. They also have opened small restaurants and shops, creating jobs in a place where people have traditionally earned pennies a day picking rice and other crops in the blistering sun.

The luckier families received enough to build ponds for fish farming.

Western Union has opened a branch to handle the money sent by newlyweds.

“At least 20% of the families on the island have been lifted out of poverty,” said Phan An, a professor who has done extensive research in Tan Loc. “There has been a significant economic impact.”

Not all the marriages work out.

Dam Psi Kin Sa went to Taiwan nine years ago at age 20 and married a thrice-divorced carwash owner more than twice her age. She met him through a matchmaking service.

Five years later, her husband demanded a divorce and locked her out of the house. Even though she had learned his language, Mandarin, the couple had trouble communicating. “We were angry at each other in a quiet way,” she said in Taipei, where she has remained to be close to her daughter.

Last year, one Vietnamese bride was beaten to death by her South Korean husband, another jumped out a 14th-story window, and a third hanged herself on Valentine’s Day, leaving behind a diary full of misery.

“A marriage that is not based on love often brings problems,” said Hoang Thi Thanh Ha of the Vietnam Women’s Union. “How can you live happily ever after when you met your husband three weeks before the wedding?”

Nevertheless, most young women in Tan Loc seem eager to marry a foreigner. Le Thanh Lang recently went to the town hall to get papers confirming that she is single and eligible to marry.

“Any country will do; I’ll take anyone who will accept me,” she said, waving the papers. “I need to send money to my parents.”

Besides the marriage broker’s fee, the groom gives about $300 to his bride’s family, Lang said. After that, if all goes well, her husband may send as much as several thousand dollars a year to her family.

Many Tan Loc families with married daughters abroad have big homes with color TVs, new furniture and karaoke machines.

Their neighbors live in huts.

Tran Thi Sach’s concrete home, with four large rooms and shiny green tile floors, is a mansion by island standards.

“Since my daughters got married, I’ve retired,” said Sach, 59, who used to toil in the rice fields with her husband.

“We lived in a shack,” she said. “We had to work no matter how hot it was, no matter how much it rained, from 5 in the morning until 5 in the afternoon. Sometimes we could only afford rice porridge.”

When her daughter Tho first said she planned to go to a marriage broker, Sach objected. What if her in-laws abused her? Where would she turn for help?

Tho married six years ago and her younger sister, Loi, two years later.

“Their husbands are gentle, handsome and hardworking,” Sach said. “They are really fine men.”

Next door, Nguyen Thi Chin lives in a two-room shack with a roof so leaky that when it rains she must move from spot to spot to avoid getting wet. Each of her seven children married a Vietnamese, all of them poor. At 70, she is still working, pulling mussels from the muck in the Mekong River.

“I could never have a house like that,” Chin said, glancing next door. “It’s my destiny to be poor. If I had another daughter, I’d ask her to marry a foreigner.”

More than 100,000 Vietnamese women have married Taiwanese men over the last 10 years and the numbers are rising, said Gow Wei Chiou of Taiwan’s representative office in Hanoi. In the same period, about 28,000 South Korean men married Vietnamese, according to the Vietnam Women’s Union.

As more Taiwanese and South Korean women move to cities to work, many men in those countries, especially those from rural areas, face increasing difficulty finding wives, Chiou said.

“Taiwanese women want to get married when they are much older, and they are also very opinionated,” said Lin Wen-jui, 39, who met his Vietnamese wife through a Taiwanese friend in Ho Chi Minh City. She has since taken a Taiwanese name, learned Mandarin and opened a restaurant.

The overseas marriage trend has been boosted by online matchmaking services such as the Singapore-based Mr. Cupid, which offers a “comprehensive Vietnamese marriage package” and five-day matchmaking tours. “No one ever came on our trip without finding their dream bride,” the site boasts.

In 2002, not long after Quyen went through her paces for her future husband, the Vietnam government outlawed commercial matchmaking services. The news media were reporting the phenomenon in vivid detail, and authorities said they were concerned that the business could be a cover for trafficking women into prostitution.

“They take hundreds of women at a time to a hotel and line them up for the men,” said Nguyen Thi Ngoc Hanh, vice chairwoman of the Ho Chi Minh City Women’s Union, a government agency that supports women. “It’s very disrespectful.”

But although driven underground, the practice continues, abetted by village matchmakers and secluded meetings with suitors.

Half the brides in such marriages are under age 21; half the grooms are 40 to 60.

“Sometimes the men ask them to pose naked,” Nguyen said. “It’s inhumane.”

Quyen still has vivid memories of going to the matchmaker’s house in Ho Chi Minh City, a 120-mile bus ride and a world away from Tan Loc.

“I was scared,” she said.

After Quyen made the final five, the man asked a few simple questions through an interpreter: How many brothers and sisters did she have? How far did she go in school?

They had dinner and Quyen agreed to marry him on the spot.

“My life in Taiwan is good,” she said during a visit to Tan Loc. “My husband and his family treat me well.”

Life is not so good, however, for the young men in Tan Loc who watch the exodus of marriage-aged women with despair. “If all the girls leave,” said Nguyen Hoang Mong, 19, “there won’t be anyone left for us. Marriage shouldn’t be about money. It should be about love.”

posted by Kathryn Lord on 10.13.08 at 7.36 am
permalink | Categories: • For and About Men • Dating Tips • Search Smart • Be Safe • 5 Comments

The Truth About Dating Revealed

I ordered Steve Penner’s book “The Truth About Dating Revealed” after reading a couple of his articles online – which were so good that I posted them to my blog.  It came in the mail yesterday and I ready it practically in one sitting.  As I said in my blog, “This guy knows what he is talking about.” 

Penner ran a dating agency in Boston for 23 years, and during that time, amassed plenty of information and opinion on what makes it easier or harder for singles to meet up and eventually marry.  He packages his experience here in “The Truth About Dating Revealed” as Dating Quotient (DQ), and what raises or lowers a single’s “datability.”

I am a Romance Coach, and Penner’s observations totally agree with what I have seen or suspected.  I work with singles to use Internet dating sites, and the advantage that Penner offers – his direct observations of what works and what doesn’t – gives us a powerful peek backstage.  Penner’s clients had the additional advantage of his experience and advice, and sometimes his powerful push.  Internet daters rarely get this kind of insight.  Penner’s mantra is “Be flexible, be very flexible.”  Read his true life stories in the last chapter “And so, in conclusion…”  You’ll be glad you did.  And you’ll be closer to finding love as a result.

I’m adding “The Truth About Dating Revealed” to my must-read list for clients.  It’s a winner. 

posted by Kathryn Lord on 10.05.08 at 7.52 am
permalink | Categories: • Dating Tips • Search Smart • 6 Comments

Green dating?

I don’t tend to suggest niche dating sites, green or otherwise.  Internet dating is about numbers, and niche sites are, by definition, about small slices of the singles community.  This article below struck me as pretty west coast, Seattle in particular, but I went ahead and took a look at the GreenSingles.com site anyway.  I did a search on Florida, men looking for women, and a surprising 224 guys came up.  And most seem to be the over-40 crowd.  However, there were 379 ladies looking for men in Florida too.  That’s about 50% more women than men.  (Always check the gender ratios and go for the sites that you have an advantage in)  I checked Maine, too, and while the numbers were smaller, they were respectable.  Though the ladies outnumbered the men 2 to 1. 

A niche site that appeals to a part of you might be worth some time and investment, but pick on IN ADDITION to your big name, big membership site.

Single Shot: The eco-dating game Special green services want to help you find a sustainable soul mate

By DIANE MAPES

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems as if everybody’s trying to out-green one another these days. A woman I was talking to at a restaurant the other night said she’s even using Seventh Generation diapers for her baby. I don’t know about you, but that seems like one really old diaper.

But such is the pressure to reduce, reuse and recycle.

As an apartment-dwelling single with nary a dependent, I can’t brag about how I use cardboard diapers for my kids. Nor can I point to the energy-efficient appliances I’ve purchased for my solar-powered yurt, or wax sanctimonious about my backyard worm bin (I’d install one in the kitchen but my lease says no pets).

But I can do one thing to keep from being completely left in the eco-dust. It’s called green dating.

Green dating officially got its start about five years ago, around the same time niche sites like LargeFriends.com and EquestrianSingles.com began cropping up faster than recycling ordinances in the city of Seattle.

GreenSingles.com, a personal-connection site for people in the environmental, vegetarian and animal-rights communities, probably has been around the longest, hooking up singles who share a “global consciousness influenced by holistic philosophies, green politics and a willingness to explore the mind, body and spirit” (i.e., tree-huggers looking for love) since 1985.

A quick search through the site - “made with 100 percent recycled electrons!” - yielded me 71 potential dates in the greater Seattle area (I’m thinking global, but dating local), including a marine biologist, a musical gardener and some guy who lives on a permaculture farm in the woods. (Does that mean he grows pot?)

Over at Green-Passions.com, brought to you by the same folks who created StachePassions, MulletPassions and TruckerPassions (what, no TrailerParkPassions?), I didn’t have nearly as much luck. My search netted only four eco-friendly singles in my area, plus the site kept crashing every time I tried to check out the guys’ profiles.

Not that it really mattered. Butted up next to each match was a large ad for a hot pink waterless composting toilet. I’m all for saving water and everything, but talk about a buzz kill (not to mention a not-so-subtle reminder that my love life was in the crapper).

Undaunted, I plowed ahead and soon found a handful of other sites where a green - or even celery-colored - single could find a sustainable soul mate.

DemocraticSingles.net ponied up 86 matches from a pool of more than 25,000 environmentally and politically aware mates, including one guy interested in “trees, mountains, sex, wild birds and conversation” (or was that conservation?). Earth Wise Singles (ewsingles.com) gave me 21 candidates, among them a tall slender sensualist into environmental design and another guy hoping to find someone who likes to garden naked.

Let’s hope he doesn’t keep raspberries.

EthicalSingles.com is a matchmaking portal for people concerned about human rights, animal rights, pollution, global warming, genetic engineering, organic farming, timber sourcing, circus animals and a slew of other topics you’ll never hear discussed on Fox News.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a single ethical date in my area. At least not until I widened my search criteria by 60 years, lied about my home state and switched my sexual preference. None of which felt exactly, well, ethical.

Dateless but undampened, I surfed over to GreenSpeedDating.com, which touts itself as a new way for singles to find “carbon neutral love.” Only around for a matter of months, the L.A.-based Web site recently held its first event in Santa Monica in which 16 singles hiked, biked, bused and (gasp!) drove to a bar for complimentary fruits and veggies and a raft of three-minute minidates.

Although there was nothing on the calendar for Seattle, singles across the country are encouraged to set up their own GSD events (just go to the site and click on the appropriate link). Not only will you up your chances of finding the low-impact love of your life, your $25 fee will go into a fund designed to take solar energy to rural Nicaragua.

And there are greener pastures yet.

In June, Portland’s Pedalpalooza sponsored a “bicycle speed dating” event, drawing 40 single cyclists in all their helmet-haired glory. Here at home, there’s SeattleGreenDrinks.org, a big green monster of a gathering held the second Tuesday of each month (for those who don’t like crowds, there’s the more intimate Green Lunches).

Although the group isn’t a singles organization per se, there’s plenty of environmentally savvy eye candy plus lots of opportunity for, if you’ll pardon the expression, icebreakers (“Soooo � are you as concerned about toxic sex toys as I am?”)

As for me, I may decide to join one of the eco-dating sites (many offer free or discounted memberships to those who donate to green causes) or spend some quality time discussing all things organic over a biodegradable cup of green beer.

Then again I may decide to simply stick to the basics: reduce, reuse, recycle.

Surely I have to have at least one old boyfriend I can ease back into the dating picture. Heck, I’ve recycled before; why quibble about doing it now when resources are so tight?

Or maybe I’ll ask around to see if anyone in my circle of friends has discarded some perfectly good soul mate. Instead of letting him just go to waste, I can pick him up, dust him off and see if he wants to get eco-friendly. The two of us can ditch the car (relatively easy for me since I don’t have one), skip the wasteful wining and dining and go for a nice long (trash-collecting) walk on the beach.

Who knows? If we like the cut of each other’s carbon footprint, we might even come back to my place for a quick game of spin the recyclable bottle.

posted by Kathryn Lord on 09.12.08 at 5.10 am
permalink | Categories: • Dating Tips • Search Smart • News About Dating Sites and Types • Niche Dating Sites • 0 Comments

January’s Hunting Season

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.”

posted by Kathryn Lord on 01.31.08 at 12.16 pm
permalink | Categories: • Dating Tips • Where are the Good Men and Women? • Search Smart • 2 Comments

Googling Updated

Was it just three years ago when I was writing here about the new tool for singles: Googling potential dates?  Does new stuff more into the mainstream fast or what?  Back then, Googling a date was very controversial.  It felt invasive and prying.  But now, it seems that folks take it for granted that they will Google and be Googled.  See the article below for more.

Pew survey: Half of us have looked up people we know on Internet

Ellen Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer

Monday, December 17, 2007

About half of the online adult population has looked up themselves or someone else online, according to a survey released Sunday.

A good 36 percent said they have searched the Web for someone with whom they’ve lost touch, and 9 percent have dug up information on someone they were dating.

At the same time, 60 percent said they are not worried about how much information about them is on the Internet.

The findings, published by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, reflect how people are sharing more and more of their lives on the Internet, as well as how Web 2.0 sites such as YouTube, Flickr, Facebook and MySpace are encouraging users to post their home videos, photographs and personal profiles online, including data ranging from their favorite movies to their cell phone number.

The increasing amount of personal information online has drawn concern among privacy advocates, who worry about how it could be used and who controls it. Most recently, they decried a new Facebook advertising program that broadcasted its users’ online purchases and other online actions to their friends and network. In response, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized and gave users the ability to permanently shut off the program.

But the Pew report suggested that most Internet users are not concerned about their personal information online. The study found that 61 percent have not felt compelled to limit it, while 38 percent have taken steps to control it.

Among adults who have a visible social-networking profile, 60 percent said that anyone who happens upon it can see it, and 38 percent said they restrict access to their friends, the report said.

“People aren’t being super cautious about what they’re doing or presenting online,” said Mary Madden, co-author of the report and a senior research specialist with Pew.

The report also found that 47 percent of Internet users have searched for themselves online, up from 22 percent in 2002. And 53 percent, mostly those under the age of 50, have looked up an acquaintance on the Web.

Women were slightly more likely than men to have researched someone they were dating or someone they were about to meet. More men than women, on the other hand, said they have looked up friends, someone from their past or a colleague or competitor.

In light of recent recommendations that job hunters not post photographs or personal information that could hurt their chances with employers, 11 percent said they have searched online for someone they were about to hire or work with.

posted by Kathryn Lord on 12.31.07 at 7.06 am
permalink | Categories: • Dating Tips • Search Smart • Be Safe • 0 Comments

Word Snobbery and Internet Dating

Internet dating is MADE for people who like to write and are good at it.  Never underestimate the seductive power of a well-written email.  But if you can’t write well, or can’t close your editor’s eye when reading an email from a new suitor, you are in big trouble.  While there seems to be no excuse for misspellings, it does seem that many do not know how to use a spell check.  Or write right into those boxes on the dating sites, rather than off-line where you can use your word processor and polish away. 

My clients find over and over that love can come in the most unexpected packages.  Poor writing (or a spelling mistake or two) may mayn hid a sterling character.  Try to hold your word snobbery (as well as other forms of snobbery) in check when you go looking for love.

Sentence Sensibility
By JAIMIE EPSTEIN
Published: July 8, 2007

I promise this is on topic, so please bear with me. . . . One day, as a cure for a broken heart, a heart that had only barely survived a head-on collision with another heart, a heart just out of intensive care, bruised and limping and still shying at the sound of any traffic, I decided to go online to find distraction in the arms of other, virtual men and maybe, as a bonus, a suitable replacement for the one no longer in my life, to meet someone the normal way, as opposed to the archaic, anachronistic, so 1970s way I had met HIM — I’d had my skis (nearly) charmed off me at 10,000 feet by my instructor, who was trying, with a dribble of luck but gallons of patience, to teach me how to jump turn on telemark skis. A broken heart, like the crack of dawn, can’t be fixed, said a wise friend, but I was hoping that the splint of male attention might at least encourage healing — and it would mean I’d have less time to waste obsessing over you-know-whom.
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I didn’t realize, however, what a huge boulder I would be rolling uphill — what with my being a “literary person,” a sometime editor of this column, someone whose ear is as tuned to the pitch of language as a cellist’s is to music — until the misplaced modifiers, dyslexic spellings and grievous abuses of syntax started pouring in. One seeker of a woman to call his own allowed that the last book he had read was “Atonement,” which was about to earn him a gold star, Ian McEwan having his own section on my bookshelves, except that he didn’t quit while he was ahead — he had to add that it was written by . . . Ian McGregor! O.K., no big deal, you say, they’re both Brits, it’s hard to keep all the Ians (or, um, Ewans!) straight, you know what/whom he meant and at least he reads something besides Gawker. Well, yeah, but couldn’t he have malapropriated a lesser writer’s name, one whose first and last aren’t tattooed on my forehead, one not sitting on a pedestal in front of my computer? Couldn’t he have checked his sources?

Speaking of mis-namers, I am sure the Spielbergs and the Kings of the world are used to the “Steven or Stephen?” flip of the spelling coin, and some of my closest friends have been known to lose one of my “i”s, but you’d think that a man trying to impress a woman would get her name right. Well, you would be wrong. After an intense flurry of e-mailing that involved the seductive vocabulary of maple farming — “splitting maul”! “peavey”! — and even more seductive pictures of said maple farmer, I decided that we had reached the point in our relationship where I really needed him to spell my name correctly, and I told him so in a gentle mama-bear-like way. Next thing I know I get a quick response: “oops, bad timing — I just started a new relationship”! O.K., maybe he did, or maybe he took offense at my comment about the grin of satisfaction slathered over his end-of-the-workday face in his latest photo attachment: “for all i know you’ve just put a family of four through a wood chipper!” (Dude, where’s your sense of humor? Did you not love “Fargo”?) But maybe he was one of those men who would sooner ask for directions than have their punctuation or grammar corrected. Can you spell “thin-barked”?

I know what you’re thinking: No wonder she’s single, no wonder she got dumped, who would want to feel those eyes/ears of judgment upon his every utterance? (Please include a RECENT photo and a list of the five things you can’t live without when you e-mail your diatribe to me at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).) But just imagine what it’s like to be afflicted with an excess language-sensitivity gene. I mean, how would you feel if someone extolled your “skillful verbage”? Maybe he liked the way I threw my verbs around, but my nose picked up a whiff of “garbage.” And what about the onomatopoeticist who enjoyed the “slurshing sound of the waves”? “Slurshing” made me think “drink sloppily and quickly,” and combined with the motion of the water, the effect of his words was to produce welling seasickness, not the soothing rock and roll of the ocean crashing and uncrashing with romantic abandon along the shore of a secluded beach that he must have been aiming for.

Uh-oh, I just ended a sentence with a preposition! Hey, I know I fall far short of the lofty standards upheld by Strunk and White, Fowler, Bernstein and Garner. It’s not like, whoops, I mean as if (see!), I’m perfect, as if I have, after all these years, mastered the subtlety of who/whom, as if I never use “media” in the singular or accidentally type “their” when I mean “there,” as if I ever get the comma or not before “too” 100 percent right. I know people don’t proofread their myriad daily e-mail messages, and I have certainly been chagrined to discover, say, that I fired off “bike” when I meant “back,” but isn’t dating online like sending out your résumé, aren’t you trying to sell yourself to a potential employer (i.e., friend, lover, hand-to-hold-until-the-end-of-time)? When you write to a new someone, that someone who just might be the answer to your dreams (yeah, right), don’t you want to show him/her that you care, that you are paying attention?

Alas, there does not appear to be a 12-step program for usage addicts, but while pondering what to do about my little weakness, I recalled that my baby brother, while working on his Ph.D. in math, once mentioned an “encumber” in a letter to me (yes, a real letter — it was eons ago), referring to the green vegetable, sometimes peeled, sometimes not, that you slice into salads or turn into raita to accompany your Indian feast. His spelling, if that’s possible, has only devolved since (maybe that’s why he finds numbers so elegant), but I still love him as much as I always have. So, channeling sibling tolerance, I began to leap over stray commas and words-run-into-periods and managed to go out with a cool downtown daddy-o “tommorow” who has “distain” for organized religion. And guess what? I even enjoined myself! Unfortunately, I won’t be able to discuss the financial wizard who basically wanted to know whether I could squat his weight (160; I can) because his affliction would indeed be off topic.

Jaimie Epstein, a freelance writer in New York, is really rather low maintenance.

posted by Kathryn Lord on 08.31.07 at 6.31 am
permalink | Categories: • Dating Tips • Search Smart • Mind Your Manners • 4 Comments

We Like the Facts…

I always like seeing some facts and figures come out about online dating.  Here are a few from a new poll by Vizu Corporation for OKCupid.com.  The numbers I found particularly interesting were in the last paragraph, which lists the factors that singles use to eliminate candidates.  If you are chubby, smoke and have kids, your chances of making the cut are slim.  One thing that is hard to judge by an oline profile is character, which I think is THE most important attribute in a potential mate.  Maybe the chubby mom who smokes would be thebest risk of all.  Who will know if you don’t give them the chance?

From Your Romance Coach, Kathryn Lord

From New Opinion Poll Benchmarks the State of Online Dating

Of the 49 percent of survey respondents who claimed to have interacted with an online dating Web site, more than 20 percent were committed users, either by paying for a subscription or using a free service. Another 29 percent admit to at least browsing profiles, even if they don’t take that final step of signing up and making a connection. Those who do commit tend to stick around - 62 percent trying their luck for two months or longer.

Sixty-eight percent of respondents prefer services that provide personality questionnaires, analyze compatibility and offer matchmaking recommendations. And users want that service for free, too. Free sites are preferred over subscription services at a ratio of five-to-one.

Despite the reach of the now ten-plus-year-old industry, 72 percent still feel there is a social stigma to online dating. Yet that perception appears attached to those who are less involved in the experience. Once daters embrace the online path and actually meet their match, they become more comfortable. Nearly two-thirds will admit that, upon meeting their significant other online, they would tell the truth if asked about how they met.

Finally, the report shows online daters to be highly selective. Most (58 percent) rely primarily on photographs to quickly filter their field of prospective matches. Deal breakers that tend to cause prospects to be rejected include smoking (23 percent say no) and having children (32 percent aren’t interested). As for physical characteristics, 45 percent will reject someone because of his/her weight, and another 33 percent will disqualify those outside their age range.

posted by Kathryn Lord on 07.11.07 at 4.55 am
permalink | Categories: • Dating Tips • Search Smart • News About Dating Sites and Types • Online Dating Facts and Figures • 0 Comments