Dating Online – Ins and Outs

Online Dating Survey Results:

The following is a summary of a study of about 100 or so urban dwellers in how they look for people to date. Dating Online may not result in you getting the person of your dreams, but it may be an interesting diversion from all those hard to believe Match.com and eHarmony.com commercial breaks that try to convince you about how lonely you are during the late winter/early spring/ mid summer blahs.

<bold>Some Dating Insights Gained:</bold>

1)     It is not uncommon for members of the online dating community to be members on various sites at the same time. The attitude is that the more exposure you give yourself to other people, the more likely it is that you will find a match. Sort of like buying several lottery tickets instead of just one. These same people are likely to be dating several different people concurrently hoping to find the one who clicks. In any event, you would want to play the field until you find someone that you really bond with. After all, in real life, you are probably meeting a friend of a friend, or at least have had some opportunity to watch them interact with other people at your favorite watering hole. That tends to prescreen the people that you would actually go out with before you make any sort of commitment to one-on-one dating.  In actual fact, in most conventional dating scenes, you are actually doing some multi-tasking on the pre-screening front before you ever interact in the first place. Because of the anonymous nature of online dating sites, you cannot prescreen people through friends before meeting them. One way dating sites try to mitigate that is via chat and anonymous email, but even so, once you meet in real life for the first time, it has more of the hallmarks of a blind date that any other dating situation that you have found yourself in. With this high tendency not to hit it off on the first actual date, the online dating community tends to interact with more people at the same time, and as a consequence, they are more tolerant of people playing the field during the initial relationship phases.

2)     Online Dating is much more superficial – pictures and videos are everything – without them you get almost no action, or attention.  And you ladies need not worry, as long as you have a reasonably flattering shot of yourself having fun someplace, you will likely get responses from lots of men.  This is a marketing exercise, not a life story exercise. If you are selling beauty products on television you do not explain each step of the research that lead to the product. Although you might mention the research, you tend to focus on the results, and the benefits. Market yourself in a positive and flattering manner. Whatever you do, do not post a picture of yourself that is taken with your web cam – the video quality sucks, and you can never show yourself in a socially fun situation with a web cam For women, since men do not read much, you have to be reasonably brief in what you say, but it also needs to be fun and engaging if you hope to have him read. Watch the movie “Must Love Dogs” for ideas in how to market yourself on an internet dating site. If you are a man – pay attention to the words as best you can – look for the “must not be” things that many women pre-qualify their profiles with, and do not annoy them if you are a “must not be” person.  Women are generally strong communicators; hopefully having to read “likes long walks on the beach” for the umpteenth time will not make you lose your cookies.  In any event, for both sexes, keep the profile text fun, factual and short. If you are lucky, you will find other people with similar interests and a complimentary sense of silliness. The anonymous chat and email services are there for your benefit and safety. Use them extensively before agreeing to meet in person for the first time. Do not be too verbose in you profile.  Your profile is a short teaser ad that highlights your benefits to catch someone's eye. Do not pollute it with negative statements of past failures. You are trying to sell someone about who you are and where you want to go. You do not want to bore them with the history of your life, all your mistakes, and what you changed your mind about.

3)     Men without strong advancement prospects, or God forbid, no jog at all will find it difficult making much headway on some specialty dating sites where people are focused on success. In their heads, women are looking for winners, not losers. On the other hand, if you can hook a woman physically or emotionally, they will often overlook the fact that you are stock shelves in a grocery store, as long as you are able to show her that you have solid future prospects.  Keep your personal financial status out of the conversation if at all possible. If the person keeps insisting on focusing on that particular statistic, they just might be a gold digger

4)     Full figured women are actually not at the disadvantage that they often think they are. As long as you do not have flab's of cellulite hanging several inches under your arms, you likely have a solid chance of getting the favorable attention of most men. If you are not wider than you are tall, then likely you have a pretty good chance of finding someone. Since most women will often post a younger, or more flattering photo of themselves, they will often attract men online. Coupled with shaving a few years off of their ages is also done with great regularity.  Men will often lie about their income, but are usually quite truthful about their ages. Men are almost always athletic or average, and almost none admit to being overweight or obese.

5)     Love does not actually happen online – love can only happen after you meet.  You either totally connect and love someone, or you do not. It is the little interactions that result in a strong attraction that can lead to love, but that is often fillial love, not eros love. It takes chemistry between two individuals when they kiss, and have sex that leads to truly erotic, head over heals love. In the online dating world, from the time you first start to interact online to the time you meet in person is about two to four weeks. If you are too cautious, then the person will likely meet someone else in the meantime, and you will fail. Don't forget, if you are attracted to them, then others will be too, and since everyone on dating sites are trying to meet as many people as is reasonably possible, you are in a time limited competition to win their hearts.

6)     There is still a social stigma associated with online dating. The real problem with online personals sites is that they have had a reputation in the past for being the hangouts of losers and predators. Nothing is further from the truth. Unfortunately, many people refuse to even try online dating because of these factors.  The fact is that one in five relationships at the current time are people who met online.. You are likely more at risk in conventional dating as you are with online dating. Most people who meet and fall in love online do not broadcast how they met to the world at large, so all you hear about is the people who were not successful on dating sites. This leaves a bad negative impression of the online dating industry in the public eye. This tendency to be closed-mouthed is kind of silly because everyone knows that people who date to have met at some time, so why try to hide it.

7)    The real power of dating sites is their ability to match people up who are in completely different social circles, and therefore would never have met through any conventional means. Since everyone on a dating site is there for the same reason, you will find it amazing how easy it is to talk to other people about your wants and needs in a relationship. These social dating sites are the ideal place for busy professionals or single parents. Who has the time to hang out in bars with a bunch of underage teens with forged identity? There is not enough hours in the day, so if you want to meet someone, then you should take your search online to make more productive use of your limited time. Online dating is the wave of the present and future if you want to find successful and interesting people. No matter if the forum is online dating or bar hopping, when it comes to finding the person of your dreams, you will likely have to kiss a few frogs along the way. So just get out into that real world or Internet marshland and get on with it.


If you are interested in online dating sites, then you might want to check out this resource page:

Online Dating