Date/Time: 2/23/10 7:00pm EDT

Category: Romance

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The Perils of Cyber-Dating: Confessions of a Hopeful Romantic Looking for Love Online is a romantic tell-all memoir spanning over 250 online dates in almost 15 years. This best-selling book is filled with heartfelt, witty, and hilarious stories. Join Safer Dates as we learn from an Internet industry pro, who as a super-successful cyber-dater, has already received several marriage proposals and a brilliant assortment of fabulous and fun dates after she had to start her life all over again.

By Lori Gottlieb

The author of a provocative new book reveals why you’re wrong about Mr. Right.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a magazine article called “Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough.” In it, I confessed that, having found myself still single at 40, I’d come to an eye-opening realization: Had I known when I was younger what would make me happy in a fulfilling marriage, I would have made very different choices in my dating life. It was a hyperbolic essay with a serious message: Look for the important qualities in a partner, and let go of the stuff that won’t matter five, ten or 20 years down the line.

I’ve never believed that we should stop looking for Mr. Right (we shouldn’t!) – but I do think that by changing our rigid idea of who Mr. Right is, we’re more likely to find the right Mr. Right. You can’t just order up the perfect husband á la carte – I’ll take a little of this, a little of that, less of this and more of that. A guy is a package deal, as are we. Recognizing that isn’t settling. It’s maturity. The key is to focus on the qualities that lead to long-term romantic happiness.

In my new book, I asked experts, including marital researchers, sociologists, neurobiologists, couple therapists, behavioral economists, matchmakers, clergy and even our mothers (God help us!) how to tell the difference between smart compromises (which lead to happiness) and settling (which doesn’t). The answer is complex — and different for everyone. But here are five basic things I learned I should cut a guy some slack on before I assume he’s not The One:

1. His height. Let me say upfront that I’m 5’2″. With one-inch heels. And yet I always preferred to date guys who were taller than 5’9″ (and so I could kiss them while barefoot, shorter than 6’0″). But one expert explained how limiting this was: “Let’s say there’s a 50 percent chance you could be with a guy who’s 5’9″. That’s a height you like, but it could go either way depending on what else he brings to the table. There’s probably a five percent chance you could be with somebody who’s 5’4″ – but there’s a chance. Maybe if you spent an hour with Danny DeVito or Robert Reich, all of a sudden you would say, “You know what? This is somebody I could actually spend my life with” – even though the height is never going to be ideal. On the other hand, take somebody who’s unkind. There’s a 100 percent chance you won’t want to be with him. So I’m saying, what are the real irreducibles as opposed to the unlikelies?”

2. His Match.com profile. A Northwestern researcher who studies online dating (yes, there are scientists who make a living doing this) told me that I shouldn’t get too specific about my search parameters in online dating because in his research, he found that “there was a lack of correlation between what people said they wanted on a questionnaire, and what they actually pick when they meet a real, live person.”  Moreover, he added, don’t rule out a guy because you think you know what it means that he misspelled a word or likes Madonna. You have no idea who this person is until you meet him. An online profile, he said, “is like reading the ingredients on a box of food and trying to imagine what it would taste like.”

3. His occupation. Yes, alpha males are sexy and charming. But they aren’t always the best partners for me, especially if they travel for work all the time, need to be the center of attention and don’t have the same ideas about how to run a household that I do. As a dating coach explained to me, many women are attracted to super-ambitious and charismatic guys who are leaders — but it’s hard to find a person who has that kind of personality and also makes time for you and is able to put you first when it counts. Now Joe, the cute elementary school teacher, on the other hand … you get my point.

4. His age. The thing about being picky is you have to know what to be picky about. Apparently, I wasn’t picky enough on the things that matter (shared values, reliability, “getting each other”) and was too picky on the things that don’t (his age). While I wouldn’t want anyone to mistake my husband for my father, it’s foolish to decline a set-up with a guy just because he’s got less hair and more wrinkles than I do. This might sound beyond obvious, but many women end up dating guys with a chemistry of “9″ and a compatibility of “5.” The happiest couples, though, have both a chemistry and compatibility of “7.” Would I be more naturally attracted to a guy who’s my age? Yep. Would it matter that much in the scheme of things if he was 12 years older but still handsome? Probably not. Am I going to be more wrinkled one day and thrilled to be with a man who finds me attractive anyway? You bet.

5. How he compares to “my type.” One expert told me that when she first met her husband, she had no interest in him at all. He wasn’t her type. He didn’t fit her image of the kind of guy she imagined herself with. She was Ivy League-educated, and he was a potter. At first there were no sparks. Nada. But the more time she spent with him, the more she liked him. And then the sparks flew. They’ve been married for 20 years. “In America,” she explained, “when a potter makes a pot, they put a glaze on it and put it in the kiln and know exactly what it’s supposed to look like when it comes out. But when the Japanese make a pot, they put it in a wood-fire kiln that could be any temperature, and when they take the pot out, it’s not always exactly like they thought it was supposed to look like. And they say, ‘Oh, wow, this is what the fire did to the pot and it’s gorgeous!’ They believe there’s no beauty in perfection. So instead of knowing what the person sitting across from you is supposed to be like, the question you have to ask is, ‘Do I like it?’ instead of ‘How does it compare to what I thought I wanted?’ People can surprise you.”

Indeed. I ended up falling hard for a 5’6″, balding, bow-tie-wearing guy I almost didn’t e-mail on Match.com. He wasn’t who I had in mind, but he was who I wanted to be with. And that, of course, is the thing that matters most.

Source: wowowow.com

Read on as these women recall the times when Cupid’s arrow pointed straight toward disaster.

By Ashley Womble

Dream Date Disaster
A new guy surprised me by planning the perfect Valentine’s Day date: a romantic dinner followed by fireworks show on the beach. Everything was great until the check arrived. He asked me, “Should we split it or do you just want to pay for your meal?” After dinner we took a walk on the pier. He bumped into a girl, who was obviously his ex-girlfriend, and after talking and laughing for about 20 minutes without including me he finally said, “Oh sorry, this is my friend, Kat.” We broke up the next day. —Katrina, 19

Shot in the Heart
I had a crush on a close guy friend during college, so I was really excited when he asked me to come over to watch a movie on V-Day. I arrived at his dorm room with a handwritten poem that confessed how much I liked him. After I read it, he said, “That’s nice,” and promptly started the movie, Reservoir Dogs. It was clear by the first gunshot that romance was not on his mind. I was heartbroken and had to watch a gruesome, violent movie with no chance of cuddling with my crush. —Ashley, 28

On Thin Ice
I bought my boyfriend tickets to the Columbus Blue Jackets hockey game for Valentine’s Day. During a break in the game, my guy spontaneously grabbed and kissed me! I pulled away, because I was so shocked, and that’s when he pointed to the JumboTron screen. We had been on the “Kiss Cam,” and everyone in the arena had seen my snotty pull-away and embarrassed reaction. —Tina, 20

Ex Hits the Spot
After secretly dating two guys — Dan and Joe — for a few months, I told Joe I didn’t want a relationship, so that I could get serious with Dan. On Valentine’s Day, Dan took me out to dinner, and I almost choked on my drink when our waiter arrived. It was Joe! To make matters worse, Dan ordered a dish with béchamel sauce, which he loved. He gushed to the waiter, a.k.a. my ex, “If she could cook like this I’d marry her.” I wanted to die. —Cristina, 26

Honestly, Abe?
After a long dry spell, I was psyched to finally have a new guy in my life so we could spend Valentine’s Day together. Call me corny, but I was hoping I’d get flowers or chocolate — you know, what every girl wants! Instead, he gave me an old Abe Lincoln bobblehead that looked like it came from the bottom of his closet. I honestly didn’t even know what to say, so I just mumbled “thank you.” After a few more bad dates, I pulled off Abe’s head, and kicked that boy to the curb. —Adrienne, 17

Slacker Surprise
I decided to have a low-key Valentine’s Day with my live-in boyfriend. I had a feeling he was going to surprise me by making a special dinner or sending flowers. I didn’t talk to him all day, so I was really excited to see what he’d planned when I got home from work. I walked in the door to find him sitting in front of the TV in sweatpants. He gave me the lamest card I’ve ever seen and then asked, “What do you want to order for dinner?” I was shocked that to him low-key meant nothing at all. —Ali, 24

Party Foul
My boyfriend Matt and I didn’t have any special plans for V-Day, so he decided to have a few friends over for an impromptu get-together. I was a little pissed that he invited Krista, a girl I suspected had a thing for him. I played it cool until later that night, when he admitted that he had cheated on me with her a few months before. When I confronted her she denied it, but later I heard her ask Matt, “Why did you tell her?!” After a big blowout, I left the party and Krista spent the night with my guy! —Ciara, 18

Thief in the Night
The guy I’d been dating, Clay, was totally MIA on Valentine’s Day. At first I was worried, but after not hearing from him all day I started to get pissed. That night I got a call from the county jail, asking me to accept a collect call from … Clay! He had stolen his parents’ brand-new car and they reported it to the police. Even though I have a thing for bad boys, I broke up with that loser the next day. —Rachel, 22

Double Trouble
One Valentine’s Day, I planned an elaborate meal for my boyfriend. He acted really awkward during dinner, and when I gave him a gift he said, “Oh, I don’t have your gift. Can I give it to you tomorrow?” I found out later that he was dating another girl and had already celebrated V-Day with her earlier that evening! —Tiffani, 33

Source: lifestyle.msn.com

By Ellen McCarthy

The hikes Thierry Chiapello and Sharon Spradling began taking in fall 2006 were not particularly romantic.

They’d met earlier that year at the Pentagon. She was a career Air Force officer specializing in biomedical science. He was the director of the Defense Department’s Explosives Safety Board. Their jobs would require a certain amount of collaboration, so they exchanged cards and promised to be in touch.

And they were — trading messages on their BlackBerrys about work strategies, life philosophies and books they found compelling. When he signed off one Friday with a mention that he planned to hit the C&O Canal that weekend to clear his head, she replied that she’d been planning to do the same.

They decided to meet near Great Falls and set out on the trail together. Over the next few months they would log hundreds of miles, exhausting their bodies and trying, at least, to exorcise the sorrows weighing on each of them.

By then Chiapello, now 43, had been separated from his second wife for almost a year. He’d married for the first time at 27 when, as a young Marine, he found out his girlfriend was pregnant with their daughter. But the union lasted less than a year. When he walked back down the aisle at 31, it was with greater deliberateness and confidence that this relationship would last. But after two more daughters and 10 years, that marriage, too, began to crumble.

Spradling had been married for three years in her 20s, but chafed at the institution. It seemed to somehow change the way people treated her: She was someone’s wife then, not her own person. “People don’t talk to you, they talk to your husband,” she recalls. “It drove me nuts.”

For years she was happy to move around the country with the military. But she’d been in Washington longer than anyplace else, and it was here she’d carried on a 10-year relationship that had also hit the skids. By the time she and Chiapello began hiking together, the breakup was complete, though her ex-boyfriend had yet to move out of the house.

“That’s why we hiked so much — just to kind of talk about it,” says Spradling, now 44.

A 14-mile walk in the woods can breed a certain intimacy, one that deepened as they reunited on the trail every weekend. Little was left unsaid — except, perhaps, the feelings they were developing for each other. Spradling, in particular, thought there was potential, but even investing herself in that thought felt risky, she says, “because I think he was hoping, up until the last minute, that his divorce wouldn’t happen and he would have a happily ever after.

“It was pretty clear to me that wasn’t gonna happen, but you can’t tell somebody that. And you don’t even want to hope for that, really.”

It was Chiapello’s daughter, Monica, who impelled the relationship beyond the footpath. Visiting from Los Angeles over the holidays, the 16-year-old joined the two on a New Year’s Eve hike, nudging her dad at the end to invite Spradling to a family party that night.

Soon Chiapello and Spradling were seeing each other regularly, adding dinners and phone calls to their hiking routine. Chiapello’s divorce became final in March 2007, but instead of feeling like a release, the finality of it devastated him.

“You do the self-analysis: ‘What could I have done differently? How much of this was my fault?’ A lot of different issues start percolating up,” he explains. “You’ve got to take out the garbage, so to speak — about yourself. You’ve gotta clean house.”

To save himself from future heartache, he says, “I’ve often thought about joining a cloistered men’s monastery — at least for 30 seconds.”

Neither knew where the relationship was headed, but they agreed, Spradling says, “that we’d be friends no matter how it worked out.”

“There was no big rush,” Chiapello says. “And in hindsight that’s what I didn’t do in the previous two marriages: build a foundation of really getting to know someone — without any pressure of expectations for a future.”

At the end of 2007, they bought a house together. Living under the same roof proved difficult initially, so there were, just as there had been at the beginning, a lot of long talks. “It’s about communication overall. And I’m not talking about mild stuff. I’m talking about what’s really at the heart of it,” he says. “We worked through a lot of stuff. But we always came out on a better place, even on some really tough issues.”

The adage is that as people age, they become more set in their ways. Chiapello thinks the tumult of his life has instead made him more flexible. “I’ve become more tolerant over time,” he says. “I think life has really served to make me understand myself far better. And to understand what’s important and what’s not, and to appreciate what’s important and what’s not.”

During those first hard months — as he also worked to help his daughters adjust to the changes in their lives — Chiapello and Spradling paid a great deal of attention to “learning to tolerate each other’s imperfections and weaknesses.” There would be, they determined, no rose-colored glasses in this relationship. “That’s the beauty of this,” he says. “It’s real.”

When Monica came to live with them the following year, the couple began to feel frustrated with the description of Spradling as “my dad’s live-in girlfriend.” But each was still wary that marriage would somehow diminish the good thing they had going. For a while they decided to be “virtually married” and live as if they’d tied the knot, just to see how it would feel. “And that actually worked out pretty well,” he says. “So ultimately we said, ‘Let’s do it.’ ”

It took a year, but they finally set a date: Jan. 10 at Great Falls, where their relationship took root. There would be a ceremony, they decided, but no giant wedding. “We didn’t want to fall into that trap,” he says. “It’s about the rest of it — not the wedding.”

Before Spradling woke that morning, Chiapello sent her an e-mail. “As experience and understanding of who I really am becomes more evident on this constant journey called life, my shortcomings and mistakes become increasingly evident,” he wrote. But, he continued, “I commit to giving you my best day in and day out.”

As ice floated by on the Potomac and freezing winds blasted their dark overcoats, the two exchanged simple vows. And the guest list that day totaled seven, including their three dogs.

Source: The Washington Post

By Ellen McCarthy

Robert Epstein believes that someday, in the not-too-distant future, many Americans will share his philosophy on relationships. And his philosophy is this: You can build love deliberately and choose whom to do it with.

All of this “falling” stuff, he thinks, will become passé.

Epstein is a psychologist and author whose previous research has focused largely on creativity and adolescence. He turned his attention to affairs of the heart after his first marriage ended in divorce. “It was personal,” he says. “I’ve certainly failed in relationships and in very much the typical American way, which makes it very frustrating — when you fail in a typical way.”

In 2002, when a young woman came in to interview for an internship and told him she’d never been in love, he had an idea: They set out to make her fall in love. The intern eventually backed out of the experiment, so Epstein decided to do it himself. After meeting a woman on a plane who agreed to be his partner in the endeavor, he began to employ strategies and behaviors that relationship experts have found increase feelings of intimacy: sharing vulnerabilities, touching each other affectionately and seeking adventures together.

The good news? They fell in love. The bad? It didn’t last. She was from Venezuela, and the logistics were too difficult to overcome.

Still, Epstein, former editor of Psychology Today, has been shaping his theory that love can be orchestrated ever since. It may sound strange to Western ears, he realizes. But Epstein’s come to think it’s the American way that’s really absurd when it comes to love: “We grow up on fairy tales and movies in which magical forces help people find their soul mates, with whom they effortlessly live happily ever after,” he wrote in a recent issue of Scientific American Mind. “The fairy tales leave us powerless, putting our love lives into the hands of the Fates.”

To gain insights into another way of cultivating love, Epstein has begun to study arranged marriages. Some studies have found that over time the affection between partners in arranged marriages can surpass that of couples who chose each other because of love.

Epstein, 56 and remarried, taught a course at the University of California at San Diego last spring in which students could earn extra credit by employing affection-building exercises with friends and strangers after class. Almost all the students who tried the techniques — including trust falls, synchronized breathing and prolonged gazing — reported greater feelings of closeness with their partners. (The psychologist has sworn off talking about his own relationship, but he will say his wife sat in on several classes that semester.)

The seed Epstein is hoping to plant in people’s minds, through lectures and a book he’s writing, is that we may have greater control than we think over this wily thing called love.

And if that doesn’t sound particularly romantic?

“All I can say is there’s nothing romantic about failure,” Epstein answers.

Source: Washington Post

Rivals on the dating scene could make one feel closer to God, according to new research that suggests one’s religiousness may be more closely related to mating strategies than previously known.

In experiments with 269 college students, researchers found that both men and women apparently felt more religious when they saw attractive potential competitors.

Social psychologists had volunteers view dating profiles of either attractive men or women and told them these were fellow students participating at an online dating site. They were then asked to rate, on a 10-point scale, the extent to which they agreed with statements like, “I believe in God,” “We’d be better off if religion played a bigger role in people’s lives,” and “Religious beliefs are important to me in my everyday decisions.”

The volunteers appeared more religious when exposed to attractive members of their own sex.

“While we don’t doubt there are many reasons people are religious, our current findings suggest that people do vary in religiosity depending on the perceived mating market,” said researcher Yexin Jessica Li at Arizona State University in Tempe.

What’s Going On

The findings, detailed online Nov. 1 in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, suggest that people may adjust their religious feelings to support their current romantic goals.

Past research had suggested that information about the local dating pool can influence one’s behavior — exposure to attractive members of one’s own sex can reduce one’s feelings about one’s own attractiveness.

“It’s our belief that religious behavior is linked to several different psychological mechanisms, but one plausible function of religious sanctions on sexuality is to maintain and defend a low-promiscuity, monogamous lifestyle,” said researcher Douglas Kenrick at Arizona State University. “For that lifestyle, an abundance of attractive competitors is a threat.”

“Our guess at this point is that seeing attractive members of one’s sex makes it less likely that you will be able to play a fast and loose mating strategy, because the competition is likely to be too tough,” Li said.

As such, the researchers conjecture that people might become more religious when rivals are present since religion often involves rules that police sex. Alternatively, people might say they are more religious to be more attractive, maybe exploiting a different niche to find mates.

“We are proposing a new way to look at religion — as a strategy to advance evolutionary goals,” Li said. “This opens an exciting new line of research to explore in terms of the link between evolution and religion. There are many potential ways to go from here, but we are especially interested in looking at different domains of risk-taking and decision-making.”

Criticism Expected

These findings dovetail with others from the researchers suggesting that people’s feelings about premarital sex, abortion, and birth control — about mating and its potential consequences, in other words — “were more predictive of their church attendance than other classical religious attitudes, such as their beliefs about whether stealing or lying are right or wrong,” Li said.

The scientists added that especially religious people might not change their views at all regardless of how attractive rivals might be. Moreover, they suggested responses could vary across religions, since each might have different notions regarding sex.

“We feel that perhaps most vocal criticism we will get for this research will be a moral one,” said researcher Adam Cohen at Arizona State University. “Some people do not like thinking about something as personal as religiosity as a mating strategy.”

Social psychologist Ara Norenzayan at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, who did not take part in this research, noted that one issue these findings raise is that “if religiosity is a commitment device for both sexes, what would stop impostors who are not really religious to fake religiosity to attract mates? And it would be very interesting in the future to see if increases in religiosity lead to more interest from the opposite sex. Another interesting question is whether the higher levels of religiosity lead to a shift from short-term mating strategies to long-term — that is, more interest in stable relationships.”

Source: foxnews.com

Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Source: foxnews.com

WAUSAU, Wisconsin —  A judge has ruled that there is enough evidence to warrant a trial for four Wisconsin women accused of luring a man to a motel room and tying him to a bed to get back at him for cheating.

The 37-year-old man testified Tuesday that he went to the motel room expecting a romantic interlude with a girlfriend but instead ended up being tied to a bed by the girlfriend and three other women, including his now-estranged wife, and having his penis glued to his stomach.

The women are each charged with being party to felony false imprisonment, a felony. One of them is also charged with misdemeanor sexual assault.

Those charged in the case are: Wendy Sewell, 43, of Kaukauna; Therese Ziemann, 48, of Menasha, Michelle Belliveau, 43, of Neenah, and the man’s wife. The Associated Press is not naming the man to protect his identity as an alleged victim of sexual assault.

By: Akiba Solomon

Source: lifestyle.msn.com

Ever been on a doozy of a date? Just try to top these women’s crazy but true stories. (Or actually, don’t!)

It’s a skill, really. Some women play jazz flute. Some make fine Italian cuisine. But my special talent, it seems, is going on bad dates. I’ve been out with an athlete who bragged about groupies polishing his toenails; a finance guy who casually mentioned that he was under federal investigation; and a blogger who danced like a drunken baby.

Then there was John.* I was elated when this cute, shy events planner got my number from a mutual friend and asked me out to dinner. On date night, I — a flats-and-jeans girl — slipped on red four-inch heels and a pencil skirt. I even got to the restaurant early. Forty-five minutes and six “I’m so sorry” texts later, John arrived. Dinner actually went well — until an elderly hippie wearing a sarong slid into our booth, greeted us in Swahili and bought marijuana from John right in front of me.

Of course, there is one good thing about having so many truly horrific dates: getting to rehash all of the gory details with other lucky ladies. Therefore, I present some of the most awkward, most bizarre, most awesomely bad dates in the history of womankind — for official confirmation that, really, it’s not us; it’s them.

“When the movie my date wanted to see was sold out, we went to my first choice instead. A few minutes into the film, he announced he was going to get us some candy. Twenty minutes passed. Then 30. Worried, I sent him a text. No response. I even checked the lobby. An hour later, as the credits rolled, this fool came strolling into my theater bragging about how he’d snuck in to see the movie he’d wanted!” — Chauncie Burton, 28, Chicago

“My girlfriend and I met two guys at a lounge and liked them enough to move to their table. Three hours later, after lots of dancing and flirting, the police showed up. Seems our dates had been buying us drinks with stolen credit cards the entire time!” — Rochelle Spencer, 32, Augusta, Ga.

“For our first date, Eric* said we were going out for a ‘nice meal.’ I was shocked when we arrived at his parents’ just in time for Sunday dinner. I hardly knew him, so it was incredibly awkward. Even worse, his grandmom kept asking how many children I was willing to have!” — Chinwe Etoh, 24, Baltimore

“Once on a movie date, the guy waited until we got to the ticket window of the theater to tell me we were going dutch. OK, sure. After the film, he wanted to go to the Arby’s drive-through so we could grab something to eat. Before he put in the order, he turned to me and hissed, ‘You’re paying for yours!’ and for about five minutes grumbled to himself about ‘greedy women with their hands out.’ Obviously we didn’t see each other again.” — Tarana Burke, 36, Philadelphia

“This guy took me, a meat-eating Texan gal, to a raw food, vegan restaurant. For an entire hour — I am not exaggerating — he explained to me, in the most vivid detail, how cow’s milk was actually pus. Clearly this wasn’t a love connection.” — Renee Good, 38, Prairie View, Tex.

“My twin and I had dinner with two gorgeous brothers who calmly said they were aliens who’d come to Earth to find wives!” — Hillary Garcia, 40, Macon, Ga.

“I went to dinner with an older man who happened to make considerably more money than I did. Regardless, when the check arrived, he quickly did the calculations and split it in half. No problem, but then he told me, ‘Oh, actually you owe me another dollar — you ordered the white meat.’” — Zuhirah Khaldun, 33, East Elmhurst, N.Y.

“In college I went out with a guy the night before summer vacation. After dinner I told him I needed to get home because my flight was really early. To prolong our time together, he drove 20 miles an hour the whole way. He wasn’t bothered at all by the honks, middle fingers and shouts from the other drivers who swerved around us. He even told me I was wrong to ask him to speed up, because I should appreciate how romantic he was.” — Adia Harvey Wingfield, 32, Raleigh, N.C.

“On a hiring panel for my company, I met a really attractive interviewee. Although he didn’t get the position, he did call to ask me to go to dinner. We had a great time, so imagine my surprise when I arrived for our second date and saw him standing at the bar talking to another woman. He gave me a big hug and said, ‘There’s someone I want you to meet — my fiancée. I’ve told her all about you!’” — Tenecia Harris, 27, New York City

*Some names have been changed

August 5, 2009

By: Noreen Panizzoli

Source: examiner.com

Statistics show that American’s are waiting until much later in life then they did just ten years ago to pursue a love relationship. With more and more people seeing the need to get a college education and have a sure footing in their careers before finding love, why should they consider using online dating services instead of depending on the traditional dating scene? The answer is that using every available option to find love is the best way, but online dating has some specific advantages.

All about the Numbers

The vast number of people you can check out cannot be beat. It would take hours of effort to connect with a handful of people at a club, but minutes with a mouse and Internet connection to see hundreds of potential matches. Your search is not limited to people in your local area but anywhere in the world.

Time Savers

The amount of time you will save in meeting people online is well worth the effort. Connections can be made through e-mail or chat rooms in a matter of minutes; while in real life, you would need to spend a considerable amount of time with each person at a café or coffee house. An added time-saving benefit is the ability to search the dating site at any time of day or night, seven days a week. Why waste precious time when at a glance you can weed out people who don’t spark your romantic interest?

Deal-breakers at a Glance

Online dating allows you to express more of what makes you ‘you’ upfront, your likes and dislikes, religious beliefs, cultural background, ethnicity and personality traits, in your online dating profile. On the other hand, you can be more direct about the type of person you’re hoping to connect with and eliminate time spent with someone who has issues or traits that are deal-breakers. Getting this type of sensitive information in the traditional way would probably take several dates.

The Cost of Dating

How does traditional dating compare to online dating in the money you will spend? Well, there is just no comparison - online dating comes out way ahead. The monthly membership fee doesn’t come anywhere near what it would cost in travel, dinner and drinks for a traditional date, multiplied by the number of dates you would need to have before finding your soul mate. One month’s membership costs less than a night on the town and gives you hundreds of chances to meet your perfect mate – every night!

The bottom line is that using an Internet dating service in conjunction with any real life dating situation that may arise will increase your chances of finding the ‘right’ person and save time and money.