Dating Online Recommendations

Modern Online Dating Survey Results:

Here is a summary of the results of a study about the online dating practices of urban dwellers. This was the culmination for interviewing just under 100 men and women about how they date online and what they look for in potential dates and partners. Online Dating Sites may not result in you winning your life partner, but it may be an interesting diversion from all those hard to believe Match.com and eHarmony.com commercials on TV that try to convince you about your need for someone new in your life during the late winter/early spring/ mid summer blahs. 

Some Dating Insights Gained:

1)     People who date online attempt to put the odds in their favor when trying to find their soul mate. As such, it is not uncommon for someone to join 5 or more different dating sites at the same time. On the same note, they are also more likely to date several people concurrently, trying to keep all of them on the string until they can make a final choice. Kind of like the online world's version of “The Bachelor” or “The Bachelorette”. Playing the field is a defense mechanism in the online arena. Because of the anonymity of the sites, you cannot tap into you normal social networks to find out about the people you are talking to online, or dating in real life. There is a much higher chance of being taken in by a smooth talker. It is also easy to give your heart away to a loser. Keeping several people “in process” at the same time helps you from “settling” on any one of them prematurely. Online dating sites cannot give you that same intuitive comfort before your first real interaction that you get in more conventional dating scenes, therefore, with online dating, the meet in person step tends to be more often a miss than a hit.

2)     Online Dating is much more superficial – pictures and videos are everything – without them you get almost no action, or attention.  Ladies about having less than average looks. If you do a good job of portraying yourself in both words and pictures of someone who loves to have fun, you will get positive results.  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. For men, you must read the words!! Women are strong communicators and they will say what they are looking for, and they will also say what they are definitely not looking for. Be honest about who or what you are, and do not annoy a women with attention of any sort if you are definitely on her “must not be” list.  In any event, for both sexes, keep the brief and factual (within limits of course – this is marketing after all). If you are lucky, you will find other people with similar interests and a complimentary sense of silliness. Be prepared to use the email and chatting facilities of the online site to get to know people better. Do not over write or over work your profile.  Your online profile is a 30 second teaser commercial, not an in depth user manual.

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. Women have a pre-disposition to be attracted to “good providers”. In cave man days it was the best hunter. In modern times, this is a man with a stable job and steady income. On the other hand, if you can connect with a woman physically, they will often overlook the fact that you are flip burgers at McDonald's, as long as you can show yourself to be someone with future prospects.  By the way, keep information about your personal finances close. There are a lot of gold diggers out there!

4)     BBW women are as disadvantaged as they 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. In any event, most women will post a profile of themselves at a younger and lighter age, and then proceed to lighten the age load a few years on top of that in their profile.  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 have chemistry with someone, or you do not, there is no kinda click, there is no partial chemistry. You totally fall head over heels in love with someone, or else you settle for something that is less than total love. It is the many little interactions between two people that add up to someone falling in love. The average time between meeting on a dating site and meeting in person is about two to four weeks. You must be cautious on a dating site, but you cannot be overly cautious or you will fail. If you are attracted to someone, so are other people, and you have to compete for their attention. Putting off a face to face meet for too long will doom you to failure.

6)     There is still a social stigma associated with online dating. The reputation is that people who use such sites don't have a real life. They are social outcasts, ugly people, and deviants. Nothing is further from the truth. Even so, people using such services are reluctant to be associated with “losers”, or, they may be careless with their safety.  The fact is that one in five relationships at the current time are people who met online.. Because of the anonymous nature of dating sites, you are more likely to be targetted by deviants on facebook, where everyone can see your real name, than on a dating site, where nobody knows your real name or where you live. 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. People will admit that they met in line getting an unemployment check, but they will not admit to meeting online for some reason.

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. The fact that everyone on the site is looking to meet someone for the purpose of dating, or establishing a long term relationship, it is incredibly easy to start up a conversation with someone that you have never met. You already have at least one subject in common – dating. 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. If you want to find successful and interesting people, then online dating is truly the wave of the present, and the future. Do not expect every match presented to be made in heaven. There will still be some off spec people in the barrel, so keep on trying.


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

Online Dating