BlogHer - Eating my own dog food: Fifteen tips about online dating I learned from doing it - Comments

And I give no energy to men

Honey_b_Temple — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 18:44:59 -0500

And I give no energy to men who only offer an ice breaker/wink. They are probably sending the same message to dozens of women to see who'll bite.

Oh, I HATE that! I even clearly state in my profile that I won't answer those, and I still get them!

The thing I've learned about online dating is: Don't Settle!! I can't tell you how many times I've thought, Oh, he seems nice enough and he's okay looking, I'll meet him! Groan! Two hours later, stifling yawns, I'm chatting away like a maniac, too polite to take my leave, just wanting to get home and cozy with my cat. What a waste of time!

I won't meet someone unless we've had e-mails and phone calls where I feel some kind of spark. Even that doesn't always work (I'm still single, after all), but at least you'll have a good conversation out of it!

Honey B
Mellifluence

How horrible!

Liz Rizzo — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 19:43:01 -0500

Thank goodness you found out! Small comfort, but still.

Hang in there.

Liz Rizzo

I blog at Everyday Goddess and On The Lot.

Susan; Your list is right

Dating Goddess — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 11:15:46 -0500

Susan;

Your list is right on. I'm glad you are able to share an insider's view of what works at YP. I often scratch my head when men contact me who meet none of my criteria.

I've also learned that if a man posts pictures of himself from more than 5 years ago, even if they are with recent pics, there is something off. Why would we care what he looked like in high school or at his wedding until we've met him?

And I give no energy to men who only offer an ice breaker/wink. They are probably sending the same message to dozens of women to see who'll bite.

I've included lots of other lessons and insights on my daily blog for women dating after 40.

Dating Goddess
Adventures in Delicious Dating After 40
http://www.DatingGoddess.com

Note of Caution

Lisa Okuhn — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 01:51:48 -0500

Lisa from That's Empress to You
One of my best friends met her second husband online. There are countless success stories like hers, or Florinda's. But I have just discovered that my "boyfriend" of 4 1/2 years, with whom I planned to spend the rest of my life (and whom I met online) has been online the whole time, acquiring other full-time girlfriends, even fiancees, often two or three simultaneously. This sounds improbable, but unfortunately it's true. So I have to add a word of caution to the enthusiasm. Most people are on dating sites to meet people with whom they can have genuine relationships. But there are others who use these sites as petri dishes for their illnesses. It's a perfect place for unscrupulous people to present themselves in such a way as to get whatever they want, to as many unsuspecting people as they can.

A few more tips

smartl — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 11:10:38 -0500

I've certainly done more than my fair share of online dating and actually met my fiance on Lavalife 3 1/2 years ago, so I thought I would chime in! All of the tips below are ones that I have learned the hard way (and probably have a story or two behind them):

16. Don't waste your time with someone who doesn't live in your area, unless you are moving or want to move (for reasons other than a love interest). It is not worth the heartache that will follow if you fall for someone who lives across the country and logistical issues prevent you from being together.

17. Be very wary of much older men who are interested in much younger women (I'm talking an age gap of more than 15 years). In my experience they are looking for a trophy girlfriend, or someone naive that they can mold into their ideal partner. I'd rather have someone like me for me.

18. If you meet someone who seems promising but they procrastinate about talking on the phone or meeting in person, DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME. I cannot stress this enough - I would have literally saved myself years of relationship trouble if I had learned this sooner. Some guys are lying and like to chat online as a hobby but have no interest in a real relationship.

19. Just wanted to reiterate Susan's point #11 that if a guy won't share their contact info, that's a red flag. However, I would say with a caveat that if they will only offer a cell phone number that's not necessarily a problem. It is increasingly common now to have a cell phone as your only phone number so they're not necessarily hiding anything.

Getting back into the dating pool

Florinda — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 11:09:17 -0500

When I was finally ready to try dating again after my divorce, I went online without much hesitation - given the way my life works, it actually seemed like it would be easier to meet people that way. I used one of the services that does more compatibility testing and matching rather than posting a profile and searching on my own, though - I wasn't quite that brave.

I really recommend communicating pretty extensively online for some time before meeting someone in person - you can learn a lot from how someone expresses himself in writing, and learn enough about each other to make your first face-to-face meeting more comfortable. Another good thing about this is that "some time" may not be much more than a few days or a week, since many people are much freer expressing themselves online. Hopefully, they are also being truthful! But don't wait too long for that meeting, or you might lose some momentum - and you truly can't judge the "chemistry" thing any other way than in person.

When you do meet up, coffee, or even lunch, is a better first-date idea than dinner and a movie.

I met my second husband through online dating, so I'm a definitely a supporter. We e-mailed for a week and a half before our first actual date, a lunch that ended up stretching over an entire Sunday afternoon.

Florinda
Blogging at The 3 R's: Reading, 'Riting, and Randomness

Eating my own dog food: Fifteen tips about online dating I learned from doing it

susan mernit — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 09:10:46 -0500

When my long-time marriage ended two years ago, my then-therapist told me to check out online dating. Since then, Iâ€™ve gone on meet and greet type dates with more than a few people I met online and learned that while there is still some stigma attached to online dating, itâ€™s one of the basic dating tools for the over-40 crowdâ€”and very common with people in their 20s and 30s as well.

A year or so into my dating life, I ended up going to work at Yahoo Personals -partly because Iâ€™d formed strong opinions about what dating sites did and didnâ€™t do wellâ€”and now that my day job is helping people find meaningful connections, love and romance-Iâ€™ve learned even more about how online dating works.

So, with this mix of personal and professional experience, let me share the following tips, based on my own experience, on successfully dating online:

1. When you create a profile on an online dating service, say exactly what kind of person youâ€™re looking for and precisely specify their attributesâ€”because the matching engine is working with a database, the system serves you exactly what you asked for from a huge pool of prospectsâ€”that means that if your search criteria are too broad, they can push down the best candidates and you wonâ€™t see them soon enough. In plain English this means that if you want someone who is 35-42, athletic, college-educated, makes over $100,000 a year and doesnâ€™t smokeâ€”specify exactly thatâ€”in a big dating service, youâ€™ll still get a lot of matches and youâ€™ll be able to focus on the best fit prospects.

2. Photos really matter, but lots of people (men and women) donâ€™t want to put them up. If your hesitation in adding photos has to do with privacy, consider only using services that require all searches to have their own profiles (this cuts down on gawkers). If your issue is that you donâ€™t want people to look at you and send you emails based on your appearance, consider creating your profile, adding pictures, but then making it unsearchable--this would allow you to share your profile and photos with people who you contact and who respond to you, while limiting the amount of contacts youâ€™ll receive. And if your issue is that you donâ€™t have any good pictures, fix thatâ€”find a friend or get a photographer who can take some decent shots.

3. Anyone with only one picture posted probably doesnâ€™t look like that anymore. More likely, they are fatter, older, grayerâ€”or look significantly different from every other angle.

4. Online daters have three agesâ€”the one they post on their photo, the age of the person they want to date, and the age they really are, which is harder to discover than the size of their mortgage.

5. People donâ€™t always want exactly what they say they wantâ€”or, appearance really does matter for some guys. For many men, their dateâ€™s appearance reflects how they want to be perceivedâ€”the more a man describes his income and his status as reasons to date him, the more likely he is to want a traditionally *pretty* partner as evidence heâ€™s arrived.

6. As you go down the socio-economic ladder, menâ€™s appearance preferences seem to broaden to include heavier womenâ€”I have no idea whether this is a this is who I can get or a this is what I want scenario-or whether tastes just broaden when people have less status (or are less status conscious.)

7. Not everyone is honest. If someone who contacts you has a profile that says he is interested in women ages 18-99, with many of their other desired characteristics set to Any, any, anyâ€”they could be a scammer or a spammer and you should stay clear or proceed with great caution. And if theyâ€™re eager to get your personal email address right away and get off the dating site, be cautious-that's iffy-I don't share email addresses till I have a better sense of someone.

8. Consider how much you want to give people who contact you the benefit of the doubtâ€”or not. When I started online dating, I was eager to scrutinize each profile and find people who seemed possible. Now, a year or so later, I only look for people who seem probableâ€”there are just too many people out there to wonder if someone whoâ€™s on the edge of what Iâ€™m seeking is a possible fit-I save those corner cases for the guys I meet first in real life, not online.

9. Understand that the people you meet online are mostly strangers; donâ€™t expect perfect behavior. Unlike social networks, where you and 1,000+ strangers are connected through friends, online dating services trade off networking for privacy. This means that while itâ€™s great that guy youâ€™re chatting with doesnâ€™t really know who you are and where you live, it also means you donâ€™t share the network of friends and family connections that requires him to treat you well. Out of this come two lessons: First, if you meet someone online who is connected to you in real life, give them extra possibility pointsâ€”a shared context is an excellent factor in predicting compatibility; second, donâ€™t be surprised if people disappear or stop taking calls after one, two, or even three datesâ€”the fact you have no shared context except for some talk and a deep knowledge of Starbucks means that if they want to disengage, they have no inherent incentives to treat you well as they peel off.

10. IMing, emailing, and even talking on the phone donâ€™t reveal whether you and Date Boy have that elusive thing called â€œChemistryâ€ so get your meet on if things seem promising.

11. Men who meet you for coffee and donâ€™t offer a business card, home address, or info other than email and/or cell phone are signaling theyâ€™ve got something to hide.

12. Itâ€™s amazingly common for online daters to start off sharing a false name and a dummy email addressâ€”but during date one, when you meet, if you seem to like one another, you should both come clean. If you get the sense youâ€™re not getting a real name or the complete picture, bail right then and nowâ€”always listen to your gut and donâ€™t worry about what the guy might thinkâ€”you donâ€™t know him well enough yet that it should even matter.

13. Assume anyone who is attractive, sane and engaging is very likely to currently be attached to someone else to some degree and theyâ€™re most likely shopping for better and more appropriate possibilitiesâ€”just like you are.

14. Sometimes the frogs are really cute. During my online dating journey, Iâ€™ve meet a number of interesting, appealing men, who were smart, sensitive, and warm-but who just didnâ€™t do it for me as a relationship possibility. If you focus on trying to make yourself make it work with one of these guys, youâ€™re not making the time to discover someone who really feels right.

15. Itâ€™s supposed to be a journey of discovery, try to keep it fun. This could mean both appreciating everyone you talk to and varying those first date meeting spots so itâ€™s not the 10,000 cup of coffee, or the same old same old bar. Thereâ€™s no reason you canâ€™t meet for a walk in a public park, or a stroll through town-sometimes having a gentle activity takes some of the pressure off and makes it easier to talk.

What are your top tips for successful online dating?

Iâ€™ll be writing a relationship column 2X a month and would love to hear questions, ideas, suggestions, stories and more from you all.

Email me at susanmernit@yahoo.com, or post comments here.