Dating Online Insights

Dating Online 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. Online dating may not result in you winning your life partner, but it may be an interesting diversion from all those hard to believe eHarmony.com and Match.com Television ads that try to convince you about how lonely you are during late night movies. 

Resulting Dating Insights
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”. 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. In conventional dating situations, other than blind dates, you have some concept of how a person interacts with others because you usually have a chance to observe them in action from afar. It is one of the reasons why blind dates get such a bad rap, because you do not know what to expect, nor can you prepare yourself. Online dating does allow some interaction, but meeting in person for the first time has more of the hallmarks of a blind date than it does in conventional dating.

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 If you are a woman, just remember that men see and assume – most do not read much, they look and evaluate visually for the most part, so keep the words to a minimum. 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 men and women, keep the profile words short, sweet and to the point. If you are lucky, you will find a person with a really funny and offbeat sense of humor that meshes with your own sense of silliness. Fully employ the anonymous email and chat facilities of the site before attempting to meet in real life. Do not be too verbose in you profile.  Your online profile is a 30 second teaser commercial, not an in depth user manual.

3)     Men without jobs have little or no traction on dating sites that are focused on long-term relationships. In their heads, women are looking for winners, not losers. On the other hand, if you connect to a woman's soul, they will often overlook the fact that you are stock shelves in a grocery store, as long as you come across as trying to better yourself.  Keep your personal financial status out of the conversation if at all possible. If the person keeps insisting on focussing 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. 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. You will find however, that men almost never tell the full truth about their body weight. Almost all men show themselves as athletic, or average, almost never as overweight in any manner.

5)     You must have contact with a person for love to develop. You cannot really be in love with someone that you have only talked to on a computer. You must meet in person for love to happen.  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. If you take longer than that to get up the courage, you will likely miss the boat anyway. So if you are too cautious in online dating, you will most certainly fail.

6)     There is a bit of stigma associated with dating sites. 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 over 60 million people in North America have used online dating sites in the last few years, and there are just not that many losers and predators in North America. You are likely at more risk of being stalked on facebook as you are on a modern dating site. 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)    Online dating sites are an extremely powerful social tool that brings people together who would never normally have ever met each other. Since everyone is there for the same reason, and since it is possible to simultaneously be interacting with several people at once, you really do have a much better chance of finding someone that you are truly compatible with for the long term. Online dating is actually the best forum for people to meet when they are just too busy, too tied up, or just not inclined to be wandering around bar hopping or social clubs trying to meet people. Online dating is the wave of the present and future if you want to find successful and interesting people. 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