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| Dating Guide for Seniors
February 3, 2009
Love and romance never grow old. Are you over age 65,
single and thinking about entering the dating world? Are you not sure
what to expect? Do you want to know the secrets and shortcuts to
successful dating? Then, The Senior's Guide to Dating (Again) may be
the book you...more
Free online dating and the movies
February 2, 2009
Online personal ads and the matchmaking experience brings to mind a movie I saw. In Little Black Book, Brittany Murphy's character engages in
some high-tech snooping on her new boyfriend. Based on this scenario
Date.com, an online dating service, asked its
members: Have you ever snooped on your partner? Women...more
Love on the net. It was going so well...what happe
February 1, 2009
Dating personals are a great start, but there seems to be a new phenomenon of late whereby a first date
seems to go extremely well and may well lead on to a second date and
then all of a sudden it's over. Why would this happen when
everything seemed so...more
Falling in love online - A Practical Guide
February 1, 2009
Matchmaker services on the internet are great. More and
more people these days are finding love online be it due to time
constraints, unsociable working hours or simply the death of the
community, but one thing is for sure, this is the fastest growing way
to meet potential partners, however...more
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| Falling in love online - A Practical Guide
February 1, 2009
Matchmaker services on the internet are great. More and
more people these days are finding love online be it due to time
constraints, unsociable working hours or simply the death of the
community, but one thing is for sure, this is the fastest growing way
to meet potential partners, however it has it's pitfalls. Whilst
online dating agencies may offer a quick way to meeting these
partners, Instant Messaging using programs such as ICQ, MSN, or Odigo
offer a lightning speed way of getting very intimate, very quickly.
It is so quick because you can be just who you want to be when you
are chatting online, no one will see you blush if you say something
wrong and most importantly, it allows you to take risks that you
would never dream of taking in the real world. The most powerful
aspect of this all though is that we paint our own picture in our
minds of what the other person is without all those non-verbal cues
such as facial expressions and mannerisms that subconsciously in the
real world tell us valuable things about the person. In short, with
our own beautifully created perception of the person, fall for them.
So why do we as intelligent human beings end up falling for people we
have never even met before? The answer is simplewe want to be in
love, we so want to tell ourselves that the searching for our soul
mate is over and with that we picture our lives in a blissful sea of
coupledom, sharing our lives together. Sadly it is this haste to end
our single lives that can lead to disappointment as quickly as it
started.
Meeting Your online love for the
first time
Sooner or later the question of
actually meeting in person will come up and whilst many people would
say it's better to take your time and let the online relationship
develop, I strongly believe that the sooner you do it, the better. If
you leave it too long, then the impression you have built up of this
person will be so deep rooted that your expectations will be far too
high and you will be set for disappointment. The other point is if
you have been a lot more confident chatting than you would be in real
life, how are you going to be able to keep up that persona? You may
end up competing with yourself. So assuming that you are both happy
with the length of time the romance has been going on for and you
decide to meet, what will it be like? It will be quite strange to
begin with. You may find that although you have been up most nights
until 5 in the morning chatting, you find it hard to talk about
things in the flesh. This is perfectly natural as the two of you are
having to almost re-learn the parameters of the relationship and
digest the visual cues that our mannerisms and facial expressions
provide. It will be a nerve racking time as we have to decide there
and then if these mannerisms and even physical odours are compatible
with us. If you can pass that first test, then things get a lot
easier. Do however be very careful if you are traveling abroad to
meet someone because if things fail at this first hurdle, then you
are totally stuck on your own in a foreign country.
Passed first base, what next?
Having
gone through this initial nerve racking first meeting, there is often
a huge temptation to revert back to an 'online relationship' as it
feels so much more comfortable, but I cannot stress enough to resist
that temptation. Slip back into the old online chatting routine and
the online persona won't die. The transition from online to offline
relationship can be extremely difficult but at all costs, you must
get to know the real person from a new offline perspective and kill
off any false impressions you may have had about them online. Going
back to the online chatting routine may make you feel all warm and
fuzzy again, but it can be an unrealistic perception of who the
person really is.
In Summary
This all may seem a little negative and in some cases may not
even apply, but overall, forewarned is forearmed. There are of course
many people who have made a success of their relationship by Instant
Messaging and some are even married now but it really pays to be
aware of how feelings can be distorted by the shield of an anonymous
nickname and a computer monitor.
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