The Drawbacks of Online Dating

It is difficult to meet the right person in this day and age, and is not made easier by the pressures placed on us not only by friends and family, but also by most television shows and print media, a fair percentage of songs, books and films, and almost every advertisement you see. It is easy to understand why people will look to the Internet to solve the problem. Being able to use the Internet to look for love removes a lot of the hurdles from the process. However, the process is far from foolproof.

Even before Internet dating became a popular method of looking for the right person, there was a swell of opposition to it. Someone who appeared charming and well-mannered on the Internet could, it was argued, be horrible in person. The Internet allows a certain amount of your character to stay hidden. The old cliché of a 53-year-old man posing as a 21-year-old may be a well-worn one, but only because there have been cases where that exact thing has happened – and worse things than that are not unknown.

Even if a potential dating partner does not deliberately mislead with their profile, they can turn out to be missing a certain spark “in the flesh”, sometimes because their personality comes across better when they have time to think about their responses. Some people are just shy. If you persist with them, they may come out of their shell – but a judgement call has to be made at some point, and you cannot wait forever for that glowing personality to replicate itself in the here and now.

Speed dating

There is such a high level of importance placed on finding the “right” partner these days that a wave of different dating services have opened up to allow people to try and find someone. Among these services are several that enable the individual to “vet” possible suitors before they actually go on a date, the theory being that you can find out in advance if you have enough in common to make dating worthwhile. Of these methods, one of the most popular is “speed dating”. This is, in short, a way of meeting several potential suitors in one night for a controlled period of time (from three to five minutes, usually).

In the course of a speed dating evening, depending on the turnout, a person can meet anything from a few to around twenty people in whom they might be interested. In theory, for a mixed-gender speed dating event, there should be an equal number of men and women, and the attendees of a particular gender will all be sat at fixed tables. They will then be visited in turn by possible dating partners, and have a short amount of time to chat about whatever interests them. At the close of each “visit”, an individual will either put a tick or a cross next to the name of their “date”. The following day they will feed their responses into the speed-dating website, and any coupling that gave each other a tick will then be able to arrange another date. From that point, it is all up to them.

The Advantages of Blind Dating

Although many people consider blind dating to be outdated in a world where the technological revolution has made close scrutiny of other people a matter of a few clicks of a mouse, it is still a fairly common way of embarking on a dating relationship. While not everyone will be enamored with the idea of meeting and dating someone whose only immediate “selling point” is a mutual friend, there are many who will trust their friend’s judgement without question – and often it works to their advantage.

No-one knows us as well as our friends. They spend time with us and they see things in us that we do not even see ourselves. As tricky as it can be to judge how well two people will get on, it is made immeasurably easier by knowing a few of their quirks, their likes and dislikes, and how they will react to the more outlandish sides of a person’s character. It is hard to ever judge a perfect fit, but few things in this world are 100% perfect, and it makes sense that a friend will be able to judge what will work for you.

At the end of the day, a relationship forming depends on two individuals finding each other’s company pleasant enough to want to make it a more regular occurrence. Such a bond cannot be invented or forced, but if anyone can spot the potential for it to form, it is someone who knows both parties well. The rest of the work is for the couple themselves.

Blind Dating – is true love blind?

The practice of blind dating is something which has been popular in many societies for many years now. TV shows have been based on the concept. It forms a staple part of the entertainment industry, with many sitcoms featuring a blind date, usually an extremely bad one, on average once every couple of series. It is still reasonably common practice, however, because individuals often enjoy match making between single friends who do not know each other. It starts with “I think x would really like y, they have so much in common”, and can end in wedding bells or bitter tears – or many points in between.

The premise behind blind dating is that a mutual friend sees two of their friends who are single and available and unlucky in love. They seem to have interests in common and personalities that are – more or less – compatible. None of this guarantees that the couple will hit it off, of course. A relationship needs to have the “X” factor, a little touch of chemistry that makes the conversation flow naturally, makes each joke funny and lets a connection happen without being forced.

The “blind” aspect of the date is that, usually, the individuals will not have met before, or even seen one another, except possibly in photographs. Despite having a friend in common, there is no guarantee that they will get along. If they do get along, however, it works out well for their friends, who get to spend time with two people they like without having to travel as much.

Disadvantages of speed dating

Looking for the right partner can be an incredibly tricky process. There are many people who think that there is one perfect person for all of us in the world – so if you never meet that person, or you meet them and it goes wrong, you have no hope. This is plainly wrong, though, because the world simply is not that ordered. It still does not stop a lot of people from losing hope, and this is why even targeted dating services can be more hindrance than help in many ways. Thinking about it realistically, how certain can you be that attending a speed dating event will bring you into contact with someone you will love, and who loves you?

Attending a speed dating event can bring you into contact with a wide range of people, some of whom you may get along with. However, looking at it objectively, there is no reason why the ideal person for you, or one of them, will be among a field that can be as small as five people. Coming back from a speed dating event not having met anyone you would want to see again – or finding that the one or more that you had a good feeling about did not reciprocate that feeling – can be pretty upsetting.

In the end, is a period of time that can be as little as three minutes long really enough time to get a feel for what someone is really like? The event can fall on a day when you simply were not at your best, so if it doesn’t happen for you, you should not lose faith in yourself.

Online dating – turn on, log in , find love

The advance of the Internet in our society has had many positive and many negative effects. Although it allows us to make contact with people on the other side of the world as easily as talking to a friend who lives just across the street, it also has been known to introduce a layer of insulation between people, almost putting up barriers to real, substantial connection and human interaction. All of this depends on the individual, and one person’s positive experience is another’s nightmare. At the base of it, only you can decide what you get from the experience.

Online dating has grown as an option for people searching for love in the past decade. Most usually this will be operated through a dating website. To use a dating website effectively you must create a profile which explains a little bit about you – your age, interests, a bit about your daily life and your hopes for the dating experience. You should also include a picture – in which your face can be seen and you are not doing anything potentially off-putting. Many people will surf through tens of profiles that they do not like before selecting one they do like. It pays to maximize your chances.

When you happen upon a profile for someone who appears to have dating potential, you can send them a message and if they reply, you can begin to communicate via e-mail, then possibly by telephone, leading up to a potential meeting. This needs to happen at a pace that suits both parties however – one being too pushy will crush all possibilities before they even begin.