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.

Dating Pitfalls #3 – Appearing to be Something You Aren’t

There is a natural tendency for people entering a new relationship to try and make themselves appear to be something more than they believe themselves to be. The thought process behind this is fairly rational, up to a point. The attitude that many people have goes something like the following: “He/she cannot possibly be interested in me for who I am. I’m too boring – I need to appear more interesting.”. Although this is a perfectly common rationale, it misses one key point – he or she clearly is interested. Any pretence is unnecessary. If you want to be more interesting, it needs to be a decision made for you. Only then can you fully commit to it and do it properly.

The problem with artifice and pretence is that they require a lot of work in order to be convincing. Honesty really is the best policy and not only because it is morally the right thing, but also because honesty is the natural thing. Telling the truth relies only on remembering what you have done. Lying relies on remembering what you have said, without the concrete memories to back it up. Sooner or later, you forget what lies you have told and you trip yourself up.

Being honest is rewarded with trust. If you tell a lie and are caught out, you lose a bit of trust, and once that goes it almost never returns. If you are later suspected of having done something of which you are truly innocent, your previous lie will work against your partner believing you. So even if it is only because of how it may come back to haunt you, be honest and be yourself.