A Beginner’s Guide to Internet Dating

The stress and strain of everyday life makes it more and more difficult to meet new partners. We have little time to spend searching for the ‘one’ or even the ‘right now”’ and resort to more and more remote ways to meet prospective partners. With the advent of high-speed broadband and laptops, the newish craze of Internet dating has really taken off – everyone’s at it these day. Whether you visit chat rooms or join an online agency the choices are vast catering to all sexual orientations, practices or religious beliefs!

Having made your choice you then face the social minefield of how to describe yourself, which profile photos to choose and what information you wish to make available. Do you go with a realistic view of yourself in the hope that someone will see your inner beauty, or do you pick the best shot and hope that by the time you meet your beau, personality alone will see you through? The key things to remember are to avoid the clichés of ‘GSOH’ and ‘cuddly’ in favour of funny and larger than life - and always remember if in doubt, embrace the cheesiness and just, er, LOL.

Once you’ve set up your profile, many women just wait and see who bites, but why not peruse the site and make contact with all those you like? After all, the worst that can happen is that they fail to contact you back. This is the true benefit of being online rather than meeting face to face.

Loosely speaking those online can be divided into three categories - the beautiful people, the normal people and frankly the oddballs. Most stay within their own sphere occasionally venturing out of the box to terrorise individuals in other categories. Each group has its traits:

The beautiful people

• Fantastic photo
• Occasionally online
• Into sports and partying

The normal people
• Okay picture
• Available most evenings
• Into life experiences, with realistic interests

The others
• Normal to odd picture
• Online a lot
• Various interests trying to attract as many hits as possible

The real trick is to attract like-minded interesting/ intelligent people without the risk of cyber stalkers or serial daters. Without the benefit of being face to face and being anonymous it is clearly much harder to get a feel for prospective partners. The odd balls really take advantage of this by initially appearing normal then becoming all those things you despise - the leech, the depressive and the all-out desperado. The experience includes the demands to chat despite rejection,, followed by continual email requests. The beautiful people tend to stick together which gives us mere mortals more opportunity to meet a partner - just don’t expect to hook up with an Adonis!

Having made contact with a seemingly suitable individual how are you supposed to proceed? Online etiquette dictates that you should chat, flirt and agree to meet. This is of course provided that you have ascertained the other person is not crazy, rude or in some other way unsuitable.

Chatting seems to mostly take place late at night and a sure-fire way to tell if someone is Internet dating is the tired look they wear during the week when apparently having a quiet social life. There are those who stoop to the classic chat up lines - best avoided if you plan to actually have someone accept a conversation! The best way to make first contact is to ask after their day and maybe comment on an interest they purport to have, if all else eludes you a simple “hey” will do. Chatting can be great fun exchanging witty quips or just talking about your day. There is ample opportunity to meet new people from all walks of life and even to be someone you could not be when standing in person.

When you have decided to meet, choose a place that allows further conversation and possibly an early escape route. Remember these are strangers, however well you think you may know the person.

What to wear? The average person just needs to tread the fine line between being overly exposed and prudish. Ultimately being yourself is probably the best policy even if it is harder when/if you are rejected - obviously if you have lied on your profile what to wear may be the least of your worries! Remember to thank your date at the end of the night and you can always walk away if they are truly hideous.

While meeting people is the eventual goal of internet dating, finding someone whom you both click with and find attractive is not as easy as the websites would have you believe. However with over twenty-two million people in the UK admitting to using internet dating sites, our perfect matches should be out there – go get them!