January is a boom month for online dating, but certain irksome recurring phrases might put off potential mates.
A Magazine article listing 20 cliches people write on their profiles attracted a huge response from readers.
Here are a few of the most unpopular expressions.
"Looking to make friends"
Olive from Boston says it's always funny to see people say they are "looking to make friends" on a dating website: "If you were looking to make friends then a club or interest group website would suffice." To go on a dating site for the same purpose "seems odd".
Joe from Harrow agrees friendship is not what dating sites are for. This phrase always prompts him to ask: "Does this person really know what they want?"
Of course, it could just be an attempt to appear coy. But Teresa Bentley from Horsham warns this could backfire: "If you're an adult and you haven't got any friends by now, then that suggests personality flaws."
"Hello, is it me you're looking for?"
Craig Smith from Glasgow has just got to let you know how much he dislikes this line from the Lionel Richie hit.
"It's one of the most repeated straplines/headline descriptions for a female profile that I have come across, and that really bugs me now," he says.
"It's been done to death so that I am now put off whenever I see it."
"Looking for my knight in shining armour"
Sean from Aberdeen argues that this is "not only outdated in modern day life but also a much-misunderstood myth".
He asks: "Are these really the guys a modern woman wants? Did Sir Lancelot ever do the washing up? Or hoovering?"
He urges women to ditch this stereotype and seek out "caring" men.
It's not just Sean who feels this way. Those seeking such a boyfriend are living in "fantasy land", says someone who calls himself Sir Steven Mountjoy from Wolverhampton.
"No baggage, please!"
This is both the most unrealistic and frequently-repeated phrase Melissa from London says she has seen on online dating wish lists.
"The human being with no baggage does not exist, so presumably the people who write this aren't actually ready to date anyone, or else they are signing up for perpetual disappointment when all their dates turn out to be real people who have had real lives," she says. "What we should be looking for is someone whose baggage is compatible with our own baggage."
Cathy Bartholomew from Portsmouth agrees: "Most men, it seems, won't consider a woman with anything more than an overnight case.
"Depending on your definition, this likely to be unachievable in my age group (early 50s) unless you've been in a coma for half a century."
"I don't bite, unless you ask me to"
It makes Gemma Webster from Oldbury cringe. She worked for an internet dating agency for three years approving profiles.
"It's amazing that six years later people are still using the same phrases," she says.
Its variant "I don't bite, hard ;-)" is a particular bugbear of Adam from Manchester. "This one makes my skin crawl!" he says.
"If you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best"
The complete quote by Marilyn Monroe is: "I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best." Watson Brown from Aberdeen complains that too many women "feel compelled to regurgitate" it.
It's so widely used that it has lost all meaning, complains Leo from London. He urges online daters: "Be yourself not someone else. Particularly not someone who died before you were born."
Ben Joyce from London doesn't approve, either: "If in your one free text field you can't say something about yourself without resorting to quotations then it doesn't bode well for first date conversation."
"I don't take life too seriously"
Joe from Harrow says that someone who posts this is effectively telling would-be partners: "I want someone as directionless as me."
Claire from London suspects men who advertise they are looking for someone like this mean that they will treat you poorly and "you can't get annoyed, because you're not meant to take yourself too seriously".
Ady Miles from Wednesbury just doesn't think it is possible. "Can you ever take life too seriously? We all want someone who's fun, but aren't we all being serious about looking for someone special?"
"I work hard, play hard"
This is the most irritating and off-putting phrase for Kalvin Chapman from Manchester. He states on his profile that if you have used it that you are unlikely to get along with him. "What an absolutely ludicrous thing to say. It also smacks of the 1980s more than anything," he says.
"My children are everything to me"
Chris in Staffordshire, who is also a parent, complains that this just goes without saying. "You don't need to spell it out," he says.
"It smacks of 'My children are everything, so you are competing for second place... Oh, sorry... The cat, I forgot the cat... So you are in for a shout of being my third priority - along with my car - so woo me!'. Way to make someone feel special!"
"I'm bubbly"
Damien from London says "bubbly" is the single most annoying word anyone can use to describe themselves on a dating site. "What does that even mean?"
Dean from Rugby has an idea.
He offers a translation: "'I'm bubbly and fun' - I'm loud and have a laugh like a foghorn."
Original Article: BBC News Magazine - By Clare Spencer
From virtual smiles to break-ups by text, the casual hook-up to commitment, Beck Eleven asks if romance is what it used to be.
Courting is one of those cutesy, quaint words that no longer fits comfortably into our lexicon. It conjures images of couples holding hands on a love seat in an age of sex-free innocence. We still search for ‘‘The One’’ but these days there’s nothing gasp-worthy about keeping a friend (or two) with benefits, or falling in love with your significant other over the internet.
We marry later, if at all, and divorce at a more frequent rate. We don’t have to live together to be deemed ‘‘serious’’ and – get this – even gay people get a marriage certificate in New Zealand now.
Looks and personality remain high on the checklist for a lover but we judge potential paramours on the content of their text messages rather than conversation skills.
We don’t have to sit by the phone waiting for that precious call because we take our phones with us – although the mobile phone does have its perils. One Christchurch woman told Your Weekend she swapped phone numbers with a man via a personals ad on Gumtree.co.nz. Almost immediately the text messages turned lurid, asking if she would accompany him to a swingers club that would not accept lone male patrons.
The text message exchanges, she says, did not last long.
Aucklander Rachel Goodchild was living in North Canterbury when she started having online conversations with a work colleague based in Wales.
‘‘We had a real connection and although I knew we would never be in a relationship, it made me realise you could get to know someone well online,’’ she says. So she joined a dating site and being an ‘‘A-type personality’’ made finding love a work-like business.
‘‘I went on 12 dates in 14 days. Some were just so crazy and weird, I just thought ‘I need to write a book’.’’ Using her own experiences and those of fellow internet daters, she compiled Eightyeight dates: the perilous joys of internet dating.
‘‘From one guy, I was getting text messages that were really thoughtful but they took a long time to get back to me. I just thought he was busy but when we met he had a serious head injury. I think he should have been honest because it was very obvious when we met why he took so long to reply.’’
Years of intermittent dating disasters did not put her off and today she is happily dating a man she met online.
‘‘The key was that I changed inside. I thought about my values and what I really wanted. I slowed everything down, spoke to one person at a time and didn’t meet anyone unless I really wanted to.
Yvee*, a Christchurch woman in her early 30s, says she was only looking for ‘‘a bit of fun’’ when she joined an online dating site.
‘‘I’d become sick of looking at the same local guys so I was looking at men in the North Island when I saw this one. He liked cooking and stuff and I thought he sounded alright.
‘‘We emailed and sent a lot of messages and eventually spoke on the phone.’’
He was coming to Christchurch for work so they decided to meet face-to-face.
‘‘Then stupid me said: ‘I have a spare room so you can stay here’. He arrived, we put his bag in the spare room and went out for drinks and then dinner.
‘‘After that we went for a walk and he held my hand and I had to use that line ‘I don’t like you like that’.
‘‘Then he told me the story of how his wife had left him and he started crying. He left and went out drinking somewhere. I got strange texts from him until 3am when I finally replied and said I’d left his bags on the front doorstep. I never heard from him again.’’
Today’s lovers get to know one another better by stalking a Facebook page and we accept that a smiley face in your inbox means the relationship is progressing well. But by the same token, when love falters, that same inbox might carry a break-up text. When it comes to love in the modern climate, it’s a new world but not exactly a brave one.
Angela* was newly arrived in Christchurch when she was set up on a blind date by a friend and the pair ‘‘friended’’ each other over Facebook before agreeing to a dinner date. After four happy months, the new couple were regularly spending four or five nights a week together.
‘‘One Monday, about 5pm, I texted him to enquire about our evening plans. Instead of the chirpy reply I was expecting, I received a message starting with him expressing uncertainty about his feelings towards me. The message went on to say I deserved better, we were missing a spark and other awkward cliches.’’
The text hit her ‘‘like a frisbee to the face’’ and triggered a state of shock that lasted for months.
‘‘My emotions would overwhelm me at any time. I drove my friends mad by constantly analysing the relationship and the fallout. But time passed and the hurt subsided. Eventually I considered myself very lucky for escaping a person who could treat others with such contempt.’’
In a column on ‘‘hooking up’’, Australian writer Nicole Haddow wrote about a booze-fuelled party after which a few of her single friends slept together.
‘‘This is love Gen Y-style: no flowers, no strings, a lot of repressed emotion.’’
Haddow quoted a study published last year by the American Psychological Association called Sexual Hookup Culture: A Review. It talked about casual, uncommitted relationships and said young people were struggling to communicate their true desires for fulfilling relationships.
In one survey of 507 undergraduate students, only 4.4 per cent of men and 8.2 per cent of women expected a traditional romantic relationship with a person they’d casually hooked up with, but 29 per cent of men and 42.9 per cent of women ideally wanted to be in one.
The study also listed emotions experienced by men and women who had casual sex – everything from shame and regret to happiness and pride.
Dr Ekant Veer is an associate professor of marketing at Canterbury University, specialising in social media. When it comes to contemporary dating, Veer says things kicked off in the 1990s as online dating became more popular, but it carried a stigma.
‘‘We used to roll our eyes and think those people couldn’t meet someone in real life, but that has really changed,’’ he says. ‘‘Now we judge those people as more willing to be open and to engage.’’
However, it’s not just the changing nature of technology that has dictated how we meet partners, it is also the changing nature of work and how busy our lives have become.
‘‘In the past there were more formalised places to meet partners – organised dances, regular parties, formal balls, bars that were known for meeting singles – physical spaces that were known as hook-up spaces. That doesn’t happen so much any more. These days that space is on the internet, so you can find it with little effort.’’
Once a relationship has been established, the next step is maintaining it, something technology has aided.
‘‘So if there is a lot of physical distance, whether you use Skype, Facebook, or Twitter or text, these things make you feel connected to the person you are away from.’’
But those same technologies that act as relationship glue can also be the agent for undoing. Couples who initiate through social media might enjoy witty banter online but struggle for fluent conversation face-to-face.
The third stage of living a relationship online is the break-up, Veer says. In a gentler time, we would do this in person. Now some people take the easy option and do it over text, or, as he has heard, simply by changing their relationship status on Facebook.
‘‘People feel protected behind a screen, they are immune to the other person’s feelings. The other strange thing that happens is that after the break-up, they refuse to de-friend or unfollow their ex, so they can keep an eye on them and who they’re dating next.
‘‘A break-up cliche used to be about dividing the record collection, now it’s splitting the friends on Facebook.’’
We also like to watch break-ups unfold via public social-media fights between disintegrating couples because we are ‘‘a twisted bunch’’, according to Veer.
Wellington couple Laura McQuillan and Jay Lee might have met the ‘‘old-fashioned way’’, but theirs is a fairly modern love story. Says McQuillan: ‘‘I saw him in a bar, thought he looked wicked and went over to talk to him.’’ They swapped numbers and went on a date.
At that point, the 26-year-old journalist had no idea of Lee’s surname so she was unable to search him on Google. The date went well, they agreed to see each other again and so they became Facebook friends.
‘‘I added him not long after our first date. I guess it’s just the way you find out more about someone’s life now instead of asking intrusive questions. You find out whether you’re compatible with their social, political, religious views, maybe how they interact with other people.’’
McQuillan has quite an online footprint. On Twitter she has more than 3000 followers and almost 40,000 tweets.
‘‘I think Jay thinks it’s kind of funny the way I’ve grown on an online profile but I do keep the really personal stuff out of Twitter. I talk about funny stuff that’s happened to me, but I steer clear of my problems or my life.’’
Her partner, Lee, is connected through social media and reckons he’d check two or three of his accounts – a choice of Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr and Twitter – two or three times a day. The 24-year-old athlete had not crossed paths with McQuillan before they dated.
‘‘I think that’s one of the reasons we work so well. Our friendship circles didn’t overlap, we had no mutual friends, so we started completely fresh. There wasn’t anyone telling me something they thought I should know about her.’’
The couple, who have been together for about nine months, have no set rule around their social media posts but Lee says they are ‘‘like-minded’’ on this front.
‘‘I’m still a private person. We say in our Facebook profiles that we are ‘in a relationship’ but not who that person is.
I’m open about myself but not when it comes to my relationship, people don’t have to know.’’
*Names changed where asterisked.
Original Article: Stuff.co.nz - By Beck Eleven
January is a boom month for the online dating industry as millions turn to the internet to find love. But composing a profile that makes you sound fascinating and unique is harder than it sounds.
Post-Christmas to the Wednesday after Valentine's Day is the peak season for dating websites, according to Plenty of Fish's Sarah Gooding.
In the process, millions of people will try to summarise their characters in just a few paragraphs. But anyone who browses a few profiles will quickly become very familiar with a handful of phrases.
I'm new to this, so here goes...
This betrays its author's discomfort about using an internet dating site, says William Doherty, professor of family social science at the University of Minnesota.
For him, it shows that there is still a stigma to online dating.
"When people are in a setting where they feel there's some stigma, they like to talk as if they are unfamiliar with it," he says.
I love laughing
Dating coach Laurie Davis loves laughing at this generic assertion. She is paid to rewrite people's dating profiles and this is one of the phrases she sees - and urges her clients to ditch - time and time again.
"Doesn't everyone love laughing?" she says. "They are trying to show that they are fun and that they have a light-hearted side, but it means nothing."
Other meaningless phrases, she says, include: "I'm a glass half-full kind of person." Then there's: "I try to see the best in every situation." But it's highly unlikely that someone looking to attract a mate would ever say: "I try to see the worst in every situation."
Davis says the problem with phrases like these is that they don't help with the main purpose of the profile - they're not "prompts" that act as conversation-starters.
"You can't start a conversation by saying, 'I see you love laughing. I love laughing too.' If you love comedy shows, though, that's a conversation-starter," she says.
I like going out and staying in
"In other words, you like existing," jokes serial online dater Willard Foxton.
The anonymous "single mother on the edge", who writes Gappy Tales, writes in her blog that she would "take a vow of celibacy" if she saw this phrase one more time. "Why do perfectly intelligent people write that?" she asks.
Covering too many bases is a particular bugbear of Ben England. The 28-year-old marketing director was only on Guardian Soulmates for one month before he found his girlfriend. But he had enough time to be irked by descriptions in profiles that were consciously trying to please everyone.
In his blog, Everyday Heartbreak, he takes particular displeasure at someone who lists liking going to public lectures at the London School of Economics - along with stripy tops.
Looking for my partner in crime
Some people may even go as far as to specify they are after a Bonnie to their Clyde - or vice versa.
This is an attempt to be light-hearted, says Doherty. "It's not heavy, it's saying 'I'm a normal person, I'm interesting, I'm low-key - I don't have all these deep needs that are going to bother you.' It's a way of saying, 'Hey, I'm a jolly fellow' but there aren't a lot of ways of saying that."
It keeps popping up because most people have a limited vocabulary for expressing what they want romantically, he adds.
I'm here for some good banter
"They are saying, 'I don't need anything deep,'" says Doherty. "I'm having fun - so to say 'I'm not desperate, I'm low-key, I'm safe.'"
"It's all a way to say I'm not going to be a burden to you, to push too hard to get serious too fast."
My friends say I'm… (plus list of adjectives)
Lists of descriptors such as smart, attractive, romantic, thoughtful, trustworthy, sexy, passionate, fearless, honest or friendly are labelled "empty adjectives" by dating coach Erika Ettin.
She says on the advice blog for the dating site Plenty of Fish that the problem is that these words "can't be proven until someone gets to know you".
"This is where the concept of 'show, don't tell' really comes into play. For example, rather than saying that you're funny, say something that you find funny."
"A list of adjectives doesn't mean very much," says Davis. People may say they're funny, but how? Is that humour going to resonate with a potential partner? People say they're kind but unless they demonstrate that, it's meaningless. "It's better to show it in actions," Davis explains.
Davis also takes issue with starting sentences with "My friends say..."
"That doesn't speak very confidently of you," she says. "It seems like you're not comfortable about yourself."
I like walks in the park, watching movies and going to the pub on Sunday for roast dinner
Along with its cousin - "I like Sunday brunch in the pub with the papers and trawling round bric-a-brac markets" - this is a potentially bland description of weekend leisure time.
Doherty thinks this kind of stuff is appropriated from romantic comedies, novels and reading other people's profiles. "It's all saying, 'I'm a regular person.'"
My friends (and family) are really important to me
England highlights this as one of his top meaningless phrases. "It tells you absolutely nothing about someone. Find me someone that doesn't think their friends are important to them," he says.
His point is that far too many people put their likes as things that it's very rare to dislike. "One put that she likes sunshine. Really?"
My life is fab. I just need someone to share it with
Usually accompanied by a fulsome description of a high-powered, achievement-filled and cosmopolitan life.
Doherty says this is signalling that "I'm not desperate, I'm not needy, I'm not lonely. I'm a very happy, full person. My already rich life would be enhanced".
He says people who say phrases like this are trying to say "being on here does not mean that I have deficits as a person". The reason people feel the need to state how good their life is is because they still feel uncomfortable being involved in online dating, Doherty suggests.
I'm easy-going
Variations on this are "I'm laid back" and "I'm down to earth." In his list of 10 things he hates about Plenty of Fish profiles, Greg Hendricks writes that these are so common that he ignores profiles that include them.
"What are any of these even supposed to mean? These stock traits are in so many profiles, I practically skip right over them."
Plus, who would ever describe themselves otherwise, says Foxton. "No-one thinks, 'I'm really uptight.'"
I like to stay in with a glass of wine and a DVD
A variant on this is "I like cosying up in front of the fire". It's a phrase that irks Match.com's chief scientist Helen Fisher. She says people should avoid it.
"These are things that we see in the movies. It seems to be linked with intimacy and they don't have the imagination to come up with what is meaningful to them. It's boring and shows no creativity."
The key lies always in being specific, according to Gooding.
"One thing I see a lot of in profile descriptions are really generic descriptions. So a typical description would be 'I'm a fun active girl who likes to hang out with her friends and watch movies'. So you've pretty much described everyone on the website."
Genuine guy seeking genuine girl/guy
"Western culture values authenticity," says Doherty. But trying to demonstrate one's sincerity very often appears contrived.
"It's saying 'I'm in this fake setting, but I'm telling you I'm genuine even though I'm doing this thing that feels weird.'" But he warns against "over-asserting". Normal people don't feel the need to prove themselves.
"No-one is saying, 'I'm running out of people to date, I just want to find someone to marry, have children with and grow old with - that is my deep need,'" says Doherty.
I enjoy long walks on the beach at sunset
As an anthropologist, Fisher says she understands that people are trying to express their love of nature, downtime and intimacy.
But it doesn't help them stand out from the crowd. "The bottom line is, who wouldn't want both of those scenarios?"
Dating coach Julie Spira concurs. She suggests on dating website Your Tango that it makes people look unoriginal. "Putting it on your profile just makes it look like you've copied and read every other profile on the internet."
I like travelling
England isn't a fan of profiles where all the photos show the dater in an impoverished country doing something mildly dangerous. According to him, "we've seen it all before".
Greg Hendricks echoes this complaint. "People who put this in their profile are trying to sound adventurous and diverse, but in actuality they sound just like every other profile."
The Muddy Matches blog suggests people bring this up time and again because talking about travel is also a good way to establish common interests, but it warns "don't jabber on about your trip for ages without drawing breath. Try to find out where you've both been and where you'd both love to go".
The 6ft conundrum
Attitude towards height is one of the most curious aspects about straight dating sites. Women looking for men often demand someone over 6ft and men often lie about how tall they are.
Foxton says that when he was on his mission to date 28 women, what seemed to surprise them most was that he was exactly the height he had said he was. Dating website OK Cupid notes that this is the most lied about aspect on online dating. On average, it suggests, people are two inches shorter than they say they are.
Fisher says men lie about two things - their height and their salary. Women lie about their weight and their age to emphasise their child-bearing potential.
Don't get in contact if you don't know the difference between "your" and "you're"
Grammar fanatics are over-represented on some online dating sites. But it's not always advisable to advertise just how important apostrophe usage is to you.
"Your profile isn't a place to vent. It's somewhere you're trying to find someone fabulous," says Davis.
But the problem is deeper than that for her. "People are trying to attract someone who is educated, someone who has a distaste for bad grammar, but there are many people who are not educated who know the difference between your and you're."
I'm a 42-year-old man looking for a 27-year-old woman
Christian Rudder argues on the OK Cupid blog that while the ratio of men to women on straight dating sites stays stable as people get older, the male fixation on youth distorts the dating pool.
He says data from the website suggests that as men get older, the age gap they might countenance beneath them widens.
So a 31-year-old man might look for someone between 22 to 35 - up to nine years younger than him. A 42-year-old might look for a woman up to 15 years younger than him, Rudder suggests.
But the men's stated age range doesn't tell the full story. When Rudder looked at men's messaging habits, he found they were pursuing women even younger than their stated age range.
I'm normal
"I'm not going to stalk you," is the subtext behind a range of commonly seen phrases, suggests Doherty.
"It's the ultimate stranger dating so it's not surprising that there is this emphasis on safety and normality."
It's not a phrase to take at face value, he says. It's a good idea to be suspicious of anyone who has to assert that they are normal.
I don't watch television
An increasingly common statement on some dating sites. It's often a prelude to a list of varied and often esoteric interests from someone who is "achingly hip, unflinchingly bright and invariably bearded", as Guardian Soulmates daters are described on Bella Battle's blog.
"With any other dating site, I can peddle out a profile with the usual likes and dislikes and some junk about country pubs and DVDs," she writes.
It's not enough to be average. "You have to have hobbies too - hobbies so boldly idiosyncratic they make you unlike any other person on the planet. The first guy I went on a date with from Soulmates was into astronomy and 17th century harpsichord music."
We'll tell people we met in a bar
This is dishonest and off-putting, says England.
"It's not accepting the truth. Why are you lying about something? It doesn't matter whether you met them in Waitrose in a club or on the internet. What matters is that you have met each other."
Again, for Doherty, it indicates that people are still uncomfortable about looking for love on the internet. This is changing, Davis notes in the Huffington Post. She cites Pew research to mark "the official demise of the online dating stigma". Some 59% of internet users agree that "online dating is a good way to meet people" and 42% of Americans know an online dater.
Plenty of Fish also gives a sense of the scale of online dating. It says its own data from Comscore from 2012 in the US shows they have 55 million members, 24 million messages sent per day, 50,000 new signups per day, and 10 billion page views every month.
Original Article: BBC News Magazine - By Clare Spencer
Sometimes my love life feels like a late night trip to the fried chicken shop. Tinder, hook ups and one-night stands are the ultimate in fast food dating – fine if that’s what you’re in the mood for, but unsatisfying and guilt-inducing if not. Plus, things seem to move so fast that every potential relationship is over before I’ve blinked. And, as I’m always complaining, everything has become so cloaked in ambiguity, that there are 67 different levels of ‘not being in a relationship’ you have to go through before you’re allowed to call someone your significant other.
So, when I was asked if I wanted to try out Berkley International, a personal dating service for the slightly more discerning patron, it seemed like a nice change of pace. Essentially, if Tinder is Clapham High Street; Berkeley International is Cannes.
The agency was set up 12 years ago by former hotelier Mairead Molloy when she saw a gap in the arket for a high-end, personal dating service. They don’t use algorithms to match their clients, everything is based on personal introductions, the feedback they accumulate from you after each date you go on, and a good dose of gut instinct. And – here’s the crunch – it costs between £10,000 and £50,000 to join. It sounds like a mind-boggling amount of money to me, but with 12 offices around the world and more to follow, they’re clearly doing something right.
Before I get ready to go on my dates, I meet Mairead to discuss my possible matches (Mairead deals with the international business, while the lovely Jo manages the London office and usually deals with local clients). “People are more discerning now – they care about wealth, family background, DNA,” she explains.
I assume when she mentions DNA she’s referring to genetic disorders, but I’m wrong: “They want to know what their kids are going to look like – they want to know what gene pool they’re going to be in.
“£20,000 gives you access. People put invest in it so they can meet someone like them. Nowadays people have much higher expectations. The birth of mobile phones, social media, tweeting texting and chatting online have changed human nature. People cancel by text now. And that culture has spread into the dating world – people want what they want.”
The agency is designed for cash-rich, time-poor people who don’t have countless free evenings to spend scouring bars, or online dating sites, for a potential partner – they want to cut to the chase.
The set-up is distinctly old-fashioned, as Mairead explains: “We introduce you to a few people, and if you want to meet up, and they want to meet you, then we give the guy your number. The man calls you, the man arranges the date, the man picks you up, none of this ‘I’ll meet you at the tube at seven’ business. It’s not old-fashioned necessarily – it’s nice.”
As it happens – and this is probably more due to living in London than a lack of chivalry - both of my dates arranged to meet me in bars, rather than picking me up from my flat (although I’ve no idea how I’d have explained away the one-legged drunk who sometimes sits on my front wall if they had done. My living arrangements aren’t exactly in keeping with someone who has 20K to burn).
And guess what? I had a nice time. Not mind-blowing, not terrible, just quite normal. We didn’t go anywhere ridiculously expensive, for one date we went Dutch, for another he paid. They were both much more interesting than I thought they’d be (for some reason, I was expecting a pair of soulless bankers who hadn’t left the office since the Royal Wedding). My attempts to pretend I’m the sort of person with money to burn failed miserably, but I don’t think they noticed.
But it was still very different to going on a date with a random bloke I met in a bar, or someone on Tinder. Mainly because the emphasis was on getting to know each other – there was no expectation that we’d be going home together at the end of the night (as Mairead had already said “it’s certainly not a shag-fest”). I found out far more about both my dates than you normally do when the wine’s flowing and you’re busy trying to work out if the other person’s going to make a move or not.
Both evenings ended at a civilised hour with a peck on the cheek – after which, Jo calls me with feedback – which is excruciating. I feel like I’m in the dating Olympics, and I’m going to get a row of zeroes from a panel of judges who will criticise my terrible small talk and the fact that I went to the toilet six times in three hours (tiny bladder).
As it happens, although I had a lovely time with both men, I felt pretty ambivalent about seeing them again, and told Jo as such. Despite this, it still stings a bit when I hear that one of my dates agrees with my assessment. Normally, if you go out with someone and don’t feel like there’s much chemistry, you just stop replying to their text messages. The other party gets the message pretty quickly, and that’s the end of that. When someone says it out loud it’s surprisingly difficult to hear.
Like everyone I’ve become so used to virtual interaction, and to an ill-defined dating life characterised with shades of grey, that the whole experience felt quite alien. In many ways the experience was easier – a third party conducting things meant there were no miscommunication, and the amount of money people were sinking meant everyone was pretty committed to meeting a partner. There was far less ambiguity.
No-one likes to hear constant negative feedback. We cushion our interactions with the opposite sex with euphemisms and half-truths, lest we hurt their feelings or they hurt ours. We limit ourselves tentative text messages and emails so we never get hurt. But how much time are we wasting in the process?
That’s the point though – Berkley International is designed for the sort of people who have neither the time or the inclination to mess around. And maybe that’s something plebs like me can learn from.
Original Article: The Telegraph - By Rebecca Holman
A set of graphs doing the rounds on Twitter recently purported to show the changes in how heterosexual and homosexual couples meet. While categories such as "through friends", "in a bar", and "at school/work" were either declining or holding steady, one category has exploded in the last decade: "met online". According to these stats, 20 percent of heterosexual couples sampled, and nearly 70 percent of same-sex couples met this way and its growth shows no signs of abating. But is dating online that different from the traditional methods on a psychological level?
For those actively looking for a relationship (or at least no-strings fun), there is no shortage of websites available, from straight up dating sites like OKCupid, eHarmony and Match to niche communities like Tastebuds (music matching), JDate (for Jewish singles) and even eyebrow raising Clown Passions (you can guess). While these sites vary in terms of features and cost, the basic setup is the same each time: you create a profile, upload a picture and then send out messages to those who seem your type. As a rule of thumb, women are inundated with messages and replies, while men barely get any, as demonstrated by a fascinating expirement involving dummy accounts on OKCupid here. In summary, over four months with identical profile content the subjectively most attractive female avatar had maxed out "her" inbox with 528 messages, while the most handsome male account had received just 38.
All but the most basic online sites include some kind of algorithm to try and partner customers up with someone they'll hit it off with, whith varying degrees of scientific hype behind their advertising copy. The notion that "opposites attract" is completely bulldozed over, for the quite legitimate fear of inundating each dater with people they will absolutely despise. A recent paper from the Association of Psychological Science was pretty clear that there's little evidence for any matching algorithm's scientific merit ("no compelling evidence supports matching sites" claims that mathematical algorithms work"), but the OKCupid users I spoke to generally seemed to believe there was something in it -- even if it was just filtering out their polar opposites. In fact in some cases, the subtext was that it worked a bit too well: "The guy with the highest match percentage that I went on dates with seemed more like a friend, though. We were eerily similar in some ways," one woman confided.
The usual criticism of online dating is that it's a hive of airbrushed photos and downright lies, and while there seem to be small deviations from the truth, most experienced daters I spoke to said the people they had met had for the most part represented themselves fairly. A couple of scientific studies come to slightly more critical conclusions, one saying that a third of pictures could be considered misleading, while the other concluding that misinformation was ubiquitous but in a very mild way: an inch added to the height, or a pound taken off the weight. Anything more obvious than this would of course cause problems when the eventual meetup occurs -- it's easy to overlook someone being an inch shorter than advertised, but night on impossible to successfully hide a five stone weight gain without repercussions. The study concludes that these small lies were not merely self-deceptions, but deliberate. While most daters I surveyed claimed honesty in their profiles (any eventual meetup would be short-lived if they weren't), one did raise an interesting point about subjectivity: "I'm honest in so far as anyone can be objective about themselves".
My questions also raised some interesting views about paid sites against unpaid, with three distinct themes emerging when a subscription is involved: people tend to be looking for something more serious, they're more keen to progress offline to actual dates and abusive messages are a t a minimum. All of this can be traced back to payment: a need to get your money's worth, and a fear of wasting it by getting banned. Still, the more serious nature isn't for everyone. As one online dater put it, when I asked about her experience on Match.com: "It was a lot of people looking for their wife and/or trophy person. So yeah, there were doctors and lawyers on there, but in a way their messages were inherently more creepy than what I get on OKCupid."
Ah, the creepy messages. Spend any amount of time on OKCupid packing dual X chromosomes and you're likely to be indecently propositioned or sent abusive messaes with more regularity than you'd hope for in a civilised society. This is no secret, with plenty of websites documenting the phenomenon (all links often not work safe). Why does this happen?
Psychologist Dr Jessamy Hibberd believes that along with the usual internet level of trolling, much of the directness in online dating occurs because all interactions are in a "social vacuum". With no mutual friends to avoid alienating, there's less social pressures to keep behaviour in check, and it's more akin to a stranger relentlessly hitting on you in a club. On top of this, anonymity and the lack of social cues that a face-to-face meeting would provide can cause the more obnoxious sides of humanity to emerge with depressing regularity, where no attempt is made to connect with the masses of information available on profile.
This is is of course, one of the most striking differences between online dating and meeting someone in a bar: you're armed with all kinds of information about your date, albeit only what they decide to share on a semi-public forum, with room for dishonesty by omission. If a couple sends a few messages back and forth and then decide to meet, they go into their first date possibly knowing a dizzying amount of information about their one another. The paper cited previously suggest that rather than ensuring you run out of things to talk about, this can actually improve a date's chance, stating this "has the potential to foster a greater attraction upon a first meeting", but only if this virtual period is kept brief -- "a few weeks or less" -- after which time the effect seems to diminish.
But is there a danger in the "shopping list" nature of dating sites harbouring unrealistic expectations? It's one thing to be told that there's "plenty more fish in the sea", but quite another when the sealife is grouped together by interests, availability and flattering photographs. The wealth of available singles flooding the mind can also cause conflation of information, and here the paper from the Association of Psychological Science is unequivocal: "browsing many profiles fosters judgemental and assessment-oriented evaluations that can cognitively overwhelm users". Hibberd concurs there could also be a perpetual "grass is greener" attitude inherent in date shopping culture: "You can hold in your head an ideal, and different profiles suggest that ideal might still be out there, which could have an impact. But I do think it depends on the intentions of the person as well, and why they're online in the first place."
I asked OKCupid co-founder and Match.com CEO Sam Yagan about this, and his view is that dating cycles tend to be shorter online, but for entirely different reasons: "We don't see any data that suggests people skew toward shorter relationships ex ante, but that people are more willing to leave unsatisfying relationships because there's less friction to finding a new person to date. So, average relationship length comes down, but not because people seek that."
Graham Jones, a psychologist specialising in internet psychology, is more positive, seeing a parallel with the internet's streamlining approach to retail: "Five years ago when people were choosing to buy a new car they would visit, on average, eight different dealers. Nowadays the average is down to 1.2. Five years ago people went from dealer to dealer, now they go from website to website. Because people are seeing more fish in the sea, their final chosen date is much more likely to get more commitment."
Of course, this relies on the approach of a single date at a time, which is far from the norm online. While it can make people uncomfortable offline, dating more than one person concurrently before "picking one" is extremely common and genrally accepted online. Hibberd believes that you may need a "thicker skin" to deal with this, buit it's clear that the online environment will provide one pretty quickly, in part aided by the constantly rotating selection of singles activating and deactivating their profiles. "It does make it easier to overcome rejection", one OKCupid user tells me, adding: "Interestingly, I've found it way harder sending the 'let's just be friends' text than receiving it."
So does that mean the casual nature of internet dating can lead to less commitment and direction than you would get with a more focussed, blinkered offline approach where potential partners' availability is less obviously defined? Possibly. But one thing is undeniable: the people you meet this way are unlikely to enter your life in any other context. And Jones remains adamant that rather than being unpredictable and dangerous as stereotyped, internet dating can actually keep us safer, at least on a psychological level: "One of our fundamental psychological drivers is to find certainty. Traditional dating is perceived as a danger to us because it involves so much uncertainty. The internet removes that danger from us."
Original Article: Wired.co.uk - By Alan Martin
Even a statuesque beauty queen with a graduate degree has trouble finding a date in the singles' jungle of New York, it seems. Miss USA 2012 is going online because she has struggled to get a date.
In the sort of dating dilemma that was a staple for the stars of Sex And The City, Miss USA 2012 has gone online becuase she is struggling to meet a man the old-fashioned way in Manhattan.
To the amazement of a male user of the popular new matchmaking app Tinder, he recently stumbled upon a profile for Nana Meriwether, complete with picture of her with her winner's sash.
Miss Meriwether has confirmed the profile is hers and talked about her dating frustrations to New York magazine.
"It's funny - the guys I've said yes to [online] have all been like, 'Are you real?'" she told the magazine's website. "I'm like. 'Yeah, of course.' Even pageant-title-holders get lonely.
"Here's the thing about dating in New York: it doesn't exist. There's so much going on in the city, there are so many distractions that people just forget to go on a second date."
While questions have at times been raised about the eloquence and intellect of some beauty queen contestants, Miss Meriwether is clearly endowed with both looks and brains.
The 6ft-tall South African-born 28-year-old was an All-American volleyball player at the University of California in Los Angeles, earned a graduate degree at the University of Southern California and plans to attend medical school after working in broadcasting and entertainment.
But that has not helped her find a date since moving to New York.
"Mostly I joined because a friend told me to, but I think it could be a great way to meet people, especially in New York City," she said. "I think when you're single, you should try all avenues. And now there are so many new apps for dating this one is just really fun." She has not, however, been on a date with a man she has met online and would prefer to be set up by a friend through old-fashioned matchmaking, she said.
Original Article: Telegraph.co.uk - By Philip Sherwell
A passionate online romance with an aid worker in Africa might sound appealing but it is one of many scams that cost Australians more than $93 million last year, with dating scams amoung the most lucrative.
More than 2440 jilted lovers reported a tryst - with a worker supposedly from the United Nations, an engineer working in the Persian Gulf, or a serving US soldier - that quickly escalated to a financial disaster, a report by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission shows.
More than 84,000 Australians who contacted the ACCC lost $93 million to scammers who wanted an advanced fee for a service, offered online shopping promotions, lottery tickets or were involved in computer hacking, the report showed. The average age of victims was between 33 and 45.
Of the online dating victims, 30 per cent reported a loss of more than $100,00 after they were duped into sending money to help "build a new orphanage", start a business together, travel together or for illness.
Victims of romance scams lost an average of $21,000, the report said.
"They are not only breaking people's wallets, they are also breaking their hearts," deputy ACCC chairwoman Delia Rickard said.
Despite the relatively small number of victims, dating website scams became the second highest category for losses, totalling more than $23 million. Investment scams recorded a loss of more than $30 million, asking victims for "up-front payment".
Australians' losses to online dating scams are up by $8 million on 2010.
The fake relationships would often start on a legitimate dating website, and were generally conducted by scammers in Nigeria or eastern Europe, Ms Rickard said.
For months, the new love interest would "groom" their victim, sending them flowers, presents or long love letters.
Romance victims who earnestly believed they were in a serious relationship would become defiant when police suggested their love affair had been a sham, Ms Rickard said.
Original Article: The Sydney Morning Herald - By Sarah Whyte
Millions of people first met their spouses through online dating. But how have those marriages fared compared with those of people who met in more traditional venues such as bars or parties? Pretty well, acording to a new study. A survey of nearly 20,000 Americans reveals that marriages between people who met online are at least as stable and satisfying as those who first met in the real world - possibly more so.
When online dating started gaining widespread attention a decade ago, many people considered it creepy. But after the exponential growth of dating websites such as Match and OkCupid, online dating has become a mainstream activity. John Cacioppo, a psychologist at the University of Chicago in Illinois, wondered how online dating has changed American family life. Enough time has passed that millions of Americans who first met online ar now married, a population large enough for traditional psychological survey techniques.
Cacioppo is a scientific adviser to eHarmony, one of the largest online dating sites. He convinced the company to pay for an online survey of Americans. Nearly half a million people received an e-mail from uSamp, a company that pays people to take part in surveys. From the nearly 200,000 who responded, a population of 19,131 people were chosen, all of whom got married between 2005 and 2012. For participants who were still married, the questionnaire included a battery of questions that social psychologists use to assess relationships. For example, respondents were asked, " Please indicate the degree of happiness, all things considered, of your marriage." They were also asked to rate their level of agreement with statements about their spouses such as, "We have chemistry," and "We are able to understand each other's feelings."
Since eHarmony has an obvious conflict of interest, Cacioppo asked two statisticians with no connection to the company, Elizabeth Ogburn and Tyler VanderWeele of the of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, to analyze the answers. eHarmony also agreed that the study would be published no matter what the results revealed about online dating. The surbey was conducted in the summer of 2012.
The results confirm that online dating is now one of the most common ways to meet future spouses. To ensure that the sample is representative of the U.s. population, uSamp controls for factors such as time spent online in daily life. Over one-third of the people who met their spouse online met through online dating, whereas the rest met through other online venues such as chat rooms, online games, or other virtual worlds. And online marraiges were durable. In fact, people who met online were slightly less likely to divorce and scored slightly higher on marital satisfaction. After controlling for demographic differences between the online and real-world daters, those differences remained statistically significant, the team reports online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
Harry Reis, a psychologist at the University of Rochester in New York, is mixed on the findings. "They did control for demographic factors, and that is good," he says. "But they did not control for personality, mental health status, drug and alcohol use, history of domestic violence, and motivation to form a relationship." All are all known to affect marital outcomes, and people who tend to date online may differ in one or more of these factors, he says. "It is entirely possible that when these factors are taken into account, online meeting may have worse outcomes than offline meeting," Reis says. He adds that the only way to prove that online dating has an effect on marital outcomes - positive or negative - is to do a controlled trial in which people are randomly assigned to meet people online or in the real world. "It would be relatively easy to do," Reis says, "but none of the online dating firms are interested."
Original Article: Science Now - By John Bohannon
Dating can often be fraught with uncertainty and self-consciousness. For those with incurable sexually transmitted infections (STIs), are tailored websites the answer for people nervous of telling potential partners about their condition?
The past decade has witnessed the growth of niche dating websites - from Amish to Zombie enthusiasts - but a particularly burgeoning sector has been the proliferation of STI dating websites.
Now there are so many, there are Top 10 lists.
Many have taglines such as "Stay positive! Find Love, Support and Happiness" or "Plenty of Positive Fish". Some sites, such as H-YPE or H-Date, are aimed specifically at people with the most common types of incurable STIs, such as herpes and HPV, which causes gential warts.
"If you have just been told you have herpes or HPV and you feel like your life is over, well, we are here to prove to you that it's not. In fact, it's a whole new start," it says on H-YPE.
Others, such as PositiveSingles - which has 30,000 members in the UK, accumulating 100,000 new members last year worldwide - and DatePositive, which has more than 6,000 profiles, allow users to search for people with almost any sexually transmitted infection.
Typically you enter your age and sexual preference, details you'd add on any mainstream dating site. Then you can search for people with a specific sexually transmitted infection.
The rise in these dating sites coincides with increasing rates of STIs. There was a 2% UK rise in new cases from 2010-2011, according to the Health Protection Agency's latest statistics. More than 100,000 people in the UK are diagnosed with genital herpes or HPV every year.
Meanwhile, there are about 20 million new STI cases each year in the US, and about 110 million in total, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Although some infections such as chlamydia are curable, others including herpes, HPV and HIV are not.
It means that entering the dating world with an STI is a reality for many. And the stigma can make it a daunting prospect.
"[Some people] feel like freaks, like lepers," says Max, 44, who set up dating site H-YPE.
Kate, 36, from Manchester, who has herpes, thinks the stigma attached to STIs also means "people assume you've slept around".
It belies the fact that many people contract STIs from long-term partners - with some people only discovering they've contracted one at the same time they find out their partner has been unfaithful.
For many, the thought of telling a new partner about their STI is terrifying.
Many feel there's no "right time" to have the talk. Too late, and there's the risk of incurring anger or losing trust. Too early, and the person may cut their losses before even getting to know you.
Kate recalls how a promising relationship was ruined by the disclosure of her herpes. "It came up in conversation and I was petrified. It broke us. He didn't want to take any chances."
For others, the fear of rejection can lead to a withdrawal from dating altogether.
"I've had the chat with people before and they've not wanted to know, and whatever anyone says, it knocks you back, knocks your confidence. Even when you're let down politely, it affects you. It makes you realise that you are a bit different," says 50-year-old Londoner, mark, who has had both herpes and HPV for more than 20 years.
Against this backdrop, it's easy to understand the success of STI dating websites. On most sites, users can write as much or as little about their condition as they like.
Putting all the information upfront "brings it back to the basics of a relationship... do you like each other?" says Kate. "For some people it's a life saver."
As with any relationship, shared experiences can also lead to shared understanding.
And there is a feeling that some provide more than a mainstream dating site, offering support networks and a sense of community. There are often online consellors, people can share their experiences in blog posts and some have events.
"It's like a herpetic Facebook," says Max.
However, some people are wary of the message STI dating websites could send.
HVA director Marian Nicholson believes that some sites perpetuate the negative stigma surrounding herpes.
This is completely out of touch with the reality of living with a condition like herpes, she says. For most people, it barely affects their lives, while many others do not even know they have it.
Similarly HPV often only causes one outbreak of gential warts despite technically being incurable, says sexual health physician Dr mark Pakianathan.
"These sites can make people think 'now I am a leper I need to find a leper to date'," says Nicholson. "People shouldn't narrow their pool of potential partners."
It's a view shared by sexual health charity Family Planning Association. "We wouldn't endorse [these sites] ", says director of information nakita Halil says. "The reality is that you can have a happy, healthy sex life without transmitting [an STI]".
Even H-YPE founder Max agrees that the sites contribute to the stigma, although he calls it a "necessary evil" because the stigma exists regardless.
There's also the suggestion that these sites can give the false impression that just because you have the same STI, unprotected sex is safe.
"Just because you have the same STI as someone else, it doesn't mean they're the same as you in other respects," says Dr Pakianathan. "One STI doesn't preclude the presence of others."
For HIV sufferers, there's the risk of a "super infection" from a drug-resistant strain carried by someone else, he says. And there are more 100 strains of HPV, of which more than 30 affect the genital area.
Of course plenty of people with STIs find love with non-infected partners.
Despite joining an STI dating site, Kate says she kept her profiles on mainstream dating websites, clearly stating her herpes condition. Although she received the odd abusive message, it's where she met her current partner.
"People will either talk to you or they won't. if they have a problem they can self-select out," she says.
Even face-to-face talks need not be the source of anxiety.
"Close to 90% [of the time], it depends on how you tell them. It's about re-educating people [and] making it normalised," Max says. "If you are crying, telling them like it's a life destroyer, they will treat it like one."
Ultimately, it seems to depend on the type of person and their willingness to face possible rejection.
As long as there is stigma in mainstream society, STI dating websites will seemingly continue to serve a purpose to those who wish to avoid such scenarios.
Original Article: BBC News Magazine - By Tom Heyden