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Free Online Dating

Here are some great tips for using free online dating sites to search for a potential date or partner...

“Tell me whom you love and I will tell you who you are,” said Houssaye.  Who we are, yes, is tied to others.  We get our connections made, our hearts filled, and our identities established with the relationships we carry out.  Maybe this accounts for the popularity of free online dating services: they are the conduit or the catalyst for our connecting with others.  They are the systems that are designed based on the knowledge that we humans—social creatures, for the most part—require some support and guidance in creating love, creating relationships, and in the process establishing an identity, a self that is loved and that loves.

Besides offering up-to-date, useful tools to access the greatest number of potential mates, too, free online dating services typically provide suggestions and guides for finding, meeting, dating, and developing quality relationships with others.  These guides are filled with helpful how-to tips—some seemingly part of common sense, some seemingly obvious, but all intended to make your free online dating process and experience a positive one.

So while you may already follow common sense methods or are always more than cautious, it might be good to reinforce, remind, or just revisit the caveats of courtship—especially when using a free online dating site as your matchmaker.

KEEP ALERT AND AWARE

At many free online dating sites there are separate sections for friendship, dating, serious relationship/marriage, or alternative encounters.  Know your own category; know what you want, and stay on the lookout for those with like minds, hearts, and goals.

That is, if you want sex, say so; and communicate with others who want the same.  If you want a long-term commitment, be honest about it, and interact with only those who are also looking for the same.  It is pretty easy to figure out the fakers (players) from the romantics, or the hit-and-run lovers from the ones who latch on quickly and easily.  It is also easy to avoid getting hurt by avoiding the Casanova when you want marriage or saying “No, thank you” to the devotee of monogamous marriage when you just wanna have some good ol’ homeboy fun.  Don’t get hurt and don’t hurt anyone.  Simple as that.

KEEP TO THE TRUTH

Gee, doesn’t this sound like the blurb you just read?  Okay, okay.  It is, sort of, but it is also a more specific suggestion—to be realistic when it comes to the finer character traits, those which are more specific to an individual than which relationship category he or she fits into. 

For example, if you want to find someone who has no problem with your eating straight from a pan, has no opinion on your relaxed housekeeping habits one way or the other, or accepts your being a two-pack-a-day smoker and a five-whiskey-a-night drinker, then you had better check the smoking box and answer more honestly the “How much do you drink?” question than with an answer like, “I’m a social drinker.”  That is, you will be found out within weeks, anyway; you wouldn’t want to discover such “secrets” in another person withholding such important specifics; and you wouldn’t want someone you were starting to care deeply about nagging to change this and that about you….  And if you start out with deceptions, you will create a relationship that is fake and confusing and destructive.

As one of my at-risk students (of whom all are the ballsiest and most candid people I know) once wrote in his English journal, “In order to expose the real I’ma be real myself….”  We can take a hint from this kid, who seems to get that to find the real thing, one needs to be the real thing.

KEEP GOOD AND INTERESTING IM HABITS

Numerous people I know who use free dating sites wherein you can instant message (IM) back and forth often comment on the lack of substance of the online encounters…or of some of the people online.  If you approach a potential mate, friend, or other online, in an IM or an  email, scribbling off a vapid "Hey" is a bit vague.  So is "Tell me more about yourself."  You don't need to recite renaissance and pastoral poetry, but a back and forth of "heys" is as fun as, well...it's not.

KEEP YOUR HEAD

Don’t, for God’s sake, worry so much about your appearance that you either discourage every suitor with ugly anecdotes and exaggerated flaws that instantly suggest you don’t believe you have any redeeming qualities to offer to the very person in whom you seek redeeming qualities.

If you have seen the popular talk shows (later turned ambush reality TV) of the 90s, you know that there are women who love hairy chests, or small feet; there are as many men who have a thing for gapped-teeth or big bellies.  Just realize, too, that you can’t have Nicolas Cage or Lindsay Lohan—even if you set your goals on the like—if you don’t bathe, don’t work, do pick your nose, and do insist on taking your mother on your dates with you (yes, I know someone like this).  In other words, you should avoid telling the woman with the Master's Degree and six writing awards who is thirty pounds overweight that she is just not good enough for you to take out in public—when you have yet not mastered reading in general.

This brings us to the final hints:   

KEEP IN MIND THE FEELINGS OF THE OTHER

It is possible to be real, to be honest, without being cruel.  Just because the web offers anonymity (until you change that), not one of us yet has the license to make people hurt.  I watched one friend break down and cry when, after investing days of email exchange, she was told she needed a bra with under wires.  I have seen grown men turn pale when told the only thing they’d be good for would be opening doors and his wallet.  On the flip side, I have been rejected by men with such a superb internet acumen (manners) that I wanted to help the guys find their soulmates...that's how human they were. 

It’s okay to decline an invitation.  It’s acceptable to suggest you both keep looking.  It’s perfectly fine to admit you don’t feel the connection you hoped to feel.  Not only can they (normally) not argue with the kind and personal response, but will likely agree … or at least thank you for being humane.

KEEP AN “OPEN” MIND

If you don't want to climb the Sears tower or eat pickled pigs' feet, fine.  But he does.  Maybe his dead wife ate them while scaling the stairs and he now does it to keep a spiritual connection with her. You don't have to like it, but you do have to accept it as existing.  Politely move on, refraining from attacking everyone as freaks.

KEEP TRYING

Just as it’s important to be decent to those you encounter online, it’s imperative to be kind to yourself.  Yes, you will have a fuller self, etc., with a partner, but you will start by bringing a self to the computer.

One of the smartest tips I ever read was this:  be the person you want to be with.  Then you’ll surely reflect the other, as Houssaye purports.

For more information about dating, online dating and romance, see the "resources" section of this website, or go to articles about dating.