Online Dating Guide & Blog

My name is Brad Miller. I live in Pittsburgh, PA with my wife who I met dating online. I dated online for a year and in the beginning had nothing but failures but then later had great success. I use this blog to share my opinions on online dating and to try and help others achieve the success I was able to find.

I met my wife just one day short of one full year of very active online dating. It felt like my 50th first date but it was her very first. I think we both knew within the first week that we had something special. Time flies and now we’ve been married for several years and are in love as ever. If you are currently online dating, I know it can be frustrating. Really, I do. Still, I hope you find encouragement in my story and in the advice I provide here and that you’ll persist in your search for that special someone.

About This Site

Many years ago I was researching a technology called Ruby on Rails and purchased this domain to assist me with that. Assuming my project would be small I thought LittleRedRails a good name. Shortly after my purchase, my company decided they were not interested in a solution provided using this technology and I found myself not knowing what to do with my website.

Eventually, I decided to convert this site into a blog where I could describe my online dating experiences. Perhaps embarrassingly, I had kept notes on what was working and not working for me when I was dating (what can I say I’m an engineer and pragmatic if nothing else). I was already married at this point but still felt a desire to share what I had experienced. Eventually this desire resulted in a fair number of posts on my site.

I started dating online in June of 2004. I hadn’t dated actively for quite some time, going on only a handful of dates in the four previous years. I was very reluctant to using an online dating service and was only able to start once my loneliness outweighed my pride. I tried most of the big services: Match.com, eHarmony, Yahoo! Personals, American Singles and a few smaller sites.

In the beginning, I made a lot of bad decisions and I think I unintentionally gave more than a few women the wrong impression about who I was. In my first seven months of online dating I only had five or six first dates. Thankfully, I did begin to understand how things worked and my last five months of dating online were the opposite of my first seven: I went on dozens of dates and frequently had two or three first dates scheduled in the same week. I hated my first few months of online dating but loved my last few.

Kate and I at Halloweeen

On June 9, 2005, just one day short of a full year of online dating, I met the woman who would eventually become my wife (and yes, I met her using an online dating service!). It wasn’t long before I knew I wanted to date Kate exclusively. Perhaps one of the strongest measures of my success was that when I made this decision I had to contact six women and cancel plans we had made. That’s not to brag: I don’t find myself particularly attractive or particularly funny or anything else that would warrant this much success. It really came down to figuring out how things worked best for me, after that the success came naturally.

Kate and I were married in April of 2007 and are as in love now as we were in the beginning. I realize many will laugh saying we’ve only been married two years but we truly are inseparable. I am so grateful for the opportunity that online dating provided an opportunity that has changed my life forever. I hope you will give online dating a chance. Maybe it will change your life too.

This site is intended for anyone but I do have the unintentional habit of writing as if only guys were reading. Now that the site has been up for several years I can say that many women have told me they found the site helpful so my bad habits don’t seem to hurt the advice much.

This guide is also intended for those looking for a “serious” relationship. If you are just looking to sleep around, I imagine little here will be of interest to you because most of the suggestions involve devoting time to get to know someone.

About the Advice
I covered this in the Online Dating Guide but best reiterate it here: I offer advice based on my own experience and from conversations I have had with others using the internet for dating. I do not believe there is a right and a wrong way of doing things. I do believe that approaching online dating in a particular way will improve your chances. However, I hope no one simply adopts all my opinions as their own. Read my thoughts with an open mind but then form your own opinion!

About the Site’s Design
This design is based off of a design by Small Potato over at WPDesigner.com. I altered the colors and changed many other areas to fit my needs but much of the hard work was accomplished by him.