Online Dating Guide » dating links

Did You Make a Resolution to Use Online Dating?

Brad — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 16:00:12 +0000

In my last article I talked about taking your resolution seriously if you are resolving to date online. If you’ve not read that article already, I’d encourage you do do so.

I have a free online dating guide that you can download but I realize not everyone wants a full book on dating to read. Because of that, I wanted to list of a few of my articles that I think are most helpful to someone new to online dating:

Online Dating Checklist
If you’re looking to read as little as possible, this is the article for you. I take a lot of the advice I give here and try to trim it down to as small a list as I can.

Creating Your Online Dating Profile
This is my step-by-step guide to creating your online dating profile. I try to go through the process I used to create a solid dating profile. I know it’s easy to find yourself staring at your computer screen not knowing what to write and I hope this post helps in that area.

Writing a Better First Email
In this article, I walk through what should (and should not) be in the first email you send to someone. While quite often men do most of the contacting, I think this can be helpful for women. Even if it’s just to recognize that for some guys (some great guys) it can be difficult to write that first email and being a bit understanding can be quite helpful!

Being Normal Online
In this post, I discuss how just being normal can go a long way. This is not to say you should not be unique in your profile but getting carried away can be a killer when trying to meet someone new. When we go out of our way to try and be clever or unique, we can sometimes do more harm than good.

Online Dating and Unnecessary Rules
A discussion on how hyper-specific some people can be in what they are looking for and why it can lead to so much frustration. Hopefully this isn’t you!

Going on a First Date
So, you’ve made it to your first “first date”. Now what? In this article I discuss the approach that worked well for me and how I would prepare for my first dates.

My Online Dating Success Story
This is the story of how I came to meet my wife using online dating. I don’t suppose this article is very helpful in itself but I do hope that it serves as a reminder that you can have success online if you feel like you want to give up.

I hope these articles are helpful land I hope that you find everything you are looking for in the new year!

The One Time Having a Bad Date Could End Well

Brad — Wed, 19 May 2010 01:13:28 +0000

Have you had a bad date, where things went horribly, horribly wrong? If so, you might be able to win a $50 gift card and some other prizes over at Daily Dating Advice who are having a contest for the worst date story. From the site:

You have 2 weeks, starting now until 06/1/10, to submit your worst date story using the contact form accessible with the link below. In 2 weeks, our expert dating team will review all the stories and select the best one!

My Bad Date Story

I was considering entering the contest myself but decided it wouldn’t be fair since I’ve been told dozens of horror stories running this blog and I could “steal” one of those as my own. Instead, I’ll just share it here. I should say that overall I didn’t have very many problems when I was dating. I did have one girl who was obsessed with death which was disturbing and I had another who brought a friend on our first date which was…annoying. But overall, I had good luck with the women I met. However, my very first date from online dating was probably the most…interesting.

My First Online Date
When I started dating online I really had no idea what I was doing and I wasn’t sure how long I should wait before asking a woman out on a date (you should be asking early, by the way). At any rate, I had been talking to one woman for at least a month. We chatted online, talked on the phone, emailed each other: everything but actually meeting. During this time I had made it clear what I was looking for, part of which was a woman who would share my faith. I thought I had made my beliefs and desires pretty clear. Eventually, I asked her on a date and we were both excited to meet each other.

The date started off fine and we were getting along well. Then after we had been talking for a while, she casually slid into the conversation the fact that she had once worked for a callgirl service. Wow, did that send me for a loop! I really couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned; maybe this fact went over really well on her other dates. At any rate, once the cards were on the table she was excited to talk about it and I learned quite a bit about the “industry” that night. I kept thinking: “Am I crazy? Isn’t this the kind of thing you keep a secret?!” Throughout the night I began to realize she had also been lying about other areas that we had talked about over the previous weeks and I ended up spending the last half hour waiting for the date to end.

Now one or two of my guy friends thought this sounded like a great date but when you’re looking to settle down there are a few things I think you don’t want to hear on a first date and I would say that this is one of them. My first online date left me suddenly wondering if it should be my last. I guess the “date” part of this story isn’t all that bad: the date itself went okay, crazy previous profession and all. What made it so bad was that I felt like I had wasted a month of my life. Not only that, when I got home that night she had sent me several messages saying she was looking forward to getting together again soon. I was leaving town for a week the next day and couldn’t bring myself to allow her to believe for the next week that we would be going out again. So, while it made me feel horrible, I wrote her an email saying I thought we should just be friends. The same date left me feeling like both the bad guy and the person who was lied to.

So there’s my crazy date story. It wouldn’t win any contests considering the date itself really did go okay. I guess if that’s my worst date I faired pretty well considering what many others have gone through! Don’t forget to enter your story at DatingDailyAdvice.

Looking for a Life Coach in the U.K.?

Brad — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 04:00:57 +0000

Often I’m contacted by businesses looking to promote their services and this time it’s from a company in the United Kingdom called Life Coach Directory. As the name implies, the site provides services by Life Coaches who have expertise in different areas of life where they are specialized…or I guess that would be specialised for my U.K. readers :)

To better understand the concept, here’s how the site describes things:

A life coach is an individual who supports and encourages people to fulfil their potential and really make the most of their life. A life coach can help to empower individuals to take control of their life, or certain areas of their life, for example, their career, confidence/self belief, finances, health, relationships, spirituality and/or work/life balance.

It can be easy to lose direction in our lives and life coaching aims to explore ways to enhance the skills, qualities and creativity we already have but may not be making the most of. Life coaching often involves exploring our attitudes, beliefs and values, discussing our aims in life and setting appropriate goals to help us to reach them. Unlike trying to achieve goals on our own, having a life coach should help to keep us committed, motivated and focussed. Just like sports men and women have their own coach, a life coach helps us to become the best we can be in our own lives.

The life coaches can also register with professional bodies so that those selecting these coaches can have confidence they will be working with professionals operating within strict guidelines and ethics (see their FAQ for more on this). The site also has information about various types of distress that life coaching can help, as well as a blog about the latest health news.

The site breaks its life coaches down into areas of expertise:

Career
Confidence/Self-Belief
Finances/Money
Health
Relationships
Spirituality
Business
Stress
Work/Life Balance

I don’t know what a life coach would cost but I do know this: most advice on the internet is generic because the people offering the advice don’t know the reader on a personal level. The advice can be good but it is often not as personal as someone might like. A Life Coach could solve this problem but then again sometimes a good friend could do the same! Still, the site is worth a look and I’m sure some people would find value in a service like this.

Just to be clear for the new FTC rules, I wasn’t paid anything for this post.

Great Ways to Be Romantic in a Relationship

Brad — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:00:38 +0000

At the risk of getting the cart before the horse, I wanted to share an article I read recently that I liked. This article covers 50 ways to be romantic. I know the majority of my readers aren’t in a serious relationship but I also argue that it’s best to stay positive while you’re dating online (or single in general). With that in mind, I’m going to assume that if you’re not in a relationship currently that you’ll be finding these tips useful in the near future.

I doubt I need to provide this warning but just in case: almost all of these tips would be a very bad idea on a first date. Some of them are corny and only someone who cares for you will appreciate them while others are just a bad idea to use with someone you just met (my wife would love for me to offer a back massage with some good smelling lotion today but that would have sent her running on our first date). Perhaps this is obvious but better safe than sorry!

Photo by Elmo Alves

25 of the Worst Dating Profile Photos

Brad — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 04:00:27 +0000

Have I mentioned that your dating profile photo is pretty important? Yeah…apparently these folks didn’t get the memo: 25 Weird Dating Site Pictures

Referring to these photos as “weird” is being nice in my opinion. I’m not actually convinced that all of these photos are real. Even if only a few of them are legit that still means there are people out there who think these kinds of photos will work (or there are people creating profiles as a joke). Your photo is one of the most important parts of your profile…if you play games with your photo or get “weird” don’t be surprised if you don’t have much communication.

Hopefully everyone reading this is capable of recognizing when their photo has crossed into the twilight zone but if you’re not sure, be sure have a friend review your pictures!

Speed Dating with Werner Herzog (Parody)

Brad — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 04:00:49 +0000

Funny or Die has a hilarious parody of speed dating. Not sure how they decided on Werner Herzog (whom I wasn’t familiar with) and Bjork but I thought it was great.

Speed Dating With Werner Herzog – watch more funny videos

Twitter To Replace Dating Services?

Brad — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 04:00:02 +0000

This article asks the question: Can Twitter replace online dating sites? My first thought to this prior to reading the article was: weren’t people asking this same question about MySpace a few years ago? As I had mentioned back then, people also meet in grocery stores but that doesn’t mean grocery stores are going to replace bars, clubs or singles events. And so my first thought to this question was a resounding “No”.

However, after reading the article I’ll say that the author makes some good points. The argument seems to be that heavy users of Twitter (referred to as Twitter addicts in the article) will be better served by meeting people on Twitter itself and I can agree with that. However, that’s a lot different than suggesting Twitter would replace online dating altogether. That would be like saying World of Warcraft is going to replace online dating. Sure, there are millions of people playing and, sure, I have actual friends who have married after meeting in-game but it hardly has the reach to suggest it’s going to replace online dating…or even dent it.

And my opinion is that Twitter is exactly the same. The casual Twitter user will be better served by a real dating service but the Twitter “addict” will likely be better served by Twitter itself. If the question had been phrased something like “Can Twitter replace online dating sites for its most faithful users?”, the article makes a good argument that the answer to that is “Yes”.

On that note, if you love Twitter be sure to check out the article – it might give you some great ideas. On the other hand, if you’re a casual Twitter user like me, don’t expect much to change in the online dating world for you.

Update: LemonDrop has an article with more thoughts regarding dating and Twitter (apparently it’s called Flittering?).

Dating Advice Round-Up: The Sleeping Edition

Brad — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 04:00:39 +0000

How To Sleep Alone
The Dating Papers offers some general advice on how to sleep alone. I’ll admit that when I was single I had a bad habit of staying up as late as possible…sleeping alone just isn’t fun. Still, you’ve got to do it sometime. This article offers some advice for this.

Co-Sleeping
This article discusses a rather…humorous…part of sharing the bed with someone and asks how to handle a potentially awkward situation while spooning.

The Cuddling Kama Sutra
While we’re on the topic of cuddling, I wanted to share a hilarious video that also has some pretty good advice hidden in it. I found this video extremely entertaining:

How To Avoid Trapped Arm Whilst Cuddling In Bed

Dating News: Profile Lies, Age Issues and a Widowed Mom

Brad — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 04:00:14 +0000

Little White Profile Lies
This Washington Post article discusses some of the most common lies in dating profiles: height and weight. It also states that 8 out of 10 profiles have some type of lie in it. When I was dating online I had plenty of first dates but only one where the woman I met had blatantly lied about her appearance…so if 80% of people are lying I think most of those lies must be pretty small, at least based on my experience. The article ends by suggesting the lying will lessen as dating profiles become tied more closely to social networks. An interesting thought although I’m not convinced that today’s singles want to tie their online dating life to their Facebook account (at least not openly).

Avoiding Hang Up on Age
This article discusses the increasingly popularity of “cougar” dating. The author runs a dating agency and reveals some insight into how many individuals they help are unwilling to meet people significantly older than themselves. He summed this issue up well in the article:

Yes, many guys in their 20s love to meet cougars in bars and go home with them for the night (and perhaps several other nights down the road). However, when those same guys reach the point in their lives when they want to settle down, get married, and start a family, they almost always prefer meeting women their own age or younger.

It’s also interesting to see how he has seen an increasing trend in singles looking to date people significantly younger than themselves.

A Widowed Mom Looks For Online Dating Advice
A woman looks for advice on using online dating after unexpectedly losing her husband. She has questions like if she should include the situation she’s found herself in or if she should talk about her child. The article is interesting but the advice is rather extreme. I do think you should list if you have children, although not specifics about your kids. The article uses one example out of literally millions to make the case that just listing having children will result in their abuse. Being cautious is recommended but in the article’s example the man actually married the woman to get to her children. My thought is that if some sicko is committed enough to marry a woman to get to her kids he would also be committed enough to put the time in to find out if she has kids in the first place. Still, it’s good to read as many opinions as possible and since I don’t have children yet I may not be the best guy to weigh in on this one. Still, were it me I would list having children but leave out any details.

Tips on Finding the Man or Woman of Your Dreams

Brad — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 04:00:43 +0000

As I am frequent to complain about, finding really good dating advice can be difficult. I’ve found some good sources and I try to list them as I find them here. However far, far too many sites offer the “how to seduce a woman” type of advice that really isn’t helping anyone (excluding whoever is selling the advice, and there is almost always a price). This is the type of dating advice that discourages singles more than it helps them and it’s exactly the kind of advice that caused me to write a recent article with tips on taking advice.

I’m getting off topic though because today I want to talk about some great advice, not bad advice. This great relationship advice comes from ZenCollegeLife.com and describes how to find the guy or girl of your dreams. I know that sounds like a tall order and while taking the advice given is no guarantee to truly lead you to meeting your dream person, it does provide excellent ways to start that process. It’s interesting that this site, which isn’t devoted to dating advice at all, gives far better advice than many of the sites that allege to be providing helpful dating advice.

photo by DavidChief

The article is written for the college aged individuals but the advice given in most cases will be helpful universally. Some of the advice isn’t horribly useful (I’ve already covered how advice like “Be Brave” really isn’t helping anyone) but the good far outweighs the bad. One area that I liked is the concentration paid to having the right attidude when searching for the special someone, such as having real expections and being smart with your emotions. Overall a really great read and highly recommended even if you feel you’re already on the right track.