Online Dating Guide & Blog

Once again Chemistry.com is having a free communication weekend. This free weekend event starts this Friday December 2nd and runs until Sunday, December 4th 2011. This event will start at 12:01AM on the 2nd and will end at 11:59PM on the 4th (in other words, you get all of Friday, Saturday and Sunday with this free event).

The last Chemistry free weekend was in October and through-out this year Chemistry has proven to be more reliable than other dating services for these free events. That said, even Chemistry.com is having these free event far less often than they did in 2010…so I’m not sure if the free weekends are falling out of favor or if something else is going on.

Regardless, this weekend will be a good opportunity to try it out. If you’d like to see a full list of free events that I’ve talked about for Chemistry.com, checkout this article.

Several months ago, I had posted the first two videos from Dentyne called The Single Life. I thought the videos were great and captured a lot of the real humor that happens behind-the-screens with online dating.

Well, somehow I lost track of these but a reader contacted me and let me know that the final two videos are up. Well, once again, I love the videos. There’s a lot of humor…and a lot of truth in them. Hope you enjoy them as much as I do!
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I recently had a conversation with a reader where he reveals frustration with getting new eHarmony matches. He said that he had been receiving a dozen matches a day for over a month and then suddenly he didn’t get a match for 5 days. Understandably, he wanted to know where all his matches went!

How the eHarmony Matching Process Appears to Work

A lot about eHarmony is “hidden” from people like you and me but I have been either using their service or talking about it for many years now and I think I have an idea of where they are coming from when they give you matches. To me, it comes down to this:

eHarmony wants to give you GOOD matches, not ANY matches.

They take this so far as to not accept people to their service that they feel they can’t match well. I know this is a sore spot for some people but I actually appreciate this approach: eHarmony could make money off of the people they feel they can’t match well and then just dump all those people into one bucket where they’re matched against each other. In a sense, they could make a lot more money if they did this sort of thing. Instead, they stay honest and don’t accept those people at all.
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How should someone with a visible disability approach revealing this information when dating online? A few times in the past year I’ve been contacted by readers who have had this question.

I’ve always tried to handle answering this question carefully because I can’t fully appreciate the situation. I think I can empathize well but when it comes right down to it, I’ve never walked in their shoes. I’ve warned readers who have contacted me of my limited experience…but they still seem to be thankful for my advice. With that in mind, I wanted to share my take on this situation with everyone.
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Have you found success with online dating but now you or your significant other is struggling to admit to others how you met? Believe it or not, my wife and I have actually been there as well.

At a company Christmas party several years ago we were in a group of at least 6 people (perhaps more, my memory fails me) and everyone was talking about how they met. When it came to my wife and I, we weren’t embarrassed: we simply stated that we met on Match.com.

Based on how the group reacted, you would have thought we said we enjoy sacrificing kittens on the weekends! Dead silence was all we got. After that point we jokingly talked about creating a fake story behind how we met, although we never went through with it.

My story highlights why some people are embarrassed to admit they met online and a reader wrote to me discussing exactly that:

My boyfriend and I met on an online dating site but he lies to his friends and family about how we met. I asked him why and he responded with its embarrassing and its none of their business that he was on an online dating site to meet people. We have been dating for 3 months and things seem to be going really well but I don’t know how to take this and I don’t understand why he doesn’t just tell the truth. I refused to lie about it and I told him I don’t want him lying about it but he doesn’t think it is a big deal. I feel like if he is going to lie about that, what else would he lie about? Am I thinking too much into this and overreacting?

Is it Okay if They Want to Lie?

So, my reader is basically saying: I don’t want to lie and I feel like him lying about this might mean he will lie about other things. I can see why she might feel this way but, at the same time, lots of people lie about this. There’s still a good deal of embarrassment about dating online for some people (her boyfriend being the current example).

That being said, I think it’s a pretty small issue to have compared to a lot of the emails I get. I’m not saying it’s a good issue to have, but things could definitely be worse! If you find yourself in this situation with the person you’re dating, in the short-term I would encourage you to be willing to work through the issue.

I definitely feel that at some point honesty should be achieved and you should be able to talk about how you really met. However, some people really, really care about what other people think and I wouldn’t encourage minimizing someone else’s emotions. I also don’t see this issue as some type of measure for how honest a person is. When people are embarrassed by something, they tend to be very quick to lie about it…even extremely honest people. With that in mind, I would use their response to something they see as embarrassing as an overall measure of their honesty.

So early on, I wouldn’t say you should try to force them to admit how you met. Apply some pressure? Sure, that’s fine. But if you go around telling everyone you met online just to prove to him/her that doing so is fine, you may just create resentment or damage the relationship.

That said, once things become more serious and it turns into a long-term relationship, I then feel that people have to come to terms with being honest to people on how you met! At this point, who cares what other people think? You’ve found someone great! Be willing to be honest about it! And not just for yourself: if you admit you found success online you can encourage others to do the same.

Really, in the long-term there are only two solutions:

1. Both people agree to lie about how they met for the rest of their lives

2. Honesty

My wife and I are honest about how we met and, yes, sometimes it still seems to make some people feel awkward. But over the years, that has been happening less and less often and now most often people are simply interested in how it works (especially singles!). Plus, we have each other: when someone is awkward about it we can just look at each other and laugh!

Office romances are nearly always a bad idea. As the rather crude phrase puts it, ‘Never dip your nib in the office ink.’ It’s best to keep personal and professional lives as separate as possible, as they tend not to mix well. But with the influx of many celebrations over the next few months – Halloween, Bonfire Night and Christmas – there are many opportunities to get close to your colleagues. If you’ve got your eye on someone at work, this is the time of year that things might start to happen…
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I have a friend named Kate Houston who I have talked about from time to time on this website. She runs a really unique service: she helps people write great online dating profiles in really unique ways. I like her work because she helps people “market” themselves instead of just “talk” about themselves…and I think there’s a big difference! You can see some examples of how she’s helped people at her website TrySweetTalk.com.

Recently, Kate was interviewed by the TV channel King 5 in Seattle. I thought this was a really interesting (and helpful) interview and wanted to share it with everyone:
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“I can’t believe it,” my friend, Mickey said to me when the commercial first aired.

“I’ve been telling you guys for over 5 years, you need to have an online dating profile,” I replied.

Everyone I know that’s late to the online dating game was shocked when Match.com’s commercial said 1 in 5 relationships begin online. However, just because some people were shocked, that doesn’t mean everyone was. In fact, there were a lot of people that thought “I’ve been doing this for a long time now. When will it happen for me??”
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Chemistry.com is a free weekend starting on October 14th and running until October 16th 2011. This event will start at 12:01AM on the 14th and will end at 11:59PM on the 16th (so basically the entirety of all three days are free).

Chemistry is one of the few major online dating services that has semi-frequent free events so if you’d like to try out a dating service without having to subscribe, this will be one of those opportunities to try. This is actually the first time since June with Chemistry. To see a full list of the previous Chemistry free weekends, checkout this article.

A reader recently wrote me with a very unique situation that was leading to multiple unsuccessful first dates.

In many cases, failed first dates can be a mystery: did she not like my personality? Was he not attracted to me? On the other hand, sometimes we know exactly why we are seeing failed dates…we just don’t know how to respond to them.

In this case, my reader knew exactly why he was struggling on the first dates but wasn’t sure how to correct the situation. Here’s part of his email:
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Recently I wrote an article discussing the topic of a man re-contacting a woman after his first email was unsuccessful (that is, she may have looked at his profile but didn’t respond).

In that article, I discussed how the reader had a theory that contacting later could be beneficial because she may be more able to respond at that time. This wasn’t something that I had considered in my original article on contacting a second time (but an idea I liked). Read more »

Recently, a reader wrote to ask questions about re-contacting women at some point after the first email. He also talked a bit about my personal success compared to his and I wanted to address both of these areas in this article.

Here’s part of his email to me:
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