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Net Affair – How to find love on the Internet
August 02, 2005
By: A.Retlick

Disclaimer: The author is not responsible for any negative feelings derived from reading this document. The contents herein may not be used in any form without written permission from the author.

About three years ago I found my current girlfriend in an Internet chat room. Or maybe I should say, that she found me. I wouldn’t consider myself fit to write this article like this if we hadn’t taken the relationship outside of the online world. Since then, I have met dozens of people who have also found love on the Internet. With that experience, I consider myself mildly qualified to give you some free advice on the subject. Lets first explore the pros and cons. The best thing about online dating is that you can take your time and get to know the other person. The bad part is that you have to trust that the person whom you are chatting with or emailing is really who they say they are. Sometimes you can spot them right away. Other times they will lead you on for weeks about their true motives, identity, or marital status. Beware of people who want to move too fast. It isn’t necessary to give out personal information in the first chat session.

Finding love on the Internet is filled with challenges. If you are quiet and shy in real life, odds are that it’s going to be the same online. But you can do some things to make your search a little less frustrating. First of all you need to decide what kind of a person you are looking for. Forget about looks for a minute and make a list of your hobbies, interests, likes, and dislikes. You are not going to get very far online if you can’t find some common interests with the other person. If you like juggling bowling balls, put that on your list. Once you have a list of your interests then list a few things that your perfect mate needs to have. My list was simple. She had to have a good personality, someone who didn’t take life too seriously. I didn’t want someone who I would be fighting with all the time. Then I threw in a few physical attributes. This list will help you speed up the process by not wasting time on someone that isn’t going to make you happy.

Now that you have something to chat about, you need to find a good place to meet people. There are dozens of matchmaking sites out there that will add you to their database for a modest fee. The thing I don’t like about the matchmaking sites is that you usually have to answer a ton of questions about your personal interests and then give them your credit card number. The matchmaking sites are great if you are in a hurry or don’t have time to deal with chat rooms. I tried it, but got turned off by all of the personal questions right up front. But the Internet changes fast and what was once a burden, might now be the safest route to finding someone special.

For chat rooms, it’s a good idea to have a screen name that isn’t too offensive. You don’t want to call yourself “darkdeath” if you are looking to attract the opposite sex. Something that indicates your gender is helpful. Screen names like “lovelylady” or “romanticman” will get you noticed by someone looking for a relationship. The next step is finding the right chat room. I won’t recommend a specific site, but chat rooms can be found on Yahoo, AOL, MSN, ICQ, and many others. Once you find a site that you like and get signed in, you need to choose a chat room that will give you the best results. I find that chat rooms that have an age range listed in the title will make it easier to find someone your own age to chat with. You don’t want to waste your time chatting with a teenager when you are in your 40’s. You would want to go to the room titled “30’s love” or 40’s love”. The down side of this tactic is that you can find great people but they may live hundreds of miles away. The other option is to go to a room that lists romance by location. This will allow you to chat with people from your own state or region. The problem here is that you have a wide range of ages in the room.

You should at least put your age, location, and picture in your profile. I find a lot of people neglect to do this. These are the people that I don’t trust. If you can’t take the time to put something in your profile, you’ve probably got something to hide. If someone sends you a chat invitation, check his or her profile. If there is nothing in the profile and they continue to interrupt you with requests for personal information, just say you are busy and put them on your ignore list. Nothing bugs me more than someone who asks for my a/s/l (age, sex, location), when it’s already in my profile. This person is probably from a foreign country and doesn’t know how to view a profile. It will take time to learn the proper chat netiquette. Use that as an excuse to meet someone. There are tons of abbreviations used for chatting. Ask someone to help you if you don’t know what something means. Many chat rooms have bots that can send you messages and respond to you in the chat room. Just ignore anything that looks suspicious.

So lets say you have gotten this far and you have found someone who you like to chat with. Maybe you have exchanged email addresses and pictures. You have learned about each other’s lives and you never seem to have a shortage of things to chat about. That’s great! Then the other person suggests that you should meet in person. Don’t rush into a face-to-face meeting. Make sure you check the other person out. Type their name into Google. Ask for a phone number and call the person on the phone. Do as much detective work as you can so you don’t have any surprises. It’s harder to tell the other person to get lost if you are meeting in person. Meet in a public place. Have a friend call you on your cell phone to make sure everything is going all right during that first meeting.

I love hearing about other people’s experiences meeting online. Most of the time you hear about the ones where someone was trying to meet with a minor or the person turned out to have a criminal record. I had a few that didn’t work out before I found one that did. Thank goodness I didn’t meet any of these people face-to-face before I decided that it wasn’t going to work out. When someone tells you that their favorite band is the Insane Clown Posse and that they attend concerts every year, you need to decide if someone who likes a band that is loud and offensive to women is going to be a good person for you to spend time with. They might fail to mention that they have ten piercings and assorted tattoos, until the last minute. That might be a good reason to hold off on a meeting. But then again, some people like that sort of thing. You’ve been warned. Be careful out there.

-AR-