I was reading an article I came across from the Norwell Mariner on TownOnline. This article was about the hybrid dating service eLove and their opening of an office locally. They say they take the best of online dating and offline matchmaking and put them together. Thus, creating a site where only the most serious of potential mates can be found. At $1500 to sign-up and a reoccurring monthly charge you would have to be serious for sure. But that is not what struck me most in the article.

What struck me was why the people behind eLove started it in the first place. According to Paul Falzone the CEO:

Online dating sites are become diluted by dishonesty, as members of various sites provide information that may not be completely true – they may be legally married, for example – or they’ll post photographs of themselves that are 15 years old.

Is this true? I know that some of this type of stuff happens. Is it really on such a large scale as Falzone implies? Online daters are trying to put their best foot forward in an attempt to entice a potential mate to look their way. But are people really being this dishonest? And if so, why? The bait and switch idea in online dating does not make much sense to me.

Why would you present yourself as something you are not? Once you meet the person you are going to know that the picture was misleading to say the least. Who out there is going to meet someone like this and want to continue seeing him or her? If they would basically lie about something so easy to be shown as false, what else would they fib about?

Most internet daters are basically looking for someone with which to create a life together. At least I am. So if you are tempted to go the dishonest route take a step back and think about what you are doing. Are you looking for someone with some integrity? Would you want to show up to meet someone and find out what they have been telling you is complete bunk? Probably not, so why would you do it to someone else?

No matter how hard it may be for you to put yourself out there. You need to put yourself out there. Your true self, because there is pretty much someone out there for everybody, multiple someone’s in fact. But, how do you expect them to find you, if you are trying to be someone else?

Most people are looking for a certain product and it must do for them what they want it to do. We read the product info and decide great that is just what I am looking for and we put it in our shopping carts and checkout. A few days later your package arrives. You open it up as fast as you can like a kid at Christmas. You can’t wait to start using your new Super Duper Deluxe Thing-a-ma-jig. At that point you realize you’ve been taken for a ride and that product does not work as advertised.

So, what do you do? You call or write an email and complain. Then you send it back wasting your time and money. You tell yourself that you are never going to buy anything like that again. Then you see the new and improved Super Duper Deluxe Thing-a-ma-jig 2.0. It has everything that you could possibly want and more and it just looks so darn great. A few weeks later you’re packaging up another piece of flotsam and sending it on its way. Once again wasting your time and money.

Online daters do this. They browse the online catalog of potential matches out there in the online world. They find what looks to be the can’t miss Super Duper Deluxe Mate and drop them in their proverbial shopping cart and a few days later after that first meeting decide that this was the last time they do that again. Then Super Duper Deluxe Mate 2.0 signs up at your online dating service and off you go again.

This is quite circular and leads you right back to where you are. Which is where you don’t want to be or you wouldn’t have tried online dating in the first place. Why do we keep using the same flawed match selection criteria? Why do we think it will be different this time?

Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity “is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” Do we see ourselves as insane as online daters? Have we just taken our faulty offline dating practices and moved them online. The main difference being that we can now really zip through these bad dates in greater quantity and at a faster pace than offline.

If this has been your online dating experience then try something new. Try a different online dating or matchmaking site. Fiddle with your match criteria, you could be missing out on some great people. If for no other reason than to just get yourself out of a rut, try being George Costanza.

Remember the episode of Seinfeld where George decides to do the exact opposite of whatever it would be that he would usually do in any given situation. Taking every instinct and doing the complete opposite might be an interesting way to go. Go ahead and try it. What you’re doing now isn’t working, so why not? At the very least you could meet some fascinating and out of the ordinary new people. Online Daters get off your not so merry-go-round and maybe you’ll find someone you won’t want to ship back.

A lot of people make use of a shorthand of sorts on the Internet. This has derived from communicating via the keyboard and not being able to type as fast as we talk. This is great for text messaging and using your favorite Instant Messaging client to chat with friends. Yet it doesn’t seem to look that great in your online dating profile, when used exclusively. Remember not everybody is going to understand it and won’t take the time to figure it out.

Take some time with your profile. Make it readable. Try to tell a compelling story. Let your prospects know what you are like. Give them a reason to want to get to know you further.

You can be cutesy if you want. Like typing in all lowercase or even messing with your punctuation. You are entitled to have fun. Show some personality in your online dating profile. But, please spell-check your profile entries or have someone do it for you. You are after all trying to make a good impression.

Poor spelling just makes things hard to read. At least for myself, when I see someone’s write-up with glaring spelling errors. It screams I don’t care and neither should you. It probably shouldn’t but it does. Most of the time you just need to quickly reread what you just typed. Many of these typos will jump right out at you.

Three ideas for online daters with poor spelling while typing skills are:

1. Type your answers into your favorite word processor and use the spell checker. Then cut and paste it into the online dating sites web form.
2. Get yourself the Google Toolbar. It has a spell checker for web forms.
3. For Internet Explorer users get IESpell. It installs a button into your IE browser that lets you spell check your form entries.

For longer online dating profile entries of a paragraph or more, I tend to use #1. For shorter text box form entries I tend to use #2 or #3.

Oh, one other thing. If you find a spelling error in the above post, kindly keep it to yourself.

It just seemed like the right place. Most of the other online dating services all seemed more about getting a date. Having some fun. Not that I don’t want my dates to be fun. I was just looking for Fun with a Future. Still am!

When looking for someone to date, shouldn’t there be some consideration of the future possibilities. Not just the right now. The eHarmony system said to me, we know what is needed for a lasting relationship. We will match you with others that this can happen with. You go about seeing if there is any chemistry and build from there. Made sense to me. The idea of knowing that if you clicked with someone, you had a high likelihood of a long and fruitful relationship.

Yes, you get less of a selection, because you are only matched with those that you are very compatible. Some don’t like this aspect of eHarmony. They feel they might be missing out on someone. You may miss out on someone, someone that you had less probability of having a solid relationship with.

Besides most of us miss out on many who could be good for us when using other dating sites. We think we know what we want in another and we proceed by narrowing down the field of prospects. We use the dating sites search feature and select others based on their education level, body type, hair color, income level or height. Just imagine how many possibly great people you could miss out on over an inch in height or cause their hair isn’t blonde. This all seems silly to me. But this is how we use online dating sites.

Not that this is any different than real life. We make judgments on others we see all the time based on these same types of criteria. Instantly putting them in a datable or not datable category. The Internet has just made it easier to do on a wider scale.

It is not that this doesn’t happen at a site like eHarmony. It does. You just do it on a small scale because of the fewer matches. But the matches have some substance behind them at eHarmony. Matches at other dating sites are all about criteria we think we want. Not the criteria that we probably should be using. If this were the right criteria then we probably would have already found someone offline.

It just seemed to me that if I could overcome these preconceived notions of what I wanted in a relationship partner, eHarmony would be the right place to do it. An online dating service that tries to take the long term worries off the table. A site, that if you can let go of those surface level dating type criteria we use everyday, where you could find that special someone. At least that is where I am right now.

I think that this idea has some validity. Since a year ago when I signed up other dating sites like PerfectMatch have emerged that are built around a personality test for compatibility. Even Yahoo! Personals, the biggest in the online dating market, have added what they call a Relationship test for Premier members of the site.

Well, they say that: Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Or, is it that: Success breeds competition. Either way they sure talk a lot.