Online Dating

Over these past few weeks we have been discussing online dating and the impact that it has on relationships. One of the key aspects to online dating is to build a relationship of talking and emailing before you meet the person. Statistics say that if you apply that principle there is a 94 percent chance that you meet that person again. I have experienced this aspect of online dating in my own life recently. I met this girl through a mutual friend and we began communicating through text before we even met each other and I can attest to the belief that building a foundation before meeting in person actually helped a lot. Looking back now and knowing about this concept about online dating makes me realize that I already felt comfortable with this girl when we met face to face because I knew so much about her through our communication through texts. When I think critically about this I can’t help but ask the question of how much better or worse some relationships are when they don’t meet online and build that foundation through text, email, chat room, etc. Personally, I dated a girl my entire senior year and we didn’t met online and in the beginning it was definitely a little uncomfortable because we were new to each other and we didn’t have that level of knowing a lot about each other. However, at the same time our relationship ended up being a good experience and I think that’s the ultimate goal for all relationships whether they started online or face-to-face.

When people log onto the Internet and engage in online dating, there are some deceptions that come along with it. For instance, there are always going to be users that lie about things on their profile. They can lie or “stretch the truth” about their age, name, background info, appearance, and pretty much just about anything. The problem with deception in online dating is it causes other users to be deceitful when they encounter deception. In my own experience, I have seen people be deceitful when online dating when I was helping my mom after my parents got divorced. With all of her kids in college or moved out I wanted to help her meet someone and it was obvious that some men were clearly not being truthful in their profiles. The photos of some men were not matching up to the age, height, and assumed weight that they listed. It really interests me why those three topics are lied about most and not things like financial income if listed or hobbies that would boost their profile. To pretty much answer my own question I think it is because age, height, and weight are attributes that can be overlooked by a lot of people and in the long run the person you meet could easily get over it. Lying about income or certain hobbies could really throw someone off and in turn cause problems in the relationship.