Online Dating Part One – What About the Freaks?

Recently, I asked five of my girlfriends for their input on online dating. Four of these ladies had used one or more well-known services and one met her husband in a chat room. Online dating is seen as risky or controversial to many people, but for the ladies that I spoke with, it was a convenient way to meet people who shared their interests. My friends, they are all professional ladies, a couple of entrepreneurs, a CPA, a lawyer, and a realtor.

Thankfully, my friends were very open about their experiences and with their comments. I have so much information that I’m going to break this down into a few different posts. Today I’m tackling the subject of the guys you would rather not contact you – the pervs and the weirdos.

For some reason, people feel that putting up an online profile is like opening the door to a whole lot of crazies, but it doesn’t have to be that way. I asked the ladies if they had dealt with much in the way of odd or inappropriate behavior and most of them said that they had experienced a bit. The easiest way to deal with them – delete the email, block the sender, and/or alert the administrator.

A comment that I’ve heard many times, although not from these ladies, is that the free sites are notorious for men who are looking for cyber sex or a hook-up. If that’s not your thing, their offers can be deleted or ignored. Men or women, who are looking for that sort of thing, they are going to throw that out there, in the hopes that eventually someone may be interested in the same thing. Everyone is entitled to chase their own dream, after all.

On the subject of weirdos, my friend, V says, “…in a way you have a better chance of weeding them out if you meet them online — you can go through quite a few email and phone exchanges before you actually meet. And, if you ask enough of the tough questions before you meet you can learn quite a bit about people.”

V met her current partner on the free site, Plenty Of Fish (www.plentyoffish.com) and had this to say, “(when) I met my current beau I’d actually pretty much given up on meeting anyone of substance–at least I was taking a break–after meeting a number of nice guys that I knew would never amount to a ‘relationship’ so I ‘hid’ my profile and started haunting the forums on POF answering questions on everything from dating to fitness, I noticed my current beau who was a regular poster there–a beautiful writer who contributed to poetry forums and had long exchanges on many other topics from politics to relationships. So I added him to my ‘favorites’ list because enjoyed reading what he wrote…”

A, my married friend, met her husband in a chat room. “I was email friends with Tim, whom I met in the chat room, for at least a year and a half. He was one of a group that I planned to meet when I visited Washington state. I do want to stress that the friendship was totally platonic, and had never gone beyond that stage. I was not looking for someone and neither was he,” A explained. A, shared that upon finding out that she was female, quite a few people in the chat room tried to contact her privately with offers she had no interest in, but again, delete and block – it’s easy and effective.

J, who met her guy through eHarmony.com didn’t have to deal with much in the way of creeps. She feels that the extensive screening process at eHarmony helped to avoid that. J says, “… there were probably a dozen ‘normal’ guys for every one ‘weirdo’. I think the important thing to keep in mind is that the men who use dating services are pretty much doing it for the same reason that women are: to find someone they connect with.”

Sabrina, she of the wise pro/con list advice the other day, believes that, “…the sites are getting more on top of the freaks.” I know about her freaks firsthand because we belonged to a place that included “matchmakers.” I wasn’t looking for a date, but I was a matchmaker. As I remember it, I don’t think she heard back from anybody, but the weirdos.

H met her beau on eHarmony and she did not have to deal with any weirdos at all. I had good luck, too, when in the past, I used Match.com, Plentyoffish.com, and the personals at yahoo. I never had to deal with much of the negative attention. The last time I used POF, I did have a strange man instant message me, and I did not like that. I re-met S, my guy, on classmates.com. Not in a personals section, but through emailing and we began as friends.

Next time, we’ll cover safety measures you can take to protect your privacy and personal safety. If you have something specific that you’d like me to cover in this series of articles on online dating, please include your questions in the comments section and I will do my best to find a helpful answer.