It’s 2009. We are all on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. We find our apartments online, our jobs online, and we shop online. We order food online, we keep in touch with friends and family who live far away online, and we look for pets online.
So why is it “weird” to shop for a significant other online in an age when everything else in our lives is online?
Well, I don’t really think it is. Maybe that’s because I know several couples who are happily married or engaged to the person they met online. But why is it that my friends who do the online dating thing feel the need to look around and then whisper when they say “match.com” or “eharmony“??
I mean honestly-who cares?!
Although I have not been a member of an online dating community, I see its benefits for young professionals. Why? Because after dating a handful of people, you get to a point where you know exactly what you want. Also, our time and patience is limited. Meeting someone at a bar who has your values and goals is probably much less likely than being able to go online and say “non-smoker, x religion, taller than x, wants/doesn’t want kids” or whatever your criteria are.
From there, it’s all you. Online dating just gives you a jumping off point to get what you want. There will still be a lot of people who you don’t click with, or who pretend to be someone they aren’t. Sounds surprisingly similar to “real life dating,” doesn’t it?
Maybe online dating just needs some good PR or celebrity success stories so people start openly discussing it the way they discuss Facebook and Twitter.
What are your thoughts? Why is online dating still taboo?
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If anyone can relate to where you're at in your career, it's Nicole Crimaldi: Nicole spent 5 years in corporate America, switched career paths, worked at a start-up, survived a layoff and is now self-employed. Nicole believes that career satisfaction is a huge part of overall happiness. Therefore, she started Ms. Career Girl to help other women get off the treadmill and onto a more fulfilling path.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m online dating and I’m very open about it on my blog and Twitter. In fact, many people seem to enjoy hearing about it. I don’t think online dating in a big city like Chicago or NYC is a taboo because we’re in such a concentrated that meeting and connecting with people is tough. In smaller cities, like where my parents live, it is more taboo because they still view dating as meeting someone through friends or at an event and going from there. It’s not that they’re not open minded, but they just don’t talk about it.
My experience with online dating has been mixed. eHarmony was not for me, but I’m enjoying Match.com more right now. It works better for my personality and so far I’ve had some luck. I don’t expect to meet the love of my life on there, while that would be great, but I look at it more as an opportunity to “get out there” and meet new people. Sure, if I connected with someone, I would love to start a relationship, but it’s about managing expectations too.
Some women in my office talk in hushed voices about online dating but I don’t think it’s anything to be ashamed of. I know a lot of people who met their spouses online, so why not give it a try? I just posted about a Match.com fail, but it hasn’t deterred me.
I met Sean through an online dating site and it worked perfectly. I have 2 kids so I didn’t have a lot of time to go out and meet people, plus my opinion is that I don’t frequent bars, so why would I want to meet and date someone who does? Meeting and talking to people online gave me the ability to “weed out” a lot of people whose values, lifestyle, and goals didn’t match up with mine so I didn’t waste time on bad dates. Granted there were still several times I thought there would be more of a connection and it ended up going nowhere, but I could have gone through a lot more unsuccessful dates instead of just a bunch of dead-end emails. I think online dating is something a LOT of people do, just don’t talk about because it’s still kind of a novelty. There may be a little more risk because your meeting a perfect stranger and it’s not like one of your friends can vouch for them and say “yeah he’s a great guy” so that’s where you have to be careful, use common sense, and pay attention to little details.