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 February/March
issue
available at Bay area Publix,
Kash n' Karry , Albertsons,
Winn-Dixie,
Borders, Barnes & Noble, B. Dalton, Waldenbooks,
Books-A-Million and the International Plaza Book store.
"SINGLE IN THE CITY"
by Emily Leinfuss
It’s been weeks, but calls are still
coming in from friends and acquaintances asking, “How did your
date go?” I’ve moved on emotionally, believe me, but these phone
calls keep bringing me back. “It didn’t,” I have to reply and
then launch into the whole story once again.
I guess that’s what I get for becoming really excited about this
man I met (almost) through the Internet site. It was going
really well: late nights on the phone, fabulous conversations
sharing our “stuff.” Then, we set up a date. Not simple, since
he lived in Miami and I’m on the west coast of Florida. But we
agreed to meet in Naples on the day following Thanksgiving.
But he bailed. Oh, he had an excuse––he’d been in an accident on
his bicycle. It was serious, and he was hurt, so it was a very
good excuse. Except that I basically didn’t hear from him again.
This, in Internet dating lingo, is called “the disappearance.”
With electronic media, it doesn’t take much to exit a
relationship, no explanations, no nothing. Apparently, the old
rules of polite company just don’t apply. I’m told that my
experience is common, that many times people on-line are, shall
we say, less than truthful about their appearance, employment or
marital status, and so on. I recall one
online date who told me he looked like actor Andy Garcia.
Actually, he looked more like Jerry Garcia.
“Persons who like to go on-line are generally noncommittal
people,” says Michelle Valentine, author of How to Find
Love Online (written four years ago, when
internet dating was new & more controlled) and a
Professional Matchmaker.
“They like to e-mail back and forth, but they never get to the
next level, and it can be kind of heartbreaking,” she says.
That certainly doesn’t stop us all from trying. Spending on
on-line personals and dating sites nearly tripled from 2001 and
2003 and, according to comScore Networks, which monitors
behavior on the Internet, 40 million Americans visited at least
one online dating site last August. Their choices included
giants like Yahoo! Personals and Match.com, which has 12 million
users worldwide, to smaller, special interest sites that address
specific ethnic and religious groups and
for Hispanics.
ENTERTAINMENT OR TRUE
LOVE?
“My opinion of the Internet
dating scene is it just doesn’t work,” says Tampa resident
Nicholas De Stefano, a self-employed market research expert. “It
might offer a venue for entertainment, but on a scale from 1 to
10, it rates about a 2.5.” Why? “Think about why someone would
go on the Internet: they are looking for an easy way to meet
people and the bottom line is, there is no easy way,” he
observes.
De Stefano did manage to get face to face with three different
women by using Match.com, one very nice lady and two very
strange people. “Bizarre” was the word he used, but declined to
get specific––something about their “vision of the world.”
Of course, it all depends on what you are looking for. Karren
Brooks, an African American woman who loves southern rock,
admits, “In the back of our minds, we are all looking for a soul
mate.” But, she adds, “Right now, a date would be great…” Brooks
looks at Internet dating as a way to learn more about a person,
which is a positive. “The way I see it, even if there is no
spark after you’ve met, at least you’ve made a new friend and
you never know who he might know,” she says.
Certainly, not everyone visiting an on-line dating site is
looking for a life partner. According to U.S. News & World
Report, fully half of Match.com’s members are under 30 and are
just seeking a fun date or companionship.
For Sue Moyers, a teacher and nutritionist in Tampa, the
Internet was a mixed and ultimately, negative experience. After
a divorce, she was anxious to begin dating. Using Yahoo.com, she
met two men she went out with for short periods of time. But the
third experience was shocking. “I started to go out with someone
and we had three dates. After the third, I got a phone call from
his wife,” Moyers explains. “The wife had picked up his cell
phone and hit redial.”
Valentine says there are a lot of people out there who
may not be legitimate. “People really need to take serious
precautions when on-line dating,” she says. Valentine
adds about 30 percent of people on line are actually married.
Some good rules of thumb include using an anonymous account to
e-mail on-line date. If you go to meet someone, make sure people
know where you are and have a friend call you during the date.
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