Small Business Boomers

Baby Boomers: 7 Tips for Using Online Personals

by Jean on September 10th, 2008

I confess: My husband and I met via Match.com. This was almost 10 years ago, when people were still a little skittish about online dating. We both had been online since the early days of Mosaic and early Internet, so we were comfortable with the medium and we were old enough to be cautious. Today, there are almost too many online dating sites.

Match.com is still around, and at 15 million people it’s still doing well.

EHarmony is a popular site that includes a relationship survey supposed to help you evaluate yourself and potential matches.

And SeniorFriendFinder is a smaller service that has a free standard membership.

So, if you are single and ready to find someone online, here are some tips from a former expert:

1. Before you put your profile online, sit down and be honest with yourself about what you want. Decide what kind of person you want and what you don’t want. What about smokers? Drinkers? People with pets or without pets? People with children? People without children? This is probably the most important step, because if you don’t know what you want, you will get it. Yep. Everyone.

2. Decide how far you will travel to meet someone. In other words, what is your radius of interest? If you meet someone and fall in love and decide to get married, where do you want to live? Another important point. If you don’t care, that’s fine. But be prepared to wander all over meeting people.

3. Be honest when you write up your profile. Include a nice RECENT photo. Don’t make up stuff. People can see through lies like “pleasingly plump” and “a man with muscle” (maybe once, but no more). You will have to meet people and you’re wasting your time if you don’t portray yourself honestly.

4. Start very slowly. I know life is short, but take your time getting to know the person. Start with emails, exchange photos online. Maybe do some IM’ing. Then spend time on the phone (get Skype if you’re worried about cost). Talk a lot. Get to know each other without the distraction of physical proximity. Don’t give out any traceable information until you are sure you can trust this person. That includes phone number; one guy figured out my address from my phone number and showed up at my door.

5. If you decide to meet, do it in a public setting and keep the meeting very short. Even after talking with someone for days, weeks, sometimes it only took 5 minutes for me to see that I wasn’t interested. Either the person lied, or there was just no physical chemistry. In any case, you want to be able to leave quickly, or stay and chat for a long time.

6. Don’t hesitate to end the discussion at any time. Just say, “No thanks, see ya, bye.” No need for long excuses; it just didn’t work out.

7. Listen to your instincts. If you feel uncomfortable at any point, if someone just is too good to be true, if something doesn’t sound right, DON’T meet. Don’t continue the conversation. Don’t give out information. Most of us have good instincts. For example, if someone is pushing too hard to meet quickly, they might not have the right motives (this goes back to your motives, too.)

Not that I’m the expert, but I did the “online dating” thing for several years. Sometimes I met interesting, fun people, and other times I was really turned off. Eventually, after many frogs, I met my prince. You can too.

If you have had a good…or bad… experience with online dating, share your experiences with us.

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