At one time, finding your life partner was easy. It was usually done for you, via a formalised ritual of courtship overlooked by your mother, and blessed by your father. Bad luck if you ended up with a bad match.
This evolved into the dating game, where polite women waited to be asked out and men arranged everything in the hope of ultimately securing a mate.
It allowed more freedom, but you still had to meet enough single people and navigate unwritten rules in the hope of finding someone you could love or cared to spend a lifetime with.
In the past three decades, dating has become more of a process where almost anything goes but still with no certainty of finding the "right" person.
One of the things that changed the rules was the invention of the internet. Online dating services came into being almost immediately. Initially they simply matched people based on profiles of likes and dislikes, but now there are thousands of services using anything from habits to religious belief to dietary preference; veggiedate.org is a service that caters strictly to vegetarians. People are using these services to hook up for friendship, sex, and marriage (not necessarily in that order), free of contraints of time, place, and social confidence.
But are they having any more luck than their predecessors?
As a counsellor of twenty years, I tend to hear more about people’s negative experiences than the positive ones. Comments like “ I can’t believe my bad luck in attracting users, liars, and cheats” are not uncommon in my practice. There is a reason for that, and once people understand it and begin to understand and own that they are responsible for what kinds of people they attract, they begin to have more success.
The truth is: You will attract someone who mirrors your relationship with yourself.
If you are desperate for love and believe that you are never going to find it because you are not good enough or attractive enough, if you fear rejection, if you are critical of yourself, then most likely you will attract someone who will mirror that. It may seem like everyone out there is non committal. Or you may attract someone who doesn't respect you and your needs. Or you may attract a lot of rejection.
Once you feel good about yourself and believe that you are worthy of a good solid relationship, and once you can let go of any expectations about the outcome, internet dating is a great way to meet a variety of people.
In writing this article, I consulted someone whom I consider to be quite an expert in internet dating. Sandra used internet services for over 5 years and dated around 15 to 20 men (three turned into serious relationships) before she finally met her ideal partner. She remains happily married to this day.
Sandra is a very busy business woman who owns two retail businesses and, at the time she was dating, was raising two teenagers on her own. She had been through two divorces and was determined not to repeat the pattern.
Here’s what she had to say about the process:
“At first it was fun being able to sit at home looking at photos and profiles with no obligation to make any kind of comment unless interested. It felt exciting, a little scary but mostly nerve racking. It was intimidating at first because I didn’t know the rules and didn’t have any idea how to go about it.”
“I learned fairly quickly to keep the emails with the interesting ones down to a minimum. If they sounded promising I would suggest we meet for coffee.”
“Until you actually meet face to face you don’t know if there is chemistry. You can spend a lot of time having conversations and getting your hopes up to feel totally disappointed when you finally meet. I found it best to meet for a quick coffee; 15-30 minutes is all you need for a first meeting.”
Sandra said this was safer and meant she wasn't stuck spending an evening with someone who would never work out. She said rejecting someone was actually harder than the thought of being rejected.
“Rejecting someone was hard for me, being a nice person who hates to hurt people’s feelings! I didn’t find this easy at all. Eventually I learned to be direct and firm yet gentle. What I found worked best for me was at the end of the coffee date, if I wasn’t interested in taking it any further, I would just say “It was nice meeting you and I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
The biggest challenge of all was learning how to let go and to enjoy the process.
“I went through a process of discovering and learning things about myself with everyone I met. This was the key to my success. Having the courage and willingness to look at myself and understanding that I was responsible for what I was attracting.”
Sandra said that when she was the one rejected in one of the more serious relationships, it brought her face to face with old issues of abandonment.
“I had to deal with that before I could go any further or else I knew that I would attract it again.”
“Through this whole process I realized many things about myself. I learned what was truly important to me in a relationship and I wasn’t going to settle for anything less than the best!”
References:
Cate, R. M., & Lloyd, S. A. (1992). The history of courtship. In Courtship (pp. 13-32). Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
