The Pros and Cons of Dating Online

This is the 21^st century and yet, it seems even more difficult to find the perfect mate. The usual places to find a significant other used to include libraries, churches, nightclubs, and on a lucky night, bars. Now, there is an outlet that is becoming more and more popular to find "the one," and that is at a desk, computer lab or anywhere you can access the internet from. That's right, more and more people are looking for friends, lovers and even future spouses on the internet. However, is it better than the old fashioned face to face conversations/ "Getting to Know You's?"

A lot of the dating websites on the internet will give you a "free" trial just so a prospective online dater can get a sense of how it goes. Unfortunately, a credit or debit card is the key to opening the free trial to dating websites such as True.com, Match.com and even Yahoo Personals. No money will be taken from the credit or debit card, but some credit or debit cards will have holds put on them or at least a dollar or so held as a deposit that will be returned within five business days. How do I know? I've personally tried one or two of these sites out.

Another catch with some dating sites is the constant bombardment of e-mails, notifying the prospective online dater of the men or women that the site thinks would be perfect for them. This can average from ten to about fifty men or women in a day. The e-mails of "perfect matches" can get quite pesky unless the prospective online dater changes his or her mailing preferences in the account settings part of the site, if the said prospective online dater decides to pay to subscribe to the site.

The fun part of dating websites, at least to me, is creating the profile. It's pretty much the same as creating a profile on Myspace or other social networking websites but the prospective online daters also have to include what they look like physically and what their personality is. However, they can basically pretend to be anyone they want to be, unless they post a picture. Most of the dating websites encourage prospective online daters to post a picture, given the fact that they are more likely to get more responses. However, he or she don't necessarily have to post a picture if they think that their personality can stand out for them or if they just don't have a digital camera to get a picture to post.

Let me also add that a prospective online dater can also choose the type of man or woman that they want to date. It takes quite a while to complete a public profile and the prospective online dater will realize this when they actually finish and look at a clock. However, I still have yet to find the perfect person on the internet.

There are more complicated dating sites such as eHarmony.com. For this site to work, a prospective online dater has to create a very complicated public profile that may take hours to complete and once it's over, there is a possibility that there are no matches for the person who spent hours completing their profile. An new site called Chemistry.com claims that they are better than eHarmony, but I have yet to try that site out.

In conclusion, there are some good dating websites and there are some not so good dating websites. However, it is up to the prospective online dater to decide what is good and not so good for them. On a personal note, I don't believe that dating online is better than dating in person. When people meet face to face and physically get to know each other in person, it seems more intimate to me. But, there are six billion people in the world with six billion opinions and if Dr. Phil endorses dating online, it can't all be bad. Happy dating!