Dating online and meeting in person
10-Dec-2019 00:07
Of course, just because you’re online dating, it doesn’t mean you should discount the chances of meeting someone offline, too.Go to parties, meet new friends and force yourself to speak to strangers – romantic potential, or not.Published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, it explains that there’s a ‘tipping point’ when it comes to online dating.Put simply, how soon you meet will have a direct effect on your chemistry. You could be consigning yourself to a disappointing date.But it’s a thorny issue - and one that must be tackled, as more and more of us turn to the online dating.No longer do we see tabloid headlines screaming ‘meet the couple who found love ON THE INTERNET!That way, you can mutually scout each other’s profiles and get a clearer impression of whether you’d get along socially. But if they don’t have anything to hide (and assuming you don’t) it’s one way to let someone in, before taking the step to meet them – especially if you don’t live particularly near one another. I’m not advising that you throw caution to the wind and arrange a date for every day of the week (although if you feel confident enough to do so, then go for it.
You can gather information about the other person, but until you meet them you won’t know if ‘I love to laugh’ means Fawlty Towers or fart jokes. It’s easy to think you know a person better than you really do.’ For Britain’s 16 million singles, looking for love online is the norm.Studies have suggested that anything between 35 and 50 per cent of all couples in the UK, now meet via the web.Baldly, without meeting someone, there’s only so much information you can glean about them – knowing someone’s taste in films, music, food does not a personality make. There’s a danger of idealising them and imagining your future together before you’ve exchanged a single smile.
What’s more, you have no way of telling which bits of information are true.Their first date was within that all-important window, of course (although he didn’t realise it at the time).