Internet dating advice wanted/needed

[lazygood4nothinbum]

Here's a sticky issue. I know that this process demands a certain amount of trust but in case you wanted to verify someone's identity I wonder how you could ask someone to do so? I'm thinking that I might want to make sure that a guy was who he said he was. Ask for his place of employment? Ask for personal reference?

how good are you at stalking? if you didn't get just a cell phone or unlisted number, you can reverse look-up to match with a name & physical address. or simply stealthly follow the guy home to get his address. then you google. you do sex offender check. you check county records to see if he rents or owns & if so what he paid & when. you run a criminal records check through any various person finder web site. if he hasn't put a lock on his driver's license record, you might even be able to get a copy with his picture. if, early on, you can manipulate him into revealing his workplace, you can call their human resources department to confirm. if he owns a biz you check with your state division of corporations.

that all depends on your level of paranoia and curiosity.

what research without years of just taking your chances with personal involvement won't tell you is not who this person might or might not be today, but who they might be tomorrow. and that can be more upsetting than anything you might find out about a person today.

i've had four people close in my life who either fooled me or changed so much during the course of our five, 15, 22 & yes, even 50 years of life together that they became people who, had only i known, i'd never have allowed into my life in the first place and no amount of googling would have saved me that grief.

either way, you're taking your chances. rule #1a: better to take your chances with getting hurt than hurting because you haven't taken your chances.

 

[Moemg]

Here's a sticky issue. I know that this process demands a certain amount of trust but in case you wanted to verify someone's identity I wonder how you could ask someone to do so? I'm thinking that I might want to make sure that a guy was who he said he was. Ask for his place of employment? Ask for personal reference?

one nice feature of eharmony is they have a ID verification service. If you pay $6 you get a little brownie button on your profile page.

Once you get to know his name and birth date you can do searches or have them done for you . I did one on my present SO before I got too involved . Like you I was super cautious .

 

[Moemg]

So I saw that people can search for couples. Thought it could be a good way for DH and I to meet some compatible couples to go out to eat with, attend some concerts, etc. DUH! How naive could I be? It's about couples sex! I had no idea that middle-aged people and older people would be looking for this! Guess I've led a sheltered life....

Lucky you figured it out before you agreed to meet them !

 

[FreeAtLast]

I have been doing the internet dating thing for about 3 years. I have only been out on 3 dates from the internet, however, they were all nice women. I met others as well on line, however, I usually like to chat with them for a period of time before calling or meeting. There were a few that gave up on me possibly because I took my time. You can tell much about a person when you chat online over a period of time.
In all cases they first made contact with me. The girl that I am currently dating, I met about 1 1/2 years ago, so I have not had to do any more of the internet dating recently.

I have chatted with many more, however, some were just of no interest. Others I was interested in, however, the timing was wrong. A few others were just not there the next day, I guess they found someone else.

Good Luck!

 

[Zoocat]

calmloki: good point. I never feel taken advantage of by anyone. I feel I have excellent intution about people.

Lazy: I'm no good at stalking and have no inclination to go through all that. Yeah, sometimes people grow into something you never expected. Sometimes it's a real disappointment. I like rule #1a.

Moemg: I still don't get how you could match the guy himself with the name and birth date by online searching. (I don't know anything about this.)

 

[citrine]

Geez.....I stay away for a day and look what I miss!

Haha.....I am not into the tying up thing....it just blew my mind that someone would say that on the first date!

6' and above is a great height! I love tall guys and they always seem like they have a girlfriend.

As for the financial thing.....I don't care how much money they make.....I just care about how they take care of it. I definitely believe in pre-nups and the older I get, the more they make sense.

It's so hard to find a good guy!

 

[haha]

Geez.....I stay away for a day and look what I miss!

Haha.....I am not into the tying up thing....

Well, though I am disappointed, I appreciate your telling me. I was getting ready to shop for some beautiful ties.

BTW, a realy good mainstream movie with some bondage is Atamé. Victoria Abril was the tied up woman, and Antonio Banderas was great in what might have been his first major movie.

Bye,

Ha

 

[W2R]

Geez.....I stay away for a day and look what I miss!

Haha.....I am not into the tying up thing....it just blew my mind that someone would say that on the first date!

If it was important to him, well, maybe it was better to find out right away!

6' and above is a great height! I love tall guys and they always seem like they have a girlfriend.

As for the financial thing.....I don't care how much money they make.....I just care about how they take care of it. I definitely believe in pre-nups and the older I get, the more they make sense.

It's so hard to find a good guy!

That's true, but (probably) you only need to find one.

 

[summer2007]

This is a great thread.

I never gave much thought to the criminal backround check. I don't think I would have the nerve to go through doing it though. Thinking about it though I would be much more concerned with how she treated other boyfriends than if she had a dui or was a sex offender. I guess I would like to know if she was like Heather Mills in which case I wouldn't want to be in the same room with her!

I think a for sure throw out for me is if I found out that a girl filed a false abuse report or something like that I would not want to be in the same city as her.

Citrine

That's interesting about the tall guys. Growing up my buddies that were 6 foot plus myself definitely included did horrible with girls.

My buddies that were about 5-5 to 5-8 or 5-9 got girls constantly.

I did a search on a dating site to see how much height matters to women and looked at 100 profiles to see what the minimum height was that women wanted in a guy. Out of 100 women ages 18-35 only 5 thats right 5 wanted a guy 6 foot or taller and keep in mind some of these women were 6 foot or close to it.

And yeah money is of no concern to me either when looking for a girlfriend. I would be fine with someone that was very loving and not malicious or crooked that kept them self fit or thin. The rest of the things are not must haves.

I hung out with a girl in HS that was dirt poor pretty much and I liked her way better than all of her rich friends!

Jim

 

[Texas Proud]

Summer...

I don't know where you went to school.... but all the tall guys got the girls where I went... even the basketball players...

As for the ads... they usually do not list a height 'requirement'... but when I see it, it is usually for someone over 6 ft... and I have seen this from some ladies who are only 5 - 1....

I was surprised at how many women put looks at the top of the requirements... now, don't get me wrong.. I am a guy and put looks up there.... but you hear that this is not important for women.... but it really is... they want the 'buff' guy... and I was also surprised at their 'age' requirements... a good number would not look at a guy who was older.. or if they did only 2 or 3 years...

It is more 'normal' (yea, I am ducking now).... but more normal for a man to marry a 'younger' woman... usually a few years younger than he is...

I can tell you that I was a 'good' catch... but was ignored by many ladies... a bit overweight yes (but not fat), not great looking.. but 'normal'... so I could not get very far.... but... I did finally find one and she is happy and I am happy... hope I don't have to go through it again...

 

[summer2007]

I went to school near Pittsburgh.

I did the study on match.com it lets you list your preferred height range and only 5 of 100 women listed the minimum height at 6 foot or over. I told this to one of my buddies and he didn't believe me...I said just try it and you will see.

One of my best friends was 6-5 and he had a really really hard time with girls. One of the things he told me is that he felt a good number of girls were afraid of a guy his size.


The strict age requirements are really strange to me. For one I can't judge age well at all. But age does not matter much to me. When I was about 21 I worked for a lady that was 50 and I thought she was beautiful.

When I think about it looking at actresses there are ones I think look great with about a 40 year range.

But with the dating sites IMO from reading some of the profiles there are a lot of people on them that I doubt you would want to date.

On looks they do matter to me. I'll tell you why. At a young age I had this girl ask me out. I didn't find her attractive at all but I didn't want to be mean to her or hurt her feelings since she went through the trouble of asking me out so I said yes.

We dated for a good while but I just was not attracted to her. She was fairly nice as a person but there was no attraction. I felt really guilty about it and I couldn't tell her. So eventually we broke up and actually were better friends afterwards than we were going out so it worked out good in that way.

But after that I knew not to date someone unless I found them attractive. It's just too hurtful to both of us and there isn't much you can do...you just can't force yourself to find someone attractive that you don't.

One of my buddies girlfriends had a girlfriend that liked me and kept after me and she outweighed me by probably 100 pounds now how do you handle that without hurting her feelings?

Looks matter to me for that reason just attraction. I don't really care if a girl is super pretty she can be average in looks that is fine but she has to keep herself fit or thin or I just am not attracted to her. I would date 15 years younger to 10 years older than me. I find older women than that attractive but the age difference might be too much after about 10 years.

I really don't care about age.

That is one of the advantages of online dating that you
can get through that part without things being so awkward and possibly really hurting someones feelings.



Jim

 

[Texas Proud]

That is if they are not lying about their age...

You are right... you do have to have an attraction to someone to be partnered up with them... and like you, I do not like women who weight in about what I do or more...

But as for age... there are some that would say they were 45, but look like they were in their mid 50s.... others would say that and look in their late 30s... again... to me it was not a problem as long as I like their looks and we matched up...

 

[lazygood4nothinbum]

age makes more of a difference the older we get. 30 to 50, a big but not a huge difference. 50 to 70? huge. i get kids (20's, 30's) trying to pick up daddy (me, apparently) every so often. they get so sad when i reject them and i do it as kindly as i can. my thinking is, ya, sure, 10 years of fun but then you're going to leave me and i don't like where that leaves me. i don't want to close myself off completely to potential future pain; nor do i want to assure it.

 

[socca]

how good are you at stalking? if you didn't get just a cell phone or unlisted number, you can reverse look-up to match with a name & physical address. or simply stealthly follow the guy home to get his address. then you google. you do sex offender check. you check county records to see if he rents or owns & if so what he paid & when. you run a criminal records check through any various person finder web site. if he hasn't put a lock on his driver's license record, you might even be able to get a copy with his picture. if, early on, you can manipulate him into revealing his workplace, you can call their human resources department to confirm. if he owns a biz you check with your state division of corporations.

It's nice to live in the modern world, where it's not necessary to get completely entangled with a person to have a mutually satisfying relationship with them. One advantage of minimizing entanglement: the level of paranoia above isn't required. If I meet a nice woman who I respect and admire and we have fun together, then her problems don't necessarily have to become my problems. Of course, for some people nothing less than total entanglement isn't satisfying. To each their own.

 

[Shawn]

I did a search on a dating site to see how much height matters to women and looked at 100 profiles to see what the minimum height was that women wanted in a guy. Out of 100 women ages 18-35 only 5 thats right 5 wanted a guy 6 foot or taller and keep in mind some of these women were 6 foot or close to it.

I performed a similar study on match.com and came up with an entirely different conclusion. I looked at 100 women (the same number as you), and 73 of these women had a height requirement. Of these, 71 wanted a man who was as tall or taller than them. A study in The Economist in the mid-90's came up with the same ratio. It found that 71 out of 73 women said that they wouldn't date a shorter man (the identical ratio's in my study and The Economist study are coincidence). I can't remember the exact number, but in my match.com study, the average woman with a height requirement wanted a man who was at least 5 inches taller than them (or maybe it was 7 inches). Height is an extremely important attribute that women seek in men, at least based on women from personal ads. I also looked at desired weight or body type. Although it wasn't as overwhelming as height, women were slightly more likely than men to prefer an "average" body type. Women were not as interested in "slim" men, but they were interested in men with "athletic" figures.

On another topic, a simple google search can often lead to information about a person, or at least determine if they are who they say they are. For example, searching on my first and last name and an appropriate qualifier will bring up about 100 referencing web sites (I'm a research scientist and probably get more web hits than average). I met my previous girlfriend on match.com. After a few emails, she said that she performed a search on my name. While I felt a little insulted, I got my revenge by googling her name and place of employment.

 

[clifp]

I always google prospective dates and I am not upset when somebody does the same to me. I am actually a little suspicious when they don't show up on Google (i.e. is it a fake name).

Still I was happy that a Smart Money magazine where I foolishly talked about my net worth and my real name seems to have disappeared from the Google database.

 

[Notmuchlonger]

I always google prospective dates and I am not upset when somebody does the same to me. I am actually a little suspicious when they don't show up on Google (i.e. is it a fake name).

Still I was happy that a Smart Money magazine where I foolishly talked about my net worth and my real name seems to have disappeared from the Google database.

Guess Im nobody. Since I dont show up in Google. Even my polic..er never mind doesnt show up.

 

[HFWR]

Thankfully, I cannot be found via Google.

 

[SteveR]

Lots of Google hits on my name...only it is not me. Having a common name makes it hard to find someone sometimes. 20 pages and none were me.

 

[haha]

Lot of hits on my name, mostly in Germany.

Ha

 

[summer2007]

Shawn

I'm a little over 6 foot I get measured at about 6-2 in shoes a little less and a little more depending and I'm thin. I'm built like Tommy Lee of Motley crue. And I can tell you being this height dose NOTHING to get women's attention and I got a few friends that are my height and taller that can back me up on this one.

Anyway I did this study to try to cheer this guy up that was 5-9 and wanted to be 6 foot mainly because he thought that women really like that.

Well to me this is really laughable because growing up it always seemed that guys that were 5-5 to 5-9 got all the girls. So I set out to do this study to show him reality.

I got the same kind of numbers that you got and a 100 person sample is a drop in the bucket. But the same trend only the height difference in the women vs. men was about 1.7 or 1.8 inches shorter.

Here is some other data. In my sample of 100 I threw out all that did not answer so it's 100 that gave a height range, Out of the 100 only 6 girls that's right 6 would accept a guy that was shorter than they were and out of the 6 four were 5-8 or more. So that is 94% or about exactly what you came up with. It can also be the area you live in but that is a really close result.

I know throwing out the 6 makes the average higher because they are negatives but oh well.

Now out of the 94 that wanted a guy taller than them or the same height I added the inches up and got 302 which is an average of 3.21 inches taller that the girl wanted the guy.

But one other interesting thing was for the girls 5-7 and over the amount of height they wanted was only 1.48 inches taller. A lot of the girls were 5-10 or so that made up that sample.

To me it was worse than I thought and I thought the guy I did the study for would feel so much better but I don't think he did!

In mine out of the 5 that wanted a guy 6 foot and above they were 5-9 5-10 5-4 5-4 and the last girl who was 5-5 insisted on a guy 6-3 the other 4 were ok with 6-0.


Taller girls seem less concerned about height. Most were ok with same height or an inch or two taller.

Now as far as how many inches taller a girl wants if she is 5-2 I would think a guy 5-4 would be fine but if she wanted 5-6 who cares most guys are that tall anyway so it's not the amount that they want but the actual height that they want that matters I think.

I'm glad you did a study though it helps me with verifying what I came up with.

I too noticed that the women on dating sites look older than they say they are and some might be telling the truth. I have met women in that have told me their age and I was in disbelief they looked so much older. Two ladies at I know that live near me I thought were 10-15 years older than they were. It's just that some women refuse to take care of themselves and they look older as a result.

Being thin is a turn off for most women. I'm thin and I can tell you that most ladies don't like it. But there are a few that do and they seem to just go bonkers when they see thin guys. Bad news is some of them were not exactly what you would want going bonkers over you but hey.

In my life's experience if you are a guy and 5-6 -5-8 and are a little overweight you are a chick magnet!!!

I'm curious as to how many women in your study wanted a guy 6 foot or above?


Jim

 

[summer2007]

One other thing I forgot to mention on women wanting looks in a guy.

I spent a lot of time at public swimming pools when I was younger and me and my guy friends would just look at girls the whole time. But when we were there with girls they seemed to have very little interest in looking at guys. And if you are not looking at a swimming pool I think you just are not looking!

But I'm not sure how much looks really matter to women. It's got to be way less than to guys.

Jim

 

[Marquette]

216 hits on google for my name, and they're all me. Uncommon last name, two stupid books I co-authored, and way too many mailing list posts.

 

[dex]

One other thing I forgot to mention on women wanting looks in a guy.

I spent a lot of time at public swimming pools when I was younger and me and my guy friends would just look at girls the whole time. But when we were there with girls they seemed to have very little interest in looking at guys. And if you are not looking at a swimming pool I think you just are not looking!

But I'm not sure how much looks really matter to women. It's got to be way less than to guys.

Jim

I think we men just might not catch them looking. Some women talk about men just the way some men talk about women. They have women's magazines as do men - have you checked out Cosmo while in the check out line. Eden Gray - Guy Without His Shirt - March 2008 - Cosmopolitan.com
I don't think I have ever seen my abs.

 

[Texas Proud]

Summer....

I don't know the question you asked them to get your results.... if it was something like 'what height is acceptable'... then yes, women will accept someone a couple of inches taller or the same height if they are tall....

Or did you ask 'what height is your perfect man'.... I think you would get a different result with this question...

As you can see, one is 'OK, if I MUST'... the other is 'YEA, tall dark and handsome'...

As for thin, I tend to agree with you... they don't like a guy that is more thin they they are... makes them look fatter.... but they do not like men 'overweight' either... at least the ones on the internet... they like athletic looking guys (not all buffed out... but some muscles)...

I did meet one gal who loved the thin, nerdy looking guy.... and is married to one... and he is 6 or 6 1.... where I used to work, 90% of the guys were over 6 ft and all were married... the two single guys were me at 5 9 and a guy at 5 7 and thin... what was funny was that HE had women all over him... but he was a smoker and drinker and went to the bars all the time.... so was being hit on by the 'older' ladies because the pickins were a bit slim... but he enjoyed it...