Navigating Through the Maze of Online Dating Sites

By Seth Mullins

Many people, frustrated by traditional approaches to finding intimacy, have begun to consider the Internet a useful tool for helping them connect with potential partners. Online dating sites can make this search feel less like shooting in the dark because they put us in contact with people who are actively seeking a relationship. In addition, they can provide us with a lot more information upfront about our prospects than we would ever have when approaching a stranger in a bar.

Unfortunately, there are literally thousands of sites that are bound to appear when we type the words “online dating” into an Internet Search. We would be foolish to try and follow through with every search result. Besides, typical dating sites have so many distinctive features and profiles to browse that we’d probably soon be hopelessly distracted and forget the objective of our quest: to connect with potential partners.

Understanding the various ways in which dating sites are structured can help us to hone our searches and whittle our pool of candidates down to those who most closely reflect our values and goals. First we can narrow the field by deciding whether to commit to a paid site or dabble with a free one. Many people balk at the idea of putting money down for something they haven’t tried before and aren’t sure will pay off. But the free online dating sites can oftentimes be more accurately described as free-for-alls. We enter into a jungle of names and photos of people whom we know little about. Also, they might not be as serious about initiating contact as we are, since they haven’t committed any money and thus have nothing to lose by playing around with the system without giving it a chance. Those of us who are intent on using online dating to work towards eventual face-to-face meetings with potential partners would do well to invest money in a site that’s home to more serious users.

Paid sites generally fall into two categories: free-form and structured. This refers to the ways in which they gather information about their members. Free-form sites allow people to offer up – or withhold – whatever facts about themselves that they want. While this makes it easier to enter a site, a similar problem exists here as with the unpaid sites: we might end up interacting with people whom we know little about. Structured sites ask very specific questions as part of their sign-up process. This amounts to more work for us, but once we’ve established our own profile we can browse the profiles of our prospects and more clearly gauge whether we share common ground before we make contact.

Some of the information we’ll have access to on a structured dating site include a prospect’s age (or age range), height, weight, religious affiliation, children (and, possibly, their ages and living circumstances), and drinking and smoking habits (or lack of tolerance for such things). More complex profiles like these allow us to sift through our candidates until we’ve narrowed our selection down to a handful. From there, the responsibility for taking the initiative and connecting – in the hopes of bringing things to the next level – will be ours.

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