As Valentine’s Day is coming up again, and rather than typical gift-buying relationship advice, this year we thought we’d approach it a bit differently from all that lovey-dovey talk about where you should take your significant other.
There are A LOT (and by this we mean A LOT!) of couples who actually meet online and the only date they can possibly have is via Skype! Relationship advice often comes in the form of actionable efforts that fall within the tangible realm. But when you can’t physically be there, then the only kind of dating advice you need is of the online relationship kind.
Its happening more often at weddings, we hear people talking about their fairytale of love at first chat – and quite frankly, we hear about romantic online relationship stories way too often to ignore this!
Online dating advice usually has a bitter taste to it and for some reason, it is still often frowned upon, but if we look at the statistics (40 million people in the US alone, have tried an online relationship), there are a lot of couples, who, miraculously make it through and actually get married! That means it can’t be that bad!
Men are most likely to lie about age, height and income, while women are most likely to lie about weight, physical build and age.
Even though online dating is an amazing way to meet people and potentially find your actual soulmate (rather than settling for the class-clown), you can never be too careful. For example, there are approximately over 900 million people registered on Facebook, and a big portion of them are not saints. Make sure you stay safe by (even if you think there is no need) doing background checks. You may find other profiles, e.g. LinkedIn, YouTube etc. Maybe you’ll even find reviews written on Amazon or their personal website or blog! These small things can give you a bit more of a complete picture of your potential match. And if you think stalking is creepy behaviour? Polls from Reuters revealed that stalking social media profiles has become widely accepted, hence the reason why we have the option to make our profiles public or private.
For the next step – do the same about yourself – Google your own name and see if everything you see on there, is what you want to see. If possible, do a clean-up for things from the past that are not like you anymore (for example a blog written during your teenage years) or could give a false representation to people running your name through search engines. According to statisticbrain.com, Men are most likely to lie about age, height and income, while women are most likely to lie about weight, physical build and age. So why wouldn’t you do a little bit of harmless stalking?
40 million people in the US alone, have tried an online relationship
Furthermore, make sure you leave a clean trail behind in the future – do not post emotional tweets on Twitter or Facebook – especially about your employers or friends. We know it can be therapeutic to go on a rant, and you may not be interested in anyone who won’t let you be yourself. But remember, when you’re posting out of anger or sadness, that’s not your real self either.
Another precaution – do not take the first step too far. Don’t start cyber stalking people to the level of creep, coz we all know the, “Overly Attatched Girlfriend” can work online, too. Don’t like and comment on every status update or photo they upload. Online friends need space too.
A lot of online daters think the Internet is a safe enough place to expose your online relationship by letting everyone know when you fight or break up with your other half. That is not necessary – not only do you make yourself a clown, but you will also annoy people AND it will leave a trail your future friends might see.
It is good to have a bit of a eye-to-eye contact as well! You should have the majority of contact in person, but before you meet up with a stranger, it is good to have couple of ‘Skype dates’ beforehand and always let someone close to you know who you are going out with, when and why, just in case you need a quick way out. Some people are not what they appear to be and the most cunning of all of us are able to disguise themselves as a nice person until they finally get their chance.
