Desperately Seeking Meaning

Women come to me all the time for relationship advice, as I have been married three times (well, technically four -- I don’t count the annulment) and dated hundreds of men. I try to explain that this is not a badge of honor; if you want relationship advice, go to someone who married her college boyfriend and is still married to him 30 years later.

Be that as it may, there are many women out there who, at 50-something, are dipping a wary toe into the brave new world of online dating. Having spent the majority of the past two decades single and available, I watched online dating mature from “last resort of the desperate” to “harmless fun for married men” to “the road to romance in a high-tech world.” I assume this is an improvement, although I cannot guarantee it.

Fact is, once we’re out of college and increasingly out of the traditional workplace in favor of isolated home offices, there aren’t many other ways to meet men. I don’t know about you, but I’m just not out clubbing as much as I once was.

Here, then, is some hard-won wisdom and a few shards of jaded attitude. It is my experience that the internet dating code has become, in a word, codified. Back when we were buying expensive newsprint real estate (remember newsprint?) for the personals, it was all about abbreviations like SWF and BBW. Now it’s all in the translation.

Some of the code words are obvious: Cuddly = Fat. Searching for my Soulmate = Stalker. Some are more subtle. Here are a few of Ethlie’s Tips for Online Dating, Over 50 Edition.

1. First, check the stats. Deduct two inches from his height and $30,000/year from his stated income. Then add 10 years to his age. Women, by the way, usually only shave off five years. Men tend to be deluded about the youthfulness of their appearance. I blame shaving mirrors: If they can’t see the bald spot and beer belly, they assume you can’t, either.

2. Next, look at the photo itself. No photo means he’s either married or Quasimodo. Odds are he’s not Quasimodo. The headgear is your first tell. Unless he’s actually riding a horse, any man wearing a cowboy hat is bald. Also, do not expect him to go to a chick flick with you (any movie without explosions is a chick flick) or to cook indoors. If he’s wearing a cowboy hat and standing next to a truck, he’s bald and he drinks. If he’s wearing a cowboy hat and standing next to a Harley, he’s bald, drinks, and will cheat on you.

Unless he’s actually playing baseball, any man wearing a baseball cap is also bald. If he’s wearing a baseball cap, a sport coat and gym shoes, do not expect him to pick up the check.

3. If he’s posed next to a sports car, he is insecure about his manhood and will hit on your sister. If he’s posed next to a Hummer, he’s insecure about his manhood and will hit you. If he’s in a motorboat, expect a commitment-phobe. If he’s in a sailboat, expect a neat freak -- unless it’s a catamaran, in which case send him over to me.

4. Next, look at the way he describes himself. If he’s a “good listener,” he’s a wimp; you’ll be choosing the restaurant. If he’s “down to earth,” he’s cheap; you’ll be going Dutch. If he’s “a great kisser,” he’s oversexed; expect to fight him off after dinner.

5. “Adventurous” means kinky. “Sensual” means kinky. “Open-minded” means kinky. “Worldly” means kinky. “Sophisticated” means kinky. “Kinky” means not only is he kinky, but he overshares.

6. “Wants to spoil you” means he’s looking for someone his daughter’s age, D-cup or better. “Generous” means he’s looking for someone younger than his daughter, DD-cup or better. “Outdoorsy” means he doesn’t own a good suit. “Athletic” means he spends his Sundays in front of the television. So does “I’m not the kind of guy who spends his Sundays in front of the television.”

7. Watch out in particular for buzzwords that men think women like. “A gentleman” is a misogynist in a dress shirt. “A romantic” is a serial dater with a bouquet. “Spiritual” means he can barely earn enough to feed himself. And “sensitive”... well, sensitive means he isn’t really looking for someone like you. He’s really looking for someone like him. You know, someone with a penis.

Miten houkutella naisia

Any Website Can Be a Dating Site

(CNN) -- Recently, a reader dropped the following query into our inbox:

“This may be a stupid question, but recently a friend told me he’s heard of people using Facebook as a dating service. My FB friends and I (admittedly middle-aged) can’t figure out how you “meet” people on Facebook. I (and most of my friends) are FB friends with people we actually know. How would one use Facebook as a dating site?”

- Flummoxed by Facebook Flirting

Oh, Flummoxed! There are no stupid questions -- only painfully, painfully stupid people. But I digress.... .

Social media flirting is a phenom that has been around since the message board/chatroom days, when starry-eyed 13-year-olds and rheumy-eyed 61-year-olds traded “A/S/L?"s with optimistic abandon.

A quick survey of my social followers -- on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Instagram -- revealed that, among my socially savvy circle of folks, people have dated/married suitors they met on MySpace, Facebook, Tumblr, Foursquare, MyYearBook, Yahoo Messenger and Usenet, to name a few.

In fact, this past week, the story of how one couple met on Words With Friends swept the blogosphere: Megan Lawless and Jasper Jasperse started playing the smartphone-based word game and were pitted against each other randomly. After talking via the game’s “Chat” feature and later communicating on Skype and e-mail, the pair met in person, and, eventually married -- Jasperse moving from his native Netherlands to Chicago to be with his bride.

While all of this may seem weird/creepy/slightly sad to anyone who didn’t grow up a digital native, consider this: Americans now spend about a quarter of their online time using social networks. If you’re giving your monitor the old glassy eyeball instead of tipping back highballs at your local TV-plastered sports bar, that’s likely where you’re going to make connections.

However, the actual process of meeting people via social media is still rather, well, creepy. (Less creepy than back in the days of message boards and AOL chatrooms, but creepy all the same.)

Assuming that you are not, in fact, a weirdo who collects spleens (we give you guys so much leeway on this factor), here are some tips on how to make any social media site a dating site without being a creep.

Don’t:

Compliment incessantly: You know that dude who staggers up to you at the bar, breathes whiskey into your face and murmurs, “Hey lady, you got mad cleavage, yo.” He’s creepy, right? He’s even kind of creepy when he goes a less aggressive route and compliments something benign, like your eyes ("You have lovely orbs... May I have them?”). Why? Because he’s stating his intentions off the bat, and our society -- addled by years and years of romantic comedy-viewage -- prefers a bit of a chase.

When engaging with people via social media, talking about their appearance/demeanor/eyeballs is even more unsettling than at the bar, because you don’t know the person in question and you can’t see their face in the flesh. Instead of going directly for flattery, start up a conversation with the object of your desire, thereby charming them with your wit and whimsy rather than empty poesy (or straight-up sexual harassment).

Come to think of it, that’s probably good advice for comporting yourself at ye olde sports bar as well.

Repeat yourself: If your hoped-for intended doesn’t reply to the first five tweets you send him about your shared love of fossils and tesseracts, cease and desist with your wooing. He doesn’t like you. Here’s a tissue.

Erase your face: No one wants to date a picture of a donut. When choosing your avatar, make sure to show your face, or, at the very least, link to a website featuring a picture of your mug. If you’re sensitive about your big-ass nose or your shiny head, just chill out. Ugly people get married, too -- I see their progeny on the subway daily.

Exhibit your courtship: Some initial public bantering is fine -- via Twitter, Facebook Walls, etc -- but if you carry on your heavy flirting ("OMG! I love the shape of your broken nose! You look like a matador!”) in a public forum, you risk annoying your friends and followers or, worse, embarrassing your potential date -- especially if you ask out said potential date publicly.

Have we learned nothing from that dude who asked that girl to marry him on the JumboTron? Twitter allows you to DM people, Facebook boasts private messages and even Tumblr has an internal messaging service called Fan Mail now -- there’s no excuse for blithely PDA’ing the hell out of your swain.

Play phantom: We’re assuming that you actually want to meet the object of your late-night Google stalking, so when it comes to digital flirting -- bring it offline ASAP. We’re also assuming that said person wants to meet you (we’re trusting you again here, guys -- hopefully you possess the social skills to recognize interest, unlike that aforementioned dude in the sports bar).

So why not ask them to hang in person? Or, better yet, in the presence of tons and tons of friends who can waylay a possible kidnapping/murder scenario.

Marriage-Minded Do Better Online Than At Bars

In the marketplace for romance, megapixels are now officially more effective than bar-side flirtations.

More than twice as many couples who married last year met through online dating services than at a club or social event, according to a new survey commissioned by Match.com.

The survey found that 17 percent of those who married in the past three years met online, making it the third-most-frequent method of introduction, behind meeting through a mutual acquaintance or at work or school.

“Online dating is by now a preferred way for singles to find dates,” says Joe Tracy, publisher of Online Dating Magazine. “I think the stigma that has been attached to online dating -- and there’s still some of that today -- has greatly decreased. Everybody knows someone who has done online dating, so people are less fearful to talk about it.”

The study, conducted by the research firm Chadwick Martin Bailey, shows how quickly online dating -- in existence for less than two decades -- has revolutionized the way people find and pursue potential mates.

“It does seem to have displaced all other forms of dating,” says Susan Frohlick, a cultural anthropologist at the University of Manitoba who has studied online dating. “I would say that it’s been in the last five years that it’s become hyper-mainstream.”

The survey also found that one out of five singles has dated someone they met through an online dating site and that one out of every five new relationships owes its origins to the Internet. It also claims that among recently married couples who met online, 30 percent initially made contact through Match.com. The site has about 3 million active users at any given time, according to the company.

Online dating statistics have always been hazy and are frequently contradictory. The Match.com-sponsored survey, for instance, found that 17 percent of couples who married in 2007 met through online dating sites, but a Harris Interactive poll sponsored by eHarmony found that only 9 percent of couples married that year were introduced through such services. (The Harris study claims that 2 percent of recently married American couples met through eHarmony.)

Regardless of discrepancies, the findings point to the increasingly prominent role the Web is playing in helping singles find someone with whom they want to walk down the aisle. Online Dating Magazine estimates that 120,000 U.S. couples who marry each year met online.

“It’s pretty seismic, if you think about it,” says Greg Blatt, chief executive of Dallas-based Match.com. “You’ve got this new thing out of nowhere that has really jumped in and taken on a significant piece of this basic human interaction, which is meeting people.”

Blatt attributes the industry’s growth to the rise of technology and changes in society that have made it more difficult to meet people through traditional methods. People marry later, work longer hours and live farther from family members who might introduce them to a neighbor’s handsome, eligible nephew. Laptops and modems stepped in to fill the void.

“This is just meeting,” Blatt says. “It’s no different meeting on Match than it is meeting at a party, or at a restaurant or on a subway. . . . Once you’ve met, it’s real life; you either fall for each other or you don’t. You either have a great romance or you don’t.

“It’s not like computers are taking the place of romance,” he says. “It’s just another way to put yourself in a position to meet somebody that then gives you a chance for romance.”

Online Dating Tips For Busy Executives

New Husband, Wife Meet Through Internet Dating Site

This is a story with a happy ending, and like most stories with such endings, it comes from nontraditional beginnings.

Elmus Honeycutt found his new bride, Gladys Sue Balch, on ChristianMingle.com last summer, and they married Thursday afternoon in a small ceremony in Rainbow City.

It would be your typical, run-of-the-mill, 21st-century court-ship story of boy meets girl through an Internet dating site — except in this case, boy and girl are both 86, and they were married in Elmus’ retirement community at Regency Pointe.

“I’ve never even heard of anyone 86 years old getting married,” Elmus said, laughing at the unusual circumstances surrounding his courtship and wedding. “But she’s in good health, and mine, as far as I know, is perfect.”

“It just goes to show you’re never too old to try new things,” said Michael Porter, Sue’s 13-year-old great-nephew from Huntsville, who was a guest at the wedding.

Although Elmus and Sue said they don’t have any friends their age who have used the Internet for much of anything — especially dating — they don’t find their story all that remarkable.

Sue’s husband and Elmus’ wife both died in the summer of 2008. Church friends encouraged Elmus to tap the resources on the Internet to find friendship and companionship. Sue’s late husband’s insurance company promoted dating Web sites to her through mailings.

“Well, I was on the hunt, and I guess he was, too,” Sue said. “I was lonesome.”

Elmus had tried one or two dating sites, but they connected him with a lot of women in other states. When he saw on Sue’s profile last summer that she was from Rainbow City, he sent her an e-mail.

“She e-mailed me back, and so we got acquainted,” he said.

It wasn’t a week before they had talked on the phone and set up their first date in the dining room at Regency Pointe. The courtship progressed, and Elmus said he wasn’t even considering remarriage when Sue proposed to him over the Thanksgiving holiday.

At first he turned her down, but two months later, he surprised her with a public announcement from the church pulpit where they were attending services together.

“She doesn’t mind telling people that she begged me to marry her,” Elmus said, laughing.

He grew solemn as he explained he was having a hard time getting over his first wife, and that was why he turned down Sue at first. But her persistence paid off. His face brightens when she walks into the room, and he can’t withhold a boyish laugh at her presence.

“I don’t think I would have married her if she hadn’t shown that love to me,” he said.

Sue is selling her Rainbow City home to move to Regency Pointe with her new husband. Elmus said he will be getting a larger apartment so they can have an office for Sue’s two computers and his one.

He confessed to having a file of about 25 women from across the country saved on one of his dating site profiles.

“I’m going to have to give them to Sue now,” he said, good-naturedly.

“I’ll let him destroy them,” she retorted, giggling.

Daters Without Borders

There are more than 8 million people in the city of New York. Most are either too young, too old, too married or too incarcerated to date. The remaining 17 have weird hobbies, creepy hygiene and bad manners.

Plus you’ve already slept with them.

Time to look beyond the boroughs. And no, we’re not talking New Jersey. More and more New Yorkers are searching for love on European dating sites, living out fairy-tale fantasies of international romance.

“French men really treat you like a lady,” says Lillian, a 42-year-old Manhattan copy editor who signed up for Meetic.com, Europe’s largest dating site. “They wine you, they dine you, they make you feel like you’re the only one on the planet.”

Lillian describes the men she’s met on US-based dating sites as “sleazy,” and the real-life dating scene in New York as “nonexistent.”

“I go out here — and nothin’,” she says.

But on Meetic, she Skypes with a Parisian man from the site for an hour each day. This month they missed connections — she flew to France for vacation the same day he flew to NYC for business — yet Lillian managed to line up two dates with another Frenchman Meetic member while in Paris.

“I was talking to guys in Italy, France and Sweden all at once,” she brags.

Susan, a 22-year-old grad student, also struggled with dating locally, so she widened her eHarmony parameters.

“What are the odds that that perfect person is within a 25-mile radius of your home?” she asks.

Turns out her future husband was living 3,400 miles away in a tiny village with the population of 60. eHarmony matched her with Peter, a 30-year-old Slovakian living in England. After months of Webcam chats, Susan hopped the pond for a face-to-face.

“I was really, really nervous on the plane,” she remembers. “I don’t do this sort of thing! But he was that special.”

Peter proposed a few months later in a romantic English garden. They married last June near a lake in Aurora, NY, and he’s since moved here.

Even “Real Housewives of New York City” reality star Alex McCord and Simon van Kempen met through Matchmaker.com while living on different continents.

“I had already dated most of the guys I knew and wanted to date in New York,” says Alex.

Simon, meanwhile, was based in Sydney and posted a profile on the Australian section of the site. On a lark, he changed his location to New York during a work trip to the city.

“I wasn’t looking to find a New York woman and move here,” he insists.

Still, international love prevailed and they tied the knot in 2000.

“Expect it when you least expect it,” they say. In unison.

Mark Brooks, editor of OnlinePersonalsWatch.com, says international romance is a growing trend, due to singles’ increasing pickiness about potential life partners.

“The longer the shopping list, the further afield you should cast your net,” he advises.

A single New Yorker four years ago, he flew to Prague for a European online dating conference where he met — and fell for — a Czech woman. They married last April and now live in Malta with two daughters.

It’s not just New Yorkers who are searching overseas for love. Sarah Shaw, 45, describes the dating scene in LA as “a nightmare,” so a French friend made her register with Meetic, where she stumbled upon Pierre Dubois, a handsome French painter. They fell into a whirlwind “fantasy” romance and were married soon after. Pierre moved to California and they now have identical twin girls.

Sarah credits European men with being more open and less threatened by female success than American men. Plus there’s that foreign accent.

“You have to be willing to look under every rock,” she says. “In every country.”

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