10 Surprising Signs

You’d have to be crazy to hook up with an abuser, right? That’s what I thought, but after working on our relationship violence story for six months, I was shocked by how smart and cool the women who get fooled are. The thing is, these guys are super charmers, pulling off Oscar-worthy performances of Mr. Dream Dude -- at least while they’re wooing you. And then, when they’ve got you madly in love with them, ka-bang, their violent true colors start showing.

The good news: there are definite danger sings a guy is an abuser before he ever raises a fist -- and they start with you just having a funny feeling in your pit of your stomach. Because possessiveness and control are major red flags, Cindy Southworth, a VP at the National Network to End Domestic Violence, suggests this little test: “Break a date at the beginning when he’s all hot and heavy, and tell him your girlfriend needs you. If he says, ‘I’m disappointed but I understand,’ great. But if it’s, ‘I can’t bear to be apart,’ or he makes you feel guilty, puts your friend down, or gets angry, these are not good signs!”

Here are a few other red flags from Southworth and the whole team of experts at the National Network to End Domestic Violence, both for you and -- in case you’re worried about a friend -- for her:

Watch out if your guy

• Is so crazy about you he wants to settle in as soon as you meet.
• Is really, weirdly jealous. (He should be uncomfortable if you go away for the weekend with your ex-boyfriend, but if he accuses you of flirting with every guy you encounter -- the waiter, the cashier, a gay buddy -- it’s a red flag.)
• Texts so much, it sometimes creeps you out.
• Doesn’t think your friends and family value you enough, or even at all.

Also watch out if

• You are always tired because he keeps you up at night.
• You’re always explaining to people “I can’t go.”
• Your anxiety soars if you’re just a few minutes late -- you know how upset he’ll be.
• Things are always your fault.
• You get a lot of apology emails or make-up gifts from him.
• You find you don’t do anything without him, or without him approving of it.

Run if

• You find out he had a violent relationship with a former girlfriend.
• He stalks you -- at work, online, with GPS in your car.
• He beats up a teammate or has a punch-out in a bar.
• He’s ever been cruel to animals.
• He is ever physically violent to you.
• And if you’re worried about a friend? She might be in trouble if:

She starts saying she can’t come to things you invite her to (because she has to be with her boyfriend).

When you’re with her, she’s always on-edge about returning his messages immediately or being late to meet him.

She has bruises or scratches she can’t explain or tells you they were caused by an accident.

She stops doing things she loved before meeting the guy -- hobbies, shopping, school, even working.

You just feel like you’re losing her.

Have you or a friend ever witnessed any of these warning signs?

The Virgins-Only Dating Website

By Amy Julia Becker

Fewer and fewer Americans are getting married. Those who do are, on average, waiting longer to wed than have previous generations. But according to Time’s “Who Needs Marriage? A Changing Institution,” women and men still want to meet and build relationships with each other, so marriage remains an ideal. Because of this, reports Stephanie Rosenblum in The New York Times, online dating sites of a remarkable variety have proliferated in recent years. Some are based purely on physical appearance, others focus on hobbies and interests, while others highlight education or the type of computer you use.

Wading into these crowded waters is WeWaited.com, a dating site exclusively for virgins. Only 30 percent of applicants to the site are admitted, and they gain access through a fee and a survey designed to assess their trustworthiness. The site’s founders admit that some virgins are left out due to the rigorous screening process, while some who lie about their sexual activity make it in. But, according to its homepage, WeWaited.com mostly achieves its goal: “to use virginity as a significant compatibility tool to bring people together.”

If movies like The 40-Year-Old Virgin and covers of Cosmopolitan weren’t enough, sociological data back up the fact that virginity before marriage is rare in the West. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 95 percent of Americans engage in premarital sex. So WeWaited.com offers a safe space for the small segment of the population who want to stay virgins until marriage. It enables partners who value their own virginity to pair up, and it affirms the desire to remain chaste before marriage.

The founders of the site, a husband and wife team who exchanged their “vows and their virginities” on their wedding day, believe virginity is something that goes beyond physical intercourse. They see it as physical, emotional, and spiritual, and believe waiting to exchange their “whole selves” until their wedding was a blessing.

WeWaited.com (formerly called YouandMeArePure.com) is not explicitly Christian, but its view of sex as something involving the whole person aligns with the Christian view. As Wheaton provost Stanton L. Jones writes in the January issue of Christianity Today, sex has meaning, and that meaning is derived from God’s intentions for sex, not from our intentions or desires. For Christians, sex is not a merely physical act, but one with implications for gender relationships, embodiment, procreation, personal fulfillment, and God’s glory. “God made sexual intercourse to create and sustain a permanent, one-flesh union in a male-female married couple,” Jones writes.

So on many levels, providing a space for virgins to meet one another is a good thing. It affirms a biblical perspective on the purpose of marriage as well as the significance and goodness of sex within marriage. And in spite of cultural norms and sociological data that suggest virginity is impossible, WeWaited.com provides proof that it is possible and desirable, if challenging, to remain a virgin into adulthood.

Despite its strengths, the site, and the idea of Christian virgins seeking only fellow virgins as partners, poses problems. First, by narrowing the pool of potential partners to virgins, Christians run the risk of making virginity — rather than a commitment to the gospel — the litmus test of a relationship. God cares about virginity. But, as Paul wrote, “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers” (2 Cor. 6:14). A shared love for Jesus matters even more than a pure sexual past when it comes to Christian relationships. Second, although Christians uphold an ethos that supports sexual relations exclusively within marriage, virginity should not become an idol. To eliminate the vast majority of the population — including a good majority of Christians — as potential marriage partners may well emphasize sexual purity at the expense of God’s power to forgive and redeem.

The Bible advocates sexual purity. Further, though, a number of passages demonstrate how Christians should respond to sexual activity outside of marriage. Jesus, for instance, refuses to condemn the woman caught in adultery (John 8). He chooses a Samaritan woman who is living with a man who is “not her husband” as one of the first evangelists (John 4). The text assumes that the women’s sexual activity will be different in the future because of their encounter with Jesus, and with God’s grace, God’s willing and undeserved forgiveness for their sin. “Go and leave your life of sin,” Jesus says.

Similarly, Paul often addresses congregations of new believers who engaged in sexual sin before their conversion. He instructs them with a message of forgiveness for the past and encouragement for new life in Christ in the future. And as Peter writes, “you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do — living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry. . .” (1 Pet. 4:3). Contemporary Americans, including many Christians, have sex before marriage. In so doing, they bring harm to themselves and to others. But God’s grace has always been able to redeem sins of the past.

Christians should be concerned with sexual purity. And it is a relief for Christians to find a safe space that does not assume premarital promiscuity as the norm. Moreover, God’s ideal for marriage includes both partners entering a covenant as virgins who give of themselves — body, mind, and spirit — only to each other. WeWaited.com implies that virginity is crucial to compatibility. But the highest concern for Christians in dating, and ultimately marriage, is a relationship based on the love and grace of Jesus Christ, the one who forgives all sin, the one who calls us to forgive one another, the one who can make all things, and all people, new.

Hur till Land en rik man

Dating After Divorce and Other Lessons Learned

By Susan Orlins

After my separation at age 52, I thought I’d simply revert to the lively dating life I’d had in my twenties. It didn’t work that way. Most men my age seemed to have an eye only for women whose necks were long and smooth like a Chardonnay bottle.

I thought cosmetic surgery would help. Then I looked around and, though I saw some women who’d benefitted, I decided the possibility of looking worse was too real. And who wants to have their head stapled anyway?

I threw my self a divorce party, which was a great way to meet people. Plus it gave me a celebratory Auntie Mame aura.

At every opportunity, I cultivated new friendships with interesting men to go to dinner with. I never hesitated to call a guy to join me for an outing.

Everyone said you have to lie about your age. But lying about my age on my online dating profile backfired. If you decide to lie about your age, I suggest preserving the deception. Thinking I was being up front, I’d fess up right away and that was the end before there was even a beginning.

One friend told me he was fixed up with a woman he liked, but he thought she was too young, 48 to his 56. He wanted to age together with someone. Then he learned she had lied about her age, but he never asked her out again.

Avoid using the C-word or references to accelerating a relationship too soon. Some men are terrified of commitment, which everyone knows, but after divorce that kind of memory can dim.

On the other hand, men seem to get scooped up within months of becoming divorced or widowed, so timing is tricky.

I spent several years with Mr. Wrong and it was a wonderful time. I learned to give up notions I had when I was younger of how someone needed to look or act for me to be attracted. I learned to broaden the narrow universe of available men.

I weighed the odds. It took going to around 10 singles events to meet one guy I wanted to go out with. Finally I decided I’d rather spend the time going to a movie alone.

Swing dancing saved me. Just knowing I could go dancing any night of the week gave me a boost. Maybe I’d go once or twice a week. The music, the exercise, the human contact was exhilirating. People were there to dance, so not much for dating opportunities, but doing something I loved was more fun than a mediocre date!

Every summer I try to take a bike trip. Exercise always elevates the mood. Yoga adds yet another dimension. Being kind to your body helps your soul.

Going out with couples can be twice the fun.

Reframing helps. In my case, rather than feeling sorry for myself, I thought about the positives of being able to spend more time with my aging parents. Also I have some treasured friendships that divorce allowed me time to cultivate.

I compensated for the time my children spent with their dad. For example, I began getting up early so we could all have breakfast together before they went to school (which felt like the 50’s, when I was a kid).

I learned from others. One night I heard Paula Allende on C-Span talking about her daughter Paula, who had died. She referred to the remarkable ability of the human spirit to rise above adversity. Wow, if she could, then so could I. Though of course, the loss of a child is something you never recover from the way you can from a divorce.

Divorced with kids means "married for life." So if your ex is as devoted to the kids as mine is, then it improves both your and your kids’ lives to strive for harmony. We have been taking "family" vacations every summer for around 8 years now. We all look forward to that week.

Finally, I learned I don’t need a man to make me whole, in fact, my newest worry is what if I meet a guy I like? Then what?

7 Raisons Pourquoi Rencontres peut être un défi

Dating Online? Beware Of Spelling And Grammar Errors!

Dating may have become hi-tech, but romantic rituals remain much the same, says a new study. Like in traditional dating, online love birds are influenced by non-verbal cues like spelling errors, the number of exclamation marks and the use of grammar.

Zoe Hazelwood, psychologist at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), who led the study, has found that traditional and online dating are, in fact, very similar.

For example, she found non-verbal communication was also just as important in online dating as it was in traditional dating, according to a QUT statement.

“Although online traditional non-verbal cues are not present, in our research we found people do judge potential partners on things aside from what they are saying,” she said.

“People form impressions online based on things like spelling errors, use of acronyms, amount of exclamation marks, use of grammar - things like that.

“They may not pursue a relationship with someone if they do not like their writing style, or feel they have poor spelling.”

Another habit that is present in traditional and online dating was the tendency to present ourselves as - just slightly - more interesting and interested than we actually are at the start of a relationship.

Online dating has also allowed an avenue for people young and old to reach out and find connections, said Hazelwood.

“One of the things I found pleasing was that online dating stretched across all age groups,” she said. “In our research, one of the participants was a 76-year-old female. She and her partner, who was the same age, met online and were getting married.”

Hazelwood’s research found that traditional daters and online daters had roughly the same relationship success rate - despite many people believing that online dating was not as likely to be as successful as traditional dating.

Uno su quattro coppie si incontrano online

Mobile Dating

The last few years has seen mobile technology come on leaps and bounds, phones are getting faster, smaller, smoother, smarter and much more capable. This has been reflected in the explosion in the choice of applications (apps) that are available for download. These days you have apps that help you find a restaurant, translate text, social network, and compare prices. Even NASA has an app.

It is little surprise therefore that one of the most popular type of apps is the dating app. There are hundreds of them on the Android Marketplace and even more on the Apple App Store, each promising the easiest, most fun way to meet people in “your area”. Flirtomatic, one of the most popular mobile dating services, reported that in 2010 over half a billion “flirts” were sent, equating to about 285 messages per user.

It’s clear that mobile dating has many things going for it but as Flirtomatic indicates in its “Flirt Report” market research; there are important privacy issues to remember when using location based apps.

Lloyd Borrett, Security Evangelist at AVG (AU/NZ), says, “A device knowing its user’s location will enable future innovative services. Within five years users might be able to find someone on a dating site and send (with permission) real flowers immediately to their exact location.”

“Far fetched? Invasion of privacy? Consider that since your phone knows where you are, it becomes the most effective delivery address imaginable. Your address is your phone, which is where you are. But only if you want it to be.”

Giving away your location to strangers has obvious consequences, so here are five tips from AVG (AU/NZ) on staying safe while using location based apps:

Check the source: Only install apps from a trustworthy source - it’s like buying from a shop, or placing your money in a bank account. Try and check the reputation of the app manufacturer. Apps in the Apple store are rigorously checked, while the Android Marketplace is more open with its screening policy.

Check for hidden charges: When downloading an app make sure to understand exactly what the hidden costs are. “Free” isn’t always as black and white as it may seem.

Check your settings: Make sure that the app is only monitoring/reporting the information that you want to share.

Turn it off: Turning off the GPS functionality when you’re not using it will ensure that your privacy is protected. The same goes for removing the app if you’ve stopped using it.

Wear protection: Having an up to date anti-virus on your phone will ensure that it keeps malicious software from sharing information that you want to keep private.

Divorcees Find Love, Recommend Online Dating

Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love, get married and live happily ever after.

In today’s world, the realities of your typical fairy-tale romance tend to be a bit more complex.

It can be hard to find Prince Charming, especially for someone who has other responsibilities like work, school and children, and for someone who doesn’t have the social structure to meet new people easily.

Sarah Clark, of Creve Coeur, Ill., knows this firsthand. The 42-year-old is twice divorced and the mother of two small children, 8-year-old Joshua and 6-year-old Lydia.

The bar scene isn’t really her thing, and she said meeting people at church can sometimes be like meeting people at work — if it doesn’t work out, you still have to interact with that person regularly, so it might be a better idea to avoid the situation to begin with.

But where does that leave today’s singles? Apparently, with technology.

More and more single men and women are turning to the Internet to help them find true love. In today’s world, it’s possible to trade the awkward pick-me-up lines for an in-depth survey that lets the computer decide who is compatible.

That’s how Clark met her fiance, 47-year-old Mark Parshall, using the matchmaking website eHarmony. Smiling and settling in to tell their story, the couple laughs about who will go first.

“He tells it so much better,” Clark said.

“They had a free online communication weekend with eHarmony,” said Parshall, who is also twice divorced and the father of two children, 17-year-old Coy and 15-year-old Sara.

“Sarah (Clark) put a thing on there that she wanted to communicate, so I responded back to her,” Parshall said.

The free communication weekend allows users to communicate with their computer-generated matches without paying membership fee. Both Clark and Parshall had been paying members of the site over the past few years — Parshall had just paid for a three-month membership when he met Clark.

“She already knew my age, that I lived in Chillicothe (Ill.), that I was divorced,” Parshall said. “It was Valentine’s weekend, and open communication was coming to an end, so Sarah said if you want to keep contacting me, here’s my email address. It wasn’t long after that we started talking on the telephone, and I would say within two weeks later we met at Red Lobster ... and then we’ve been dating for a little over a year.”

Clark also had an advantage in getting to know Parshall because of the extensive survey eHarmony users are required to fill out when they join.

“They do a really good job of screening out people that would not be a match or would not be a long-term, committed relationship,” Clark said. “The key to it is being honest with your answers.

“You have to decide between what you strongly like and need to have in a relationship versus what you dislike. Values stuff, sense of humor, communication, affectionate. To me, that is where it was at –– the fact that we were so similar in our likes and dislikes,” Clark said.

Clark had used a few other dating websites over the course of about three years and had even gone out with about six other men she met through eHarmony. Parshall had also used other sites, and he has been out with three or four other women.

“Some, you go, and they’re totally different than what they say they are,” Parhsall said. “I’d rather not even have a picture than to have somebody say they’re ‘this’ when they’re totally different. The big thing is you have to be honest with each other. If at the very beginning you can’t be honest with me, how am I ever going to trust you later?”

Both Clark and Parshall admit not everyone looking for love on the Internet has the same goal for a long-term, committed relationship.

“If you’re just looking to have fun, there are sites geared toward that. You just have to be honest,” Clark said.

They also both know people who have fallen victim to online scams. Although online dating may seem very modern, there are some parts of it that are the same as any kind of dating.

Using the communication tools on the website, couples are able to ask questions back and forth in a sort of interview process. There is also the ability to “close” the match, which — just as in dating without a computer — a person can do with or without explanation.

“It’s a human being on the other side of that coin,” Clark said. “What I’m saying is, if you want people to be considerate to you, how can you not be considerate to somebody else? I tried to be an adult about it, and if I wasn’t interested, I told them I wasn’t interested.”

“When we first met, I just wanted friendship because of my schooling,” Clark said of Parshall. “There was a lot of persuasion on his part.”

But Clark said she knew the relationship could go further when she realized she and Parshall share the same spiritual beliefs and he was interested in going to church with her.

The couple got engaged a year after they first met online and are planning to get married on Clark’s birthday, June 23, 2012.

Without the Internet, they both say they would be “just still looking” for true love, and they’d recommend anyone who is still looking to give online dating a try.

“I think the big thing is they have to know what they want, and they plan on being honest,” Parshall said. “If they aren’t honest, and they don’t know what they want, they might as well not even waste their time.”