by Esther Andrews

Created on: September 06, 2009   Last Updated: September 07, 2009

Online dating holds great promise, yet usually fails to live up to that promise.

To its credit, online dating helps you find people interested in dating or seeking a long-term relationship often a challenge when you find your prospects dwindling. It opens you up to a wider group of prospects outside your normal circles. You may find people working in a different profession or with different hobbies and interests, who, over the course of your day-to-day activities, might never cross your path.

Where you run into problems with online dating is that there are just too many options. As a result, both men and women rapidly judge and decide about someone long before they've ever met. They are scanning dozens of photos, speed-reading through profiles, quickly making a judgment from one photo they don't like or from a couple of typos or grammatical errors in a bio. There are so many more to choose from. It becomes addicting next, nonext, nonext, no. All the options are distracting so most people don't take any time to get to know someone before dismissing them.

Even when you see someone you're interested in, you send a flurry of emails back and forth, but suddenly the other person vanishes. Often after a simple two-sentence email in which you just know you said something hilarious, because you ARE funny and lovable. It's hard not to take it personally, but it's all about the plethora of options.

Even when you get to the point of the meet & greet you both know you can throw the fish back and go find ten more like him or her when you get back home to your computer. People more freely dump you quickly and keep looking for perfection, without all those human flaws. Because we all believe if we just keep looking that perfection is out there. And the Internet gives us the ability to examine so many more prospects for perfection than ever before possible.

Dating is just truly more complicated than the online world can manage. You might arrange to bring it into the real world and get to that first meet & greet that will enable you to learn much more about someone over a date or two by seeing their mannerisms, facial expressions, day-to-day appearance, how they touch/hug, etc., but getting to that step is monumental. Even when you do take time and build somewhat of a connection with someone online via email, texting, or even talking on the phone, they often don't live up to your expectations when you meet them in person.

Some people post pictures from ten years or fifty fewer pounds ago. And you read things like houses and cars aren't as important as happy families and you think that it's sweet, until you find out that what they are really saying is their standards for their home and car are very different from your own. Or they state they are open-minded, which you eventually find out means they want you to live communally with them and several other women.

And if that's not enough, many people participating in online dating sites have ulterior motives, unfortunately, that have very little to do with wanting to date or build a relationship. Some state they are consultants or self-employed, which you usually find out later is code for I'm unemployed and just networking to find a job. It's disturbing how many times you can get hit up for a job rather than someone who is looking to date.

It all starts to feel like a treadmill after awhile. As for me, my best dates and relationships have come from meeting people the old-fashioned way through friends, co-workers, etc. I haven't given up on online dating, but I've learned that it doesn't pay emotionally or mentally to take it too seriously as a viable tool for finding the love of my life.

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