Don’t panic. I know that the title of this piece (and pretty much this whole first paragraph, and additional parts of this piece) seem like bad news. But still; don’t panic. Here’s the deal; online dating sucks. That’s a piece of information you just need to accept. But guess what? Everything else sucks too! Meeting somebody and/or finding love is not easy. It is not easy and never has been. But so what! That’s the way it goes. I’ve heard about people meeting and finding love randomly, I’ve just never met any of these people in real life. So for all intents and purposes you and I have to be proactive about finding that special someone. Having said that; online dating websites should be PART of your total dating strategy.

So before we get into the benefits of online dating websites let’s look at all the things that might discourage you when you first start. Firstly the people on the sites probably aren’t going to look as good as you want. As you start browsing you’re going to quickly discover that “people are people.” They’re not models and they don’t look like the people on TV, they’re just regular people. And guess what? You probably fit into that category too, so just start isolating those faces that you do like. But be aware if YOU think somebody looks good chances are somebody else does too, and so those few good looking folks are going to be on everybody else’s favorite list too. A site like plentyoffish is a perfect example of the good news/bad news nature of dating sites. For one thing they compress pictures that are bigger than 400 px and so most people’s pictures look terrible, BUT they do show you how many times a person has been favorited. And this is good; because if you see somebody has been picked 200 times and somebody else has been picked 5 times, guess who’s going to be more happy to hear from you?

Next piece of bad news; the damaged people. There are tons of them, especially the women over 35. By that time most of these women are on their first divorce and have 2 or more kids. The “kids thing” and whether or not you decide to get involved is a personal choice, but the hostility and bitterness in the women is something that might not be as apparent. They’re going to try to hide that-expect that hiding to be about equal to men trying to hide their low income. A lie for a lie.

Why am I telling you all this bad news? It’s good to know. Because, you can prepare yourself now. Factor it in and be ready. Know that it’s gonna go down like this and take it from there. In your school days when you took a test you probably KNEW when you weren’t going to do well right? In fact, some people lived from this premise and would say “I’m cool with a B.” And some people were “cool” with anything above an F. In other words the failure rate is factored in. And just like school tests; the more you prepare for online dating websites the better you’ll do.

That’s pretty much how you have to look at internet dating-a numbers game. If you go to an auction you hope to win but you PLAN for maybe not winning. So you start looking for other options while you’re working on your first choices. It’s only when people get attached to something they didn’t really have in the first place that they suffer. So you kinda have to go Buddhist on this one and let go of attachment. Just play the numbers and you wont have as much heartache about losing out-but DO expect to lose out. But the good news? You’ve got an almost infinite chance at winning!