Just like regular real-world relationships, online relationships need tending, to grow over time. Here are some quick growing tips.

1. Take time and make time. Does your online date get in touch with you regularly? Do you do the same? Neglecting virtual meetings can be considered abuse or neglect, so treat each other’s time with respect. If it’s lacking, might mean time to move on.

2. Communication needs to “feel” right for both of you. If one of you is too pushy about meeting, for instance, that can give off bad vibes. So don’t rush. Take time to learn more about each other and develop trust.

3. Respect each others privacy. Don’t share personal email addresses or digital photos online, for example, if your online date sent you the information in confidence.

4. Share special online and offline fun times. Online – send greeting cards, links to favorite places to upload digital photos of your favorite pet, download music and video clips, post on favorite forums of interest. Offline- if you’re exchanging addresses or post office boxes, send print greeting cards and postcards, small items from your area (like a key chain with your state bird).

Tend your online relationship. Water it with care and over time it can sprout and grow.

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Win Back Love
Don’t miss out on this. You no longer need to suffer with a broken heart!

Establishing Online Dating Relationships: Safety First

Online dating can be fun. But don’t neglect safety and common sense when you try to hook up with a mate. At minimum, take caution in the following areas.

Protect Your Computer

Take care of your equipment and systems before you head out into the Internet realm. You need to have a firewall and anti-virus protection for your email and for when you search websites and interact online. At the bare minimum, you may want these two solutions that are offered at no charge to home computer users (i.e. not for commercial use):

Protect Yourself

Take care of yourself, too, by choosing appropriate dating sites. Seek and choose a reputable online dating service. How? Begin by asking around with friends, neighbors, co-workers and others you may know who have tried online dating, and see which places they recommend. In addition, search “online dating services” and keep a notebook of their URLs or website links, the fees, rules and regulations, complete contact information of each and any other useful information that spikes your interest. Then compare each place. Try only those places where you feel safe. Avoid the others.

So take care. Arm your computer – and yourself- with the correct tools and knowledge!

Professionals often spend significantly more time at the office than at home. So much so that there is always a generous amount of single men and single women who don’t have the time to meet new people. So the logical choice for them to meet other single men and women is naturally, the office.

When single people spend at least 40 hours, in some professions 50 hours and more, with like minded people of similar backgrounds and interests, relationships are a tempting side effect. Although it’s a logical choice to look within the office for romance, there are definitely good and bad aspects to the office dating scene.

The good in office dating

There are several advantages to office dating one of which is obvious — the time you have to check out the available singles is during your work hours so no longer do the constraints of office hours apply. Also the awkwardness of first introductions is usually eliminated as initial conversations are done within the pretense of a work environment once again relieving the stress of having to make such a critical first impression since the impression would be based on some sort of work objective as opposed to strictly a personal objective like you would have in the normal dating process.

A second advantage is knowing the person before you date them, at least to some degree. The truth is you may interact with a potential date several times on a business level and get to know something about their personality and themselves without being on the spot as you would in a normal social setting. This helps avoid the common pitfall of most early relationships — incompatibility.

A final advantage, is the ability to quickly build a relationship as the time you see each other is significantly more than people who would meet outside the work place?

The bad in office dating

As with any dating scenario there is defiantly a bad side to office romance. For example just as being in constant contact with each other due to sharing an office can be an advantage it can also be a huge disadvantage. This amount of time spent together can cause a relationship to fall apart just as quickly as it developed, why? We all need alone time and seeing each other five days a week for eight hours or more and then spending time together on the weekends makes for precious little alone time.

Another disadvantage to the office romance is when a person must exercise their professional responsibilities which might include having to discipline or even fire the person they are dating . Although this might seem like a remote idea when you being the relationship, I don’t think you would be very comfortable having to tell your boyfriend or girlfriend, “your fired”. Another example of this might be a need for one of the participants to go out of their way to show the rest of the office they are not playing favorites maybe even to the point of not promoting the person even though they might be the most deserving.

A final disadvantage to office dating could be jealousy especially if the relationship is “under cover”. If you see your officemates flirting with your date the natural reaction would be negative and why would being in a office environment generate any other reaction than a natural one? With that reaction might come a unnecessary reaction including punishing someone for something that is not work related at all.

Before you entertain the thought of dating the cute secretary on the fourth floor or the hot hunk VP you saw during the last office meeting, entertain the consequences of dating that person, balance the pros and cons and if you decide to move foreward keep an eye out for all of the things that can go wrong and have an understanding of how you might handle any of those situations. Remember you are dating a professional single so to keep your job keep the professional in front of the single.

Internet dating has become a great way for people to meet people. Many singles are finding that internet dating is the golden ticket for discovering new love and true love! Is your schedule crazy busy? Want to experience a different way to find a date? Like getting to know people? Want to turn strangers into friends? Internet dating may just be the golden ticket for you!

Look, in this day and age Internet dating is life – and it is here to stay. Yet, many singles are unsure of this 21st century dating technique. Many fear the outcome. They fall prey to the stereotypes associated with the notion of cyber dating: What will other people think of me? Will I end up going out with a cyber geek? Is this kind of dating safe?

No one will think less of you for trying out online dating – so what if you end up dating a cyber geek? First dates can be last dates. If you are worried about being safe, online dating can be safe – if you exercise a few precautions.

While many singles fear meeting married liars or stalkers-in-the-making, the biggest challenge typically ends up being the magnitude of it all. Potential online daters quickly find there are a boat load (think cruise line sized ship) of people seeking dates and mates. Check this out: During December 2003, 14 percent of the active American online population, or 21 million unique users, visited a personals/dating destination, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. Eureka! Match seekers nirvana!

Tens of thousands of people have met, dated, and eventually married as a result of their online dating experience. However, it is still vitally important when using online dating services, to exercise caution. Do some homework and you will likely avoid the pitfalls of cyber dating. And it is work. Filtering through the responses and “getting to know” the people who really pique your interest could take days! But there is an element of control with online dating – you have plenty of time to check, double-check and triple check things out. Pay attention to online inconsistencies – a red flag to help you avoid disappointment down the road. Keep your antenna up and be deliberate. Then, have some fun!

DO’s and DONT’s FOR ONLINE DATING

Do make calls with a cell phone that won’t be identified on caller ID.

Do meet in a public place for at least the first few meetings.

Do let someone know whom you’re meeting and where.

Do take a cell phone with you and have someone call to check that you’re OK.

Do ask lots of questions. Look for consistency in responses.

Don’t reveal too much personal information too quickly. Make sure e-mails can’t be traced and don’t reveal a signature line.

Don’t invest too much in one person; correspond with several people to save time.

In the past, i.e. the 1990’s, online dating was a brand new idea. Unlike today, most people did not own PC’s or even have access to the internet. Times have changed. Online dating is not only IN the mainstream, it IS the mainstream.

There are many reasons for the phenomenal growth of online dating sites and the number of people, men and women of all ages, races and religions who use them as their primary source for meeting people and looking for “the one”.

If you don’t believe me, just ask your friends in the “real” world. If they are honest, most of them will tell you they have or are using an online dating service.

Here are three good reasons why thousands of people sign up for dating services everyday:

(1)  You can be anonymous. You will never be required to give your real name, address, email address, phone number or place of employment to another online user. You, of course, may do so but only at your own discretion and only when you feel completely safe. You are not required to post a picture of yourself. Posting a picture, however, will get more responses to your profile. So you can surf through the other members on the dating site you have joined with complete anonymity.

(2)  You have so many more choices online that you do in your brick and mortar world. Before the world of online dating came of age, the choice of friends and even of lifetime partners was limited to those we came in contact with through college or work. No more…the world is your oyster. You can go through hundreds…even thousands of profiles to find the right man for you.

The “safety factor” is the biggest reason of all. An online dating service will never reveal your personal information. You get to choose who has that information and when they have it. 

While you search the internet for that special lady…the one of your dreams…your soul-mate…the other half of yourself, you can do a lot of things right. Sadly, you can, also, do a lot of things wrong….things that will guarantee failure and a broken heart. Out in the “real” world, being aggressive, demanding perfection and even little white lies are all ingredients for success. However, those same qualities are killers when you are dating online and off line, too, for that matter.

There is a big difference between being aggressive or confident and being too aggressive, over-confident, or just plain sleazy or slimy from a woman’s point of view. If you push too hard for a face-to-face, you will come across as too aggressive…maybe even, scary. Try to remember that you are not trying to close a business deal and keep the relationship progressing at a slow but steady pace. Patience is the key.

Nobody is perfect. We are all flawed in some way or another…and that includes you, as well. If you expect the woman to be absolutely perfect and demand that, you will always be disappointed. Demanding perfectionism in your work is one thing. Demanding perfectionism from a friend, co-worker or a lady you are interested in is not just fine. It won’t happen. Expect flaws and just deal with them. Decide the ones you can live with and those you can’t.

Little white lies and false fronts won’t work. Be honest from the beginning of a relationship. Write your profile. Make it interesting but don’t make false statements. The truth will come out eventually anyway. If you say you are a lawyer who makes a million bucks a year and you are really an electrician that makes $75,000, you have set yourself up for failure.

Remember…don’t be too aggressive, expect to ever find perfection or put on a false front.

Online dating is not a competition between competing males for the attention of a female. Grow up. Change your mind set from “winning” to “searching”. This isn’t high school. You are all grown up and have been for quite some time, now. Your attitude is the most important asset you have. You should like yourself and not concentrate of all of the things that aren’t YOUR idea of the perfect guy…the one the all women want.

What is that women want, you ask? That’s the age old question. Being of the female persuasion myself, I can tell you a few things women want and don’t want.

Women want a man to be confident…NOT an arrogant jerk. There’s a big difference. You need to like yourself and not be self depreciating but you don’t need to come across like you believe that you are a gift to them from God and have just fallen from the sky. They don’t want you to think that THEY just fell from heaven and are some kind of perfect being, either. They can’t live up to that expectation.

Women want a communicator. The “strong silent type” really isn’t appealing at all. They think you probably don’t have an original thought in your head and you probably haven’t heard a word they said, either or that you just don’t care what they said or didn’t even hear what they said. They want you to be interesting enough to want to know more about you and they want you to think that they are interesting enough to ask intelligent questions about what is important to them, too.

Women do NOT want to be a prize to be won. They don’t want to be a trophy. They want to be the ONE woman that you want to be with.

If you are far away from your loved ones, it is sometimes hard to show them how much you love and appreciate them. You can send cards and letters through the mail, but sometimes you want to give them something special. Online florists can be the answer to all of your gift-giving woes. Rather than having to locate local florists in faraway places, online florists offer you the flexibility of sending flowers to virtually anywhere just by entering your payment information and picking out a beautiful arrangement.

Gone are the days of reading flower arrangement descriptions and picking what seems to sound best. These days, online florists offer detailed photos of their arrangements, taking the guessing game out of ordering flowers. Most major Internet florists separate their arrangements into categories, such as flower types, occasions, plants, and combination food baskets. You can easily click on a category and sort according to price range, color scheme or type of flower. You can choose from arrangements made specifically for new babies, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Easter and even Halloween. Many companies offer uniquely colored flowers for the different holidays, and they typically provide creative containers to house their arrangements.

There are a multitude of online florists to choose from. 1-800-FLOWERS.com, Flora2000, Onlineflowers.com, and 800florals are all popular Internet flower companies that provide easy access to photographs of their offerings. 1-800-FLOWERS offers pages and pages of specialized bouquets and baskets for virtually every occasion you can imagine. The best online florists even offer same-day delivery if you order early enough in the day. Check with the florist before ordering to insure that your flowers are guaranteed to be delivered on time. Most Internet florists are highly reliable, but if, by chance, your flowers fail to arrive on time, some florists will refund your money or offer you a free arrangement. The same holds true if you are not satisfied with the product when it arrives. Though it can be disappointing if flowers are broken, most companies will send replacement bouquets the next day.

When you choose to order arrangements from an online florist, you benefit from the wide variety of items they have to offer. If you visit a local florist, their offerings are typically limited by what they happen to have in stock on that particular day. However, because of the large volume of requests, online florists can have huge warehouses full of flowers ready to cut and arrange and to ship for same-day delivery. Though ordering from a website is less personal than a visit to a local florist, it can be an excellent alternative, especially if you are sending flowers to someone in a different city or state.

Many online florists offer products that go beyond regular flower arrangements. You can find exotic plants and flowers in beautiful containers, in addition to more traditional vase or basket pieces. Some internet flower retailers even stock bonsai and other exotic trees that can be shipped within a few days.

Non-flower gift baskets are also commonly found on Internet florist sites. You can send a bouquet made entirely of cookies, or you can choose from a variety of gourmet candies to include in a personalize basket. You can send holiday jams and jellies in conjunction with festive poinsettias, or you can include a teddy bear with that special dozen of roses.

Online florists offer a wide variety of items, often at discount prices. The convenience and range of products makes ordering flowers online a great way to show someone how much you care, especially if he or she is far away from you. Before you try to track down a local florist is a far away location, you should first take a look at your online options. You will most likely be pleasantly surprised.

The odds of finding your “soul-mate” online are a lot better than you may think. It doesn’t happen for everyone, of course, but it can happen for you. The world of internet or online dating has exploded over the last few years.

As our lives become busier and busier we need to make better use of our time and energy in our search for the one man who will make our lives complete.

The old saying, “You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a princess” is no longer true. Why kiss frogs when you can read hundreds of profiles and look at the pictures that go with them for a small monthly fee? That saves time and money…not to mention lip burn.

These are a few good reasons to consider online dating:

(1)  There is a wide range of men to choose from. You aren’t limited to the men in your social circle or work environment.

(2)  You have the opportunity to get to know a lot about a man before you ever contact him for the first time. You will know his age, marital status, what city he lives in, whether he has children, his height/weight and his likes and dislikes all from his profile. You’ll even see a picture of him.

(3)  You have a better chance to present yourself in a favorable way. This is especially useful for those of us who are shy. We have time to think about how we want to say things about ourselves and can avoid being tongue tied. Even those who are more extroverted can take time to reflect on who they really are before writing their online profile.

(4)  Online dating is certainly a time saver. You can meet so many more men in a lot less time than you ever could out in the real world.

The sooner you realize this sad but true fact, the sooner you can get on with finding Mr. Close-Enough-To-Perfect. Prince Charming, riding on a white stallion, lost his way or found Princess Charming and got married on his way to your castle. Get over it and get on with it. You ARE going to have to actively seek the man of your dreams and you won’t find him hiding under your bed. You already know that he isn’t among the men that you are acquainted with so, now what? Online dating is “what”.

It’s true that online dating, while in its infancy, was only made up of perverts, sexual predators, nerds and weirdoes but that is no longer true. It has become the main tool of the single person in every developed country in the world. Forty million people can’t all be wrong. Ask your girl friends if they have ever used online dating or are using it now. If they are honest with you, most of them have or are now members of at least one online dating site and maybe more than one. It really is the way to go to meet eligible men who want to meet you. It doesn’t matter what any of your numbers are…like age, height, weight or income either. Somewhere out there in the big wide world there is a man who will like you…..then love you….and think that you are beautiful and desirable. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is true. What is considered beautiful in one part of the world is completely different from what is considered beautiful in another part of the world. It’s even different from one part of this country to another.

Find an online dating site that fits your needs. Write a great profile and post a flattering picture. Start contacting eligible men on the site. Mr. Close-enough-to-perfect could be a few mouse clicks away.