Cautions and Red Flags of Online Dating

The last blog looked at the online dating industry’s advantages and disadvantages to the user. We also took a cursory view of the pragmatic and scientific approach of the dating services. Let’s discover a few cautions and red flags of online dating:

Safety and Privacy Cautions
If you pursue online relationships there are some important things to keep in mind. 
For safety and privacy reasons, never provide any type of personal identifiable info—full name, phone number or home addresses—on your profile.

Realize upfront that although you’re too classy to use glamour shots from 10-20 years ago, others are not. One woman told me, “I thought I was meeting a man in his early 40s. Turned out he had kids that were over 40.” Go figure.

All first in-person meetings should be in a very public place. Tell a trusted friend where you’re going. Check someone’s background before you meet him or her. Always carry your cell phone.
Online long distance connecting offers advantages, but also a high degree of risk and uncertainty. Think again, if you’re going to a place you’ve never been to meet someone. Too many told me they couldn’t get a plane ticket fast enough to get out of town.

Many men purposely go online to find the culture best fitting their desire for a certain type of spouse. For example,  the stereotypical ‘submissive’ wife from an Asian country or the young orphaned, beautiful Russian woman looking for U.S. citizenship who wants to emigrate.

Red Flag Signals
If any of the following red flags come into play, rethink your on-line romance:
Offers excuses not to meet their family or friends * Manipulates your emotions
Note: 30% of online customers are married or living with a significant other
Pressures for physical intimacy * Served time in jail *Asks to borrow money
Seems overly interested in your children, especially teenage girls
Listed on a state or national sex offender registry
Appears on America’s Most Wanted – I’m kidding, but you’d be surprised

Do You Want to Put Yourself in the Hands of Experts?
Rest assured dating services know what appeals to people’s wants and wishes. Some online dating sites target every imaginable user wish. The more scientific sites are almost like a diet plan. If you do this, this will happen. Some are subversively manipulative or debased at the lowest denominator.

Others appeal to your intellect, while others tug at your emotions, taking advantage of your emotional vulnerabilities. For the pragmatic online dating user connecting online seems more efficient.Why would they want to waste two hours of their time going to a singles’ group, church, hiking group and risk that nobody they’re interested in will be there?

Is There a Better Way?
In the not-too-distant past, community played a much larger role in meeting people. Today people substitute online communities for the lack of real world community. People hunger for real relationships that matter. God created every person for relationship. We probably agree that we need good friendships. According to recent Gallup poll, the number one need of Americans is friendship.

Everyone longs for genuine intimacy. Some of us need to consider deepening your current friendships and or/seek ‘new’ reciprocal, honest friendships—where you can be yourself. Encouraging and challenging friendships where God’s grace and truth is the standard of acceptance takes time to develop. Invest in people.

I’ve seen it countless times that people who invest in other’s lives more than their own for God’s purposes discover their needs are met in Him through the community of people they do life with.

Now, be discerning won’t you? “Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.”  Ephesians 5:15-17  

The Perfect Match

Millions are inundated with the myth that there is a perfect match for them. Somewhere ‘out there’ is the perfect match for me, my true soul mate, the person who fits me like a glove, who fits my soul the way a key fits into a lock.

Every week over 30 million are on the elusive search for the perfect match. So, one turns over every stone or possible lead only to discover after an exhausting pursuit, ‘it just isn’t so.’ Then, after their empty pursuit many become pessimistic, “Where have all the good guys gone?” Some even come to a place of despair and hopelessness desperately wanting something or someone.

Our longings for someone is strong and the thought of our future can become painful. Many philosophers, theologians and psychologists have written that the soul cannot survive for long in a state of despair, but we find a way to manage it by resignation. Learning to accept the inevitability of our circumstances with serenity is a good course of action, although definitely not easy.

But resignation alone cannot sustain a life
The writer Ernest Hemingway (don’t let the romanticized Hemingway’s role in in the Midnight in Paris fool you) said, “Sooner or later, the world breaks everyone, and those who are broken are strongest in the broken places.”

Sometimes that is true
But sometimes people write nice things they hope to be true only to find they don’t help. Hemingway himself didn’t get stronger and ended his own life because his pain was too great.

But, there is always HOPE which is not based on circumstances, but rather in God.
Many hope for a lot of things, but the good news is that hope can be experienced. Hanging around hopeful people can really help too.  Yet, none of us can ensure that things will work out the way we want them to, but we can ask ourselves, ”How would the person I want to be face this situation?”

We might not be able to change our situation, but many of our situations are temporary and the person you are becoming will go on. You have to live with you. What are you going to do about your circumstance or better yet, who are you going to become through it?

Adversity can change your priorities about what really matters. Billy Bean, former GM of the Oakland Athletics, whose character was portrayed in the Academy Award nominated movie ’Money Ball’, decided his daughter was worth more than the highest paid GM in baseball (12M).

Disappointment and adversity can point us in a different direction.
While I was teaching a Bible study in a prison I met several who pointed themselves in a different direction. Their circumstance helped them see what was really important in life. A few were formerly rich and had traveled the world, but told me if they were to visit one more place before they die it wouldn’t be luxurious places, but rather their prison cell where they met God.

Hope points us beyond ourselves.
In a difficult world where at times it can seem that nothing is going up we may ask, “What’s going up for me?” One thing that can ‘go up’ in our lives is the opportunity for you and me to trust God. Our trust in God can always can go up! It isn’t easy, but it’s wide open because God’s grace and His love are always available!

For more about meaningful relationships check out our blogs on ‘Dating’

Is It Better to Be Married or Single?

Over the years I have been asked countless times by hundreds of people a few common questions that have spun around God’s perspective on singleness. Questions like:

What does it mean when God told Adam, “It is not good for man to be alone”? Or is it God’s will for everyone to me married?

Is there a perfect mate for me or is God a divine matchmaker?

Is singleness a spiritual gift for some?

Is marriage valued more than singleness in God’s perspective?

Unfortunately, for millions of Christ-followers around the world the answers to these questions have not adequately addressed. The answers have not been typically addressed from the pulpit or have not been adequately answered from a biblical perspective. The result of this has left a lot of myths dangling out there about singleness within churches and Christ followers.

In the 70s and early 80s the church saw the moral decline of our culture and wanted to protect the American family at any cost perhaps. A worthy cause to be sure, but in that process some churches unintentionally got to the point of almost canonizing or idolizing marriage. As the Apostle Paul admonished the Romans, “What says the scripture?” What does the Bible actually say about marriage and singleness? How does church history play into this?

When it comes to dating and mate selection, the best our culture has to offer is simply ‘good luck.’ Fortunately, God has more to say than just good luck to you and I. The result of this general malaise of confusion has been huge contributing part of the mass sea of broken relationships. In response, over the years I have given several messages on the subject of single adults in America, one of which was called the ‘The Truth About Singleness.’

While that message is not the definitive or last word on singleness from a biblical perspective it does address those myths I mentioned above. That message was recorded live at Woodmen Valley Chapel. I believe you will find it helpful so please share it with a friend. To listen click here. Please share your comments below.

Mark
mark@startingoverworkshops.com