DATE Sparking relationships may be just a quick download away THE PROFILE GUESSING GAME STILL SEARCHING
CYBERSPACE It’s not just children who write letters to Santa Claus.
“Santa, I’m in search of a new girlfriend,” a Santa Monica man recently wrote to St. Nick. “I know you’re going to hear from quite a few girls saying they want a new boyfriend for Christmas so I wanted you to know I’m available and would be open to your putting an absolutely adorable girl in my stocking.”
The simple Christmas request came from the 54-year-old owner of a recruitment firm who in seeking some companionship for the holidays. He cleverly posted a short 257-word letter to Santa on the personals section of Craigslist, including within it his specifications for the perfect woman.
“Please make sure she doesn’t smoke and please send someone who likes to exercise, Santa,” stated the author of the letter, who in choosing to remain anonymous for this article referred to himself as Coolsurver.
With the winter holiday season well under way — invitations to office and family parties arriving in the mail and jewelry store commercials advertising in full force that Christmas and New Year’s is the perfect time to pop the question — the more than 80 million American singles are feeling the pressure to seek some romance.
The Internet has emerged as the premier date-finding destination for singles in the past decade with the widespread success of sites like eHarmony and Match.com, supplanting the newspaper personal ads and the grocery store aisles as the best places to find Mr. or Ms. Right.
Such sites can see a spike in registered users in the crunch time between Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day.
“We attribute a lot to the New Year’s resolution where people are saying ‘next year, I’m going to find somebody,’” said Gail Laguna, spokeswoman for JDate, a dating site for the Jewish community.
The Beverly Hills-based dating site was founded Joe Shapira and Alon Carmel, two Israeli entrepreneurs, in 1997 at a time when the Internet dating boom was taking off. The site has steadily grown over the past 10 years and now has more than 400,000 registered clients.
Once a stigmatized way to find romance, Internet dating is now widely perceived as an acceptable and common way to meet new people, especially among the younger generations that grew up surfing the Web and chatting online.
“Everyone does it,” said Marcia Miller, a Santa Monica business owner. “I would think there’s something wrong if you weren’t doing it.”
Miller, a jewelry consultant who owns the Marcia Miler Collection, has been dating via the Internet for the past 10 years and has met her last three boyfriends through sites like PlentyofFish, Match.com and Yahoo Personals. Once married for 10 years, Miller said she enjoys the convenience of meeting a man without going through the hassle of dressing up, being able to sit and relax in front of her computer and browse through the seemingly endless database of eligible bachelors. Though she believes the Internet is an excellent way to meet men, Miller said that online dating only comprises 3 percent of her social life.
Perhaps the success of Internet dating can be attributed to strong marketing campaigns by various sites, posting stories of their clients finding love through their services and living happily ever after. One of the more notable advertising campaigns belongs to eHarmony.com, whose commercials include a series of testimonials by smiling couples telling their stories to the tune of “This Will Be.”
“There is a history of more and more people meeting online and a lot of people think if it worked for Suzy and Tom, maybe I can do it, too,” said Los Angeles dating and relationship expert Lisa Shield.
Shields, whose business is based in the Fairfax District, said she is shocked by the number of people who still seem to be resistant to the idea of dating online.
“Their fear causes them to make up irrational excuses or reasons why they can’t do it,” she said. “The truth is it’s a brilliant way of bringing more single available people to your life.”
The dating expert is speaking from experience, having met her husband through Jdate.
It was 2002 and the couple was meeting face-to-face for the first time over dinner. At that point, Shields had gone on nearly 100 dates she had met through the Internet while her future husband had only been on two.
He ran 30 minutes late but that didn’t matter. “I remember I was sitting at a table and he leaned over to shake my hand... and I looked into the kindest eyes I had ever seen,” Shields said.
The greatest appeal of Internet dating is it allows the user to filter the pool of candidates by preference, checking the box for the desirable age range, height, weight, race and religion.
For Miller, the profile and self-written description gives her a glimpse into the user’s intelligence level, whether he’s using correct spelling and grammar.
She has found that many men typically lie about their height if they’re shorter than 5’9” and have heard many men complain that women will always lie about their age and weight.
It’s a reason why some people have been turned off to Internet dating.
A 46-year-old marketing consultant in Santa Monica, David, who chose to keep his last name anonymous, recently canceled all of his online dating memberships last week, fed up with the increasing number of occurrences where he would meet a woman who was less than honest about her description.
“I’m an honorable person — my statistics are current, my photos are current,” David said. “I would say 95 percent of the people have been less than honest. I understand it’s marketing and you want to put your best foot forward.”
Divorced more than a year and a half ago, David decided to try Internet dating about six months ago and ultimately went on 25-30 dates, only a few of which have been with women who were physically attractive, he said. The women in that small pool had personality issues that ended the relationship within the first couple of dates.
Instead of online dating, David said he has seen better results in speed dating — a series of five-minute dates that rotate from table to table — and attending social networking parties hosted by Rapid Dating, owned by Santa Monica resident Renee Piane.
“Those are actually really good because you get to meet people for five minutes at a time and see what they look like and can tell if they have any nervous ticks or quirks or crazy eyes,” he said.
A 39-year-old construction worker who goes by the name SeekingSusan has been seeking love on the Internet for the past four years with varying results.
It started with a chatroom in Yahoo where SeekingSusan met a woman. The two dated for a year before parting ways after their cultural issues — she was Korean and he is Caucasian — interfered.
Since then,SeekingSusan has browsed for romance through sites like PlentyofFish and Craigslist, but with little success.
But going out and meeting women in clubs or the supermarket or mall just doesn’t seem like a viable option, he said.
Recently, the Santa Monica resident said he met an attractive woman at the gas station. The two exchanged smiles and SeekingSusan decided to be bold and gave her his number. She never called.
“How do you approach a girl without a girl thinking you’re a total creep?” he asked. “It’s much more easier getting to know someone over the Internet — you get the exchange of brain waves of what your belief systems are and what attracts you.”
Some avid Internet daters wish the service existed long ago.
Coolsurver has been finding his dates through the Internet for the past 11 years and has been in a few relationships as a result during that time.
Never married, Coolsurver said he did-n’t enjoy the singles’ bar scene, unable to determine which woman was sincere and who was just in it for fun.
Currently, the Santa Monica resident is seeing a woman in Santa Barbara.
While he posted the letter to Santa in late November, which resulted in a number of e-mails from women, Coolsurver said one of his resolutions is to take a break from the Internet dating scene.
“Sometimes it becomes a job,” he said. “It becomes addicting that I find myself at work clicking on Jdate.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 8, 2007. Read the original PDF.