Dating

I'm a big fan of having a plan. Good organization helps with business decisions and day-to-day living. But what happens when you try to plan out your love life, specifically by making a big wish list of the kind of man you want and all the romantic trappings that come along with it?

I think many of us get stuck when we try to special-order love into our lives. While online dating makes it possible to pick and choose what we like and don't like, people are much more unpredictable than their profiles might imply. For instance, maybe you only go for tall guys with dark hair who are either musicians or bikers. But then when you date them, it never seems to work out.

Or maybe you have a four-page list of qualities you want in an ideal partner, and nothing less than perfect will do. According to recent studies, women tend to have at least 100 traits that they desire in a man, while men only have 3 traits they look for in a woman.

Can you imagine a man bringing a four-page wish list on a date with you? How would it make you feel to be under such a microscope and never quite measuring up?

Searching for love is an organic process. Real love ignores plans and rules and wish lists. When you really connect with someone, it doesn't matter that they aren't as tall as you'd like, or don't meet your education requirements, or work in public service instead of at a law firm. If you are open to allowing love to happen despite the fact that a man might not meet all of your wish list requirements, you are making room for more opportunity in your love life.

While it would be nice to think we can think up the man of our dreams, life is much more surprising than this. in fact, often what we think we desire is not actually what we truly want. If you think about your true desires in a romantic partnership, is it that your man is taller than you, or that he respects you and really listens to what you have to say? Some things are just more important than others.

It's also important to be open to timing. If you're too focused on career and ignore your love life, you could be missing opportunities. It's the same thing as waiting for "the right time" to have a relationship. The universe doesn't work that way. It's important to remain open.

That's when real love can happen.

According to recent research, online dating is now the most popular way to meet prospective romantic partners. If you're considering joining a dating site but aren't sure what to do or what to expect, it's a good idea to proceed with both an open mind for meeting people and a little precaution.

Online dating safety is a concern, and the U.S. Attorney General's office has taken a stand to encourage people to exercise caution when searching for a relationship online because of the recent dating scams, especially when online daters misrepresent themselves in order to extract financial favors.

Zoosk, which markets itself as the number one dating app, has put together a few quick tips for online dating safety, so keep them in mind when you begin your own search:

Create an Alias - Create a new username and use a different email account from your main email when signing up for a dating site to protect your privacy.

Stay Online - Don't give out your personal cell phone number right away, especially if you are feeling pressured. Keep your messages and chats online through the dating site until you meet in-person.

Keep Personal Info Private - Do not share sensitive personal or financial information with someone whom you haven't met. This includes your last name, address, home or work phone numbers in addition to any financial information.

Go Out in Public - Always choose a public venue for your first few in-person dates, such as a restaurant or coffee shop. Never meet for the first time at your/their home, and don't arrange to have your date pick you up. Plan to meet each other at a restaurant or other public location instead.

Tell a Friend - Always let a friend or family member know who, when and where you're meeting for an in-person date with someone you met online.

Here are a few more things to keep in mind when you're online dating:

Meet sooner rather than later. Many problems for daters occur because they form a virtual relationship with their online match and become emotionally invested before they've seen each other face-to-face. Before you get intimate through emails and phone calls, plan to meet each other for coffee in person. Often, a scammer will try to avoid in-person meetings and keep things going online. If your date keeps making excuses for why he can't get together, then move on.

Keep drinking to a minimum. Some people like to have a glass of wine to loosen up on a date. Keep in mind your tolerance levels. If you get tipsy after a drink or two, you might want to consider not drinking at all. Don't make yourself vulnerable to your online dates, especially when you don't know them.

While POF has garnered a lot of attention over the years for its free online dating service and hook-up potential, its founder wants to get back to basics and is focused on the goal – finding people matches for the long-term.

POF does have an advantage over other dating sites: namely, its user base. With 70 million registered users all over the world, it can rightly call itself the largest online dating site. Three and a half million people log on to the site every day to look for matches and communicate with others. The company also estimates that over one million relationships a year begin on its website.

What does this mean for daters? For one thing, the sheer numbers POF draws from memberships means the company can determine how people date from country to country, including their cultural preferences and overall approach to dating. They’ve found that while daters in the U.K. largely embrace online dating, the rest of Europe is a bit behind. They can focus on areas of growth and potential.

POF began in Canada, but the U.S. is by far its biggest market, followed by the United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil and Australia.

“People in the United Kingdom will wear turtlenecks in the photos they send,” POF founder Markus Frind told The Provence, commenting on the cultural differences of dating he’s witnessed through the POF user base. “Women are way more aggressive in Brazil. They initiate as much as men.”

POF was started in 2003 when Frind was working for another technology company, and created the dating site in his spare time. He ran the company out of his apartment for five years until it reached ten million in annual revenue. Today he employs about 75 people in a large office space in Vancouver, and since POF remains a free service for daters, most of the revenue generated is from advertising.

Though Frind won’t disclose how much revenue his private company makes, he has put aside $30 million for acquisitions and intends to keep growing. In September of last year, he bought speed dating company Fast Life, hoping to add value to his online dating service by getting into singles events.

And as for success stories? Frind met his own partner through work, not over an online dating site. But he has gathered some success stories resulting from POF matches, including a young married couple who met each other five years ago on the site.

With its popularity unwavering, POF is focusing its efforts on technology and growth. The goal according to Frind is still to help people find long-term relationships.

If the state of dating in America in 2014 was summed up in one word, it would be "open-minded."

ChristianMingle.com and JDate.com have teamed up for the second year in a row to bring you inside information on what it means to be single and dating in the United States in the 21st century. The second annual State Of Dating In America report explores the ever-evolving public opinion on sex, infidelity, gender roles and other controversial issues. It also delves into the ways mobile technology is affecting and changing societal norms of courtship and relationships.

"In today's modern world there are so many factors contributing to blurred lines and mixed messages when it comes to dating and relationships," says Rachel Sussman, a Marriage and Family Therapist and Licensed Clinical Social Worker who partnered with ChristianMingle and JDate to analyze the findings of their study. "I see clients every day who are struggling with how to navigate muddled waters in a new or long-term relationship, and this study by ChristianMingle and JDate confirms these issues exist across the country."

The big news coming out of those muddled waters this year is that singles are becoming more and more open-minded when it comes to gender roles, dating expectations and infidelity. Singles have accepted that infidelity isn't always a black and white issue. Shades of gray are an inevitable part of being in a relationship:

• 86% of men and 92% of women consider having sex repeatedly with another person to be cheating.
• 82% of women and 56% of men believed sexting or online flirting is infidelity back in 2013. But this year the number of women who believe that flirtatious messages count as stepping out dropped significantly to 86%, while the number for men dropped slightly to 51%.
• In 2014, 90% of women agree that passionately kissing someone else is cheating. In 2013, that number was 100%. Men's opinions reflected women's shifting views: 86% considered passionate kissing cheating in 2013, compared to 75% in 2014.
• Cheating isn't always a dealbreaker. Nearly a quarter of singles say they would consider marrying someone who is unfaithful to them while dating.

Attitudes toward gender roles are also evolving in major ways. Fewer men believe that they should be the primary breadwinner in a relationship, and fewer men believe it's their duty to pick up the tab on a date. We are, apparently, increasingly confused about whether or not we're actually on a date or just hanging out with someone casually, but we're also increasingly open to the idea of dating online.

94% of respondents say online dating expands their dating pool. Two out of three singles know people who've met through online dating. And 85% of singles say they believe online dating is completely socially acceptable.

For more information on the dating sites which conducted the survey you can read our Christian Mingle review and our JDate review.

If you've been single, chances are you've also had a few bad dates. Unfortunately, sometimes a bad experience is enough to turn someone completely off of dating. I've heard many women complain, "I just can't meet any good men in this city, so why should I bother?" I live in L.A., and while dating can be a strange thing to navigate here, there are certainly many people looking for love just like you.

So what do you do to bounce back when dating can feel like a waste of time? Bad dates happen. But this doesn't mean that all dates are bad. Think of it this way - some people you hit it off with and share instant chemistry. With others, you might feel a spark of interest or curiosity, and still others there's not much making you swoon. In other words, there are lots of gray areas. Not everyone is going to be amazing, but then - not everyone is going to be horrible, either. Some may pique your interest when you're not expecting it.

You might feel otherwise if you haven't met anyone special, or if you've just experienced a string of bad dates. But this is the best time to kind of recharge and adjust your perspective on dating. Following are some tips to help:

Join a dating site with a friend. Have you ever asked a friend to take an exercise class with you to help inspire you to actually go? It works well with dating, too. If you're over online dating, it's a lot more fun to join a new site with a friend. You can check in with each other to see how often you're logging in and who you're meeting. You can edit each other's profiles. When you're in it together, you don't feel so overwhelmed or alone.

Go someplace new. Instead of meeting for coffee or drinks at the places you know as a first date option, try something new. I like to recommend active dates, like jogging or wandering around a gallery or walking your dogs together. Check your local online listings for what's happening, and explore together.

Agree to a second date with someone you weren't so sure about. Maybe one of your past dates wasn't so bad - he just didn't exactly rock your world, either. He's worth a second chance. Most of us enter relationships based entirely on chemistry, but this can be misleading. How many relationships started this way but fizzled out quickly? People are more complex and rich than we could ever know in one meeting. Take more time and get to know them. You never know what could happen.

What if you could meet, woo, and win your fiancé in just 90 days?

That's exactly what Chris McKinlay, a Boston mathematician, did in June 2012. McKinlay was good at math, but not so good where his love life was concerned. So he did what any enterprising mathematician would do: developed complex algorithms and used robot profiles to systematically sift through thousands of profiles on OkCupid to find his perfect match.

McKinlay was working on his PhD at UCLA in June 2012 when he first joined OkCupid. After answering 350 questions from the thousands available on the site, he discovered that he only had a compatibility rating of over 90% with fewer than 100 women. Six disappointing dates later, and McKinlay realized that something needed to change. He decided to apply his data skills to his dating life.

He began by creating 12 robot profiles that answered all of the questions randomly and used them to mine the survey answers of all women on the site. Then, armed with 6 million answers from 20,000 prospective mates, he used an algorithm to analyze the women he would like to meet. He limited his search to LA or San Francisco based partners who had logged on within the last month and clustered their personalities into two types that appealed to him most: "indie" women in their mid-20s and slightly older creative-types. After creating two different profiles for himself designed to target each cluster, he then answered the top 500 survey questions for each group.

The hack worked. McKinlay suddenly found himself with a 90%-plus compatibility rating with more than 10,000 women. Because OkCupid notifies users when someone looks at their profile, McKinlay designed software that would automatically view as many profiles as possible, prompting curious matches to initiate conversation with him. He received about 20 messages per day and went on 87 dates, but just one - the 88th - was special.

28-year-old Christine Tien Wang, an artist pursuing a master's in fine arts at UCLA, caught his attention and the two hit it off. They've been together ever since, surviving through Wang's one-year art fellowship in Qatar and McKinlay's admission that he'd used rather unconventional means to meet the woman of his dreams. "I thought it was dark and cynical," Wang told Wired. "I liked it."

McKinlay maintains that he was just doing "a large-scale and machine-learning version of what everyone does on the site," and unusual though his approach may sound, it's hard to argue with success. McKinlay and Wang are now engaged, and he has written a book to help others find spouses through online dating...it doesn't get much more successful than that.