General News

Are you dating and having no luck, or have you had a string of bad relationships and can’t figure out what is wrong?

Sometimes it’s difficult to understand why things happen in our lives – why we’re still single, or why we keep meeting the wrong guys. As I say in my book Date Expectations, sometimes it’s our romantic history and patterns that hold the key to understanding why we’re stuck, why we can’t seem to find a happy, healthy relationship.

If you’ve noticed that you keep meeting and dating the same kinds of guys/ girls, or that you don’t find anyone new that you meet particularly exciting, it could be because you haven’t really gotten over your ex. More specifically, you are looking for your ex in all of your future relationships, even if he or she wasn’t so good for you.

Instead of getting stuck in the past, it’s time to really assess what is happening, and how your own dating habits could be contributing to the problem. While you might be meeting the wrong people, there’s a reason you keep meeting them.

Following are some questions to ask yourself to see if you’re really over your ex:

Do you tend to go for the same “type?” Whether it’s physical features, a sense of humor, or someone who shares the same intellectual curiosity, you find yourself attracted to different versions of your ex in every new person you meet. While you might think you have a “type,” – if you’ve dated several guys who were your “type” and yet none of them worked out, you might want to try something else.

Do you find it hard to commit? When we haven’t moved on emotionally, it’s almost impossible to commit to someone new. Maybe you feel pressure at each new relationship, so you tend to keep things casual or delay any meaningful conversation. Consider this: maybe it’s not your date, but that you aren’t quite ready for anything serious. That’s okay. Better to acknowledge your pain and work through it, so you can be ready when the right person does come along.

Is it hard for you to be single? If you’ve gone from one relationship to the next without taking much of a break, then maybe it’s time to give yourself just that – a break! All of us need to get familiar with our own wants, needs, desires – who we really are outside of a relationship. If you don’t, you’ll have a hard time knowing who you are in a relationship, and that leads to a lot of frustration, insecurity, and unhappiness. Instead of jumping into your next relationship, take a step back. Take up a new hobby, join that amateur Dodge Ball league you’ve been considering, or book that vacation to Belize you were going to take with a future partner. There’s no time like the present to get to know yourself better.

Dating apps and online dating sites have taken the place of many personalized matchmaking services. Thirty years ago, singles who wanted to meet people outside of their networks joined a matchmaking service or placed an ad in the paper, as their options were limited. Using a matchmaking service involved a basic process: the customer would look through video profiles on VHS tapes, screening potential dates to see whether or not they would want to meet in person – much like sifting through profiles on an online dating site. Now, matchmaking services have to offer a little extra personalization if they want to compete with a free dating app.

Matchmaking services don’t come cheap. Because they market themselves as personalized services, catering to specific client needs, they often charge thousands of dollars.

Matchmaking service eLove has gone through a couple of incarnations – first known as LoveAccess until it was acquired by International Dating Ventures and became eLove, but has always been a matchmaking service. Now, the company is finding itself in hot water with dozens of its clients. It has an F rating and 143 complaints listed against it with the Better Business Bureau, mostly due to promises it makes about “referrals” that don’t actually happen.

According to The Courant, One 70-year old female client was promised 33 referrals (or dates) plus a VIP service for the hefty price of $7,000. A year later, she’d only received a handful of referrals, most at the beginning of her membership. A total of six referrals were made to her, costing her over $1,000 per referral. One of the men she met wasn’t even a member of eLove.

Another female client paid $6,000 and received only one referral, which was a phone call – not even an in-person date. And a third female client, a licensed psychologist who was 75 years old at the time she joined eLove, paid $9,566 last year for 16 introductions. After meeting only three men, including one she says who arrived drunk, she requested a refund. When eLove refused, she sought the refund, damages and punitive damages for breach of contract.

Instead of going to court, eLove agreed to settle with one unhappy customer so far. The other cases are still pending.

Should you join a personalized matchmaking service? With all the technology available at your fingertips, many daters don’t think it’s worth it. But for those who lead busy lives and just don’t find the time to meet potential dates, or for those who are nervous about getting back into dating and want a little hand-holding, it’s a valuable resource.

As with any service you decide to use, make sure you check it out first. Know how they are rated, how many complaints are filed against them, and what types of complaints. If the price seems a little high, or there is no obligation on their part in the fine print, you need to consider another service.

Yesterday eHarmony started up their Free Communication Weekend (FCW) again for 4 days. You can "Feel the Love" from July 24th to the end of the day on Sunday July 27th.

Free communication allows you to use the eHarmony guided communication process with the matches you receive and that you feel a connection with. Once it is complete you can then send emails to them as well. Free Communication doe not include skip straight to email, secure call (a phone service - see our eHarmony review for more details), and profile photos.

To participate in a FCW all you need to do is signup for an eHarmomy membership and take the profile questionnaire. This process will take you about 30 minutes and is a key step since the information you give them about your interests and personalty will be used by eHarmony's matching algorithm to match you with other high quality members. The membership account, taking the questionnaire, and receiving matches are always free and no credit card is required.

Tinder has hit a bit of a rough patch lately. The company behind the hyper-popular mobile dating app was recently slapped with a lawsuit by its former VP of Marketing, Whitney Wolfe. In the suit, Wolfe alleges that she was sexually harassed and discriminated against at work, stripped of her co-founder title, and forced out of the company when she complained.

There’s no question that Wolfe’s accusations have affected the people involved, one of whom was suspended indefinitely, but what remains to be seen is whether they affect the company as a whole and its majority shareholder IAC.

Investors have been hoping that IAC, which also owns Match.com and OkCupid, would use Tinder’s success to spin off its online dating businesses into a separate company, thereby making IAC shares more valuable. But now that Tinder’s in trouble, that prospect could be in trouble too. “Given what’s going on at Tinder, I would assume that probably would cause IAC and Match to think a little bit longer and harder about pursuing that at this juncture,” Scott Kessler, an analyst with S&P Capital IQ, told Bloomberg News last week.

I’m just guessing here, but IAC and its shareholders probably aren’t too pleased at this complication throwing a wrench in a very lucrative opportunity. Investors have been encouraging IAC execs for months to speed up the process of making Match its own business, but now their plans may be thwarted (or at least slowed down).

Last year, IAC made $788 million in revenue from membership and subscription dues for dating services – well more than twice what it had made five years earlier, despite the fact that they have yet to monetize Tinder. What's more important than revenue for investors is market value, which Tinder has in spades. Tinder is one of the hottest commodities on the market right now, and creating the separate Match group could cause spikes in the stock prices of both IAC and the newly formed company.

History has shown that this is a good move for IAC. When the company separated Match from its search business, its stock price jumped significantly. Barry Diller, IAC’s chairman, has also seen huge profits from spinning off businesses from IAC. The question now is whether or not Tinder is damaged goods and, if so, just how damaged. So far the company is remaining frustratingly tight-lipped about both Tinder’s trouble and the possibility of Match becoming its own company.

IAC is positioning itself to be the center of the online dating world. Its 150 brands are cornering the market, particularly Match.com, OkCupid, and popular dating app Tinder. Now, it’s added How About We to its roster. Neither IAC or How About We disclosed the purchase price.

How About We offers a unique twist in online dating – focusing on the offline part of the process. Members can create date ideas, post them to How About We, and see if anyone cares to join them on the date. This bypasses the typical process of scrolling through profiles and matches as you would do on other sites.

The company has gone through a lot of changes in the last couple of years, starting with broadening its reach to include curated dating services for couples (extending their user base and approach beyond just the singles market). More recently, the company purchased popular online dating site Nerve.com, and added three new content websites to the mix to offer editorial on dating advice, celebrities, sex, relationships, and other hot topics.

Did it spread itself too thin?

According to the New York Times, How About We co-founder Aaron Schildkrout (now the chief executive for This Life, Inc., the parent company of How About We) thinks this will only broaden their opportunities. “We spent the last five years building and scaling HowAboutWe; our unique ‘offline dating’ experience has been used by millions of people and has helped many, many people fall in love. Our new partnership with IAC will help us bring this dating experience to an even larger number of people than ever before.”

This contradicts his statements earlier this year, where he positioned the company to compete heavily with IAC. “The online dating business is completely monopolized — IAC owns online dating,” Schechter told Fortune in January. “So what we’re trying to do is build a media company whose sole focus is love. And we think that’s the way to beat IAC.”

The How About We dating service and media properties were sold to IAC, but a portion of the company remains independent: the couples service. Last month, employees were reportedly left in the dark about whether or not they would be fired in the wake of the acquisition, with some being promised they would stay only later to find that offer recanted.

According to the New York Times, some employees will be moving to IAC, others will be staying to work on the couples service, and some have been laid off.

Most things are going brilliantly for Tinder these days, but one thing most certainly is not. Whitney Wolfe, Tinder’s former vice president of marketing, slapped the company with a sexual discrimination lawsuit at the end of June.

In the suit, Wolfe claims her former boss called her a “whore” at a company event in the presence of Tinder CEO Sean Rad and that she was stripped of her status as a Tinder co-founder. When she complained about her treatment to other executives, including Rad, she says they forced her out of the company.

The story goes back to 2013, when Wolfe and chief marketing officer Justin Mateen dated for several months. After they broke up, Wolfe claims Mateen sent her a series of inappropriate text messages and e-mails filled with racist and sexist language. When she complained to Rad and Match.com CEO Sam Yagan, they allegedly ignored her repeated complaints about his behaviour.

Wolfe also contends that Mateen told her she was not listed in Tinder’s press materials as a co-founder because having “a girl founder” who was just 24-years-old (at the time) would devalue the company. Later, after Mateen allegedly called her a “whore” in front of Rad and other co-workers, Wolfe says she offered to resign in exchange for “modest severance” and the vesting of her stock options. Instead, she claims, she was fired.

John Mullan, one of Wolfe’s attorneys, said in a statement that Wolfe “lost her job simply for refusing to take the abuse any longer.” Another one of her attorneys said “IAC and Match.com, which own Tinder, allowed this culture to exist and did nothing to prevent the discrimination or harassment. IAC and Match.com need to be held responsible for their failure to supervise the executives at Tinder. There really was no ‘adult in the room.’”

In response, IAC indefinitely suspended Mateen. “Through that process, it has become clear that Mr. Mateen sent private messages to Ms. Wolfe containing inappropriate content,” the company said in a statement. “We unequivocally condemn these messages, but believe that Ms. Wolfe’s allegations with respect to Tinder and its management are unfounded.”

The story gets more complex when you try to determine who actually is a legitimate co-founder of Tinder. TechCrunch did an in-depth examination of the people involved in Tinder’s creation and it’s…convoluted, to say the least. It’s hard to see how they themselves can keep up with it all (and maybe they can't), much less anyone else.

Wolfe is seeking compensatory damages, including for lost pay and benefits, as well as punitive damages for emotional distress.