Advice

When dating, you and/or your partners religion may eventually become a factor if the dating leads to a long term relationship or marriage. If conflict arises it may even lead to a breakup. Family customs, spiritual holidays and how children are raised, are only some of the things in which you both need to consider. Here are a few other situations that you could deal with if religion is important to either one of you:

• The family of your partner cares about religion but they do not.
• Your partner's religion is important in their life and wants a partner with the same religion and commitment to it.
• Your partner wants to honour their religion and will honour their partner's religion as well. Children will be raised in both religions.
• Your partner will convert to your religion.
• Your partner wants you to convert to their religion
• Both you and your partner have the same religion but different degrees of observance.

For dating sites which Religion is an important part of the member's life, check out our Religious Dating Site Category.

The Chicago Tribune has a story about dating when you have children. In it they discuss how the stigma has changed about single parents and dating. The author also mentions how online dating has started to change the way single parents can find dates and how it has become more socially acceptable to use. A number of interesting statistics were included:

Part of the story is the numbers. There are 12 million single parents living with children younger than 18 in the U.S., according to 2007 Census Bureau figures, a whopping 200 percent increase over 1970, when there were 4 million.

Another surprising number mentioned was, Match.com reported that 47% of its members in the United States have children.

I wonder if I should add Match.com to our Single Parent Dating Site Reviews Category?

According to Hitwise, there are currently around 1,400 dating sites in North America. This gives singles a lot of choice and many of them join multiple dating services at the same time. Mark Brooks of Online Personals Watch refers to this as serial online dating and compares it to bar and nightclub hopping. Some people see it as a simple math equation. The more dating sites you join the more chances you have of finding Mr. or Mrs. Right. Of course the problem you run into when you do this is, you end up not spending quality time on any one of the dating sites. You end up not thinking through the messages you are sending to singles and end up doing a cookie cutter operation by cutting and pasting the same email message to multiple people. This makes you look less interested in the person you are sending the message too. It is fairly easy to see when a message or a reply sent to you on a dating site has not been tailored to your previous message or the information in your profile. That is not a very good first impression!

Initially I think you should signup to multiple site, but there is a reason for this. You should sign up to 2 or 3 dating sites using their free trials to see the type of members they have to offer and if they live an acceptable distance away. If there is no one in your area then try another site. Once you find one with what you think is a good selection of members that meet your location requirements then that is the one site you need to upgrade your membership for.

BusinessWeek did a rather week comparison of Free VS Paid dating in North America. Mainly, they listed all the benefits of free dating but none of the problems. They backed their arguments up with quotes from free dating site owners but none from the paid ones. Of course the quotes from owners are mainly plugs for their services. There was also a heading in the article called Free Is the Right Price in a Recession which discussed how free dating sites experienced traffic growth during the economic downturn but, nothing was mentioned of traffic to paid dating sites. You don't have to look far on the internet to see paid services are experiencing growth as well (See Story).

To find out more advantages and disadvantages, see our new dating reviews category called Free Dating Sites & Apps.

Perfectmatch.com relationship expert, Dr. Pepper Schwartz, has been quoted several times in this month's Real Simple magazine which has an article called The Experts' Guide to a Strong Relationship. Real Simple gathered together a panel of experts to assess 13 rules of love. The panel consist of 9 experts who's occupations included authors, sex therapist, psychologists, and a dating site owner. Dr Schwartz addressed the following relationship wisdoms:

• Your Spouse shouldn't be your best friend.
• Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
• Having kids will bring you closer.
• There is such thing as love at first sight.
• Always keep them guessing
• Everyone experiences the seven-year itch.

Each rule of love or relationship wisdom is discussed briefly by 2 to 4 of the experts, with some of them disagreeing with each other. For the full story and the complete list of love rules check your news stand for the February, 2009 issue of Real Simple.

CNN has a humorous look at 5 online dating types woman should avoid in men. Here are the dating types and a summary of what each one is:

• Ayn Rand fan - The guy who lists "The Fountainhead" as his favorite book.
• Carpet bomber - The man who is looking for absolutely anyone.
• Finicky freak- The 45 year old man who is only interested in someone under 27 and who is a perfect 10.
• Kliché King - A guy who uses all of the dating clichés in his profile. As example, he likes long walks on a beach.
• Torso Tossor - The guy that shows only his abs and not his face in photos.He is married and/or only interested in sex.

For more details on these online dating types, visit CNN Living.