Dating web sites are a safe and effective method of meeting someone these days. Why waste you time looking in bars or wherever, when you can go to an online dating site and enter your specifications of exactly what you are looking for in a friend or partner. It's like looking at the menu at your favorite restaurant.

Traditionally you'd have to go out with a person to find out that you don't like this habit or that tendency etc. Using an online dating service you can eliminate those that you know you won't be attracted to. If you're a vegetarian for instance, who wants to go out with some guy or gal that wants to chow down on a big bloody steak? And likewise if you enjoy a meal of lightly fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy, you don't want to be getting dirty look from you date who is a vegan.

There is nothing worse than getting 10 minutes into you date with someone that you met after a few drinks in a bar. Sure they were nice and pleasant and seemed perfect when you met them at the corner pub, but they didn't tell you that they lived with their mom and that they didn't have a job. I mean, who would tell someone that on a first date anyway.

Ok I'm sure you are thinking that someone using an online dating site could also lie and misrepresent themselves too, and I'm sure some do. However, by using an online site you can look for a match in many areas of interest or personality. After you have culled through dozen or hundreds of persons and looked at their pictures you can then email or call them to check them out further. Usually after speaking with them you are then able to narrow your search down even more so that by the time that you pick some to go out with you have a fairly good idea of what is going to turn up at your door or at your designated meeting place.

What I do is to keep the first date to a quick drink in a bar. If you don't drink then you can meet in a coffee spot or a book store or any place that there are other person's. You want to keep the first meeting short just in case you want to bust out there as fast as you can. Most if not all of us know within the first few minutes if there will every be any real sparks going off. If not you want to get the heck outta there and not waste your time.

I usually have this clear when I go on a date after meeting someone online. What I mean is that I have an understating that this first date is a short one. I tell them that I don't have a lot of time that day and have to be somewhere else in advance. That way I can dodge out fast if the date is a dud. A friends calls me 30 minutes into the date to act like I'm late for some meeting. Blame it on the person on the phone. If I like the person then I can always say that even though I have this very important meeting to go to, that I'd rather stay there with them. That get high marks.

Hey I gotta get outta here now and go on my next date. Bye.