Chemistry.com is one of two services that I generally see free weekends for (there may be more but if so I’m unaware of them). Recently, Chemistry has been having fewer free events but one nice thing is their free weekends tend to let you try all of the features of their dating service. Free events from other dating services tend to limit some of the features on the free weekends.

If you’re not familiar with Chemistry.com, it’s a personality-based dating service. You take a personality test and then you receive matches based on who they believe you would get along well with. This is similar to eHarmony although from my experience Chemistry is less restrictive on who can join their service.

So if you’ve never tried Chemistry, or if you’ve never tried a matching-based dating service for that matter, this weekend would be a good time to give it a try.

Sign up at Chemistry.com to try the free weekend.

This practice has become known as “catfishing” and it is becoming a real problem within the online dating community. The dangers of catfishing and its threats are prevalent and if you want to try to find happiness through online dating you must be aware of them and know how to avoid them.

Background of Catfishing

While the goal of online dating is noble and it does indeed help many people find happiness, it has also brought about some unintended negative aspects. This is how catfishing came into existence.

Catfishing is a term used for when people create false identities for social media platforms or online dating profiles. This is usually done to deceptively pursue online romances for some personal gain or other interest at the expense of the person they are catfishing.

Catfishing became a popular term after it was used as the title for the 2010 documentary Catfish. The success of this movie led to an MTV series that focused specifically on different catfishing cases around the country. This series exposed how rampant catfishing was and raised the awareness of catfishing tremendously. However, it was another even that really brought catfishing into the limelight.

A spotlight was shown on catfishing during Notre Dame football player Manti Te’o's catfishing scandal. There was a lot of controversy surrounding this story and it brought national attention to the issue of catfishing. The fact that such a high profile celebrity could be the victim of a catfishing scheme made people realize that they were themselves at risk.

Dangers of Catfishing

Catfishing is certainly not a victimless crime and there are a lot of problems that are caused by it.

The most obvious danger of catfishing is the danger of the emotional damage it can cause. Catfishing is so dangerous because it involves all the raw emotions associated with love and relationships. The person who is the victim of the catfishing ploy is usually emotionally invested in the person that they believe they are talking to. It can be emotionally devastating for the victim when they find out that the person they think they have fallen in love with does not exist or is not who they say they are.

Catfishing is also dangerous because of the personal and public embarrassment it can cause. While the level of embarrassment may not be as public as it was for someone famous like Manti Te’o, it is still enough to damage someone’s personal life. This can lead to further torture for the victim as it may cause them to be ridiculed by their peers.

These issues that are caused by catfishing are so dangerous because of the damage they can cause. The damage can often be magnified by the fragile state that a person is usually in because of the trust and love they feel for the person they think they are corresponding with. The repercussions of the emotional and psychological damage caused by catfishing can be severe and can lead to depression or even suicide.

How to Avoid Being Catfished

While the threat of being catfished is ever present and the effects of it can be tragic, it does not mean it is not possible to find a happy and loving relationship online without becoming the victim of catfishing. There a few different ways to avoid catfishing and some things you can do to protect yourself.

The first thing you can do to protect yourself is to run a background check. As soon as you meet someone online and things are starting to get more serious, it may be a good idea to run a background check. This type of check will not only confirm that the person actually exists, but it can also give you information on anything that could potentially be a concern.

Another way to detect a catfish scammer is to run one of their supposed pictures through the program TinEye. This is a reverse image search program which will tell you where the image originated. If it is not the person that you are speaking to then you know you’re dealing with a fraud.

Finally, the ultimate way to ensure the person you are talking to is actually who they say they are, is to push for a webcam conversation. While it is not suggested to use this tactic at the beginning of a relationship as many people are uncomfortable with this or may not have a camera. However, there is a certain point in a relationship where it is serious enough that if the person can’t meet you in person, then the very least they could do is get a webcam and have a conversation with you. Face time with iPhones is an easy way to do this as well. If the person continuously makes excuses for why they can’t have such a conversation, then you are most likely dealing with a phony.

While it may be difficult to detect a catfish scheme, there are ways you can do so and tools you can use to protect yourself. Although catfishing is a serious problem with serious consequences, it should not deter you from trying online dating. If you are careful and take the proper steps to protect yourself then it is quite possible to find a loving and fulfilling relationship online.

Giving advice here around online dating, I know that when meeting using the internet, there’s often a lot of mystery around what type of connection there is until you actually meet in person. Once you do meet in person, how can you be sure that she’s feeling as interested in you as you’re feeling about her? There are flirting signs to be on the look-out for that will help you have more confidence as you determine if you both want to move the relationship to something more than “just chatting online”.

Below are some great indicators and facts on: How to know if she is flirting with you

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Family

Family is of the utmost priority for Latinos in traditional Latin culture. Indeed, traditional Latino life is generally structured around family. Latinos tend to live near their families, choosing to reside in the same state, city or even neighborhood as them. Latino families enjoy gathering frequently for meals, parties and casual visits, and are very warm and welcoming, and will go out of their way to make you feel welcome. If you’ve got kids, even better! They’ll dote on them like nothing you wouldn’t believe.

Religion

Seventy percent of Latin men and Hispanic women in the U.S. are Catholic. Why is this important? Many Catholic Latinos do not believe in the use of contraceptives, and if you do, this may cause a hiccup in the relationship. Try to reach a middle ground if this is the case. As far as marriage goes, traditionally, Catholic Latinos prefer to marry other Catholic Latinos. The Catholic church isn’t a fan of marrying Catholics with non-Catholics, even though they do make exceptions.

Propriety

(This word always reminds me of Jane Austen books. Propriety is the reason why you always want to strangle her characters.)
According to the dictionary, propriety is, “the state or quality of conforming to conventionally accepted standards of behavior or morals”. For the most part, this type of behavior has died out in the US. I suppose there is still an air of propriety here, but the boundaries aren’t as clearly defined, regulated or followed as they are by traditional Latin men and women. If you’re dating a Latino, you’ll want to be aware of how you look, how you dress, what you say and what you don’t say in public, and even more so in front of friends and family. Learning a bit about Latino culture will help you understand what the norms are. Don’t let this discourage you though—if anything it’ll be good for you.

Passion

Latin men and Hispanic women are among the most sensual of people in the world. They’re very warm and touchy-feely in general (so it’s no surprise that they’re even warmer behind closed doors!). This passion is probably owed to their romantic language, pulse-raising music and incredibly sexy dance moves. It’s really just a cultural thing, as the approach in life that is most commonly taken is to make everything that you do passionate. Essentially, Latin men and women are used to philosophy: “If you’re going to do something, do it one-hundred and ten percent.”

eHarmony has been very generous with the free time this year: 5 day free event in January, February, March and now April. On top of that, they’ve also been giving out “free Tuesdays” where the service is free to try on some Tuesday evenings. So if you’ve been thinking of trying eHarmony but keep hesitating, this year you’re being given plenty of opportunities to change your mind!

Sign up to try the Free eHarmony Event

Do keep in mind that not all of the features are available at eHarmony during the free weekends and if you’ve never tried one you may want to review my article here.

This free eHarmony even is available for the US and Canada.

Those are words that well-meaning friends have said to one another for thousands of years. And for thousands of years it was often reasonable advice. But today, with availability of online dating, it’s quite possible that you’re not being picky enough.

I’m prompted to write this because of a video I saw by a woman named Amy Webb. Amy used data to improve her online dating life and she’s now written a book called Data, A Love Story: How I Gamed Online Dating to Meet My Match that walks people through her journey dating online.

After one too many bad dates, Amy created a (rather complex!) system to rank the men she was communicating with. She then used this system to determine who she would date or even who was long-term material. Here’s the video of her discussing this:

My Experience Dating Online

In many ways, Amy’s experience reminds me of my own, although her analysis and where she addressed issues differed from mine (if you’ve not already downloaded it, in my free ebook I talk about how my first 6+ months of dating online were miserable, but later it became fun and exciting).

That said, my struggles varied quite a bit from Amy’s and I think this is possibly a good representation of the different struggles men and women go through. Where I did most of my analysis was around getting a response to my first emails. Don’t get me wrong: I made plenty of mistakes in other areas but for me as a guy, addressing how often I got responses was the biggest area I watched and improved over time.

Regardless of our individual areas of struggle, I do agree with Amy that we need to be pickier. Too many of us start dating and feel like we need to accept the first person that accepts us. One area I may differ from Amy (I’ve not read her book so I’m not sure) is that I’m a fan of dating a lot of people while becoming pickier. My take would be this: be open to who you meet, picky on who you then date/pursue.

This is because my experience showed me that and the more I dated online, the more requirements I discovered I had around the woman I wanted to find. I would argue this is where “bad dates” are actually a good thing – they help you realize you care a lot more about the qualities someone has than you might initially think! And on the other side, there were women I met who I assume I’d have nothing in common with who showed me that “different from me” wasn’t necessarily bad.

So while being selective is something that needs to happen, I’m big on giving people a chance while learning more about yourself in the process. But I’d see that as an opinion, not a rule.

Where Have We Come From?

So why does it sound so odd for someone to say “be pickier”? Why was the traditional advice of “You’re being too picky” good advice at one time, but bad advice now? I believe it has to do with where we’ve come from and how the old-style of dating worked and how we viewed things:

• The old-style of dating was random. It would involve things like hoping you might have an interesting conversation with someone while you were at the grocery store. Or going to a bar frequently hoping to connect with someone. Or even switching the church you attend with the hopes the new church would provide new dating opportunities.
  
  
• Given the above, being overly-specific in qualities we were looking for wasn’t an option. If you have no idea where your next date is going to come from, being picky could mean you’d be giving up having any relationship at all.
  
  
• This led to a culture of settling. If you are going on one date every six months, eventually some qualities you dislike seem to be acceptable no matter how much you dislike them. “Good enough” starts to look pretty good when there aren’t many options out there.
  
  
• On top of all that, dating a lot of different people was often seen as odd. This isn’t universally true, but I’ve run into plenty of people who thought the fact that I was going on two dates a week was very questionable (and who weren’t afraid to tell me so!)

All of these things added up and led us to have a mentality of “hope you get lucky in who you meet and then don’t let an opportunity pass you by”. The truth is, the people around you mean well when they say you’re too picky. People will suggest you are too picky because their experience suggests that’s exactly what you are being. In the older style of data, giving the advice to be less picky made sense because often you couldn’t be picky.

Online Dating Has Changed Things

To me, online dating has changed everything about our approach. Once you find a successful approach to online dating, no longer do you wonder where your next date will come from. And hopefully this leads to a people that are less willing to settle. After all, why settle when you have several more first dates scheduled?

In my opinion, it is unfortunate that many people continue to treat online dating like the backup option or the worst-case-scenario option. In reality, it provides far more ability to measure and be intentional about what you are looking for (as Amy proved).
But things are improving in our cultural view of online dating: in the years I’ve been running this site, I’ve seen a big shift towards acceptance online dating. Even comparing where we are today to five years ago feels like a dramatic shift to me.

And this brings us to my final thought: being picky depends in part on the number of opportunities you are seeing. Online dating is a medium that can provide the kind of opportunities you need to have before you can be picky. It takes some work and there can be a learning curve, but it can be an amazing tool to find someone with the qualities you actually like, as opposed to simply finding someone so you can “not being alone”.

This is the second month in a row where eHarmony has provided a free 5-day event and what I believe is the 5th or 6th month (at least) where they’ve had some type of free event. With the frequency of these free events, if you’ve been holding off on trying eHarmony, it could be a good time to sign up. Each month they are giving some type of opportunity to try their service and when you sign-up, you’ll start to receive emails when these events start.

Visit eHarmony to try the free event.

One other item worth noting: eHarmony has been providing free weekends/events like this around holidays (St. Patrick’s Day this time). During times where there are less holidays, it seems that then they switch to giving Tuesdays away for free. So keep an eye out when a holiday is approaching, but even when one isn’t there appears to be a good chance there could be some free time each month anyway.

Best of luck to all those giving it a try this weekend!

With today’s technology you can filter out those who you may have more or less in common with. Online dating sites typically do ask people what their drinking and smoking preferences are, but there is really no place to list drug use, even if it’s recreational use. If you are someone who has overcome drugs in the past or is privately struggling with a drug addiction, you may be wondering when you should confide in the person you met online.

The Right Time to Discuss a Drug Problem

There is no need to indulge in your private life right away. A drug addiction problem is extremely personal and even being newly sober is a touchy subject. After all, the other person should get to know you based on things you have in common, your personality, hobbies, food preferences, your education or job, as these are typical things that people talk about on the first few online encounters.

The only exception to this would be if the other person mentions to you first that they use drugs. At that point, you would need to decide if this person fits into your future goals surrounding drug use. If your goals are to remain sober, you would really need to consider if you want the relationship to go any further.

Your are More than Your Drug Problem
While your drug problem is a major part of your life, it does not define you. It is best to keep the two separate until after a few months of dating and speak up about it, only if you feel comfortable.

Timing May Affect Your Approach
If your drug problem occurred years ago, say in your teens, there may not even be a reason to tell the other person. It’s completely up to you, but sharing your past too soon may scare the person away, or it could lead them to only focus on your past drug problem, and not your other great qualities. Let the person get to know the real you and then if you feel comfortable go into light details.

If drug use is part of your recent past, you can mention that you had a problem and overcame it. You may also want to have an open conversation at that point about situations you feel uncomfortable in, especially if the person you are talking to is a recreational drug user.

If You are Still Using Drugs…

If you are still using drugs or constantly high during your conversations with someone online, you may want to reconsider online dating completely.

Ask yourself at this time, if you are ready to bring someone else into your life? Do you need time to concentrate on yourself? Do you need to seek help? Are you happy with your drug use, and where you are at this point in your life or do you want to change? Are you acting like yourself if you are high during conversations or someone different?

These are all important things to consider, especially if you are going to put all your energies towards online dating or into one specific person. It may be best to focus on overcoming your drug use, finding a permanent solution and figuring out what to do next with your life before committing to a relationship or becoming emotionally attached to someone else.

1. Local Events

Find out if there are any local events for single people. Given the amount of people who rebel against Valentine’s Day, you will often find organized nights at bars and clubs where single people can get together and enjoy hiding from the tackiness of the hearts and flowers in the outside world.

2. You’re Not as Alone as You Might Think

Consider that although you are without a partner, you are not alone in one very important sense. Indeed, an estimated sixty million people worldwide will also be single on this holiday. In addition, think about the fact that many of them are probably perfectly happy on Valentine’s Day and that plenty of them think it is a rather pointless commercialized holiday. The displays of cards and gifts in stores may feel like you are a lone single person in a sea of happy couples, but this impression is inaccurate.

3. Friends and Family

Decide to celebrate love and companionship in a different way when Valentine’s Day arrives. Organize a dinner with your family or your best friend, or go out for a meal and drinks with a group of single people you know.

4. The Benefits of Being Single

Spend some time thinking about all the benefits that come from being single, and realize that entering into a serious relationship means sacrificing these benefits. When you are single, you have your own space, you can generally plan your time according to your own desires, you do not have to answer to anyone for the decisions you make, you are free to date and pursue many different kinds of new people, and sooner or later you will probably experience the butterflies and excitement that comes with falling in love again.

5. Single Doesn’t Mean Undesirable

onsider that even though you are single at the moment, there is probably at least one person out there who would love to be with you (whether you would reciprocate those feelings or not). Being single does not mean that you are undesirable or unsuccessful.

6. Treat Yourself

If you can’t spend time with friends or family on Valentine’s Day this year, make sure to find other ways to entertain yourself. Treat yourself to distracting hobbies that you enjoy, such as reading fiction or watching your favorite TV show.

7. It’s a Corporate Holiday

Realize that contemporary celebrations of Valentine’s Days are pushed on us primarily to help companies get rich from sales of quickly eaten chocolates and quickly forgotten cards. If nothing else, being single on Valentine’s Day is saving you some money that you can spend on something much more significant and enduring.

8. Be Intentional in Who You Spend Time With

On Valentine’s Day and the days surrounding it, avoid spending time with the sort of people who are likely to engage in nauseating bragging about the expensive and romantic gifts they are about to give or receive. Instead, gravitate towards people who think that Valentine’s Day is no big deal, or people who are single as well.

9. There are Bigger Things to Celebrate

Note also that many people who are deeply in love nonetheless choose to reject the cliches and forced sentimentality of Valentine’s Day. Plenty of couples think that dating anniversaries and wedding anniversaries are much more significant, and avoid trying to cram themselves into a packed restaurant on the 14th of February.

10. Motivation for the Future

If you are unhappily single on Valentine’s Day, try to see this as motivation to give new ways of meeting people a try. I am a big proponent of online dating (as I make clear on this site) but I refused to use online dating for a long time. Only when I was truly miserable in my singleness did I finally decide to give it a try. The unhappiness of being single eventually led to the happiness of being in a relationship after using online dating!

If you are realistic about what Valentine’s Day involves and if you do your best to concentrate on the fact that being single on Valentine’s Day does not say anything important about you as person, you can treat it just like any other day (or turn it into an even better day). Still, if all else fails, you can look forward to the days that follow, when you can pick up lots of luxury boxes of candy for seriously reduced prices!

Photo of Roses by Lida Rose via Flickr

It’s been quite some time since I’ve seen a free weekend at Chemistry. As I like to point out, one nice thing about the Chemistry.com free weekends is that all the features of the dating service are included in the free event. Often when services have free events, some of the features will be locked down. Historically, Chemistry has never done this so trying the free weekend out gives you a full feel for the service.

Sign up at Chemistry to try the free weekend

As with any free event, it’s best to sign up ahead of time so you can use as much of the free time to communicate (instead of spending that free time creating your profile). You might be frustrated if you heard about this free event at the last minute and end up having to spend part of the free weekend creating your profile. The silver-lining here is that once you’ve created your profile, you should get email alerts for future free communication weekends (and obviously you won’t have to create your profile next time!)

Best of luck to everyone giving the free weekend a try.