Dating Services

Anyone may be able to find sex in the city, but what if you're looking for a serious long-lasting relationship that might lead to commitment —no, not in a mental institution, but in front of an altar?
Most of us find ourselves looking for love in all the wrong places —the local bar, the office place and even the long line-up at Social Services.

We meet people who can't take care of themselves, are already attached, are scared of intimacy, are just killing time waiting around until they fall in love with the real thing, have to much emotional baggage, are alcoholics, drug addicts, or more interested in repeating some tragic, self-destructive emotional pattern.

Even if we "get lucky" at one of these places, we often end up optimistically mistaking sex for love, and place unrealistic expectations on a partner who is not willing to go forward with us into the future.

Then there's the matter of our busy schedules. Not too many single people have the time or energy to hang out at the libraries, laundromats or clubs where the old fashioned etiquette books have always advised us to go to meet someone nice.

Perhaps that's why more people than ever are using dating and introduction services. Using one of these services eliminates the fuss and muss of dealing with the modern inconvenience of recovering from a hangover after a long night of waiting around all night in a smoky bar hoping to meet Mr. or Mrs. Right.

Also, using an introduction service is much safer for women. Your best bet is to find a hands-on matchmaking service that screens their male candidates and checks their background for such things as marital status, financial solvency and a criminality. Using an introduction service is also much safer than meeting someone through a free dating service on the internet.

Your chances of meeting a jerk there are just as high as if you had gone into a sleazy bar, as anyone can lie about their history when they submit their personality profiles on-line. The bottom line, according to the dating service owners I spoke to, is: "You get what you pay for..."

According to a study called Dating and the Internet by Ian Nethercott, more and more of us are becoming disillusioned with such societal ills as alcoholism and infidelity and during the nineties turned to more and more to our computers to find a mate.

The failure of the internet to produce anything but even more illusions about love, has renewed singles' interest in old fashioned match-making services.