Virginia Beach Dating

Can a lonely young Virginia Beach woman find love (or at least companionship) on the Internet? I was determined to find out.

All my friends told me, "you should get out more." But I don't like bars or blind dates ... so I sat at home many a weekend.

Then my friends got a new idea. "You should try eHarmony! Have you seen the ads?"

Yes. I'd seen the ads. Who could miss the ads? Online dating.

Most of the online dating services, like Match.com and Yahoo Personals, are search engines with millions of profiles, each with a photo and personal information ranging from height and weight to likes and dislikes. You browse through through the data base, and e-mail anyone who looks good.

eHarmony is different. It doesn't allow users to choose whom they're going to contact. Instead, it matches people based on an exhaustive personality survey. I've read that eHarmony is especially strong with people 30 or older who are looking for a real relationship (I found this to be true ... keep reading!)

eHarmony is supposed to be a scientific method of finding a "soul-mate". The company's founder, Dr. Neil Clark Warren, promotes himself as an expert on "mate selection". That must be a fascinating field.

Anyway ... what did I have to lose? Nothing!

I went to eHarmony.com and took the free personality profile. It's lengthy, but didn't really take too long. The profile measures you on 29 dimensions of character, emotional makeup, personality and values. I just answered truthfully and hoped for the best.

I finished the survey and got a report about myself. Yep, that sounds like me. On to the matches!

eHarmony started looking for matches. (The matches are free, until you want to contact someone). I guess I'm not an easy match, because it took a few days. I decided to put my trust in eHarmony and go out at least once with every guy they matched with me.

Results of my Virginia Beach online dating experiment

My first match was my age and cute. He was strong and cool and lived only a few miles from me. We emailed back and forth a couple times, then went out for dinner. We went out twice and we got along well, although there didn't seem to be much "spark". Then I got an email about my second match.

The second guy was more than 10 years older than me (older than 30 and looking for a real relationship) and not what I thought of as my type, physically. He's fit but thin; not the beefy body I usually go for. We did the email thing and I could tell he was very smart and somewhat shy. Although he lives about 30 miles from me, we agreed to meet.

To make a long story short ... "second guy" and I have been dating for two months. He's the nicest guy I've ever dated, very patient and much more grown-up than guys my age. The 30 miles between us is a pain, but we still get together often. We talk or email often. "First guy" is history and I've stopped taking more matches from the service.

If I hadn't trusted eHarmony, I wouldn't have given my guy a chance. He may not turn out to be my soul mate ... but we're not ruling anything out yet.

I admit I was skeptical about internet dating, but the quality of matches I was sent were really kind of amazing. I recommend online dating to all my single friends in Hampton Roads. Give online dating a try! You have nothing to lose ... and everything to gain.