What are people looking for on dating sites?

The answer seems obvious but after thinking about it a lot, I have realized that the answer is not that easy. I just published a book of tips for getting around the dating pages. And in most of the interviews they ask me this question, along with others that show the ignorance of this phenomenon of interacting through the Internet:

• What kinds of people turn to dating sites? Are they the ones who can't get a mate in real life?
• Isn't it true that we only show our best side on dating sites? Isn't it too easy to misrepresent or manipulate our identity?
• Is it true that on dating sites there are paired people who claim to be single? Isn't it true that these virtual environments encourage insincerity?
• Are there not many users who are just looking for sex instead of long-term relationships? They are not so shallow relationship approaches on dating sites?
• But is it possible that you like someone without meeting them in person? And can you really find a partner, seriously, on the net?

Looking for feelings, relationships and experiences on dating sites

“People look for things to happen to them,” says Mariola Dinarés, co-founder of Quedemonline.cat, a Barcelona relationship website, things like:

• Feeling that we awaken interest in others and awaken it in others, confirm that we are still “in the market”, we are desirable.
• Anticipate the pleasure of interacting with others, and imagine others enjoying the same pleasure.
• Imagine relationships and create relationship expectations in the other.
• Give and receive affection, approval, verbal caresses.
• Express ourselves and listen.
• Like and that we like.
• Build new relationships, whatever they are.
• And search and wait for all of the above.

All these experiences serve to enrich our world of relationships: be it with short adventures, with permanent company or with virtual relationships with no prospect of becoming real. And we want to enrich ourselves beyond relational labels, because our social hunger is also nourished by experiences that do not reach the category of relationship: a conversation, a little attention, a satisfied libido, the opportunity to forget oneself for a while thanks to interest that another wakes us up. To finish discovering that beyond our social world, there is a world of possible relationships.

We are passionate about everything that meets the needs of the social animal that we are, whether we satisfy those needs in a virtual way or in person (in what we call real life since the Internet exists). And beware! Because if we make this difference between the Internet and real life, it is because, because the difference exists. It is not a truism to say it: on the Internet we interact in a different way, a way that changes the relationships themselves. Think about it: in this hypertechnological era that we live in, and until telepathy is patent, our verbal caresses, expressions of affection and pleasure, conversations and explorations of the territory of relationships are given, above all, in writing.

Is there really no relationship without bodies?

For a long time, researchers believed it was impossible for people to initiate and maintain relationships over the Internet: physical presence seemed essential to them. This idea was based on how we used email when it appeared: especially for professional or academic purposes in business or university environments. This led to the idea that communications over a computer network could only be impersonal, and that's how they were baptized.

As expected, reality was ahead of our understanding of what was happening. While researchers remained convinced that text-based relationships were nonsense, users built relationships on the Internet. First in isolation. Later the habit spread: it was then seen that the email also served us to tell another that we were moving, to share our sentimental adventures with a friend, or simply to gossip about a co-worker.

And it happened that we not only spoke with those in our circle, but also with others whom we had never met. Remember the chat explosion? Then the social use of the written word on the network became evident, and people began to talk about interpersonal communication online.

Nice to meet you: I think I love you

Today we know that personal relationships on the web have an accelerated speed, compared to face-to-face ones. It's easy for two users to come to the conclusion that they have a lot in common after exchanging a few written messages (in real time or not). Being physically separated and not receiving visual information from the other, we make a rough cut and paste with the partial information that comes to us from our communicative partner. This is how we "invent" the person who is "on the other side".

Add to this that, in order to bear the many uncertainties that a relationship presents us without enough information about the other, we launch ourselves to ask about intimate aspects and to show them much earlier than in face-to-face relationships. And therein lies the formula for an express relationship and what network communication researchers have called hyperpersonal communication. The conversational couple are drawn into a sudden and intense intimacy: similarities are exaggerated, differences are minimized.

Should we stop networking because of hyperpersonal relationships?

The answer is no. What we must do is be aware of this express intimacy, and take security measures in our virtual relationships until we know the other minimally. In addition, we have to continue living our relationships in the face-to-face world, which is what most of us seem to do..

Nor should we forget the advantages of opening up so quickly to others on the network. When we have to live with daily problems, many of us turn to the Internet in search of information and education, but we also seek help from others, sometimes strangers, or from support networks that have a virtual and face-to-face presence..

I think everything we look for on relationship websites has been said before. But I would like to end by talking about those who are in them: they and they are the ones who search the catalog of relational stimuli that I spoke about at the beginning. There is only one more condition to be in the network, willing to give and receive all those stimuli: a social hunger enough to overcome the shame that still causes us to say publicly that we seek to relate to others, in the plane be.

References

Main, Terri. Impersonal, Interpersonal or Hyperpersonal? Cyber-Talks. Available at: http://goo.gl/9keEfD. Last access: 10/8/2015.

Nardi, B., & Whittaker, S. (2002). The role of face-to-face communication in distributed work. In P. Hinds & S. Kiesler (Eds.), Distributed work (pp. 83-112). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Parks, M. R., & Floyd, R. (1996). Making friends in cyberspace. Journal of Communication, 46 (1), 80-96.

Short, J., Williams, E., & Christie, B. (1976). The social psychology of Telecommunication. London: John Wiley

Turner, J., Grube, J. and Meyers, J. (2001) Developing an optimal match with in online communities: an exploration of CMC support communities and traditional support. Journal of communication, 51 (2), 231-251.

Walther, J. B. (1996). Computer-mediated communication: Impersonal, interpersonal and hyperpersonal interaction. Communication Research, 23 (1), 3-43.