Month: June 2015

Have you ever written a letter to someone you have never met? When I was a little girl we used to call them pen pals. Every year our teacher would bring in a list of children from another school, sometimes even from another country. We would get to choose a person from the list to begin writing to.

One year I chose a girl whose name has long faded from my memory. But I remember the anticipation of those letters. …

‘Now I’ve turned 40, I think a lot of men on dating websites write me off,’ a reader told me. ‘Would it really be so bad to knock a few years off my age, just to get those initial meetings? It’s only a harmless fib, and I’d confess the truth as soon as I met someone.’

A while ago, a work colleague of mine went on a date with someone she’d met online. The next morning, we were all keen …

Sometimes when I take my wife out to dinner, I look over, see a couple, and know it’s their first or second date. The signs are all there: the nervous chatter, the stiff posture and the forced laughter that says, “We. Are. Trying. To. Make. This. Work.” I look back on my own sometimes-awkward dating experience, and I don’t envy those folks.

Dating often seemed like an endless journey through mountains of wasted time, energy and money. To my credit, …

So what IS the magic formula for finding your perfect partner online? While no-one has yet discovered the secret sauce for guaranteed success, there are a few things you can do to increase your chances of finding someone, whilst remaining safe and happy online.

Be Wise

“Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, the man who gains understanding”
Proverbs 3:13

Choose your dating site carefully. There are many good dating sites, but just as with investing money, there are few …

‘A nice Christian man is keen to start a relationship with me, and I like him too,’ said the email. ‘However, his wife, to whom he was happily married, only died a few months ago. I’m worried I’d just be a substitute for her. HopefulGirl, how soon do you think is too soon to start dating after being widowed?’

Once, when I was bemoaning my single status, someone tried to reassure me that ‘the widowers are now starting to come …