MSN.com, Match.com, HappenMagazine.com: they’re in a healthy and satisfying 3-way relationship. Meaning that you can find MSN/Match.com’s “Ask Lynn” columns –penned by BG’s alter ego — over at Happen now as well.

This week Lynn advises a Confused Soul who is wondering if she can make things work with a guy she met online that is an admitted online flirt. In fact, they broke up over it, but now …

Now it seems he wants to revive things with me. He says he never cheated on me or really liked anyone. He says he talks to tons of girls during a typical week but that doesn’t mean anything.

Should she give him another shot? Read the letter at Happen along with Lynn’s advice, then come back here to comment!

Looking for some fun on November 30, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I’m a 37-year-old graduate student who’s having the usual dating difficulties common among those of us who are old and grey and cankered. I know (since you mentioned it) that there’s a book entitled “How to Get Married Over 35” and I’ve had a look at that; the problem is that I don’t want to get married, I just want a date or three, and so the advice is just a trifle off the mark (I mean, I don’t want to meet a nice church going man who wants a mother for his three sons, as much as this would doubtless be another woman’s dream).

Therefore, I’m wondering if you (equipped as you are with superhearing, supersight and super-connection-to-this-particular-aspect-of-the-Publishing-world) happen to know of any other titles, websites, mailing-lists, what have you, that are focused on this particular segment of the dateless population (old farts).

There are tons of on-line personals ads, of course — but I’m not interested in sending erotic e-mail to a phantom on the other side of the globe. My fantasy life works just fine all by itself (after all, as you pointed out, fantasies are just that, and that’s why they’re fun). I’m looking for more concrete suggestions.

Do you have any? Suggestions, that is…

— Jo

BG’s answer after the jump!

A long one from October 19, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I’ve been reading your site for months now, and I love it. I’ve been feeling the urge to write in, but I haven’t actually had any questions to ask. You just remind me of a good friend of mine who moved to Seattle a few years ago. I figured I could send in a “Look! It can get better” letter for your collection.

I’m in my ninth term at college now, and the story goes way back to the beginning of college. I never had any relationships in high school. All the boys were so… young. So was I, but gee, you’d never have gotten me to admit it. So I get to college and poof! Suddenly there are all these smart, interesting people around. Amazingly, some of them are attractive, and some of them are scary, and some of them are both. But the only way to stop being scared of something is to just deal with it, right? Besides, all the scary people are the fun ones. These guys aren’t into drugs or guns or anything. They just know what they think and like and refuse to waffle about it. Plus, they’re fun. So they decide I’m an interesting person and we start hanging out. One of these guys is *incredible*, tall, funny, extroverted, incredibly handsome, dances, gives great hugs… oh yes, and he just came back from another coast to discover that his fiancee has been cheating on him, just to see what it’s like to be with other men. So this incredible guy decides that A: Relationships suck, and B: Sex is good. And starts seducing anything interesting (successfully; he even gets the girls to go after him). Ever see a man with a neon sign that says “BAD PLAN” in bright glowing red letters? There’s one. So the friend you remind me of spent a year telling me, “Bad plan! He’s notinterested! Run away!” and telling him, “She’s too young! She’s not interested! Run away!” And then the rumor mill decided we were going together, manufactured our dates, our proclivities, and our fights, much to our amusement. Can you say, OBSESSION? I knew you could.

(more…)

Sh*t is about to get real on August 17, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

First I just have to say I really enjoy reading your advice and it has helped me through some tough choices. Now I had better get to the point. I am 17 y/o female who lives in Canada and I have been “dating” a 19 y/o guy from Germany. It is an online relationship. Neither of us believed in “online love” until it happened to us. First we were friends and then one thing led to another… we have been together for a year. Anyway we both really love each other, but sometimes I feel he loves me more. I know he is great– sweet, honest, loving, funny– but for some reason I find myself overlooking those things. Lately I have been stuck on “do we have a future together” and “is he the one?” You are probably wondering why I am worrying about such major issues when we only have an “online” relationship. The answer is, in fact, he has an opportunity to come visit me in about 3 months. We had began to plan a couple other trips early in our relationship but for various reasons, namely money, things didn’t work out. I am glad that they didn’t then because I wasn’t “ready” for such a big step. Now though, the latest opportunity seems great! When I have first heard about it I was so thrilled beyond belief. But now the time is approaching that he must buy a plane ticket, etc. within the next few weeks. I am now beginning to panic. A major problem is asking my parents, whom I don’t have a very open relationship with. (Maybe Breakup Mom has some tips.) Lately (in my panic state) I have been wondering more and more about if he is “the one” and if its worth us meeting. It will cost him a few grand and his holiday time, but it is costing me nothing. Still I don’t know if we should meet. Can you PLEASE help me… I need an answer ASAP and well if you can’t help then somehow I’m going to have to decide on my own. *Scary.*

Thanks a million.
— Confused in Canada

BG and her mom respond after the jump!

Writing at Salon.com, BG’s alterego talks to many brave women to find out. Of course, they shouldn’t have to be so “brave” in order to speak up, but what they speak about — the persistent stigma of STIs, especially for women, despite their breathtaking near-ubiquity — is exactly what otherwise keeps them quiet. (When one woman named Michele worked up the gumption to disclose to a potential partner, he said: “You seem like a very classy girl — I would never have imagined you having that.” Translation: “You slut.” And he was one of the polite ones.)

But! As it turns out, the vast majority of people interviewed in the story — even the expert doctor — wound up finding (a) community among others online, and/or (b) a happy relationship (with someone “sero-negative,” even). In other words, there is life — sex life, love life, LIFE life — after/with an STI. The morals:

1. Get yourself tested. And educated.

2. Use condoms.

3. Manners, people! You don’t know anything about how or why anyone got anything. Don’t judge. Don’t even snicker. You might even have something yourself and not know it. (See #1.)

Folks, this is getting as old as the people who allegedly lie about their age on the Internet. Are we really still slamming internet dating? It’s kind of like saying cell phones are bad, or “technology.” In the latest crabby smackdown, Rhodri Marsden, writing in The Independent, “reveals” the “truth” about Internet dating: things don’t work out more often than they do. Stop the presses? Because um, that is also true of bricks-and-mortar dating as well — it’s probability, not cynicism — not to mention, well, life. Saying that he has — aha! — found people who’ve been bruised by Internet dating! is like saying he’s found people who have been bruised by…dating. Duh. Everyone said it was handy. No one said it was magic.

To be sure, there are differences, concrete and ineffable, between dating online and IRL. Each has advantages and disadvantages. The fact that you can likely “meet” more people online than off does translate into more rejection: again, that’s math. And the Internet probably makes for more colorful before/after bait/switch experiences, but that’s because of the built-in online -> real-life progression; that’s story structure, folks. (Said it before: you mean all the people you meet on singles hikes tell the truth from day 1?) So to throw the Internet babes out with the bathwater is, to put a fine point on it, just dumb. So, too, is — if you’re single and would like to change that — not making Internet dating part of a diversified meeting-people portfolio.

So, enough. I’m outta here. Because BG spends some of her time online, and some of her time “getting out there.” See?

(h/t The Awl)

You know that charming but not TOO charming, witty but not TOO witty, flirty but not TOO flirty back-and-forth you’ve struck up with that guy at CouldThisBeTheOne.com? You might actually be flirting back not with that guy himself, but with virtual-virtual him: a correspondent hired to take care of the pre-meeting nitty-gritty online half of online dating.

The Washington Post reports that more and more singles (roughly 80% men) are getting some very personal assistants — whether their own secretaries or via a new cottage industry of ghost writers — to manage their online dating correspondence for them: creating their profiles and handling all  correspondence up to but not including the actual, real-life date. Why? Mostly, they tell the Post, because they’re busy. Really busy. And yes, to be fair, the online part of online dating — while efficient — can indeed be time-consuming. Then again, so can explaining why it was not actually YOU that they’d been flirting with the whole time. So.

Part of me wants to say “Hey, we’re all ‘busy.’ Make time, hosers.” But part of me can summon a little more rachmones than that. I mean, they’re trying. They’re not giving up. They’re not getting all Up in the Air and letting “busy” be an excuse for not searching at all. Tacky, maybe, but there’s some hope there, too. And I can always get behind hope.

What do you think? Acceptable compromise, or Cyrano-no?

MSN.com, Match.com, HappenMagazine.com: they’re in a healthy and satisfying 3-way relationship. Meaning that you can find MSN/Match.com’s “Ask Lynn” columns –penned by BG’s alter ego — over at Happen now as well.

This week Lynn responds to Hoping It Works, a fellow who’s online relationship is ready to go IRL, only he’s left out certain information about himself. No, it’s not that he’s gained 20 pounds since his profile pic shot on Spring Break ’96 — it’s that he is has a disability.

I don’t know how to bring this up into casual conversation because we have not had that many online conversations. I’m concerned about saying too much or having too many rules that will turn her off, but if I don’t say enough it could cause a situation that’s dangerous for me.

What to say and when to say it? Read the full letter at Happen for Lynn’s take, then add your own in the comments or experiences below!

From the Charlotte Observer: “A forthcoming study by a Duke University researcher and several colleagues confirms what not-so-thin women and short, broke men have long suspected: They don’t get nearly as much romantic attention as skinny women and tall, financially secure guys.” You need a study for that? Here, I got a study. It’s called pay my rent, food, and Netflix. Fund that, science people.

The study, out of the University of Chicago, is still under peer review before publication. But here’s what we know: analyzing 22,000 online daters, researchers found that “women put a premium on income and height when deciding which men to contact.” They did the math: the study showed that a 5-foot-9-inch man needs to make $30,000 more than a 5-foot-10-inch one to be as successful in the dating pool.

Men in the study demonstrated a strong, and depressing, preference for women with a BMI of 18 or 19, which basically means if you’re 5′ 6″ you’ve gotta weigh 115. So okay, women want men who can afford to take them to dinner, but the men don’t want us to eat. This should work just fine.

Sarcasm aside, I’m still annoyed with this study — or at least, to some degree, this article about it — and the way it only, and unnecessarily, perhaps even misleadingly, perpetuates and underscores that same-old same-old depressing, needlessly divisive message: “The only thing men and women have in common is that they’re shallow.” ‘Cause here’s the thing: the article and the researchers talk about what a fertile field for study these online sites are, because there are just so many people on them. Right: there are just so many people on them. That’s why people go in — or at least online — with those faux-“high” standards. Because they can. There are so many eligible singles there, at least in urban and urbanish areas, that you can afford to impose a minimum height or maximum BMI standard. You know? Then later, at a party, you happen across someone who — for whatever ineffable reason — makes your heart go pitter-pat, maybe someone whose attributes you wouldn’t have click-clicked and checklisted, and boom, you give them a chance. I’m not saying some people aren’t shallow, but still.

As the article, to be fair, does state: “Since the study focuses on first impressions and initial contacts rather than marriage, it doesn’t rule out the chance of true love winning despite appearance or income. ‘If you had to sit down and write what you wanted in your dream guy, most girls would write ‘tall, hot and well-off,'” said Kari Castle, a 27-year-old online dater in Charlotte. ‘But in reality, is that the only thing they’d settle for? Probably not.'” Right.

So, I guess, since the study doesn’t really tell us much, the reporter is forced to fill in with dumb cranky unhelpful — and dare I say self-fulfilling — quotes like, “It’s got nothing to do with anything but green,” [said one bachelor]. “If you’ve got enough money, you’ll have women swarming all over you.” Attitude, people! Actually, it might be a guy in the comments who said it best: “If you think women will only like you if you have a sizable bank account, you are the one who makes that happen.”

Via Broadsheet:

God! Would you just let me have a LIFE?! According to CNN — dateline: Opposite World — this is what some parents are, or need to be, saying to their kids. Specifically, parents (in the story, mothers) who are looking online for a new partner, and kids (mainly adults themselves) who are, true story, hacking into their mothers’ email and sending rejections to potential suitors. (Another reportedly drove back and forth yelling at her mom while on an outdoor date with an online beau. Check, please!)

Who knew that the “younger generation” — those perhaps most likely to be Tweeting/Facebooking/LiveJournaling about how gross it is that mom’s on eHarmony– would (along with CNN, just a bit) be the ones perpetuating the ancient-in-Internet-years canard that online dating is WhereYouMeetLyingWeirdos.com? Why is online so different from real life? Who says that guy/gal in a bar is telling the truth? How often does the person you meet in person come right out and say, “I enjoy snowboarding and film noir, and in about three months I’m going to start to pull away”? (or “Please enjoy my backyard compound?”) True, some parents, unseasoned daters and e-flirters, might be a tad fuzzy regarding red flags; fair enough. But at the same time, depending on the circumstances — and speaking of bars — their brick-and-mortar options for meeting people might be limited. Online seems ideal for second-timers (if not, like, everyone).

Of course, it’s pretty obvious that what’s really going on here is not “Yikes, mom’s dating online!” but rather, simply, “Yikes, mom’s dating!” — circa 2009. There’s no doubt that seeing a marriage end and a parent move on can be challenging, even devastating. But sometimes, I guess, we just have to let them grow up.