Phone Dating

By Joanne Elliott

Phone dating is not about using your own home telephone; rather it is a service where you can communicate with potential love matches. You can sign up for a relatively low cost, and the main benefit is that you can chat to others via text or over the phone without giving out your home number and potentially compromising your safety or privacy.

The fact is that our culture has changed along with the development of technology, and it is often the mobile that makes the first move. Gone are the days of the embarrassing moment where somebody asks another person out fact to face! This is not now the way that dating is done. It is far more likely that an interested party will ask for your number rather than ask to take you to dinner! This is probably because we are now much more concerned with safety and want to get to know the other person better before committing to a date.

Phone dating allows two single people to get to know each other better before they actually meet up face to face. This is especially useful for those of us who are shy or are perhaps far too busy with the day job to potentially waste valuable time on a date with a complete stranger who is not compatible. There is also an element of comfort and control involved with getting to know someone through phone dating. There is no pressure and time is not an issue - you can reply when it is convenient to do so, and only if you want to!

Here are some general tips about phone dating that will greatly increase your chances of success with potential new partners:

• Don't leave it too long before you reply. Obviously don't reply straight away as you will seem too keen, and possibly even desperate. And forget leaving it for days on end too unless you aren't interested... because this how it will look to the other person.

• Check your spelling! This is especially important if you have predictive text as you could potentially type in a word that makes no sense at all.

• Avoid 'text language'. Not everybody is aware of text abbreviations - for example LOL (laugh out loud). It can also sometimes appear slightly uneducated to pepper your messages with shortened words that mix numbers and letters, or shorten a word - for example 'c u l8r'.

• Don't over-use exclamation marks or emoticons. Let your words speak for themselves.

• If you are contacting someone from a different culture take the time to consider that sometimes things don’t often travel well in translation. Keep an open mind and be thoughtful.

• Keep the momentum going with your messages and replies. Do the best you can to keep conversation interesting and varied.

• If you know that the other person has been out somewhere then you should ask them to 'text when you're in' if you're interested in them. This is a great excuse for flirty messages and also gives you something to look forward if you're home alone.

• Be cool. Just like any other method of getting to know another person you should observe the golden rules of avoiding gushing, nothing blue, and absolutely no poetry.