Living the single life can be a lot of fun. Like, a lot. After all, you don’t have a overly jealous or suspicious partner to answer to, the freedom to come and go and text as you please, you don’t have to worry about cleaning up after your messy partner (or vice versa), and you can sleep as awkwardly as you like. Being single can be especially gratifying after coming out of a long term relationship such as marriage or after an emotional divorce. It can give you time to lick your emotional wounds, rediscover who you are and what you want out of life, as well as a much needed break. It gives you time to enjoy being selfish!
But on the flip side, living the single life can also leave you feeling lonely or as if you were missing out. How many times have you experienced that awkward — and frankly, annoying — feeling of being the third or fifth wheels when you’re around couples? Or the slight embarrassment of attending a friend’s wedding by yourself? There are certain times in life when it just feels good to have someone on your side other than your Mom, so it’s easy to see why matchmaking and dating is such a big business, especially online dating websites and apps.
Online dating offers a variety of benefits compared to going the traditional route. Once frowned down upon and thought of as weird, online dating websites and apps have now become the social norm. It’s almost become strange to think that people still meet each other the traditional way at a bar, at work, or by being set up by friends and family. At the very least, it’s likely that someone will do a little bit of friendly “cyber stalking” on Facebook or another social media platform in order to get to know who they’re dealing with.
But although online dating websites and apps offer a whole host of benefits that can make the process of finding that special someone easier than ever before, it also comes with an equal amount of inherent risks. At one time or another, everyone has heard stories about a man or woman who ended up in the fight for their life after meeting a dangerous date online. Even selling an item online and having a person come over to home to purchase and pick it up poses potential dangers! As such, secure online dating has become a major priority for online dating websites and apps, both large and small.
Here are some of the dangers of online dating websites and apps. Use these to become aware of the risks so that you can be proactive in protecting yourself and avoiding them.
Difficulty reading and understanding dating signals
During face to face conversation, people rely on a slew of both auditory and visual cues to process the information a person is telling them. For example, people can take note of a sudden change in a person’s tone of voice, uncomfortable facial expressions, the inability to look someone in the eye, as well as body language. However when communicating with someone online, this is extremely difficult if not downright impossible to do. As such, your intuition may not be able to warn that someone is being deceptive or has false motives.
You could end up wasting a lot of time on the wrong person
How many times have you heard horror stories of people establishing a great connection online only for them to meet in person and realize that person looks nothing like their profile picture? Unfortunately, this happens quite often. It’s common practice for people to lie about their age, weight, social or employment status, and even their criminal past! Always be sure to perform an online dating background check to be certain the person is who they say they are!
Tons of irrelevant information to weed through
Come on now; does it really matter if someone happens to enjoy a trashy reality television show that you hate? Online dating websites offer a variety of information that makes it easy to get to know someone but you could be quickly turned off!
