Finding and Using Singles Sites

Are you feeling lonely?

For all sorts of reasons and at all sorts of times some students feel themselves to be failures at establishing relationships or unable to go out and directly seek a partner. Whilst for decades their have been dating agencies that can help people overcome their fears or misgivings today many folk chose to use the internet to connect with other singles.

This article gives you some tips and advice on how to go about finding and using a singles site. Here, at Hampshire College in Western Massachusetts, we’re quite lucky in that our student services office gives us access to counselling services, that can help students overcome their worries about meeting other single people. Such relationships advice can also be found online with just a few clicks of a mouse.

Finding a singles site

Actually it is one of the easiest things to find websites which offer chat services and singles dating on the internet. Just typing the word “singles” into a search engine will bring up several sites you could try, just on the first page!

I’ve just done that in Yahoo and it returned 131,000,000 sites! Refine the search with “singles dating” or “singles chat” and you’ll narrow down the number of sites returned. For example - “singles dating” narrows the number of returns down to 31,000,000.

Progress indeed, but those sites and the people logged-on to them could be anywhere in the world! Don’t worry - if you don’t already know - you can refine an internet search by using what are called logical operators. I’ll leave it to your web-browser/search engine to explain this further or your college IT services, but basically they’ll let you narrow down your search to a specific area or item.

I’m sure you’ll agree that if you’re searching for a singles chat site it doesn’t matter where in America or even the world it is, or wherever the person you ‘chat’ to online is. However, if you want a singles dating service, presumably at some point you’ll want to meet the other person.

Now then, do you mind travelling a long way or do you want someone nearby? What if you wanted to use a singles dating agency online, that is mainly used by people in Western Massachusetts - simply type the following into your search engine, exactly as I do here:-
“singles dating” + “western Massachusetts”   (Sometimes you need to use the word and rather than the + sign, refer to your web-browser/search engine.)

If I do that search my search engine now it returns only 173 responses. Adding the word “student”, and making the search “student” + “singles dating” + “western Massachusetts” - I can narrow my search down to just 32 responses, a number I can easily work with.
One last tip here - presuming your web-browser/search engine has an ‘adult content’ filter switch; I’d recommend turning this on whilst doing these searches. As otherwise you can be swamped by some very dubious websites and offers!

Using an online singles sites

The next thing is what to do when you’ve chosen an online singles service. Some of the online singles services have sub-divisions for: Romance, Students, Christian, Gays, and Lesbian etc. So, obviously first off choose the category that you think you’re most likely to find the sort of person you’re seeking. Most of them are for free, but there are some where you have to pay a small permition fee that you can easily pay via credit card. You’ll need to create a profile for yourself. Before doing this read the websites privacy features carefully. The following is especially important for chat sites - be very careful about giving out too much personal information too early.

You probably won’t need to have your accommodation address or phone number displayed whilst you’re just searching for someone. Also, I’d recommend creating an e.mail address that you only use with the online singles service, at least until you know who you’re contacting.

Conversely I would recommend that from the start you’re 100% truthful about your physical appearance. Imagine you’re getting on really well with someone online, you arrange to meet them and then realise you said in your profile you’re 5’ 10” tall when really you’re 5’ 4”!

Also, don’t even think of doctoring or not being 100% up front about what is a true and recent photograph of yourself. At the same time do have fun when writing your single profile, be honest about yourself, and state clearly what sort of person you are and what you’re looking for in a partner. Finally, be confident that someone, possibly your soul mate, is also out there looking for you!