In a perfect world we all want to believe that whoever we talk to is an honest and decent person.  But in today's real and virtual and worlds, you must guard against trusting the untrustworthy and giving away your love under circumstances that could come back to haunt you. Exercise caution and proceed slowly. What do you really know about this person? How can you be sure? Any suitor must earn your trust gradually, through consistently honorable, forthright behavior. Don't give it away for the asking -- and you will be asked. As an added precaution, make sure you set up a secondary email account, to be used just for this relationship, which you can shut down should things seem not right.

Your instincts are right 99% of the time. Trust yourself. Go with your instincts, even when they can't be logically explained. When something feels wrong, it generally is. When someone appears untrustworthy, they usually are. If you want to substantiate an intuitive hunch, hire a service to check on your suitor's background (criminal records, home ownership, bankruptcy, divorce, etc.). These services can be found on the Web or in your Yellow Pages under Investigators. While background information may reassure you about someone's history, it provides no guarantees about future behavior. Ask yourself why you are dating someone you feel the need to investigate.  Ask yourself: Is she who she says she is? Is he/she honest? A murderer? A rapist? A gold digger?

I have a friend who met someone on line 3 years ago who was an executive with a Fortune 1000 company.   He would call her everyday, even from other cities when he traveled.   That was part of the charm and the con.    He told her he was divorced and engaged to marry someone else that fell through a few years before.   Within two weeks she found out the he didn't just have two children but a third that was a problem teenager.  Upon further investigation (her instincts were right on) at the county courthouse, she found out he had married and divorced the woman he claimed to be engaged to at one time but never married. Once she started asking he questions about this he stopped calling.....good riddance I say!  There are pathological liars everywhere.   DON'T believe everything you hear.

Watch for red flags: 

You are a smart cookie.....you can spot the unscrupulous and deceitful jerks. They betray themselves with inconsistency and unexplainable behavior. You should be concerned if your date does any of the following without providing an acceptable explanation:
 

• Frequently disappears and becomes unreachable by phone or email

• Provides inconsistent information about age, interests, appearance, marital status, profession, employment, and so on

• Refuses to speak to you on the phone after establishing ongoing, online intimacy

• Refuses to give you a home number and only calls you from work.  (They could be married, have a live in lover, have a significant other and are looking for their next conquest before ending that relationship).

• Doesn't provide direct answers to direct questions

• Appears in person to be significantly different from his or her online persona

• Never introduces you to friends, professional associates or family members
  
  Be responsible and trustworthy yourself  Some say that the lines between honesty, exaggeration and deception have blurred, especially in print personals and online dating. Is it a crime to represent yourself as a few years younger, especially when your friends frequently comment that you don't look your age? Has thinning hair become a euphemism for bald? If we want to hear the truth, we must start by telling the truth, even when it isn't easy or advantageous. And we must conduct ourselves and our romances in a responsible manner. Don't fall in love at the click of a mouse. Don't become prematurely intimate with someone, even if that intimacy only occurs online. Live by standards of honesty and decency. Let the buck stop with you.

Older Men Dating Younger Women

Ten years younger is OK (provided you have some sort of personality and are not a teenager), but we are wary of you-if you marry us, you might leave when we get older for a younger woman who can have babies. If you look more than ten years older than we do, we will not find you attractive, especially if we have managed to stay looking younger than our age. If we can mate with a male who is our age-we will do it.    A significant age difference can bring problems from the start of the relationship that never end.   Women are more aware of the problems as they hit their 30's and see the health problems striking male family members in their 50's and 60's.  And a woman experiencing this in her own family will think twice before looking at marrying potential problems.

Usually men look for women ten years younger than they are, and women look for men five years younger to five years older. If you are ten years older than we are and don't look it, that's all that matters. No, you don't have to lie about your age.   Women live longer and healthier lives at older ages than men. We are living in the sandwich generation, and now that women are exposed to seeing their mother and grandmother taking care of their ill spouse, we think about having to take care of someone older than us...which can stop many romances over 10 years age difference after a few dates. On the other hand, if you have other bargaining points, money, status, height, a vocabulary, the ability to dance, we may be willing to date you despite how old you are.   

The best places to meet people on the net today:  

American Singles Jump Start Your Love Life at American Singles with Free access to over 10 million profiles. Membership includes matching, instant messaging, tease, email and more. Singles can both post a personal profile and search other profiles without charge.

Match.com is the world's biggest online dating and personals site. View Photos of More than 15 million singles. FULL ACCESS to all the features of Match, including searching for singles, matching, and anonymous email.  More than twice as many marriages compared with any other site. More than 60,000 new people across six continents register on the Match every day. Exclusive Match Technology finds your most promising matches.  Save Time:   Venus delivers new Matches and Search profiles directly to your inbox. Check out the Match.com 3 Day Free Trial

Find Romance with Yahoo! Personals Yahoo Personals, is the second largest and one of the most popular personals services with over 10 million singles. Try Yahoo! Personals Premier's advanced searching and matching FREE. It's easy. All you need to do is complete a profile and to take the Yahoo! Personals Premier Relationship Test. Then you'll be able to Search and Match for a Relationship Fit rating with other Premier users

Fall In Love For All The Right Reasons Matching based on 35 years of research on successful relationships and marriages, and it is the only site that brings singles together using a scientifically-proven set of 29 compatibility principles.. Eharmony is an outgrowth of the general principles on marriage and relationships outlined by Dr. Neil Clark Warren in his books, seminars and clinical practice. Check out his books: Finding the Love of Your Life and How to Know if Someone is Worth Pursuing in Two Dates or Less.

Matchmaker has the world's largest database of singles and is one of the few services that offers a FREE TRIAL where you can use a majority of the features before you decide to join.  The FREE TRIAL lasts for a few weeks which gives you ample opportunity to see why they have the largest number of quality singles in your area.  This is the closest you will find to an dating service.  Old profiles are scrubbed from the system monthly.  (This is important.....why waste your time looking at old personals and people who come and go to never come back and check their mail?)  This is the most up to date system on the net.  If you live in a city with more than a million people, you will find the largest database of singles by city.  They have been successful at generating a large database because they have concentrated on "city sites".   This system has the most complete matching available with over 40 matching questions, an essay, anonymous email within the system and chat rooms.

Young Single Professionals   Meet other single professionals.  Programmers, Consultants, Project Manager, Doctors, Attorneys, Accountants, Architects, Engineers, Geologists, Business Owners, and hundreds of other professionals.  Free to browse.  Check it out!