Online Dating:
How to Avoid the Pitfalls and Oddballs
Online Dating:
How to Avoid the Pitfalls and Oddballs
Leslie Koh
When Esther was first introduced to the idea of online dating, she baulked.
The 30-something was tired of meeting guys through “traditional” channels—such as friend’s recommendations and group outings—and not meeting anyone suitable. But she wasn’t sure that it was a good idea to find a match through an online dating site.
“Online dating was still not that common then,” she says, “and I had this impression that it was only for dubious people who wanted to hook up online.”
However, she came to hear of an ex-colleague’s positive experience, and realised that there were “decent men” on some of these platforms. So she gave it a shot.
Today, Esther is happily married with a 1-year-old daughter, and can attest to this conclusion: online dating is okay, and it can work. That said, she also had some very real concerns.
Avoiding the Oddballs
One common fear about online dating is being matched with the “wrong” kind of people—those with dubious motivations, or those who are simply unsuitable matches. As Esther notes, “The key danger of online dating is that you don’t know who this person really is.”
Unlike traditional, face-to-face introductions, people who look for prospective partners online are likely to have no “background” knowledge about their dates. Instead, they have to depend on profiles or virtual conversations, which may not reflect a person’s true character and motivations accurately.
“Everyone’s putting on their ‘best face’,” says John, who is in his 40s and had tried online dating for six to seven years, “so they may not be totally honest about their real expectations.”
At first, John took dating profiles at face value. But the full-time Christian ministry worker soon learnt to be circumspect. “Some girls said they were okay with my salary and where I worked. But actually they were not.”
And even when you go on to meet a prospect in person, you may still find it hard to discover his or her true character. This is because such interactions are more likely to take place on a one-to-one basis, which can limit opportunities to see how that person behaves in larger, more informal social settings where they are more likely to reveal their true nature.
“Without a ready group of mutual friends that both of you can hang out with, it’s not easy to see what the other person is like with others, and how others treat him or her,” notes Esther.
One way to address this challenge, say some users of dating apps, is to introduce a date to your group of friends and hang out together. This will give you a chance to observe how that person interacts with others, as well as your friends an opportunity to help you assess the person’s motivations and character.
Sophie, who met her now-husband online when she was in her 30s, had one more fear: falling victim to love scams. Without any way to verify the authenticity of people’s profiles, she was constantly looking out for red flags. She also tried to check out their background through Linkedin and Internet searches, though this was not always successful.
She also found some of the app algorithms unhelpful when recommending prospects. “Initially, it was thrilling to explore a variety of guys through my filtered options, but over time, when none of the men fit my bill, I got discouraged,” she says. “The same group of guys just kept getting recommended to me.”
Eventually, Sophie took a break from online dating for a couple of months. While she managed to avoid getting scammed, “it became exhausting to repeatedly introduce myself to every new guy I was matched with,” she recalls.
Esther, meanwhile, found one way of filtering the people she met—by using dating platforms that allowed only those she “liked” to contact her. The first one she used, she recalls, allowed unrestricted messaging, “so all kinds of random men messaged me.”
Finding a Spiritual Match
Finding a Spiritual Match
For Christians who go onto online dating apps, however, meeting the occasional oddball is possibly the lesser concern. Believers say it was even more important that they met someone who truly loved the Lord, and shared similar spiritual values as well as approaches to life.
In this, both Esther and Sophie were guided by the principle of 2 Corinthians 6:14: “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?”
From the outset, this meant ensuring that potential dates were actually believers. “I had gone into the process very clear that I would only date a Christian, and thus made this clear in my profile and filtered out non-Christian matches,” recalls Esther.
In her conversations with prospective dates, she also took pains to ask whether the guy attended church and whether he was serving. This, she says, was a way of “getting a sense of where he was spiritually”.
This was also a “non-negotiable criteria” for Sophie. “While many professed to be Christians, it became evident through our conversations how committed they truly were to their faith. This helped me in narrowing down potential issues that might arise in the future.”
More Than a Shared Faith
For John, it was not enough to know that the prospect was a fellow believer. He also wanted to know where she was in her spiritual walk, and her values and expectations in life. But, he quickly realised, he first had to be sure about his own values, expectations, and starting point.
“I learnt what I want or don’t want, and what is really important to me,” he said of his journey of self-discovery. “I want to serve God full-time, and I know I will never have a lot of money, nor status or fame.”
John’s primary concern was thus this: Was this something the other party could accept if they eventually got married? The only way to find out his date’s needs, expectations, wants, and values, he says, was to keep asking her questions like, “What matters to you?” and “What do you want in life?”
John also learnt to listen to the other party’s questions carefully. “If they keep asking me, ‘Are you okay with your job or salary?’, or ‘Have you thought of changing jobs?’, then it could be a red flag that they want me to change jobs, even though they say they are okay.”
His guiding biblical principle, he says, was Amos 3:3: “Do two walk together unless they have agreed to do so?” Being equally yoked, he says, “means that both parties are walking on the same path, with the same aim of holy living”.
Esther, on her part, took practical steps to determine whether they shared similar levels of commitment to God. Soon after she and her now-husband started dating, they visited each other’s church and cell groups regularly, and she even attended his church camp.
Enlisting Wise Counsel
Another thing that has helped many Christians in the journey of online dating is community.
“People who go online to find partners tend to be secretive about who they meet,” notes John. “But I would say this: don’t go solo. Get wise counsel—get your friends involved, so they can advise you or help you assess your date. They may be more objective than you.”
Both Esther and Sophie agree. They too had taken pains to involve their friends when getting to know their prospective partners better.
Sophie even sought counsel from her mentor, keeping her updated about her interactions with the guys she met. And when she met someone she thought was the “right” person, she quickly introduced him to her mentor before committing to the relationship.
Above all, say those who have tried online dating, keep seeking God’s counsel, for it is ultimately He who brings people together.
For Sophie, it meant constantly talking to God about her desires, fears, and concerns through the dating process.
“The concern I had was whether he was the one God had planned for me,” she says. “Just because a guy is a good Christian doesn’t necessarily mean I should marry him.”
In her search for the “perfect man”, Sophie also gradually came to the realisation that “such a person doesn’t exist except for God himself”. She concludes: “God has granted us free will, along with wisdom and discernment to choose the ‘right’ person. Through prayer, I found peace, and both our families and friends supported our decision.”
Leslie Koh spent more than 15 years as a journalist in The Straits Times before moving to Our Daily Bread Ministries. He’s found moving from bad news to good news most rewarding, and still believes that nothing reaches out to people better than a good, compelling story. He likes eating (a lot), travelling, running, editing, and writing.
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