A few years ago I recall the looks of pity my friend Sarah would get when she mentioned she’d been trying an online dating site. I must admit, at the time, I thought she must be desperate; couldn’t she meet anyone in ‘reality’? Didn’t she meet people at work, or at parties?

I judged her actions and concluded that she must be either a bit weird or socially inept. Of course, you know I wouldn’t be telling you all this if she had never met anyone! Sure enough, she met a guy online and fell in love. He didn’t live in Bahrain either, he lived in her town!

Even one experience like this in your own circle of friends is enough to make you question your hasty judgments. So, could online dating prove to be a mainstream way of meeting people, or would it remain in the margins of society? Is it humiliating to look for people online?

Well, let’s say you’re busy all day at work (nobody eligible there), you go out twice a week with your usual group of friends (been there, dated them), and the rest of the time you’re doing chores and sleeping; realistically, how many new people are you going to come across?

Even if you managed to date, or even chat beyond pleasantries with, one new person a week, how many of them are likely to be a good match? One in a hundred? At that rate, it would take you two years to meet someone that you feel really attracted to. Not bad, but, in the meantime, you’ve spent two years alone!

So, let’s say you look at these statistics and realize you need to up the odds of meeting someone. You do the logical thing and search a database of millions of people on a dating site. You use the Internet to keep in touch with your friends, and for buying things, so why not for dating also?

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