Love Online: Join the Fun!

ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- It grew by 40 percent last year to a $313 million market, it only costs you between $25 and $30 a month, and it’s changing the way millions of Americans find love. In part one of our special series, Love Online, we'll show you why record numbers of women are finding fun and love on the Web.

Relationship advisor Eve Hogan says, “Online dating is an unbelievably popular phenomenon. I think there’s somewhere in the vicinity of 28 million people dating online in the United States now, and it’s just huge.”

After 20 years of marriage, Jennifer Walker found herself single again. She knew Internet dating was popular, but she was doubtful. “Online dating seems to me to be in the same family as personal ads in the newspaper, and it wasn’t the kind of thing I expected that I would do,” she says. But one night, Walker learned a close friend was giving digital dating a try. “I was surprised,” she says. “Then the more we talked about, the more interested I became that that might be a possibility.”

So Walker tested the waters herself. “I wasn’t heavily doing a lot of emailing, but I had emailed a few people and had met a few people. But then I just felt like it wasn’t going anywhere, and I didn’t have enough time. So I let that go and I stopped.”

Charlotte Dutton’s friends also convinced her to try online dating. “Everyone kept telling me I really should do it, and I finally said alright, I’ll give it a shot.”

Dutton, too, had mixed results. She says: “The first one called me the next day after I had met him for coffee and asked me to marry him. The second gentleman waited until the second date and asked me to move in with him.” She quit for a while, but a recent AARP article convinced her to try again. “I think it’s worth a shot, and I assume that if there’s the right man out there, he’ll show up one day.”

Hundreds of sites cater to virtually every interest, from religion to age to sexual preference and even educational background. Eve Hogan says an ever-growing number of new members is one incentive to keep dating online. Another is convenience. “While the kids are doing homework in the same room even, they can be interacting with people online and being proactive in their love life,” she says. An NYU study found online relationships tend to last longer than ones that start offline.

Walker says perseverance is the key. She returned to online dating and one Saturday night and was completely taken with Woody’s profile and his photograph. Two years after they first exchanged e-mails, they exchanged wedding vows.

Since our meeting with Dutton, she reports she has returned to online dating and has had tremendous success.

This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, who offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, go to: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.

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