>Online Boomers
>Who Do You Want to Meet?
>It Beats Speed Dating
>To Each His Own
>6 Tips for Finding Love Online

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Online match-making services are gaining popularity among the baby boomer crowd — and among servicemembers.

A growing number of busy baby boomers are finding what they need online. Now that marketplace momentum and technological advances have overcome many of the early security concerns associated with online activities, who can blame them? After all, you can order your favorite blend of coffee, search for rare coins, or book a plane ticket to Chicago — and you can do it all while lounging around in your pajamas. (You can even find new pajamas in a hard-to-find size or just the right shade of blue!) So, why not log on to find love?

According to his online dating profile, John W. wants “to find someone to hurry home to.” The 48-year-old former Apache attack helicopter pilot has been exploring the world of online dating for about three years from his home in Plano, Texas. John has tried a number of different online dating services since his divorce, including Match.com, Yahoo-Personals, and USMilitarySingles.com. He’s had mixed results, but he remains optimistic. “At my age, I would prefer not to go into restaurants and bars to meet somebody. It’s tough,” he says.

Online Boomers
These days it seems that everyone knows someone who met somebody online. Whether it’s a family member, a friend of a friend or a starry-eyed couple on TV, we’ve all heard the stories. And by and large, they’re true; people are meeting online.

According to a report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project released this past year about online dating, “Some 11 percent of Internet users, about 16 million people, say they have gone to dating Web sites, and a majority of them say they have had positive experiences and believe their use of such sites helps them to find a better match. A notable number of these online daters have found firsthand that lasting romance can be forged online.” The report also notes that, “ 17% of them, or roughly 3 million people, say they have entered long-term relationships or married someone they met through the [online] services.”

According to Match.com, baby boomers represent the fastest growing segment of this online dating population. Liz Edelbrock, a spokesperson for the online dating service, reports that their membership in the boomer age group has grown 350 percent since 2000.

“Online dating is not an edge behavior anymore; it’s mainstream,” says Susan Mernit, senior director of global products for Yahoo-Personals, which also has registered significant growth among the over-45 crowd. A sense of social acceptance — at all age levels — and familiarity is what Mernit thinks is fueling the increased boomer activity.

Another factor could be the sheer number of baby boomers. “That’s part of it,” author and psychologist Capt. Michael Adamse, USAR-Ret., concedes, “but I think the other part of it is that a lot of baby boomers are divorced.” As Adamse points out, society has never before had to deal with a large pool of middle aged people who are single and looking. “They’re not going to go clubbing,” he explains, “There’s a different psychology behind it.”

Who Do You Want to Meet?
Baby boomers are more serious about their search for a partner than their younger counterparts, according to Adamse. Typical 20-somethings are interested in having fun, but baby boomers are interested in finding someone to have fun with.

“A lot of people have a very definite idea of the kind of person they’re seeking — especially baby boomers,” says Edelbrock.

“They’ve typically formed some pretty strong opinions based on their life experiences and on the past relationships they’ve had,” Mernit adds. Many enter the online dating arena with rather high expectations.

“What people say they’re attracted to and what they are attracted to are often two different things, so I don’t put a lot of value in what someone is looking for,” Adamse says. “It’s just a point of connection.”

Or, as Edelbrock puts it, “People know what they think they want.”

There’s no need to compromise on the things that matter most to you (smoking and the desire to have children clearly can be deal breakers) but don’t rule somebody out just because they didn’t care for the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Be flexible and, if you’re serious about making a connection, don’t give in to the temptation to exaggerate your attributes. When you do arrange a real life meeting, someone is bound to be disappointed.

“One thing that everyone needs to remember is that the goal of online dating is not to date online; it’s really to get offline and to meet in person and to feel that spark or that chemistry or that connections,” Edelbrock says. “I’m sure you had more hair five years ago, but the truth is there’s going to be someone who, receding hairline or not, finds you attractive.” On the other hand, if you use that old photo — the one with hair — you’re likely to come across at a first meeting as someone who can’t be trusted.

“People will misrepresent themselves; it happens when you meet someone getting coffee, it happens when you meet someone at a bar,” Edelbrock says. And, yes, she acknowledges, it happens online: “There are those people who are not going to be 100-percent truthful about who they are. We do everything in our power to keep those people off of our site.”

Deception, whether it is inadvertent — in the form of someone who posts a photo that might be a little more out-of-date than they’d like to admit — or an intentional scam (beware of anyone asking for money), remains a consistent complaint among online daters. Community policing and company review policies reduce the number of blatant cons, but, as Edelbrock says, “we can’t force people to be honest.”

It Beats Speed Dating
Boomers also place a greater value on efficiency than their younger counterparts do. Time, you could say, is of the essence. Forget about biological clocks, though, these folks are just plain busy. They have responsibilities and interests. According to Match.com, if they haven’t already retired, baby boomers are most likely to be self-employed or entrepreneurs (more so than any other age group on the site). More than half of the boomers on Match.com exercise regularly or at least occasionally; their favorite activities are walking, hiking, dancing, swimming, bowling, and golf; and they dine out, travel, visit museums, and attend the theater. You won’t find them sitting at home. “People have limited time, and this is a very efficient way to look at a large number of possible dates and then narrow it down,” Mernit says.

“It’s definitely attractive for somebody who doesn’t have the time, and possibly doesn’t have the opportunity,” Adamse says, especially for those in the military. “Having been in the service and knowing how compressed people’s time can be with respect to deployment or reassignment, it’s a pretty interesting and convenient way to date,” he says. “Now, wherever you’re stationed or wherever you live, retired or active duty, it won’t matter any more.” With the Internet, you can wink at someone 5 miles or 5,000 miles away.

To Each His Own
Of course, online dating isn’t for everyone. “It’s not a guaranteed fast track to meeting people,” Adamse says. “There are a lot of variables that go into it.” And he’s not talking about blondes, brunettes, or redheads — finding a perfect match online is not as easy as point and click.

Like many baby boomers wading into the murky waters of online dating for the first time, Liz L., a 51-year-old resident of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., found that reality often doesn’t meet up with online perceptions. After a string of disappointments, she’s ready to throw in the virtual towel. “I’ve decided I’d rather go up to someone who’s caught my eye, say at the supermarket, and take a risk by striking up a conversation instead of weeding through the mass descriptions of potential candidates online,” she says.

“You have to remember that probably 70 percent of the information we garner from another person is nonverbal,” says Adamse. Body language, style, tone of voice, and inflection are all critical to communication. “They’re no longer available on the ’net,” he says. “All you’re going to get is text and a picture, so you’re suffering from a huge deficit of information. Because we can’t help it, we fill in the gaps. We imagine what that person must be like — it’s human nature.”

If you have a good imagination, you may be a prime candidate for disappointment. Just don’t blame the Internet. As Adamse likes to say, “Don’t kill the messenger. It’s a medium to connect people; what happens after they connect is entirely up to them.”