Online Dating? Avoid Facebook Problems

Whether you are a newbie to online dating, or an 'old hand', even in a fresh and deepening relationship, then this article may help you. What happens when you and your date both have Facebook pages, and your relationship is in that exciting phase when you just cannot stop phoning and texting each other? Or, maybe you are now in to a cosy relationship, maybe you've even started living together, and you both have Facebook pages of your own. Have you thought about the potential problems this can cause? Do you need two facebook profiles - one for your normal friends and one for online dating?

Profile Privacy

Having a personal profile on Facebook can lead to several problems, for example identity theft, which is one reason why I shied away from the portal for a few years. Yes, there are privacy settings, but they don't always function as they should, and recently the management at the company changed the standard settings unilaterally. This led to fury in the Press. And Yes again, they eventually changed them back. But it just makes you nervous about having your whole life on line, doesn't it? Nowadays there is software which can scan your profile and your 'friends' and figure out a whole lot about what you are really like, even your sexual orientation.

Until very recently, I had no page on Facebook. My girlfriend has had one for years, and she is fanatical about her privacy online. She uses it mostly to keep in touch with her family.

So, I thought it would be a good idea for me as well, as I'm not good at keeping in touch with family, and I do know my daughters are really active. Fine. So…

What's this got to do with online dating?

Well, I started to set up my online profile in Facebook, and after the first couple of pages it asked me to find some friends online. You've probably done it already. Guess who I looked for? Yes, my girlfriend. Could I find her? No. Did I find her? Yes. I just looked for one of her daughters and located her as a friend of her daughter. I then sent a request to my girlfriend to be my friend.

After a couple of days I had received no reply. This started me thinking. Is she ignoring me? My other family members (including my own children, I'm glad to say) had accepted and become facebook friends. Maybe there was another reason, something more insidious? So, I asked her if she was not responding. She said no. Fair enough, I believed her. She was surprised that I had been able to find her at all given her Facebook profile settings (that's just off the point of this article, though I did touch on it earlier).

This whole episode got me thinking. Maybe she had a whole list of people - exes maybe, who she did not want me to be able to see as her friends. Anyway, it was not an issue for me, but it did make me doubt her for a few moments.

In conclusion then, this online profile setup can raise doubts and questions when it comes to online dating, especially when you are just meeting someone. You exchange real email addresses, then phone numbers, then maybe, just maybe, your Facebook pages.

There are couple of solutions. One is to have a simple profile with few friends, plus your real everyday profile. Another solution is to keep your profile clean of your dates and exes. Of course, if you are dating multiple people at the same time, or even using Facebook dating features, then you will have to be a lot more cautious if you want to avoid lots of questions.

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