make the transition as easy as possible on the children.
The summer of 2012, Dave was still smarting from the breakup and a little bit lonely. He was glad to have regular visits with his kids, but he was otherwise alone. He lived in a barebones Omaha apartment in a huge complex near Hyatt Tire, the shop he managed. At age thirty-four, he was healthy, attractive, and faced years of empty nights if he didn’t make an effort to socialize. He realized very quickly that it wasn’t hard to meet women. They were as close as his laptop computer, and with the press of a key, he could bring up the profiles of hundreds of attractive females who were hoping for friendship and romance.
Most computer-savvy singles looking for companionship are aware of the many dating websites they can join. Match.com, Coffee Meets Bagel, OKCupid, eHarmony, Tinder, and Plenty of Fish, are among the more popular sites where those seeking romance can view the profiles of thousands of others looking for the same.
Dave was drawn to Plenty of Fish, a website claiming to be the largest dating venue in the world. Founded in 2003, the site boasts 80 million members, with 14 million daily visitors, 60,000 new people joining each day, and over a billion messages exchanged between singles each month. A basic membership is free, and visitors to the site can search for new friends by gender, age, ethnicity, and location, and then scroll through the results like a kid leafing through a toy catalogue, though no one is for sale, of course, and the interest must be mutual before arrangements for dates are made.
Each profile features a photograph, a nickname, and whatever general information the poster is willing to share such as: Nonsmoker with average body type, born under the sign of Gemini, Caucasian, no kids, works in the service industry or Curvy single mother, loves to dance and eat chocolate, just looking to have some fun on Friday nights when the ex has the kids.
As with any dating website, there are risks. There is no guarantee that the poster’s information is accurate. There is no guarantee that the attractive, seemingly charming individual with the enticing description is not a dangerous felon. While the majority of people seeking dates are harmless, not everyone is truthful. Most of the fibs are benign—a few years or pounds shaved off or a photo that was taken last century represented as recent. Sometimes those trolling for romance are married, pretending to be unattached.
One dissatisfied member of Plenty of Fish recently lashed out online, complaining, “I was guaranteed a single man. The company did not screen this person well! I am very angry! This site needs to do better!” The grumbler clearly felt betrayed, but she was naïve to think that website managers had the capability to screen out liars. It is simply not possible to vet 60,000 new members each day. Even if thousands of website employees worked around the clock to try to verify information supplied by members, they would fall short. It is far too easy to create fake profiles in online venues.
Females are particularly vulnerable when it comes to dating strangers met online. Many women refuse to meet a first date anywhere but a public place, and some even snap photos of the license plates on the cars of their new beaus, sending the images via text to friends, a somewhat morbid precaution should they go missing. Dave Kroupa understood why women were cautious. He couldn’t really blame them. He had heard the news stories about women attacked by men they met online. He didn’t argue when the women he was interested in suggested coffee in a public place for their first dates.
It did not occur to Dave that online dating could be hazardous for him. A former member of the National Guard, he could take care of himself. “I don’t think of myself as really bad ass. But I’m not going to hide under a rock. You do what you do, and hopefully it turns out alright.”
Dave knew some of the ladies he chatted with had jealous ex-boyfriends. Were any of these men so possessive that they would resort to violence to eliminate the competition? It was not something he worried about. He saw nothing risky about online flirting.
For every online dating horror story, there are thousands of romantic connections so successful they result in marriage. According to a June 2013 article in the New York Daily News, a study