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COME AND GET IT, the ad announces.
SWM, early 40s, seeking pretty, trim woman for romance and long walks. I
am handsome and well-dressed.
Don't bet on
it, claims a veteran of the Denver personals.
"They
all exaggerate on the physical stuff," says Diane, a
thirtysomething woman who works in the medical field and who has turned
to the classifieds for help finding a boyfriend.
Over the past
couple of years, she answered three ads placed in Westword, dated the
men for a while and then wrote off the whole experience as a singular
failure.
"I
wouldn't do it again," Diane says. "I don't think people are
very truthful in these ads. I think they have this fantasy of how they
would like to come across, how they appear to themselves, and it just
isn't the reality of it."
All three ads
said the men were handsome and well-dressed. And the plain truth?
"Completely
average and had no clue."
Away from the
well-worn worlds of video introduction services and one-on-one
matchmaking, the personal ads continue to flourish, and dinner dates
first hatched in Web chat rooms are becoming a common staple of the
singles life.
While Diane
has sworn off the personals because they paired her with "a
workaholic, a medicated bipolar and a TV executive who lied about his
age and how often he'd been married," others warn that romance ads
and Internet chat rooms could land women something worse than a bad
date.
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Lenore
Walker, the Denver psychotherapist who pioneered the
"battered-woman syndrome" murder defense, says women trolling
for potential sweethearts should be particularly wary of the Internet.
She has appeared as an expert witness in three criminal cases in which
men were charged with assaulting women they met online.
"I felt
that for these people, it was just one more way to reach unsuspecting
women," Walker says. "They were ... serial rapists who were
using the Internet. I think there's more of that today."
While a few dating
services run background checks on their clients, there is no
safety net with the Internet, Walker says. To women who use the
personals or the Web to meet men, Walker suggests these strict,
common-sense rules.
They should
first meet in a public place, like a coffee shop or restaurant,
preferably in the daylight. Second, they should never give out addresses
or much personal information until they get to know the guy better.
Third, as simple as it sounds, they need to listen to their gut.
"If a
woman feels uneasy about a man, that's it. She shouldn't continue seeing
him," says Walker, who has been single for 20 years.
"I would
just tell somebody to make sure you're really, really comfortable with
someone. Get to know who they hang out with. Many sexual predators are
loners. Watch how they treat women. Ask yourself: Do they talk about
women in a respectful way?
"But
hey, I've been out there (in the dating world), too. I know it's not an
easy life."
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