That made me laugh.

We paid the bill and I left.

A joke on point:

Ladies, don’t go to dating sites, go to employment sites.

Same profiles, but pictures and CVs are real.

The third candidate has been fooling me for a week saying that he had just come back from the States and wanted to get married urgently. He said his parents want grandchildren, and he really liked me. That’s what he said. My heart 'sank'…

Wow, I thought…

However, it turned out to be a great deal simpler. Like in this joke.

Online dating:

– Hi! Where are you from?

– Hi! I from Russia. And you?

– I from France.

– Pizdish.

– Chestnoeslovo…

Exactly one month passed since I signed up for the site. More than 200 people wrote to me during this time. Many of them told me they were up to serious relationships and would marry. Some wanted to meet to make sure we fit together.

I met three other young guys, but it did go beyond cafe dating. From my experience, profile photos have little in common with their owners.

So, don’t trust the photos on dating sites. Men tend to 'rejuvenate' or 'embellish' themselves a bit. A handsome guy will turn out to be an oily old man with a sagging belly or a married guy with three children, who want to have fun on the side.

There were also those without a profile photo, but with the 'premium' icon on. Premium account is a paid service that allows you to send messages without a profile photo.

These dinosaurs are there for years. They’ll never send you their photo. They usually call you straight away and ask for meeting. But I've never met such men. I decided not to take this risk.

Overall, dating sites are full of surprises.

                                    A joke on point:

A guy on a dating site met a girl. They exchanged photos. It turned to be his mother-in-law.

Conclusions

There are decent men online, who have no other options except dating sites due to their excessive employment.

Men tend to embellish themselves on dating sites. They upload six-year-old photos of themselves, want to look younger. They tend to conceal their marriage, children. They tend to lie about having own business and money to burn and send an off-topic photo with somebody's fancy car.

There are also those who look for one-night stand or married guys who look for a side adventure or silly girls to have fun in a motel room.

People mostly communicate with a fictional image, not with a real person. Many illusions crumble when faced with reality.

There are those who say they have an instant crush on you and ask your Skype login right away. The climax of such stories is him asking for money… He promises to give it back very soon, telling all sorts of stories like lost IDs, an ill family member, car accident. I have banned a couple of those immediately.

You don’t want to have a long online chatting with the person you like. Call each other after a short conversation. You don’t ask for his number and send yours straight away, but at the same time make him understand clearly if you have a real interlocutor or not. The faster you move at least to phone communication, the sooner you understand what kind of person he’s. The live conversation reveals true level of intelligence and manner of communication, whereas correspondence allows to gloss them over.

How to behave on dating sites

Upload your real photos. Don’t upload exceedingly blurry photos or those where you’re wearing glasses. I find it silly, to set a photo of you with a bouquet of flowers for profile picture. They may think that you have no end of boyfriends, and your heart has long been taken. Even if he wants to send you a message, will you read it?

It is no secret that nowadays, many girls come to dating sites looking for potential sponsors. Therefore, it is better to ask a guy about his financial situation when you meet him in person. Gently. I mean really gently. Not point-blank: okay, darling, now tell me…

Try to keep conversation easy and relaxed. Don’t tell him about your problems, plans, and projects straight away. Don’t try to drag him into any of your business. Stay away from the image of a businesswoman. It pushes people away. I don’t think this approach is helpful. It is absolutely useless. A guy has just met you how can he get into your business idea straight away?

Try to write competently and engage in dialogue correctly. Your spelling mistakes or completely stupid answers and questions may scare away educated, purposeful and literate men.

Don't write to him often! Even if you have a feeling you have known him a for ages, and therefore you have every right to know what he’s doing at 12 o'clock midnight. It may alert the guy reasonably: what will happen next if this is only the beginning?

Keep the conversation going. Odd emoticons, answers like: 'er', 'heh', 'oopsie doopsie' or answering him in a day are the most effective ways to kill the conversation.

I call it a day.

To sum up, online dating has its own upsides and downsides. In order to avoid the latter, check your feelings and build relationships preferably during offline communication. Maybe, someone dated a person online for years and then got married. I still tend more to live communication.)

That is the end of the first chapter, my dear reader. Let me finish my online dating stories with my favourite Italian word: 'Chicercatrova', which means: 'The one who seeks will always find'.

Chapter 2

Restaurants, bars, discos: can one meet a decent man?

– How did you meet