Ellen Fein - The Rules for Online Dating: Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right in Cyberspace

We would like to thank our families and friends; our agents at Clausen, Mays & Tahan literary agency, Stedman Mays and especially Mary Tahan, who believed in and supported us in writing this book; and our editor at Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster, Mitchell Ivers, who made it all possible. And thanks to all the Rules girls online around the world who e-mailed us their experiences, tips, and success stories!

ALSO BY ELLEN FEIN AND SHERRIE SCHNEIDER

The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right

The Rules II: More Rules to Live and Love By

The Rules for Marriage: Time-Tested Secrets for Making Your Marriage Work

The Rules Dating Journal

The Rules Note Cards

For more information about The Rules, including

The Rules News Newsletter

Website ( www.therulesbook.com )

Private consultations with the authors

Rules seminars

Rules audiotapes and videotapes

Rules merchandise including Rules Ankle Bracelets (oval plate with CUAO inscribed on it, in silver and gold), and more,

please contact:

The Rules

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P.O. Box 6047

New York, NY 10150

(212) 388-7910 (phone), (973) 422-0048 (fax)

E-mail has become a universal part of relationships these days, whether a relationship starts online or not. Millions of women around the world are e-dating, whether they meet men online or in a local bar. In the last two years, weve seen a rapid shift in our consulting businesstoday about 50 to 75 percent of the calls and e-mails we get concern relationships being conducted on the Internet. And these women have been asking us for a book of Rules for dating online.

As many of you know, our first book, The Rules, spawned a worldwide movement. Readers beganand continueto set up free online and offline support groups around the world and visit our website ( www.therulesbook.com ) at the rate of over 400,000 hits a month. But when we wrote The Rules seven years ago, little was known about online datingmany even considered it dangerousso we did not even include it. By 1997, when we wrote The Rules II, there was a little more interest in online dating and we wrote a short chapter telling women the pitfalls of this chat-intensive dating method, how to best apply The Rules, and how to play it safe.

Back then, there were only a handful of dating websites. By 1999 there were more than 2,500 Internet sites devoted to matchmaking. And the numbers are still climbing worldwide.

Today, busy professional men and women think nothing of placing an ad and photo online and coming home every night to dozens of e-mails from desirable members of the opposite sex. They spend hours on the computer every day in online relationships or chat rooms or just answering their e-mail. The only problem is that online dating has become a little like a bad bar scene. Women are making serious mistakes in the way they meet and talk to men online. Women need to know:

how to write effective ads

how to answer e-mails

how to act in chat rooms

how to set boundaries with men online, and

how to weed out the good guys from the bad.

And were not just talking about women who use online dating services and chat rooms (an online forum where people can converse with each other by posting messages in real time). Today, virtually everyone uses e-mail; its as common as a phone call. More men are simply asking women out or asking them about their day by e-mail instead of or in addition to calling, whether they first met these women through love@aol, personals. yahoo.com, or at a party at a friends house. These days, men and women meeting for the first time often exchange e-mail addressessometimes before they exchange phone numbers! Women meeting new men at business conferences, birthday parties, or clubs give out their e-mail addresses and also take mens e-mail addresses, and then find themselves in an e-mail relationship with a man. These women are just as prone to making the same mistakes online as women using online dating services and chat rooms mistakes that can ruin their relationships.

E-mail courtship has made dating more hazardous than ever. With e-mail, women are tempted to let their guard down, let it all hang out, Instant Message men all night, and have cybersex (not The Rules!). But we believe you cannot e-mail with abandon, without thinking, without Rules. You must watch what you say, how often you say it, no matter what or how often he e-mails you, otherwise the relationship becomes so casual that it can go poof!disappearlike a blank computer screen.

What many women dont realize is that an e-mail is just like a phone callit does count! Women are making the same kind of mistakes online they make on the phone, mistakes that allow an e-courtship to become too easy. But these mistakes can be easily corrected with a set of Rules dos and donts. Hence The Rules for Online Dating. In this book, you will find out, among other things:

Why you must let a man e-mail you first, regardless of how you met him

Why not to answer mens ads

How to create a good screen name or ad name

The right wayand the wrong wayto write an online ad

How and when to answer mens e-mails and Instant Messages

How to do The Rules in any relationship that uses e-mail, no matter whether you first met online or offline

How to prevent the relationship from becoming too casual

How to not let online men waste your time

How to set up the first face-to-face meeting with your e-mail guy (date zero)

How to evaluate the quality of an online relationship as it develops

Potentially life-saving safety tips

You may be wondering at this point: If the premise of The Rules is that a man must pursue a woman and she must be mysterious and challenging, how is that premise going to work on an Internet dating website where you have to post a photo and describe yourself in an ad for all the world to see? You can definitely retain your mystery and keep yourself from being too available on dating websites and even in chat rooms. Read on, and we will tell you exactly how to apply the basic Rules premise to online and e-mail dating for the best possible results.

We suspect that some of you may be reading this book only out of curiosity, still reluctant to actually try online dating. You may believe in The Rules all right, but you may not yet believe in online dating. You may not know anyone who is doing it or you may know one or two girlfriends who are, but neither has met Mr. Right. And even though you are meeting no one at all at clubs, parties, or through personal introductions, you just dont like the idea of meeting men online.

Or perhaps you think online dating is just for losers and men and women who have no social skills, desperate people who are forced to do this as a last resort. You may think that there is no way you can have any real chemistry with online profiles that are probably fabricated and photos that hardly resemble the person. You havent yet tried it, but you are sure it wouldnt work for you. You would rather stay single than put your profile and photo up for friends, college roommates, coworkers, and neighbors to see. The whole idea of it makes you illeven though some of these people may be online themselves!

We know how you feel.

Only a few years ago when we wrote The Rules II, we had nothing good to say about online dating. We thought it was potentially dangerous to meet with strangers. We also thought it would be hard for a man to feel a spark online in the same way he would meeting a woman in person, especially if the woman didnt post a photo. We thought that e-mailing back and forth endlessly, possibly for weeks or months, would ruin any chance for Rules mystery and challenge to happen.