The world is intrigued by true love stories just as much as fiction these days. Now, you can find a variety of sites dedicated to the reality of love at your perusal.

It goes to show you that just as many of us are captivated by the reality of romance as we are by a good romance fiction.

Although the two can offer some of the same results for the reader, it’s clear they both bring something of their own individual value to the table.

You can’t always get the same thing from true love stories that you can get from romantic fiction and vice versa. Neither can replace the other, but they both certainly do make the perfect couple.

You can take a closer look and see that we are often drawn to both types for different reasons. One very significant reason that many of us are captivated by romantic fiction is escapism.

The ability to dream and dare to dream. To live out experiences that would be impossible in reality… or unlikely. To take on new lives and journey to new worlds that don’t exist, for the sheer pleasure of it.

We get to ask ourselves, “What life do I want to live today?” and then pick up a book and choose our own adventure that journeys us through our pick of the day.

True love stories can’t really replace the sort of bond we form with fiction. Reality is one thing but fantasy is another.

Of course true love stories offer their own sort of getaway, but the boundaries are clear. In reality, most stories are bound by life’s limitations. Oh, you may have a few exceptions to the rule, in which something miraculous happened, but that’s on an every-now-and-then basis.

But even then we will never be able to journey to a different world and experience life in ways that exist in fiction.

However, true love stories do have a magic of their own. The truth and experiences that we all share in this world will always carry greater weight with us. To connect with a real person who experienced similar trials can’t be replaced by fiction.

Curiosity may drive us to read a true story but it’s inspiration and intrigue that keeps us there. Knowing someone out there–someone real has gone through something we’ve personally experienced is powerful.

True, we may be able to make up a sort of false reality with romantic fiction, but it can’t replace the substance of truth. That real connection.

True love stories have their own individual quality. They draw us in, because really… what could be more fascinating than reading a true tale about love offset by the circumstance of reality? We all know there’s no guarantee in life. Whether we will be dealt a good or bad hand in love is questionable.

We don’t know the odds, or what the outcome in our lives will be in the end or during our own personal adventure through life.

When we add the limitations of uncertainty to the pot and combine them together with love–that alone captures our interest.

Whether the ending is good or bad, we’re intrigued by the fortunes and misfortunes of reality, because life truly does imitate art.

Tameka Norris is the founder of Romantic Short Love Stories. Offering the best of both worlds with true stories about love and romantic fiction. Visit http://www.romantic-short-love-stories.com

There are potential hazards with any kind of dating online, if you are a teen, you run the risk of meeting a pedophile who pretends to be a person of your age in order to entice you into meeting them somewhere outside of cyberspace. If you are a senior, you run the risk of meeting a con artist who will prey on your loneliness to take advantage of you, but if you are a gay person dating online, you run the risk of becoming a victim of a hate crime.

Take the case of Martin, who had joined an online dating website and was making regular contact with other gay men via the chat room. Eventually he met Earl and started an online romance. He and Earl chatted two or three times a week for months before Earl initiated outside contact. Martin agreed to meet Earl at a yacht club and go for an evening sail. There was no one else around and it was starting to get dark when Earl finally showed up. After introducing himself, Earl’s friends appeared from the other end of the dock and beat Martin within inches of his life. Martin was lucky-he lived even though he spent three weeks in the hospital and had to undergo painful physical rehabilitation.

Unfortunately, Martin’s story is becoming all too common with gay dating online.

Gay bashers posing as gay men online in order to lure unsuspecting people out to get beat up can be avoided. While you can never be sure that the person you have met online is who they say they are, there are precautions you can take to insure your safety. The first being, never agree to meet someone from an adult dating service online in a secluded spot, always meet socially, where there is a large group of people and have a way to leave if you are not comfortable. This is rule number one of online dating tips. If you have any reservations do not go; you can do a back ground check (if you have their real name) with a number of online security check websites.

Online dating can be a fun, safe way to meet new people, if you keep your own safety as the number one objective when meeting in person.

Erick Shipmon has been an online marketer since 1997. He currently is the President and CEO of http://www.eDatingPlanet.com which is quickly becoming the hottest and most desirable online dating community on the planet.

eDatingPlanet.com online dating services include: E-mail, Live Chat, Live Video Cam, FREE VoIP Broadband Long Distance, and more!

If you’re a single parent and trying to date it can be tough Thinking about dating and having the time to date sometimes seem as far apart as East is from West. Questions run through your mind…

Am I being selfish?
Do I have the time?
Who is going to watch the kids?
It’s been so long. Do I even know how to date?

It can seem overwhelming and look like a far away dream if you didn’t have anyone to guide you. Lucky for you , we’ve picked the minds of successful single dating parents and put together an action plan that will make dating fun, safe and rewarding.

The Action Plan

Your action plan is made up of five simple steps. Each step is designed to build upon the previous one. The goal is for you to spend time with quality dates that respect you and your situation. You will put your plan on paper. Why? Writing takes your plans out of the world of thought and brings it into the world of reality. Get your paper and pencil and let’s begin!

Step 1. Asses your situation.

Do you really have the time to date? As a single parent your activities revolve around your kids. Caring for a even a single child is a full time effort. If you have more than one child your workload multiplies. If you decide to date you’ll need to create flexibility in your weekly plans and plan in advance. It takes time to find love. If you want love…make the time. Write down the time available each week that you think you can devote to dating. Schedule it.

Step 2. What do you want?

What type of relationship do you want? Are you looking for short term relationships? Long term? Committed? Non-committed? Do you have a time line? Biological ticking clock? What type of person do you want? Tall? Short? Loves to travel? Stay at home type? Christian? Family oriented? Good family relationships? Be honest with yourself. Consult your heart and your head and create the profile of the perfect person for you. Don’t leave anything out. List the qualities you admire. The type of family you want them to come from. The color of their eyes etc. The more specific the better. Make it as detailed as possible. A crystal clear target is much easier to hit than an out of focus one. Cupid has the arrow. Help him out and provide the target. Again, write it down. Once your have a clear picture of what you’re looking for it’s time to find them.

Step 3. Find a date.

There are three places you will go to find a great date. The first and the easiest is a dating website. Yes there are thousands of websites out there. Some great. Some not so great. Read a review of the best dating websites and choose the ones that meet your criteria and join 2-3 of them. Why 2-3? To increase your chances of a match of course. Having your profile/ad in 2-3 dating website substantially increases the odds of a great match. Successful daters play the odds in their favor. Another advantage to dating websites is that you meet people 24 hours a day. Seven days a week. You can view their profiles and if you don’t like what you see…delete them! Pick only the best.

The second place you’ll go for dates are your family and friends. They know you and your life circumstances. They only wish the best for you. Let them know you’re looking for a date and what you’re looking for (pull the profile sheet out). Let them look for you. The odds are that you’ll have a date within a week. Two weeks tops.

The third place to look for dates is anywhere that you happen to be. You never know where love hangs out. Be open to new experiences and new people.

Step 4. Separate prospects from suspects.

If you followed step three you’ll be getting a number of potential dates. The task now is to separate the good(prospects) from the bad(suspects).

As a dating single parent your first job is to protect yourself and your child from anyone that would do anyone of you harm. Safety will be your first screen. If you know the persons full name check to see if this person is a sex offender. Your state may have a registry where you can check for free. Better safe than sorry.

If it’s a dating website candidate spend time to get to know the person via e-mail first. The rule is give just general information (no phone numbers, last names, addresses etc) until you get to know the person over a period of time. Minimum two to three months. If they can’t wait that long then move them to the suspect file and delete them.

If this is a blind date from your family and friends get ALL the information you can on the person. This would be a good time to write down some questions that you’d like to ask your potential date. Nothing like being prepared. Talk on the phone first. Ask questions to determine if there is some broad based compatibility. Do you like the same things? Dislike the same things? The closer you can match these the happier you’ll be.

Once you’ve done your homework it’s time to go on a date. WooHoo!

Step 5. Date!

The first rule is be yourself. The second rule is have fun. If you can follow those two rules you’ll have a great time. To ensure that you have a safe and fun time follow these rules.

1)Always let someone know who you’re going out with. Where you’ll be going. What time to expect you home.

2)Bring your cell phone. If you don’t have a cell phone. Get one. They’re cheap. No reason not to have one.

3)Always meet in a public place for your first meeting.

4)Arrange a date dump call. Arrange for someone to call you mid way through your date. Prearrange a code word to let them know that your date is going well or not. This is your opportunity to dump your date if you’re bored to tears.

5)Consider having your date somewhere you can talk. Like over dinner or maybe a lunch date. Avoid movies on the first date because it doesn’t allow you the opportunity to get to know someone. At a movie you get to sit silently for two hours listening to the person behind crunch popcorn and slurp their five gallon bucket of soda. How fun is that!

Being a single parent doesn’t mean shutting your heart down. Despite having your kid(s) fill every minute of your waking day you still have a longing in your heart for that special someone.

If not for love…maybe just for a good adult conversation over a warm cup of coffee. Good luck in your dating!

James Lindsey is a writer and publisher that takes the mystery out of dating and finding lasting love. His work can be enjoyed at his website http://www.RomanceRebel.com.

Most men don’t know when they are in love. A lot of times when guys start hanging out with a young lady they are so thrilled to be doing so that they mistake a new friendship for something else. And if you are a guy who moves from relationship to relationship, or has multiple relationships at the same time it is even harder to know if you love someone.

Guys who don’t get to have so many relationships, or, they haven’t been in a relationship for a while may think they are falling in love when they meet someone new when in fact, they are not. The desire for companionship with a woman may override the senses. If you are not careful you could allow the relationship to lead to sex. Once this happens it becomes difficult to judge correctly what your feelings are.

Once you engage in sex, the sex itself becomes the motivation or foundation of the relationship before you have determined if you actually could love this person. The longer you engage in this practice the harder it becomes to distinguish your feelings. Other things come into play as well. Guilt and feelings of obligation make it hard for you to be honest about the way you feel. This is because your feelings do become clearer the longer you stay in the relationship. Consider yourself lucky if after a while you find that you are in love. Then you don’t have to lie about your feelings. You only have to hope she has come to love you too. Why would you lie about your feelings? You don’t want to hurt her feelings. You feel guilty about having lead her on all these months. You have already been having sex so you feel like you are obligated to stay in the relationship.

If you are a guy who has multiple sexual relationships going at once consider yourself screwed. It may feel like fun right now but eventually you will get caught. And you will get caught right at the time you decide that you love one of them. Only it will be to late because she has found out about your other relationships and she wont have you either. Why is it so much trouble when you figure out you have fallen in love with one of your sex partners?

For starters if she was willing to give it up to you before marriage or, within a few days of meeting, she could probably give it to others as well - just like you. Secondly, the same thing that happens anytime sex comes into play before love and marriage - confusion about your feelings. And since you have multiple sexual relationships going it is even harder to determine your feelings. We were not meant to have multiple partners or wives. It is not a cultural thing either. It may seem to be working in certain cultures but, if you look closely you will find misery somewhere because of this type of relationship. Even in cultures where this is practiced you will find that multiple wives add a lot of misery for one man. Read some bible stories.

If you want a clear chance of knowing when you fall in love time is your friend. Abstinence is your friend. These two elements will make it possible for you to determine with some accuracy whether you are compatible, whether you have chemistry, and whether you really are falling in love with someone. To let anything else other than friendship and simple dating occur will only confuse you. This is the only way to ensure that you are falling in love for the right reasons.

Maybe you think it can’t happen this way. Perhaps you don’t think that people live this way anymore. It’s just those stuffy, so called Christian bunch. Well even we blow it a lot of the time. But I stand by what I say. You want to know whether or not you are with the right girl? You want to know if you even feel like being in love? You want peace in your life? Time is you friend. I realize that this is not the way people do it today but look at all the misery in marriages and relationships. We must be doing something wrong.

On line dating and free relationship advice - is a web site discussing various methods of on line dating and finding, judging, and using free relationship advice. Also reviews of many on line dating sites.

The online dating business is expanding rapidly with special niche dating sites. Now you can search for your perfect match not only by gender or religious affiliation, you can also search by hobbies, such as dog lover’s adult dating websites, gardener’s sites, etc.

One area that seems to have fallen through the online dating service cracks is possibly one of the most necessary, the mentally ill.

The very natures of these debilitating diseases lend themselves to isolation; the bipolar sufferer who can’t stop shopping during the period of mania may not be able to leave the house for months with the onset of the depression side of this disease. Many times the chronically depressed person will not even attempt to become part of a relationship because they know how hard it is to try to go out with someone who can experience mood swings even while taking regular medication. Online dating services typically profile members as successful, smart, funny, highly functional people causing the mentally ill to feel too self conscious to join.

The stigma attached to the mentally ill makes it virtually impossible to date, so these people are left with chat rooms and the television as their only companions.

Enter www.nolongerlonely.com, a completely free adult dating site designed specifically to bring mental illness suffers together with chat rooms, anonymity, profiles, and 24 hour support.

Through this site you can contact other mental illness suffers and chat online, supporting each other and making new friends safely from your home until you are ready to meet out in the real world.

James Leftwhich, a sufferer of schizoaffective disorder, started the website in 2004 with the expressed purpose of creating a safe online dating and friendship site where persons with a mental illness could log on and talk to other suffers.

Erick Shipmon has been an online marketer since 1997. He currently is the President and CEO of http://www.eDatingPlanet.com which is quickly becoming the hottest and most desirable online dating community on the planet.

eDatingPlanet.com online dating services include: E-mail, Live Chat, Live Video Cam, FREE VoIP Broadband Long Distance, and more!