When it comes to online dating, one of the biggest questions we initially face is whether to go for one of the big all singing, all dancing, national (or even international!) sites with the TV commercials and the full page newspaper spreads, or a local site that tries to match people from the same area.
Some say that bigger is better, and being a Texas girl, where everything is bigger, I should know a thing or two about that! But thinking about dating sites is a different matter to most. Having more choice when it comes to the type of profile that is more likely to pique your curiosity seems great in principle…especially if you like to take your time! But what happens if you hit it off with someone who lives 500 miles away?
Trust me I’m not at all complaining about distance relationships. My other half is British and our relationship was a very long distance one for some time before I moved across the pond, where we now live very happily indeed. But one size definitely doesn’t fit all and each of us has our own preferences and circumstances that shape what we are looking for in someone we meet. In my case, I knew, being a lifelong Anglophile, that because I fell in love with my other half pretty quickly, I was not going to have a problem moving to be with him if our relationship continued to blossom to that point. But what if I had met him at a different stage of my life, or with a slightly different mindset? Well, as they say, Que Sera, Sera!
So with this in mind, what are my thoughts on locally themed dating sites? Well, my mother-in-law used a few different ones and I had the pleasure of initially helping her to navigate her way through them! She ended up finding love with someone who lived just a few miles down the road and they are now quite the happy couple!
For her, it was spot-on the right choice to use local dating sites. She had had a negative experience trying to keep a flame alive with someone who, lovely as he was, was not able, for personal reasons, to manage long-distance love for too long. At a more senior age, she didn’t want to meet someone who she might hit it off with but know that picking up the phone and saying “let’s go and see a movie” wasn’t going to be possible.
Above all, I think online dating should be a fun and exciting experience. And there’s definitely something very exciting about knowing that someone you are chatting with might only be a short walk or drive away. And what’s more, you might have even bumped into that person at some point without knowing it! There is bound to be at least one locally themed dating site that covers where you live, so if you are thinking “home is where the heart is”, you can’t go wrong.
