Military Online Dating Guide
The dating scene in general is complicated. It is full of deceit, distrust and game playing and I haven't started on the "online dating" scene. For a member of the military the dating game becomes even more difficult. In military online dating, you not only deal with the standard pressures of building a relationship, but with all of the additional pressures of military life. It's no picnic.
Military Life is Unique
Military life has many benefits and perks, but an environment for creating lasting relationships (outside of your unit) is not one of them. Although this lifestyle is a voluntary choice, many young recruits don't see the implications. When deployed, it is very difficult to stay in touch and couples might not see each other for weeks, sometimes months at a time. Reunions can also be problematic since re-acquaintance or re-adaptation is necessary. There is also the need to deal with the stress of armed combat or tense situations that might have, or are being faced, and on top of that the uncertainty of a new deployment order coming in.
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Military online dating suffers from all of these problems. This is especially true if you are looking for a long term relationship. Because of these unique characteristics you might find it more appropriate to go for niche military online dating sites. Sometimes this works, but because of their "niche" nature, many times these sites don't offer the breadth that might be needed to find your ideal match.
Niche vs. Mainstream Online Dating Sites
The benefits of niche online dating sites, and military online dating is no exception, is that you are sure that the members that participate in the community understand the nuances and needs of that specific lifestyle. If you have a religious orientation that is tightly tied to cultural and traditional activities you can be sure that a niche online dating site that caters to that religious community will have members who understand it. You will most likely "fit in" much more quickly than with a mainstream site.
The advantages of mainstream sites like Match.com, Chemistry.com or LavaLife.com are that because of their sheer size in revenues and membership, they can offer features that most niche sites can't match. These large sites in realizing their weakness in competing with niche sites have invested an inordinate amount of resources in making searching the right "fit" very easy.
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Also, one thing I failed to mention regarding niche sites is that their membership counts are significantly smaller than these mainstream sites. So once you have been in them for a while it seems like you have seen all the "potentials" already. In essence, although you make sure that the uniqueness of your situation takes precedence, you reduce the candidate pool a whole bunch.
Go Mainstream!
The best of both worlds is to go mainstream, but in a way that filters out people who clearly are not in tune with your situation. Basically "be open". You need to be clear about what you want in your current situation on your profile and in your communications. If one popular site runs its course and you have met most of their matches, move to another. With this technique I would usually start with the site that has the most members. At one point it was Match.com, but those rankings change constantly so work on your due diligence and join a mainstream site.
If you are in the military and want to go through the online dating adventure; by maintaining open and honest communication and having the right matching technologies your experience can be as niche oriented as you want...even in the largest sites.