The days of online lovers

What you need to know:

  • Places like church or even being introduced by a relative formed some of the top ways how and where couples met, whereas it was taboo to meet a future spouse in a bar or disco.

In the days gone by, there was something like the perfect meeting place where men and women in search of partners found each other.

Places like church or even being introduced by a relative formed some of the top ways how and where couples met, whereas it was taboo to meet a future spouse in a bar or disco.

Times have changed and the millennials are doing it slightly different from what their forefathers believed was the sanctified ways of meeting a spouse.

When the internet first arrived not many believed that it would change several facets of our lives including how we find marriage partners.

To most Tanzanians this was once upon a time a very alien thing that they only heard about in Europe and America, however this is fast becoming a reality with more dating sites opening daily.

But with changing lifestyle with many people too busy to get involved in the conventional dating game, they prefer searching for partners through the several sites that offer local solutions.

Here young men and women put forward their strongest features that they believe will attract potential suitors plus some of their best pictures that form the basic profile.

The sites such as Tanzania Dating, FirstMet, InterracialDatingCentral, Twoo, and many others are a hit with both young and old alike.

To the proponents of this new lifestyle, meeting singles from Tanzania has never been easier for the sites offer those in search of partners that are in their proximity.

Though many people might not publicly admit using these sites, they actually do gauging by the numbers that are displayed on the sites and they are all local.

Mary Urassa, 29, admits to have tried this route more than once and the first time she had tried was out of boredom after she had spent some time quite alone in the wake of a very nasty break-up from her boyfriend.

Single and desperate

The type of friends she had at that time did not help her cause for they always advised her to go back to the same man whom she considered very abusive. She had to gamble!

“I was bored and wanted to meet a man, but I didn’t know where to meet one, so I signed up with an online dating service and the result was spontaneous,” she says.

All she needed was to post a photo of herself, write a paragraph or more about herself, and complete their questionnaire.

“You answer questions such as your age, height, eye colour, interests, marital status, and personal information. You have expectations of meeting someone just right for you,” she says.

Though she had reservations about the whole arrangement, her match was probably close to what she had envisioned and they got on quite well.

“He happened to be living some 30-minutes drive away and was in the same profession as me, so after a couple of exchanges online we exchanged our phone numbers and the rest was history,” she says naughtily.

As awesome as this might have been for Mary but what happens when something goes wrong, and they aren’t your match at all?

One of the biggest and most common problem with online dating and relationships is lying. Men lie mostly about age, height, and income, while women lie about weight, physical build, and age.

Although most women are seeking someone to have a great relationship with and enhance their lives, many men are seeking women for other reasons.

As Rachael Abraham confides, the two men that she has met online were not anything close to what she had prayed for, they were consummated liars that she is yet to see.

He lied about almost everything about himself and was very insecure.

“In the beginning, he had an extreme interest in getting to know me, making me his top priority, and making me feel more special than ever. He reel me in with promises of the great life he was going to provide, and said everything any woman would love to hear including how much he loved me, rather quickly,” says Rachel.

Master manipulator

According to Rachael she found herself falling in love rather quickly to a man who was a master manipulator who was out to reap from her.

But it is not all about men telling lies, women too have had a myriad of issues in the dating game as Arnold Vedasto recounts.

One of the most important features of creating an online profile involves having a profile picture that is part of one’s identity.

During his search for someone, Arnold came across a certain Christina, she was quite an eye candy, her beauty was quite startling, besides, at 29 she bore the looks of a 23-year-old or there about.

After the early exchanges, a date was set, and guess what, the woman who introduced herself as Christina was far from what Arnold had seen in the different pictures on her profile.

“Her pictures were heavily photoshopped and she looked considerably older and to a greater extent several kilogrammes above the 70 kg she had spoken of,” says Arnold.

This was a complete put off and the relationship never took off for he just couldn’t imagine what was in store for him, she had crossed the line.

These are some of the treacherous paths that one sometimes has to navigate to find that elusive romance and sometimes at such a cost that is unbearable.