Be sure to tune in to Daytime on Tuesday, May 19 when I’ll be talking about Virtual Dating Assistants

Too Busy to Date Online? Virtual Dating Assistants Will Write Your Profile, Answer Your Messages, and Even Pick the Restaurant.

Some people just don’t have 40 hours a week to devote to finding someone special. Busy professionals have long had difficulty finding love online, because the searching and responding to dozens or hundreds of potential suitors, not to mention going out on dates, can take hours every single day. But now, help may be on the way.

What is a Virtual Dating Assistant?
Basically, a Virtual Dating Assistant is someone you hire to do the heavy lifting when it comes to online dating. After an in-depth interview, your Virtual Dating Assistant will comb dating sites looking for suitable matches, send selections to you for approval, and even woo your selections with witty online banter. Once a date is arranged (they’ll even pick the restaurant) your Virtual Dating Assistant will provide you with a sort of “romantic white paper” to let you know what the fake you and your real date have been talking about, and all of the things you probably have in common.

Can they really help to find you someone great?
Virtual Dating Assistants can help you if you’re very particular in your desires (one client had a clown fetish and was looking for a woman who owned her own pair of red floppy shoes, water-squirting flower, and red squeaky nose.) The gentleman’s VDA set him up with not one, but three women who fit the bill. So, if you have, um, unusual taste, a Virtual Dating Assistant might just be what you need.

Scott Valdez, the founder of Virtual Dating Assistant says that the majority of his clients are “busy professionals.” In many cases, a high-powered job prevents them from spending the amount of time necessary to successfully date online. Most of his clients are men. According to Scott, attractive women can receive hundreds of messages every week, and frequently they don’t have the time or desire to weed through all the frogs to find their princes.

How much do the services cost, and where can you find a Virtual Dating Assistant?
Prices vary among smaller companies, but the biggest VDA company Virtual Dating Assistants offers packages that range from $600 per month for 40 hours of dating assistance to $1200 per month for 80 hours of dating help. That’s right, two full time employees (freelancers, actually) doing nothing but combing the Internet for Mr. or Ms. Right on your behalf.

Is it ethical?
It’s sort of a mixed bag on that one for me. I don’t think that having someone write your profile, search for possible matches, or even sort through potential dates is unethical in the least. Many people aren’t spectacular writers, and frankly, having someone else to narrow down the 40 million prospects available on the gazillion or so dating sites online doesn’t seem like a big ethics problem either.

Here’s what I have trouble with: One person pretending to be another. The idea of some writer/poseur who makes somewhere in the neighborhood of $8 -$10 an hour as the faux you. It’s terribly unfair to the person your VDA is wooing. They think they’re connecting with you. Really, they’re connecting with a set of facts posing as a human. They think that you’re spending ten hours a week (or whatever) pursuing them. But really, you’re not. According to Valdez, most times a male writer will write for a male client, and a female writer will write for a female client. But sometimes, a female writer will write for a male client. Which means, if you’re a woman dating online and you’ve just found the sensitive but manly guy you’ve always dreamed of, beware: it might just be a chick.

How is that going to work out when the client and his date finally come face to face?

One of the biggest complaints that women and men have when it comes to online dating is that lying is rampant. Men lie about their age, height and financial status. Women tend to lie about their age and weight. Does a VDA service really do anything but continue to ramp up the already prevalent bullshit factor?

Also, it’s hard enough to make the transition from online banter to offline chemistry. But if the online connection isn’t even real, what chance do you have of a real spark?

One more thought: If you’re too busy to find a date online, how are you ever going to find time for a relationship?

Lisa appears every week on Daytime, check your local TV listings for times and stations.
XO,

I was not particularly interested in ESPN Analyst Steve Phillips’ affair with a 22-year old production assistant named Brooke Hundley. I rarely, if ever, watch ESPN. I feel terrible for what his wife and family must be going through, but I don’t know any of the parties involved. And while another married, middle-aged guy sleeping with a 20-something old is pretty pathetic in my view, it doesn’t exactly make for exciting news.

But then, a friend of mine sent me a link to Brooke Hundley’s letter to Steve Phillips’ wife.

This put me over the edge.

Why?

Because it is jam-packed with all the lies, crap and bullshit that married men in particular tell the women they are attempting to seduce. I know this because a lot of women write to me about their dating and relationships problems and I’ve found that I keep hearing the same things over and over again. Like there’s a Midlife Crisis Affair Handbook or something.

Page 53. What To Tell Your Mistress About Why You Can’t Leave Your Wife

The Kids Are Keeping You In Your Marriage

Gol-durn-it, you’d leave in a second if you’d allow yourself to be happy, but you just couldn’t bear the thought of losing your kids. (The same kids you’re not seeing during all the times you’re shacked up in a hotel room with your mistress, but whatever.)

Your Wife is Making You Go to Therapy Even Though You’ve Told Her It Won’t Work

This is especially effective as painting you as a dedicated husband WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY MAKING IT CLEAR THAT YOU ARE a man who has already moved on emotionally because of the specialness of your relationship with your mistress.

You Have A Loveless Marriage

You haven’t slept together for years. She’s cold, unfeeling, and she just doesn’t understand you. This strategy allows you to remain married while you assure your girlfriend that you’d never cheat on her.

She (Mistress) Makes You Feel Better/Younger/Etc Than You’ve Ever Felt Before

If only you’d met her ten years ago!

After My Wife Recovers From Bulimia/Grad School/Redecorating the Den We’ll Be Together

Brook is clearly suffering from some issues, here. But clearly, she fell face first in the load of crap that Mr. ESPN was dishing up.

And please don’t think that I’m letting Brooke off the hook. She is an adult, albeit a young one, and should know better than to sleep with a married man. (Brooke — if you don’t, please email me and I’ll be happy to set you straight. If anybody could benefit from a little dating coaching, it’s you) It is also not my intention to go easy on women who cheat on their husbands — I’m sure they have their own affair playbook.

If you are married, sleeping with other people is wrong. It’s selfish, unfair, and cruel to your spouse. It’s selfish, cruel, and unfair to the person you’re sleeping with.

I have heard a number of people say that if a woman sleeps with a married man, she deserves what she gets.

Does she?

And what about Mr. Phillips. It would seem that he’s painting himself as a sort of a victim of a fatal attraction, even though he did admit he’d slept with Brooke three times in a statement obtained by the New York Post.

Is poor Steve the victim in all this?

Or maybe that’s just what he’s telling his wife.

Here’s what I’d like to tell Brooke, and any other woman who is considering getting involved with a married man:

If there’s a Mrs., he’s Mr. Wrong.

Don’t date anyone who is married. Even if it’s the first time he’s ever cheated (it’s not) or he leaves his wife (which he won’t), and marries you (which he won’t), it will only be a matter of time before he leaves you for somebody else (which he would.) Married men who cheat are notorious liars. They have to be.

If you date a married man, you’ll never be number one. (His own wife isn’t, why would you be?) You probably won’t even be number two.

You’ll spend holidays and nights alone with a quart of Chunky Monkey, waiting for the telephone to ring. You’ll never have his full attention, because he’ll always be thinking about the lie he’s going to tell his wife when he gets home. Pretty soon, the best years of your life will have slipped by, while you’re waiting for his wife to (insert pathetic excuse here), his kids to (more excuses), or his job to (more excuses.) You’ll have spent every New Year’s Eve, Valentine’s Day and family wedding alone, waiting around for a man who is clearly not waiting around for you.

No matter what he tells you, he doesn’t love you. How do I know that? Because a man in love will do whatever he can to keep from hurting his partner. A married man fails on both counts. He’s hurting his current partner by cheating on her. And he’s hurting you by stealing your life and thinking only of himself. No matter what he tells you, he’s still probably sleeping with his wife. That’s what husbands, even lying, cheating, crappy husbands, do.

And, if all that isn’t enough, consider this: Dating a married man means doing something that hurts another woman, his wife. If she’s married to a sneaky cheater like him, she already has enough trouble to deal with without one of her own kind knifing her in the back. These types of men do enough terrible things all by themselves, we girls should stick together.

Lisa

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Dating Coach and Relationships Expert Lisa Daily is the bestselling author of two dating books, Stop Getting Dumped!, How to Date Like a Grownup and the totally funny novel Fifteen Minutes of Shame. You’ve seen her everywhere from Entertainment Tonight to the HITCH movie DVD.

If you’ve ever dreamed of writing a novel, a dating advice book, or even if you’re a multi-published author looking for a kick-start on your next book, you might want to check out www.nanowrimo.com .

November 1 kicks off a thirty-day writing frenzy held all over the world called National Novel Writing Month — hundreds of thousands of participants attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in just one month.

I’ve participated for several years — there are all kinds of nifty tools that get you excited about your work in progress. I wrote a good chunk of my first novel, Fifteen Minutes of Shame — a romantic comedy about a TV dating expert who gets dumped on national TV (fiction, I promise!!) during NaNoWriMo, which not only went on to be published, but also won an RT Award.

I’ll be participating again this year. If you want to join the party, I’d love to have you as a writing buddy — my nanowrimo user name is lisadaily .

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Related Articles:

Fifteen Minutes of Shame Wins Reviewers’ Choice Award

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TV Dating Expert and Dating CoachLisa Daily is the bestselling author of two dating books Stop Getting Dumped!, How to Date Like a Grownup and the totally relatable and hilarious novel Fifteen Minutes of Shame. You’ve seen her everywhere from Entertainment Tonight to the HITCH movie DVD.

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To read more from dating coach Lisa Daily on topics like this & others on love, cheating, relationships or dating advice visit: http://www.lisadaily.com/datingexperttv