Internet Dating

The three questions I am asked most often are: (1) How do you spell that? (2) Are you single? And (3) Why don’t you try internet dating?

The first is a consequence of having an unusual name. I’d like to think that the second is a result of being fantastically eligible, but it’s actually because I wrote a book about escaping an arranged marriage. The third, meanwhile, seems to be the question posed to everyone nowadays if the answer to (2) is yes.

It’s astonishing how big internet dating has become. According to one survey, half the country’s single population have dated online. And while a few years ago these people would no more have broadcast this than discussed their haemorrhoids, the stigma has gone. Four of my most glamorous colleagues and friends met their partners online and are not at all sheepish about it.

Not that I have succumbed. It would, of course, be nice to settle down, retire from the series of short-lived relationships that have made recent years feel as bloody as Reservoir Dogs. But…

Read atTimes Online