Oz Dating

For a long time people have been campaigning against the institution of marriage on various grounds - for example that it's inherently oppressive to women. Yet despite all the bad press about it, people just keep tying the knot!

It seems that most people still believe that marriage holds the key to happiness. Cynics would argue that it's a fasle dream. But one thing seems certain: it can confer many powerful health benefits.

There's a widely held belief in our society that a man doesn't have to be young and handsome to win the heart of a beautiful young woman; he can do it if he's older, rich and powerful. A lot of people don't like this idea, since it puts a big hole in their theories about equality between the sexes.

Still, there does seem to be a lot of evidence for the belief - the latest being the engagement of Aussie celebrity Sophie Monk to the much older French millionaire Jimmy Esebag. While she describes him as being her soul mate, and there seems to be clear and genuine affection between them, it's fair to say that his substantial wealth and influence probably had more than a little to do with her attraction to him!

Many of the social changes that have occurred in Western society over the last few decades have been initiated in the belief that men and women are pretty much the same psychologically and that any seeming differences are mainly due to socialization. Women have been encouraged to value work outside the home as much as men do, and there have been many affirmative action policies put in place to ensure equality of outcome in this area.

So now we have a situation in which most women have to work whether they like it or not. Yet there's more and more evidence to show that most of them don't like it. It's all quite ironic when you think about it.

Turning back the clock on four decades of feminism, a study has found nearly two-thirds of women would love to find a husband with a bigger pay packet than theirs so they can care for their children full-time.

EHarmony reveals some more specific demographic information of interest to single people. This time it's about Aussie women looking for love.

Their data says that suburbs such as Alexandria in Sydney's eastern suburbs had the nation's highest concentrations of such women.

Like the dating site RSVP, eHarmony is frequently analyzing its membership to uncover interesting statistical and demographical information that is used by various media outlets. For example, it recently revealed that the suburb of Reedy Creek had the most single people in Queensland's Gold Coast.

The information is certainly useful, particularly if you live in the area. It also shows just how popular this site is. For eHarmony to confidently make this claim about one particular suburb, it must have members in most, if not all, postcodes of Australia.

It's interesting how quite often a boom in one industry will result in a similar increase in others that are seemingly unrelated.

Here's an example: The online dating industry is massive now, and members are often getting scammed by unscrupulous people. So new background checking services are now popping up and offering their services to those using these matchmaking websites.

Here's yet another depressing story about someone being fleeced over the internet. This time it was a Perth woman, who was deceived by a man who said he lived in America. He managed to con her out of over half a million dollars.

It's bad enough to rip an individual or business off in, say, a real estate or insurance scam. But to actually target someone who is lonely and looking for love, then maintain the deception over a long period of time is cruel beyond words.

Sadly, scams of this kind are happening increasingly often all over the world. The American FTC even issued a warning about them recently.

The locations where these scams are being run from are changing lately, too. For example, it appears that Russian bride scams aren't just run from within that country. It seems that many of them are actually perpetrated by organized criminals in Queensland's Gold Coast.

Mick Hucknall has apologized to the countless women he slept with at the height of his fame. This is quite a remarkable thing for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's odd that any bloke would feel guilty about it - particularly one who is a performer. They are more egocentric than most people, after all.

And secondly, it's quite amazing that he managed to actually do what he now feels so ashamed of. He's hardly handsome. But then it just goes to show the power of celebrity. And he's certainly a talented singer with a very distinctive voice. Clearly a lot of young women found these qualities powerfully attractive.

There are more and more reports about various online dating scams. But most of them are fairly unsophisticated operations. For example the scammer might pretend to be an attractive woman in financial trouble who then asks for an online money transfer from her contacts on various established dating sites.

But sometimes the scheme is elaborate in the extreme. Take the case of Canadian Barrie Turner, who created a series of niche dating sites, along with very detailed fake profiles to bilk lonely people out of large sums of money.

The whole scheme must have taken many, many hours of intricate planning and work. He could easily have made the same amount of money (or more) if he'd put the same amount of effort and expertise into a legitimate operation that genuinely helped people get together. So it seems that it was not merely callous greed that was motivating his actions but cruelty as well.

I think the same can be said of a lot of fraudsters - even those who are not as diabolical as Turner. That's what makes their deceptions not only depressing but disturbing as well.

It would be nice to think that sex and violence were two completely separate drives. But the sad fact is that they are often linked together. The obvious example is in the case of rape. Then there is the fact that so many serial killers are driven by bizarre sexual fantasies as much as by anything else.

Of course the vast majority of people aren't sex criminals. Still, lots of couples do indulge in fantasies that involve violence. Most of the time they don't go any further with them. But sometimes they act them out, which seems to have happened in a crime committed early this year in Melbourne. The alleged perpetrator of a knifing in Fitzroy said that planning the attack on his lover's husband had improved his sex life with the woman.

Financial gain also appears to have been a motive in this case. But it seems the sexual thrill the lovers were getting from their fantasies had a lot to do with the crime ultimately being committed. It's not just love that can make people do crazy and destructive things. Sex can too!