First off, for those of you who don’t already know,  guided communication is a model employed by several major dating sites, ostensibly to safeguard users’ anonymity in the matching process, while, through the grace of relationship science, ensuring the optimal context for matchmaking. Depending on the particular site, you post a profile, it’s hidden, and the algorithms go to work to match you with the best candidate mates. Once you’re notified of a match, you are then stepped through a series of Q & A structured emails with that person. If the Q & A’s are mutually satisfactory, then you are finally granted the ability to openly communicate. To buy into guided communication requires that online daters:

•  Suspend disbelief in the gods of “relationship science.”

•  Give up a portion of  freedom of expression.

For the most part, people subscribe to dating sites that feature guided communication mainly to hide the fact that they are online dating from friends, family and/or colleagues. There will always be people who want to hide and, therefore, a market these dating services.

But with the gradual mainstreaming of social networking and specifically online dating, that market is narrowing. FlirtySomething dislikes guided communication for 3 big reasons:

1. It stifles the human voice.

2. It’s rigid and Orwellian and doesn’t allow for intimacy to form through phatic communication.

3. We prefer that people be/choose their own guides. We do not pretend to be relationship scientists, nor do we have the tools to predict compatibility. In fact, we don’t believe anyone really does!

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