THE INTERNET Untangling love prospects from Web takes time

A self-professed Internet dating expert said she's made a lot of mistakes.
By JANE GLENN HAAS
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
SANTA ANA, Calif. -- Lorraine Dageforde is a romantic, a head-in-the-clouds kinda gal who believes her Mr. Right is out there on the Internet. She's also a realist, a pragmatic and experienced woman who knows the road to Mr. Right is paved with lots of e-mails and dates with Mr. Wrongs.
So she devised a battle plan. She has sent more than 100 e-mails in 100 days to men on Internet matchmaking services. She has dated 38 of them in three months. And she's still looking.
"If you're going to use the Internet to find a match, you have to put effort into it," she says. "Make it a major force in your life. For me, that makes my first goal to e-mail somebody new every day."
Who's out there
In 100-plus days of intensely reading Internet profiles, Dageforde, who admits to being over 60, has discovered a man whose wife was terminally ill and wanted sex, a bachelor in Croatia who needs a U.S. wife to immigrate, and men posting photos taken 10 or more years earlier.
In the past year, the Santa Ana resident has become a pro at writing a profile that draws male response. The former Orange Coast College manager has mastered the methods for uncovering false advertising in men's profiles. She can decode an e-mail and find the hidden land mines -- like wives who haven't quite been cut loose.
"I've made my share of mistakes meeting men," she admits.
There was the guy she drove more than 300 miles to meet for dinner. He lived in Arizona. She found out he was a retired letter carrier and that his "teaching position" was a volunteer job at a home for disadvantaged kids.
She dined with a guy who never shut up -- even to eat. All he did was talk about himself.
She spent an evening with a man who then walked her to her car and told her, "I don't ever want to see you again."
That, Dageforde says, is something she would never do.
"I always allow every man I meet to depart with dignity."
Still, in today's competitive world, the Internet is the best forum for mature singles to meet, she says.
A lot of singles
Spurred by divorces and spiced by longevity, mature singlehood is at an all-time peak, demographers say. Of the 97 million people age 40 or older, almost 37 million are single, the U.S. Census reports.
Dageforde is divorced and has had "a couple of long-term relationships" but still wishes for romance and marriage.
Her system is designed to minimize those awkward moments when the man you thought you were meeting -- as in the profile he posted on the Web site -- is not the person waiting with latte in hand at Starbucks.
First, she prints out each profile that intrigues her and creates a file.
She adds each man's responses to his file.
And eventually she labels them: "mundane," "too good to be true," "touchy-feely person," "sounds good!"
But it took her 15 to 20 bad dates to learn to navigate around the land mines, she says.
"At first, I was just responding to people who were picking me," she says. "Once I learned to set my standards, every date I've had has been OK."
Dageforde claims that with her system, the men she meets on the Internet are "good people, quality men, just not right for me -- yet."