A Romance Coach was born, though I didn’t have the vocabulary to name myself that just yet.

The training started in February, online and on the phone, and last six months. Additional courses would span the next couple of years. I jumped ahead of my classmates, putting up a basic website and starting an enewsletter in just the first couple of months. Find-a-Sweetheart.com was born, *eMAIL to eMATE* named and the first issues published. A mailing list started growing, I presented classes, and started talking to real live people who wanted help finding love.

Ten years later, I am still at it. I have helped hundreds of people directly, thousands via my website and *eMAIL to eMATE*. Many of the people I have talked to are now married or are in relationships.

There is no better business to be in than to help people find love.

In 2002, I had been a psychotherapist for 25 years. I had started three private practices (Maine, Florida, and Mississippi), and while I love being a therapist, it was grueling, kept me tied to one location, and was frankly depressing. I had heard about life coaching and was intrigued: I liked that it was positive, future oriented, and best of all, could be done anywhere via the Internet and phone.

I got a brochure in the mail advertizing a workshop by MentorCoach on coaching aimed at mental health professionals. I could tell that it was a promo for an intensive—and expensive ? training program.

I was feeling poor (remember that 9/11 had a negative financial impact for many people) and also questioning the quality of the program being offered. I was very skeptical. To help me decide, I asked Drew to come with me ? the workshop was being held in Birmingham, Alabama, four hours away.

Ben Dean, the MentorCoach founder, presented, and that guy is GOOD. Drew checked him out at lunch and was also impressed. By the end of the day, all that stood in the way for me signing up for the training program was the fee, a hefty $2,000+.

But?fate stepped in. At each of the workshops that Ben Dean presented, he drew a name from the attendees and gave away the tuition for the course.

I won.

I couldn?t believe it.

I had no reason at all NOT to go ahead with the training.

Not too long after I met Drew, which was hugely successfully and quickly apparent to my friends and family, I got a request for help. My long-time friend Christine, happily married for many years, had been recently widowed. A still energetic woman in her late 50?s, Christine asked if I would help her get online and start looking for a guy friend. She knew that she wasn?t ready to jump in yet (her husband had been gone less than a year), but she was thinking about the future. I was more than happy to help. Online dating, I knew, was such a great resource, and with a little perseverance, could really pay off for ready singles.

I suggested to Christine that we get online on her computer and look around, and we did.

I don?t remember much of what we actually talked about and did, but I found that helping Christine was fun! I loved it. How great it felt to be able to offer someone a tool that could change their life!

Unfortunately, Christine was not having as much fun as I was. Super enthusiastic and wanting my good experience to work as well for Christine as it had for me, I was not sensitive to the fact that I was scaring the bejesus out of her. Even after a decent length of time, I didn?t hear any more interest from Christine as far as online dating was concerned. I blew it.

However?it really had been fun.

1. An investigation or audit of a potential investment. Due diligence serves to confirm all material facts in regards to a sale.

2. Generally, due diligence refers to the care a reasonable person should take before entering into an agreement or a transaction with another party.

Do not assume that your dating site has done ANYTHING to verify your correspondent?s identity or anything to check his/her background. Even if the site purports to do background checks, it would not be hard for a devious person to figure out a way around the check. Participating in a site that claims to check backgrounds, or sites that appeal to moral virtues like Christian dating sites may actually make you MORE vulnerable. You may relax your “radar,” assuming that others on the site are vetted or are “like you” and honest. Due diligence is YOUR responsibility.

If they have nothing to hide, then they should hide nothing. Your dates should EXPECT that you are going to check up on them, and you should expect that they are going to check up on you.

BTW, if you DO have something to hide, then you should be figuring out how to handle the matter. What if the secret were discovered? Should you proactively tell before discovery? I cover this extensively in my book “Find a Sweetheart Soon!” Chapter 13.

In the early days of Internet dating and the beginnings of search engines like Google, doing a search on someone?s name was difficult and seemed rude and invasive. No more. You should be Googling, right off the bat, as soon as you have someone?s name. Conversely, you should be expecting that they are going to be doing the same. So it is important that you be aware of what is Out There that might come up connected to you in a Google search.

Don?t know how to do a Google search? Type your name inside quotation marks in the Google search box. Mine would be ?Kathryn Lord.? What comes up when I Google my name is mostly me, but also someone at the University of Massachusetts who specializes in dogs. Also on page 2 of the search is a fungal cell biologist ? not me.

So, do a regular Google search on your own name, because your date is sure to do so and will want an explanation of anything that does not jibe with what you have told them. My uncle had an odd spelling of his name. It was the same name and spelling of a gay porn star, definitely not my uncle, but good for laughs.

So, this is just the beginning of how to do “due diligence.” Stay tuned for future instructions to help you stay safe.

Jack has been in a full relationship with Jill for almost 2 years now. I just got an update from him that I thought you’d be interested in seeing:

I am doing fine. Jill and I still plugging along. its like once a week we inch ahead a little further. This process has really made me grow. Jill really is like medicine for me. I don’t always want to swallow it but I can see I need to. I can see she is going thru much the same process as I am. Her best friend told me the other day that Jill has made significant changes in her life for me. And that her son David has changed a lot to for the better since I have been around. I just keep saying to my self “its not always about me” and what would old Jack do? Do the opposite.

The “do the opposite” is Jack’s invention based on the Jerry Seinfeld Show’s George Constanza. Worked for George, works for Jack. What about you?

Most of us would like to think that we can tell if someone is lying. I?ve even written about it. What I wrote in that article sounds pretty good, frankly, though a heck of a lot of factors to keep track of on a date.

However, even with practice, most of us would only catch the liars who weren?t very good at lying. In reality, we learn to lie very early in life, starting around age 4. And we get progressively better at it. (See ?Nurture Shock? by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, Chapter 4 ?Why kids lie.? According to the authors, who reference a number of studies, even the children?s parents cannot tell if a child is lying.)

We do seem to want to keep our belief that we can detect liars, though, and we are not alone in that wish. I stumbled on this TED talk by Pamela Meyer.  I don?t know if what she has to say will make anyone more able to detect a liar, but I did find a couple of points she made very useful: 1. She says that lying is a cooperative act ? it takes a liar plus someone willing to be lied to, and 2. You are vulnerable to being lied to around what you want to hear. For singles, that might mean you want to hear that you are lovable and desirable, and you are willing to suspend disbelief if someone tells you those very things.

I like to think that I have sharpened my ability to spot liars by watching Dr. Phil ? not so much by what he says, but by watching the ?guests? squirm and evade when Dr. Phil tries to pin them down. Here?s an example of the most believable con man you are likely to meet.

Regardless of whether you are able to spot liars at all, meeting strangers in your efforts to find love requires that you do your ?due diligence.? Here?s part of a definition of ?due diligence? that I found online:

Generally, due diligence refers to the care a reasonable person should take before entering into an agreement or a transaction with another party.

I?ll write more about ?due diligence? in the next *eMAIL to eMATE*. In the meantime, let me know what YOU do to check out prospective mates. with your suggestions.

What do people on dating sites seem to lie about most? Age. Here?s what ?Social Q?s? in the NY Times? Style Section had to say last Sunday, with my comments in red:

I am on a dating site called OKCupid.com and list my age as 33, even though I am actually 43. When people meet me, they assume I am in my late 20s or early 30s. I feel fortunate to get away with looking so much younger than I am without Botox. My plan is to admit my true age on a second or third date, and hope he?ll forgive me. Or should I correct my age now? K.S., Bridgeport, Conn.

I hate to be the bearer of hard (gravitational) truth, but no one who is 43 looks as if he or she is in the late 20s (or early 30s, either). And if people are telling you that you do, they are fibbing to make you feel better.

Ain?t that the truth? No one EVER has told me that they look old for their age, but I regularly hear that they are ?young looking.? The other day, a service man at my car dealership called me ?young lady.? Argh! I am 62 with a full head of gray/white hair. ?Young lady? to older women seems to be meant to be a sort of Southern compliment, but Yeesh! Did he think I would fall for that? Maybe. See Pamela Meyer’s points about lying #5 below,

Correct your listed age. Better to underpromise and overdeliver on dating Web sites, and elsewhere, than to play it in reverse. There is also the small matter of honesty with potential mates. Why not be the youngest-looking 43-year-old on the Internet?

Great strategy. Make your date pleasantly surprised when you meet, rather than angry and feeling tricked. (It happened to me. I drove quite a distance to meet a guy who said he was 53. In person, he was clearly quite a bit older, verified by his telling me about his 38 year old son. I doubt that he was a father at 15.)

But I was not born yesterday (either): Online daters tell me that age shaving to the next-lower 9 (listing yourself as 39 when you are 43) is a common ploy. That way, we turn up as matches for folks who only want to date people under 40. That may be ageist of them, but it?s their loss. So why waste your time?

Tricky, huh? That?s a good reason not to do it (lie about your age to trick someone into contacting you). No one likes being tricked. Besides, it is a waste of time to be trying to figure out and out-maneuver everyone else. Be honest, do your own searching, and write those first emails. You will be much more likely to get what you want if you do.

Anyway, I stumbled on this video of Helen Fisher talking at TED about “Why we love and cheat.” Helen Fisher is the Rutgers anthropologist that Match.com asked to develop the science behind Chemistry.com. I heard her talk at at matchmaking convention a few years ago. She is fascinating.

If you enter “Helen Fisher” in the search box on the TED site, there are quite a few entries. I plan to do some watching over the next few days, and you might want to consider doing so as well. If you want to know the “why and how” behind romantic love, she is on the cutting edge.