If you are planning on joining the millions of singles in the world of online dating then the one thing you need to know is that you need to be honest with yourself and with those you will be matched up with.

If you are truly looking for a lasting relationship then you owe it to yourself and others to be honest about who you are and what you are looking for. You need to treat your online dating experience the same as if you met someone for a regular date. On a regular date you are face to face, talking, sharing stories, reading body language and that makes it easy to read the other person, just as they are reading you. And if you are not honest on a regular date sooner or later your date will start to see through you and your chances of a another date are little to none.

Now in the online dating world you will not get that face to face contact. All you and the person you have been matched with will be able to go off of is your personal profile and the emails that you have started to exchange. You can say alot with written words, but the problem is that it's hard to judge character, emotion or intent from written words.

When you fill out your profile about who you are, what you do and what you want out of life you can say anything you want and no one will be the wiser. And you may run into others who have embellished their profiles as well. The question you have to ask when you are doing your profile is how would you feel if you met someone through an online dating service and when you finally meet how would you feel if everything they said about themselves was not necessarily true. Think about it, you've just spent allot of time and energy trying to get to know this person and when you finally meet face to face and start talking you start to find out that they are not the same person you just spent a month or two exchanging emails with.

It's in your best interest to be completely upfront and honest in your profile and when you start exchanging emails, because if you aren't, the moment they find out you will be right back at square one again. And if they report you to the dating service you could loose your membership as well.

Any long term relationship is built on trust, and if you can't be honest from the get go your chances of finding that type of relationship are not very good. Remember, you want someone to fall for the person you are, not the person you think they want you to be.