Having never used a dating website I can only make assumptions about what happens on them. But what I think is that people would be very open with each other and it would be easy to find someone in a similar situation to you, e.g. two people going through a divorce. There isn't the same messing around as there would be if you went to try and meet someone at a bar. Not everyone in bars are looking to meet someone, a lot of people there would already be in a relationship or be married. This makes it harder to approach people when you don't know their situation. With online dating you know that everyone is there to try and meet someone. You can also hide behind your computer, this may feel like security for some people. If you were to meet someone in public you'd have to really put yourself out there. Also chatting online avoids any awkward silences. You have a few minutes to think about what you want to say next and this is also a way of avoiding saying something you may regret.
Having an online relationship is also very convenient. You can sit at home by the fire with the TV on, in your pj's and chat to someone. All you'd have to do maybe is to upload a photo of yourself from one time that you may have been dressed up with makeup on. If you were to go out to a pub to try and meet someone you would constantly have to get dressed up, perfect hair, perfect makeup to try to look attractive to the opposite sex. With online dating you can also form a relationship without it being based on what you look like. You can get to know someone based on their personality and when your ready send them a photo of yourself. Then you can arrange to meet up with the other person once you've really got to know who they are and feel comfortable around them. I think that people also spend hours online chatting to someone they have just met for the first time. This would help the relationship excel very quickly. Whereas if you were meeting someone for a first date you would spend maybe two to three hours together at a time and it would take a few dates before you really get to know them. Online you can get to know everything about a person in the one evening over a space of a few hours and then you can decide if you want to continue this relationship with them or move on.
There is also some disadvantages to forming a relationship online. It is a lot easier to deceive someone online then it is in person. I don't think it's a lot more natural for it to happen now online but it certainly gives people that extra platform to deceive. People have been deceiving each other for years before the internet arrived. Many people have been found to live double lives before the internet. I think that now that you can form relationships online it is easier to deceive but it's also easier to be found out. An example of this I will take from the film Catfish. The relationship in this documentary was mostly online so when the girl sent the man a song she said she recorded of herself singing he was able to find the exact same recording on youtube and subsequently finding out that the whole relationship was a scam.
People can easily get sucked into the lies and scams of who they meet online, who they think they can really trust and develop genuine feelings for. But I would just say to have your wits about you and be weary of people. It's ok to question things and if they are genuine they shouldn't have a problem with this and they should understand your need to question. Sometimes if someone is too good to be true they generally are so you just need to be careful. I have had one extended family member to meet someone online and three years later they are still together and very happy. They were both there for each other when they needed someone and helped each other through a very difficult time and came out the other side very happy. The problem is you only ever hear of the bad stories and the scams reported in the media, you don't hear about the 'happily ever afters'. I believe that there is more good then bad in online relationships.
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