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Oh no, it's the weekend after Valentine's Day and that means only one thing here in Americe...It's STILL Valentine's Day and the velvet boxes of candy, wilted flowers and two for one candlelight dinner specials are still out in full force for two more days. Ugh.

According to an article in mainstream media, personal ad traffic is flat during Valentine's Day but spikes right afterwards. And who is out on the prowl for a new date? 25 percent are married!

It seems this consumerist holiday makes married couples painfully aware of the lack of appreciation and missing spark. (Guys, women do really appreciate a little something--even if it's just wilted tulips from Trader Joe's or a carton of chocolate Coconut Bliss.)

So what to do? Make every day a celebration of love. Appreciate your partner by not complaining orgriping about anything and being 100 percent positive today. I bet they'll love you more.

Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow taught me a life lesson on Valentine's Day.

Once upon a time, about 10 years ago, when I was a lot snottier than I am now, my then boyfriend,  drove up from San Diego to meet me on a weeknight for Valentine's Day in Santa Monica. He was three hours late, dressed badly, and didn't even book a reservation in a restaurant.

So here we are, it's 9 pm already, I'm grouchy and starving, my blood sugar has bottomed out so low that I'm almost dizzy, and we're driving all over Santa Monica trying to find a restaurant that will let us in. One after another, we're turned away. Jesus and Mary, there's no room at the inn. There isn't even any food left at most of these restaurants by now.

This goes on for another hour and I'm getting increasingly annoyed with my boyfriend. Finally, we are allowed to sit at the bar in this cheezy, not terribly romantic seafood grill. The barstools are packed up against each other. The guy next to me is elbowing me as he's eating alone. I realize he's getting drunker and is flagrantly hitting on me. The service is terrible and we wait again, 30 more minutes, just to catch the waiter's attention, as the guy next to me offers to buy me a drink.

When my salmon finally arrives, it's sloppily prepared and overcooked -- the chef no doubt is in a bad mood himself by 11 pm on Valentine's Day.  I'm grumpy. My date is grumpy. The guy next to us is getting more obnoxious.

Just then, I see this gorgeous, radiant couple walking out of the restaurant. There's almost an aura of radiant light surrounding them. His hair is long and blonde. His smile is angelic. She has transparent, luminous skin, and long flowing golden hair. He's wearing jeans. She's in a simple, almost frumpy navy blue sundress. They're holding hands and shyly exiting as a crowd swarms around them.

It's at that moment I suddenly realize it's Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow.

At first my inner snob was thinking: "Wait a minute. Brad and Gwyneth are wealthy celebrities. They can go anywhere. Why are they here in this cheezy seafood diner? Why aren't they eating at a five star restaurant, or the Hotel Bel Air, or perhaps the Beverly Hills Hotel on Valentine's Day?

But then the beauty of this moment hit me: "If it's good enough for Brad Pitt to take Gwyneth Paltrow here on Valentine's Day, it's certainly good enough for me."

It was one of life's great humbling moments.

That experience taught me a lot about how it's the experience that matters, the thought and the caring, and not the material frills. Where you are is not as important as who you're with. Every year since then, I've been grateful if I even have a boyfriend on Valentine's Day, if he gives me a simple card with a heartfelt inscription, that expression of love alone is enough to make me happy.

Though I am quite sure of one thing: Reservation or not, Brad and Gwynneth certainly got a table that night.

Well, I predicted it. Now there are special "apps" that help you date with Facebook.  SNAP Interactive, the developers behind the “Are You Interested?” app, is now the largest Facebook dating app. Last week the company announced record quarterly revenues: $1.65M, more than double the revenue of the same quarter the year prior.  Zoosk.com is dramatically larger than Are You Interested’s destination site.  FULL ARTICLE @ ALL FACEBOOK See all posts on AreYouInterested

I'll  check some of these apps out soon and let you know what I think.  

Today I found some pretty disturbing new statistics about online dating and hookups. It's getting wilder, looser and wierder.


- One out of three women who meet men online have sex on the first encounter. (40 million people use online personals in the US alone. That means more than 7 million women in the US alone admit to hooking up for one night stand sex with a stranger they met on Craigslist or whatever. Eeeeew.

- And 1 out of 5 of the women who hooked up did not use protection. That means 1 million women every year are having unprotected hook up sex with total strangers they meet online. And those are the ones who admit it. Double eeeeew.

- One out of ten users on online dating sites are scammers. (Oh really?)

- One out of ten sex offenders reportedly use online dating to meet people. (I personally have had the misfortune to meet a few of these sex addicts and players who habitually use personals to hook up. The most common ploy is saying they want a "serious relationship.")
 
- Online, men lie most about their age, height, and income. (No kidding. Especially their interest in an actual, sincere relationship instead of their chance to be one of those lucky 7 million guys who got laid on a first date that probably cost no more than a latte at Starbucks.)

- Online dating has caused a decline in online porn. (Well, if you can laid for the cost of a latte, why would you shell out money for phone sex?)


Is it just me, or has morality, commitment and just plain getting to know each other first (for like, at least, you know, a week or two, how about for three lattes?) gone completely out the window?

Are people just too broke in "today's economy" to go on a date and get to know each other's last names before they jump into the back seat of the car and boink?

By the way, statistics of heterosexuals with HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases are soaring. Probably in no small part due to the success of "NSA" ads enabling easy hook ups.

Do you really think someone who doesn't even know you yet and will never see you again gives a hoot if they pass on their little "infection"?

70 million people are living with STDs in the U.S. alone, as well as an estimated 400 million people worldwide. But don't worry. There's an online dating service for that too including Positive Singles, STD Match, Herpes Online, AfterH.com, STDfriends.com, HMates, STDSinglesmeet, FreeSTDsinglesmatch, and Pozmeeting.com.