Austin knows online dating because he’s lived online dating. Working 10-hour days with a 2-hour commute both ways, the opportunity to go out and find someone socially was daunting. Where do you go? How do you find the time? And how much time can you spend looking unsuccessfully before, given what limited time you have, it just stops being worth it? Online dating helped narrow the search, finding women he would never have met otherwise. Be it a few miles from home, halfway across the country or internationally (he spent several months dating a woman from Canada), these were women he’d never have met otherwise. There were good experiences, some bad (a few with fake pictures, one who neglected to mention she was pregnant) but on the whole it was an education.

Austin decided he didn’t want to date anymore, though. At 26 and family oriented, he decided it was time to really focus on finding the right someone for the rest of his life. He wanted marriage, kids, a house. Five miles from home, in a town he’d been to hundreds of times, where his band played regular gigs, online dating brought him together with an amazing woman he now – 7 years later – calls his wife. A working mother with a then 6-year-old daughter, she certainly didn’t have the time to go out and “play the field.” But a few exchanges through the Web site, a week’s worth of 3-hour phone conversations and a casual late-night dinner set in motion a love to last a lifetime. Engaged after 7 months, married after 18, they know share three wonderful boys together and life couldn’t be sweeter.

“There was a stigma with online dating then that has faded with time,” Austin says now. “It was a joke to people then. But the fact is, my wife and I never would have met without it. Generally speaking, people work and they work hard. Working nights, working long hours, it’s hard to justify relying on dumb luck to find someone in a bar, at a movie…and you limit yourself – by time, by distance, by chance. That’s no way to live.

“Online dating lets you set your limits, and in doing so exposes you to people in the same situation who you would never meet otherwise. Whether the love of your life is a block away or a time zone away, shouldn’t you know she’s out there? I know I didn’t. And now I do. That’s what it’s all about.”