TrueLoveSingles Or Else

“Followers do not change the world, leaders do. But you won’t be a leader unless you are really fed up with something.”

Introduction

TrueLoveSingles is a new international courtship site – a boutique “dating site” if you will – for high-minded and deep-hearted Singles to find and court each other. I conceived of and created the site during the last year and will explain what brought this site about and why I am looking for collaborators.

The other day I happen to overhear fragments of a conversation between my daughter and her roommate. “…I like Alfredo….,” the roommate voiced. Both of them are college students and they just had come back home from campus on their motorcycles.

Curiosity welled up in my heart and I asked the roommate: “Are you dating an Alfredo at college?” “No,” she said, “I just mentioned that I like alfredo sauce over macaroni for dinner today.”

Predicament Tom Froehlich Both daughter and roommate are in their early twenties and single. Both are interested in receiving the Blessing but are not inclined to attend a matching event sponsored by our church. I hear there are many others like them.

It is about a year now since I was asked by my daughter to help her find a mate for life. She is still not in a hurry, and I do not blame her. Not looking forward to taking that considerable risk of ending up with a mismatch during a matching event, she considers her choices. But what are they?

Courtship followed the matching/marriage/blessing event for many years in our church. That is how it still goes in many traditional cultures. Courtship, many would say, is the process through which two singles get to know each other heart-to-heart to learn about their compatibility with each other.

My wife and I were matched by the late Rev. Moon and attended the Blessing in Madison Square Garden in 1982. We made the commitment first, and passion and intimacy needed to blossom later.

This is perhaps not the model through which all of humankind is supposed to find salvation. The passing of Rev. Moon and subsequent social pressures, I argue, are making a difference. There is nobody left who claims to have the insights as to who is meant to be for each other as a “match made in Heaven.“

For my daughter, the pool of “candidates without original sin” is precariously shallow and shrinking. I refer to Prof. Michael Mickler’s essay entitled The Providential Necessity of “Open” Blessings as published in the Applied Unificationism blog, January of 2014.

http://appliedunificationism.com/2014/01/27/the-providential-necessity-of-open-blessings/

So what are the young people of the Unification community to do? What is a father of a wonderful daughter like me to do? I cannot login to any of the church-endorsed matching sites (to check for prospective talent) without my daughter first putting up a serious profile. She isn’t quite that ready – catch 22.

What policy is our church advocating today, tomorrow, or in 10 or 40 years from now? Has anybody started a public discussion about that? Or are we just supposed to “hang in there” and believe that “God will work in mysterious ways!” And what about the billions of good people alive on earth today? What are they supposed to be waiting for?

No, I do not have any good suggestions other than what I came up with in my slight

desperation: www.truelovesingles.com

TrueLoveSingles is an international courtship site, a boutique “dating site” if you will, for high-minded and deep-hearted Singles to find and court each other.

In the TrueLoveSingles scheme of things, courtship precedes the decision to become one and the subsequent commitment. I find nothing wrong with that strategy whereby two singles get to know each other in terms of passion and intimacy prior to commitment.

However, this statement needs a disclaimer. Courtship in this conception prompts two people to first get to know each other “heart-to-heart” to check for compatibility. They avoid the pressures of physical intimacy or unchecked emotions so as not to cloud their view. Courtship takes a bit time and a lot of talk, naturally.

To learn what I mean by passion and intimacy, please read http://www.truelovesingles.com/types-of- love/ and http://www.truelovesingles.com/three-elements/ and other blog posts and pages.

Courtship should not be an afterthought to Unificationist’s interest in “change of blood lineage,” but encouraged and supported upfront by caring elders of the church. Could it be that courtship actually prepares people best for a lasting Blessing relationship?

There is the Global Peace Academy (GPA) and the NextGen Academy (NGA) for training youth in our church. What do we have for courtship? Why are there so many marriage counselors around? They say that an ounce of prevention (courtship) is better than a pound of cure (marriage counselors)!

Unificationists

So, can TrueLoveSingles be a site for 24+ Singles, divorced or widowed Unificationists? Perhaps. Unificationists can identify themselves on their profile as such, and can be discovered in the searchable directory as such. More to the point, the site tries to cater not only to Unificationists but also to millions of like-minded people.

In truth, finding a way to serve my daughter is one motivator. She isn’t actually jumping on the bandwagon as much as I had hoped. People are very finicky.

The other motivator for the site is witnessing. I am an original Moonie, a tribal messiah of sorts. I joined this movement because of its messianic claims, not because I liked it. What once had lodged itself prominently into my mind was the proposition that God suffers because he cannot reach and guide his children into a better living.

I was lucky to have been able to study theology at UTS as well, but must say that I have turned against High-Christology by now. It’s a lot of heady talk and leads to inconsistent action.

So, here is my Low-Christology action play with the focus on people.

What are Unificationists known for? What is our brand? Blessings. Happy couples. Good families. You name it. Yet, we do not capitalize on this reputation as much as I think we could.

Massive amounts of people spent tons of money on all kind of public dating sites all over the world to find their One and Only. None of these sites is operated by Unificationists (with one exception). None of these sites educate people about the important things of life (with one exception). None of these sites lead people on to the Blessing (I am working on it).

Instead of asking the few people in the vicinity to “come to us,” and ”join our reality,” why are we not going out to the people and join their reality, speak their language and make their life better for the sake of all? Remember the Home Church providence? Why not set up a courtship site that witnesses to the millions and makes as much money?

Recently Match Group, the holding company of big dating sites Match, OKCupid, PlentyOfFish, HowAboutWe, and Tinder, went public on the NASDAQ. The company had generated revenue of $888.3 million in 2014 and $49.3 million profit for the first six months of this year, according to its SEC filing. http://fortune.com/2015/10/16/tinder-parent-company-match-just-filed-to-go-public/

It may sound like a good idea to some. Truth is, I cannot do it alone and am looking for collaborators.

One long Year

TrueLoveSingles started about a year ago on the cheap WordPress platform with a couple of community plugins for basic functionality. The site is now a fully functioning concept site with dozens of plugins accounting for paid memberships and SSL security to make things happen.

I used to write HTML in the early days of the Internet and programmed Access databases in VBA during my time as Director of Advancement Services at California State University, East Bay. Never did much in CSS, and nothing in PHP. It has been a learning curve, to say the least. A volunteer PHP programmer could really make a difference for the site.

Social media is another challenge. I hate Facebook and all that nonsense on there. But, one cannot do any marketing without Facebook and Twitter pages and groups. Another steep learning curve.

I had opened up the site for registrations in May 2015, and so far have had way over six thousand people look at the content of the site (bounce rate about 60% and 2.64 pages per session) and over five hundred people registering with their emails. All I did was spent a few bucks each day on Google AdWords and some Facebook action, etc.

These 500+ people are not qualified right now, their number will shrink. But ads on the keywords “true love” and “courtship” pull people in.

I spent a few weeks getting the Traitify personality assessments to work on the site. It’s amazing what these brief tests can tell you about yourself. http://www.truelovesingles.com/personality-tests-for-free/ It is good to be aware of one’s personality and it can lead to a good conversation with a promising single regarding compatibility.

The big deal right now is how to engage these 500+ people via email campaigns in MailChimp. Some registered for the site but not the newsletter, others also expect special offers to be mailed to them. Most have not put up a profile picture. I used to run the donor and prospect segmentations in our fundraising database at the university, so this transferrable skill and experience comes in handy now. People need to be constantly prompted and nagged to “get on with it.”

Dating Sites

Dating sites started only a few decades ago and grew big by blogging to attract attention and offering personality tests to lure subscribers in. So, I am doing much the same.

Interestingly, eHarmony was launched in 2000 by Neil Clark Warren, a clinical psychologist, and seminarian. The evangelical conservative James Dobson, through his organization Focus on the Family, provided early support and publicity for eHarmony.

Dating site algorithms for matching people are meaningless. They really don’t do anything. In fact, the research suggests that so-called “matching algorithms” are only negligibly better at matching people than random chance. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/11/11/the-one-thing- about-matching-algorithms-that-dating-sites-dont-want-you-to-know/?postshare=661447283256959

How is TrueLoveSingles different

TrueLoveSingles does not match Singles based on dubious computer algorithms. No swiping right or left, no such gimmickry. People can be too complicated and unpredictable on one hand and too adaptable and accommodating on the other to fit neatly into any psychological models.

Researchers found that relationship success basically depends on three things:

 individual characteristics, like whether you’re smart or what kinds of hang-ups you have around relationships;

 the quality of interaction, or how you hit it off in-person;

 surrounding circumstances — stuff like your race or health or financial status.

So, I think that people are better off when they take a lot of time for courtship to figure out for themselves whom to settle down with.

Singles can, but need not be alone on TrueLoveSingle. The site encourages Singles, especially females, to get friends to register as well and enables them to engage as a team on the site. Friends have each other’s

back, they provide Singles with second and third opinions and offer references on their behalf. This should make the discovery of Mr. Right or Ms. Perfect a safer journey.

The site probably will appeal to a more mature audience. We believe that Generation X and Baby Boomers who are looking to settle down in long-term relationships will find value in the design of the site.

Collaboration

The entire concept really needs a team to take it to the next level. When things eventually take off, the site may need to be ported to a more powerful platform. Also, an app for mobile devices could make a difference, especially for Millennials, etc. The site may need to be translated into multiple languages. Right now I am using Google’s translate feature, which is fairly pathetic.

The effort needs a programmer, a marketer, guest bloggers, and perhaps most of all sponsors and/or investors. It has not been very expensive until now, but if the site is to compete with the big guys for the hearts and minds of God’s children, it will be. However, the rewards may be “heavenly.”

Again, I really cannot see myself doing this for the next ten years without partners. So, please chat with me if you have an interest and professional skills and experiences in helping people live better.