You’re the one! Dangers of internet dating

A young woman of 23 met 'Derek' several times before inviting him back to her house. They had first 'met' on an internet dating site. On September 30, they arranged to meet on the M2 where he followed her car back to her block of flats in south London.

The woman was with her three-year-old son and while they were having tea together, 'Derek' punched the woman unconscious and then raped her in front of her son. According to yesterday's reports, she and her son later escaped and fled to the police.

Internet dating sites are careful to warn their clients about the need to meet in public places, at least initially, and not to give out personal details, such as last names or addresses before getting to know someone. The snag comes when getting to know someone, particularly a stranger, is not so clear cut.

While there are countless stories of happily married couples who met on the internet, there are even more stories ranging from the ludicrous to the dangerous. What many of these stories demonstrate is that internet dating is a prolific breeding ground for romantic and sexual fantasies that may have little to do with reality.

A middle aged man rushes into a hotel bar where he is meeting 'Dance Ticket'. He is over an hour late and has telephoned 'Dance Ticket' to explain he has been caught in traffic ­ can she just hold on? She waits and wonders how typical this is ­ but his profile and their conversation on the phone the previous week seemed promising.

Then he appears, throws his coat over a chair, orders a glass of wine for himself. ­ 'Dance Ticket' is already on her second ­ and, as his eyes flit to the other people talking in the bar, declares, "You're perfect! I knew it ­ you're the one for me!"

The idee fixe of the perfect partner is fraught with problems and usually indicates someone who has idealised a parental figure and who is blindly and impulsively looking for a similar match. But the idealisation often covers up underlying conflicts that can't be acknowledged, including, at its most extreme, hatred.

We all have templates of our parents in our minds as our first love objects. But these templates tend to become fixed in our fantasies when there have been difficulties and traumas. When this happens the child in the mind of the adult continues to search for a parent whose love may have been mixed with either ill-treatment or with certain expectations of how they wanted their child to be. This way of being loved is then repeated in future relationships ­ what Freud coined the 'repetition compulsion' ­ and inevitably leads to heartache.

For internet entrepreneurs, this is the perfect customer because they can be sure they will return for more.

All internet daters have an agenda of some kind. Some internet daters are only looking for a sexual partner. They either freely admit they have no interest in any other form of relationship or they say they do when they don't. But these daters also have particular fantasies that they are hoping to fulfil ­ even if the fantasies entail being rejected or rejecting others. And sometimes, as in the case of 'Derek', the fantasies are much more violent.

The internet provides the perfect tabula rasa for daters to search for their fantasy partner and to enact the powerful ­ and often damaging ­ relationships of their past. Although romantic illusion does not only exist in cyberspace, the internet feeds people's desire for instant relationships and instant solutions ­ and an instant fix.

The net effect is that there is increasing pressure amongst the dating culture to be able to find 'the one' for you by a few simple trawls through profiles intended to promote various fantasy scenarios.

The real danger in internet dating is that it encourages the ideal of the perfect match and reduces the complex business of building a relationship into a shopping exercise. Dating is the new commodity with trial periods, exchanges and returns offered - but no refunds. Buyer beware!