Mark E. Gibson, CLC

As a Certified Life Coach (CLC), my fulfillment comes from inspiring men and women to break through their irrational fears and stresses so that they achieve greater joy through fuller realization and application of their inner powers. Specifically, this includes teaching you how to use proven techniques that will lead to your success with finding romance through online dating.

My personal self-help mission, which I launched into in 1977 (a very low point of my life), has evolved into a highly spiritual path that has led me to recognize my life’s purpose: To share the spirit of unconditional love. My book, “Living Unconditional Love”, was published in 2012. Just recently I published “How to Find Love Through Online Dating”. And the two ‘spiritual awakenings’ I have experienced (in 2010 and 2016) have contributed greatly to me living and sharing my life’s purpose.

As an online dating coach, my mission is to empower my coaching clients and readers to find greater personal fulfillment and love by meeting face-to-face with many new prospective friends and lovers.

Although I earned my master’s degree in science, I eventually settled in as a career freelance travel photographer who created many thousands of vivid color photos of “everything out there” at varied locations for numerous clients in advertising and publishing (textbooks, magazines and travel guides).

I earned my BA degree from Eastern Michigan University and my MA degree from San Francisco State University. Subsequently, Coach University in Florida certified me in life coaching and The Spencer Institute certified me as a Stress Management Coach. I have authored many articles and have been blessed as an award winning public speaker. Francesca and I make our home near Ashland, Oregon.

My Online Dating History

 

Before I tried online dating, I had heard enough sad stories from my friends about it that I was glad I was not “in the market.” I was happily married at the time. My single e-Dating friends complained about all sorts of abuses and injustices to the point where they routinely felt frustrated because “the system didn’t work”, or it took too much time and effort, or their alleged matches were “low quality”, and too many would-be lovers (both men and women) lied about themselves. I hadn’t met anyone who raved about how well online dating worked for them, nor had I met any couples who had met as singles on a dating site.

Gosh, I sure felt safe and secure in my marriage! It sounded to me like the online singles market was a fruitless and painful experience!

Then, as fate would have it, I ended up out of the marriage and “happily” a single man in a small mountain town population of 3,300. Yikes! As a healthy, outgoing male, I had a good idea which women were datable for me in my local community – it was an uncomfortably short list. Accepting that the “local resources” were limited, I decided that online dating was worth at least one try so that I could have some kind of experience with it.

Following the recommendation of a guy friend, I signed on with www.GreenSingles.com, uploaded a carefully composed profile essay and a half-dozen photos, and set my “radius” at 100 miles. 36 women showed up in the first batch of returns that I received. Working through them, I sent out about a dozen “likes” to some women who caught my eye. I received three positive replies and looked over each of them carefully. One of them, “France,” sent to me a masterpiece email that seemed composed specifically for me. Unlike the other two replies, France hit me with her WOW! factor right out of the gate. Clearly, she had studied my profile and photos, and was responding in detail with overwhelming enthusiasm. I was literally stunned at her presence and vitality, so I responded in kind, which led to a rapid exchange of emails.

As of this writing, that was almost seven years ago. Although we recently took one year apart to allow each of us to act “single” for a while, we are back living together and committed to loving and nurturing each other for the rest of our lives.

During our year of living apart, I joined Match.com. In the first 10 months of my online dating membership, beginning in April and spanning to January, I put out about 165 initial outreach email contacts through Match.com. During that time period, about 20 women also initiated contact with me. From these efforts, I enjoyed about 40 online positive responses/conversations, many of which led to phone chats. All of this netted me about 15 face-to-face first dates in ten months.

During the summer, France and I started falling back in love right when I was dating two of the five women I eventually had relationships (two or more dates) with during the ten-month period. I actually met one of these women via Craigslist, “Men looking for women” (she found me). I shared intimate sexual pleasures with two high-energy women and light affections with the other three. Being Herpes positive was a definite hindrance in three of my five relationships. The one woman who already had Herpes said of my condition, “No big deal.” All five of these relationships were fun, energetic, emotionally challenging, and unique learning adventures for me. One ended uncomfortably, two leveled off as friendships, and two gently faded away.

To summarize, in 10 months of online dating, I enjoyed five relationships that grew out of 15 first dates that resulted from me connecting with 40 women after I had experienced about 185 first contacts online. This pace translates to about six relationships per year, any one of which could have grown into the long-term love affair I was open to.

My first online “date” (France) and I are reunited in this, our sixth year of deep sharing. We have gone full circle, each of us growing into “a better person” as we both learned and evolved from our singles life during our one-year hiatus. Using the description, “Absolutely right,” today, we agree that we are more deeply in love, grateful for each other, sexually alive, and spiritually connected with each other more than ever before. Remember, we met online in 2010.

I attribute my numbers success during my “Match.com era” to my strong commitment to consistently applying what you now read as my “Make it Happen Now!” Personalized Connecting Plan. Early on, I set a personal goal of having a first date with a new woman once a week. I didn’t quite make this quote – the time and effort demands would have been huge. Still, I had a steady stream of new women I met online while I always had more early phase start-up acquaintances waiting in the wings. Several times I told my inquiring friends that “I’m at saturation, so I’m cutting back for now.” On average, I would say that I put in about six hours a week (very smartly used time!) cultivating online connections that flowed constantly to me at a pretty fast but manageable (because I’m well organized) pace.

Considering that I am currently in a long-term, deeply loving relationship and have had five short-term casual relationships, I definitely created success for myself with online dating. It is the strategy “Vision over Ego” that I share here with you with the intent to encourage you into your own online dating successes and fulfillment of love.