Who knows what lurks in the hearts of others? Great philosophical question when you think about the concept of meeting strangers in any venue, but especially when engaged in iDating.

Here you are, trying to meet the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, and you might even want to trust them with all sorts of personal things, even your money. So you would like someone who is sane. Ironically, in all the profiles I have read of every person on Internet dating services, I have never seen anyone actually state that they were looking for a sane individual. Sure, they all want honest, they want good looking and funny, as these are commendable assets. They even ask for wealthy. With a wish list like that, and the mere fact that they are looking for a new mate, quite often because they already had experience with a person with issues (a.k.a. a nut), you’d think they’d be more careful in constructing their shopping list and ask the dating gods for sanity.

A great looking lady (assuming that she posted her real photo) contacted me with the usual flirt, or some such device used on dating sites to let me know she was interested. I responded and got a message from this woman indicating she’d like to meet.

I was very much impressed with her profile that seemed to be either copied from others, or perhaps she paid a public relations firm to write it for her. Her response was rather good, too, indicating to me she was very witty and on the ball and may have actually written her own profile.

After setting up a time and location for a lunch date online, I had to call her the day before the meeting. The usual small talk started, and pretty soon we began to discuss the kind of things you talk about on the actual date. In this short introduction she told me she was a teacher. Interestingly she knew my best friend. This would surely offer a unique insight into this potential date/mate if I were to call him for the inside scoop.

Just as I was thinking about making that call to my best friend, she asked me to judge her when I met her, rather than listening to others. Was this a red flag? Well, yes. So immediately after hanging up from our conversation, I gave him a call. When I mentioned to him that I was going to meet a woman he taught with, I was surprised at his response.

“She’s – expletive deleted – crazy!”

Whoa, this certainly didn’t fit into the Bambi Rule of “not saying anything if you can’t say anything nice” motto taught to us by our parents. He repeated his response three times at correspondingly higher decibel ratings before he heard me yell, “I haven’t told you her name yet.”

How odd, he knew who I was talking about without me mentioning her name. Could he have taught with only one woman all these year, or is he prescient? Sure enough, he knew exactly to whom I was referring. He went on to tell me that she was not the one I wanted to meet. I told him, “I get it. I’ll just go to the lunch date for the sake of learning all about Internet dating.”

He didn’t want me to meet this woman to the point of obsession, so much so that I finally agreed I would cancel the date. I never saw my best friend so adamant about someone, and I figured the way he described her, I could end up with a butter knife in my ear if she was as nuts as he told me.

I called her the next day and canceled using the little white lie technique. I told her that I went back with my girl friend last night and had to give that relationship a try. He wished me luck and told me to pray for his soul and mine a well.

I thought that was the end, but a few days later I got a nasty email on my dating service where she mentioned that she sees I am still active on the site and correctly assumed I listened to my best friend.

What did I learn? I learned that it might be better to avoid a white-lie in some circumstances. While you don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings, you may be better off saying it like it is: “Yes, I spoke with my best friend and he told me we wouldn’t be compatible.” You can leave out the freaking nuts part.

Also, remember, they can see you online unless you turn off your visibility in the Internet site settings. If you do that, then no one will know you have been interested in looking at them, and you may miss out meeting your perfect match.

So what else have we learned by this unusual coincidence? There are nuts, lunatics, weirdos and miscreants online. No matter how much you might request a sane mate, the very nature of nuts is that they don’t generally tell you they’re nuts. While they may be nuts, they know that no one would want to meet them if they announced such a trait in their profile.

You have to understand the risk of meeting a nut exists, and you have to know what to look for.

You may find out early (within the first few dates) that they need therapy, thorazine, or a thrashing, or you may actually find out when it’s too late, like a month or so before you file for divorce.

Lunacy comes in many degrees. This means that the subtler one’s nuttiness, the more difficult it is to detect in a short period of time. This is especially true when most of us, even the nuts, are on our best behavior in the early stages of dating. It can even take years to figure out you hooked up with a nut-case. In some situations the lunacy is latent or needs a catalyst to show through, as in stress or depression that lets the true aberration come to the surface.

Just keep your eyes open for aberrant behaviors, including, but not limited to aggression, anger, hostility, extreme sarcasm, negativity, belligerence, short tempered, egotism, narcissism, petulance, ah the list goes on and on.

Be ready to move on if you see signs of insanity. And consider putting in your profile that you are looking for someone who is not insane! Maybe they will take the hint and go after someone who is unsuspecting once they know that you are on guard.