Increasingly people are turning to Internet Dating Services to find their mates. So for purposes of this article let's assume that this is the way you've recently met someone that you're now considering for a serious relationship. Let's also assume that you've done your basic due diligence (investigative work) and now that you've met and dated you believe him/her to be the right person for you. In other words, you have reached the point where you are considering a serious relationship with this person.

And this is exactly where you need to stop because there are a couple more things you need to do...

1. Work together on a project
And preferably one with a due date. You see, you never really know someone until you have worked with him or her under pressure. Under pressure is when you get to see what's behind the mask. Oh, don't balk we all wear masks particularly when we want to impress someone. For instance:

Tom thought that he knew reserved Alice and outgoing Brittany fairly well. He had dated each a number of times, but not until he worked with them on the school paper did he really get to know them. On Friday when the printer failed to get his copy out for the paper due Monday, Tom saw two personalities whom he had never known before. Brittany wilted, cried, and went home with a headache. Alice, however, refused to shrink. She said some things over the phone that would not have been printable. Then she collected Tom and two of his friends, and they visited the printer. They stayed there together until the copy was finished and the presses ready to roll the first thing Monday morning. By the way Tom wisely chose Alice for a serious relationship.

2. Get to know your mates family.
Our families are not only the factory in which each of us was built it is also the material from which we were built. Therefore, one of the best ways to know a person is to know his family. Someone once said, "The best way to pick a mate is to find a happy family and then grab any one of them."

The Burgess and Cottrell study found that when both parties to a relationship come from very happy homes, their chances of making a good adjustment are more than twice as good as when both have come from average or unhappy families.

An important part of this equation concerns the happiness of your own childhood. Although accepted myth makes childhood the happy period of life, careful clinical research has shown that the opposite is often true. Many childhoods have been periods of violently resented oppression and terrifying fears. We know that the basis for personality is laid during the early years. Therefore the happiness of your childhood is one important indication of your chances for success.. Here, again, you are not guaranteed or necessarily doomed. But it is a matter to which you should give careful consideration and work out any lingering issues you're still holding on to.

However returning to your chosen, personal observation of the interaction between his/her family members is one of the best ways of determining the family dynamics.

Does every member of the family feel free to use the house, even when this means that it will be cluttered up a bit? Do the members have a real affection for each other? This is not the same as an absence of conflict. Families who fight openly are often more wholesome than those who conceal their hostilities behind a smoke screen of frigid courtesy. But if the family members are fundamentally honest with each other; if each one dares to be himself, even, at times, an unpleasant self, there is no better sign.

But what if instead you find a strong and apparently chronic undercurrent of resentments, selfishness, and pettiness in the family? However you believe your mate to be nothing like them.

That's called "repudiating the family pattern." Unfortunately, there is no way around it. One is either following family patterns or repudiating them.

So is he/she following, or repudiating?" Remember Michael Corleone repudiated his family and wound up just like his father and then some.

But 'The Godfather' was a movie and the simple reality is that if you find your partners family to be distasteful, your relationship will be safer if he/she is repudiating it. However on this issue the percentage is not in favor of it as, sooner or later, family dynamics are usually followed

Ok let's go with worth case scenario: he/she crumbles under pressure, and his/her family is nothing short of loathsome. But you still believe there's a chance for a relationship. Well, it's not impossible if both are committed to patience and doing whatever it takes to make the relationship work and that usually means counseling to work on these issues.

Alas, love is not always enough as many have loved and trusted, scoundrels. And the only reliable way of being assured that your chosen is suitable for a serious relationship is to test their behavior under stress and to uncover their family dynamics.

Dr. Julie Curran earned her PhD in Behavioral Science and then expanded her studies to include NLP and hypnotherapy. As a busy single woman, she turned to the Internet and after more than a year of search and research she met her Mr. Right. It was the frustration of wading through thousands of online dating services that led her to start http://www.dating-bydesign.com as an online dating guide.