Getting Personal : After the suspicions are gone, it doesn’t matter to the parties how they got together, say those who have used ads to get dates.

The evening had gone fine. Dinner out at a nice restaurant, pleasant talk, good company. But when Michael, 34, got up to leave, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Sitting at a nearby table were his sister and her husband. Big sis had come to check out Michael’s date.

Not that Michael’s sister makes a habit of spying on her brother. It’s just that this date was different. Michael met the woman through a personal ad.

In recent years, personal ads placed and answered by singles like Michael, who are looking for a relationship, have grown in popularity. Running in everything from daily newspapers to left-leaning political magazines, personals have gone from the offbeat to a fairly routine way for singles to meet.

Once established, the dynamics of relationships that begin through personals are like any other relationship, say those who have been in them.

But not so in the early stages. Suspicion, security and concerns about privacy all come into play; the other person is a complete stranger, not someone met through a trusted mutual acquaintance. At what point is information such as workplace, phone number and home address shared? Is the other person hiding something? What are his or her motives?

There are some other differences, too. When a relationship becomes strained, either party can walk away confident in the knowledge that there are more people out there waiting to be met. While that knowledge can be liberating, it can also give the relationship a transient quality.

And knowing that you may be one of 50 people answering an ad is a little like applying for a job. What if you don’t get it? And, more interestingly, what if you do?

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Janet, a 42-year-old Orange County resident, says the primary difference between meeting someone through an ad and meeting someone in a more conventional fashion is the level of trust.

“I was very suspicious of everyone I met until I got to know them better,” says Janet, who like others interviewed for this story prefers to use only her first name.

She is well into a seven-month relationship that grew out of her ad. Despite her suspicions in the beginning, she says that she completely trusts her partner now.

“How we met is not important at all,” she says. “Just because I met him through an ad makes no difference. Relationships are not guaranteed to work, no matter how you meet people.”

Her ad, she says, wasn’t particularly creative, but it was sincere.

“It was something like ‘Single, white, female who enjoys movies, sports, walks,’ ” she says. The ad included her age, and when respondents called, she had recorded a brief message that described herself in greater detail, including height and weight.

“You should be honest,” she says. “When I met them, they told me they could recognize me from my description.”

Janet received 20 responses to her ad and, after screening them by phone, ended up going out with five men, ranging from a Los Angeles police detective to an account executive at a rock radio station. She says that it helps to know what you are looking for before placing your ad.

“I was not looking to get married,” she says. “I was barely looking to date. And I wanted someone who was mature.”

Janet, who is divorced and has an 18-year-old son, says the whole experience made her feel better about herself.

“I hadn’t been out with a man alone for the last year,” she says. “To have someone be alone with me and carry on a conversation--it was scary at first, but it gave me more self-confidence. I was going out with a different guy every night. It made me feel pretty popular--especially when some of them wanted me to hurry up and choose them because they wanted me all to themselves.”

In order to keep track of the people who called her, Janet, a computer professional, says she used a form she developed on her personal computer.

“When I called them, I would fill in their name and age and then I’d ask certain questions and write down their responses. I have a file folder on everyone I called,” she says.

Janet says that she called the person’s place of work to verify that he was employed there. She did not give out her home phone number until after she got to know the person. Instead, she used her pager number.

“I would suggest that if anyone places an ad and they don’t have a pager, that they go out and rent one for two weeks,” she says. “Having a pager worked out real well for me. That way no one ever had my home phone number.”

Janet conducted her first meetings over lunch in restaurants she chose.

“I was usually the first to arrive,” she says. “I wanted to be there first so that I could be inside and choose where I wanted to sit. And I did it over lunch so that if I didn’t like them, I wouldn’t be stuck with them for long.”

Janet says she would not hesitate to run another personal ad if this relationship were to end.

“Sometimes if we get into an argument or something and I’m looking through the paper, I start scanning the ads,” she says. “I know there is always more out there. I feel like if this doesn’t work, I could always meet someone else through a personal.”

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Suzanne Brierley, who works with singles through her four-year-old consulting firm called Romanceworks, sees personal ads as a very legitimate way to meet people.

“I have a lot of clients who have been very successful using personal ads,” she says. “People are perusing these ads because they are so busy and it’s hard to get out and meet someone.”

Brierley, who is also a counselor at the YMCA Community Counseling Services in Irvine, says dating through personal ads can be a real confidence builder.

“If you place an ad and start dating and socializing and having fun, no amount of therapy is going to replace that,” Brierley says. “It is the fastest way to cure a broken heart.”

Brierley, who conducts seminars on finding a mate, teaches her students how to screen out the undesirables.

“The smoothest con artists are the ones who are going to make you feel most confident,” she says. Which is why Brierley instructs her students to ask their date for references.

“If the person is who they represent themselves to be, then they don’t have anything to hide and are going to understand your reason for being cautious. And they will give you references--names of friends or business associates you can call,” she says. “If they balk or put you on the defensive, then they probably have something to hide.”

Brierley recommends that her clients avoid the phone entirely--at least in the beginning.

“I advise them to exchange letters and photos,” she says. “You can tell a lot about a person from a letter. Then you can decide if you want to meet them. It’s just much easier to screen with letters and photos. You can see if they express themselves well and if they are your type physically. It can save a lot of time.”

Never give out your home address, she cautions; rent a postal box for correspondence.

Once you’ve decided to meet the person, Brierley suggests that you select a public place--usually a restaurant--in which you feel comfortable.

“At that first meeting, your job is to have fun--see if the two of you click,” she says. “And (ask yourself) is this person who they represented themselves to be?”

Both parties involved need to proceed with caution, she says.

“Men need to be suspicious, too,” Brierley says. “Especially if the women seem to have money problems and start pressuring them for money, asking them to pay their bills.”

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Pam, 40, an Orange County resident who works in retail sales, believes that one of the men who answered her ad had a lot to hide.

“I know he was married,” she says, “because I could never call him at home, only at the office.”

Later, when Pam began to date a man in Central California, she suspected the same thing about him.

“I was very suspicious,” she says. “You wonder why--even though you are the one placing the ad--someone has to find a relationship this way. So, I was particularly suspicious of him because he was way out of town. I wanted to make sure he didn’t have a wife up there.”

Once she was confident that the man was single and trustworthy, Pam began seeing him on a regular basis.

“He would come down on weekends, and we took a trip together,” she says. “It began to look really good, but he is very quiet and I am a talker.”

Eventually the two broke up because of the differences in their communication styles, Pam says.

“It takes three to six months to get to know someone really well, and then little things start to come up,” she says.

Pam, who was married for 10 years and has been divorced for two, found that getting out again was not easy. A friend, who developed a relationship through the personals, encouraged Pam to place an ad.

And even though Pam’s relationship ended, she says she does not regret her experience. She is quick to point out that the breakup had nothing to do with how the two met.

But Pam, a recovering alcoholic, says she has decided not to run her ad again.

“I just don’t trust people very easily anyway,” she says. “So I’m hoping to meet someone through church or through the (alcohol recovery) program.”

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Michael, the man whose sister followed him on his date, says he decided to place his ad because a long-term relationship had ended and he wanted to meet someone new.

“I work for a large company and didn’t want to date anyone at work. And I don’t have time to meet anyone off the job,” says Michael, a marketing executive in Orange County. “I’m not a drinker and I don’t go to bars. Your only other choices are health clubs and coffeehouses. So, it’s hard to meet people.”

Michael says that when he is meeting someone for the first time, he always tells someone else where he is going, just as a precaution--which is how his sister ended up knowing where to find him on one of his initial dates.

“I think it is a good idea to be careful, to let people know what you are doing,” he says. “I was also careful not to give out my address because I didn’t want some fatal attraction bothering me at home.”

Michael, who has never been married, says he dated several interesting women and is considering placing another ad in his quest to find a marriage partner.

“I would never have believed two years ago that I would ever do this,” Michael says. “But it is a great way to meet people. Now, lots of my friends are doing it.”