6 mistakes people make when online dating
If you’ve been following me on here, you know by now that I have a lot of personal experience of online dating. I’m also, ultimately, an online dating success in that I’ve recently celebrated 5 years with my boyfriend who I met on Guardian Soulmates. It was a bit of a journey to get to that point, so I want to share with you the biggest mistakes I made on the way. Once I addressed these issues, it make my journey a lot more enjoyable and successful. I hope this helps you as you create your own online dating journey.
1. taking rejection personally
Rejection is a major part of online dating. For everyone, not just you or me. As you put yourself out there, you will find that people reject your moves or you reject theirs. It’s just how online dating works. But you know what? It really isn’t the end of the world. It happens to everyone and the better able you are to shrug off rejection and move forward, the more enjoyable your experiences will be. Whenever I got rejected – everything from a guy not responding to an email to not wanting to see me again after a date – I’d allow myself a certain amount of time to be upset by it. For example, for an unanswered email, I would allow myself about 20 minutes of self-pity, then I’d tell myself to get over it and move on. For rejection after a date, I would allow myself a little longer, maybe up to a day or two but then I’d force myself to move on. It really helped me not take things too seriously. It also made me feel less bad when I rejected people – which I often found just as hard, if not harder.
2. emailing for too long without meeting up
When you find you have email chemistry with someone, it’s fun to keep this up for as long as possible. You can believe that you’ve found someone you gel with and it becomes quite easy to imagine a great future with them. But you know what? People can be, and often are, completely different in real life that they are in email. Limit your emailing to a few times back and forth. Make sure you have enough information to decide whether they are worth meeting up with or not, then go ahead and arrange the meeting. If they are stalling to meet, there is probably a reason for that. You need to know what that reason is.
3. going for dinner on a first date
There is little worse that realising in the first five minutes of meeting someone that you don’t want to see them again or spend any more time with them but unfortunately you are just ordering your starters. If you haven’t experienced this yet, trust me it’s pretty painful. My solution to this was to only agree to a quick drink on a first date. I would always pretend I had somewhere else to go after an hour. On the many occasions when the date was actually going well, I’d fess up and tell them and end up staying much longer. The added bonus was that they usually felt pretty good hearing that so the night usually got even better.
4. seeing it as a means to an end
If you’re reading this blogpost, the chances are you aren’t enjoying your online dating experience as much as you could. One of the main reasons for this is probably because you just see it as a means to an end – finding someone to love. But as with most things in life, if you make the effort to enjoy what you’re doing, everything suddenly becomes a whole lot easier and more positive. Changing your attitude to online dating is probably the one thing you can do to improve your experiences and improve your luck. Decide today that you’re going to start enjoying the whole experience and that will help you meet more suitable people, shrug off rejection and be happier in yourself. Go fire up that positive attitude and see the difference it makes to your dating experience.
5. not taking a break when you feel jaded
It happens to everyone at some point, even those who are enjoying themselves, when you realise you’re really fed up with online dating and need a break. When you start feeling like that, the best thing you can do is to take that break. Give yourself some time off. Hide your profile and go and throw yourself into something completely different for a month or so. It’ll leave you ready and raring to go again which is how you need to feel if you are going to approach online dating with a positive attitude.
6. letting your profile stagnate
Are you still using the same written profile and photos that you started with 18 months ago? Hmmm no wonder you might start to feel a bit jaded. To keep your profile fresh and at the top of the pile on dating sites, make sure you’re changing it up every couple of months. Rewrite your profile – have a bit of fun with it – and try out some different photos. Make sure they are good ones – clean, bright, in focus – and that you look good in them. Without a doubt you’ll see a sudden upsurge in interest. Now go have fun out there and enjoy the journey.
