when is it time to log off?
So today I’m asking the question, how do you know when it’s time for you to log off the dating site when you’ve started seeing someone you really like?
I was inspired to cover this after chatting to some of my twenty something friends (yes, I still have some unbelievably). They are all currently dating and love to chat all things dating with me when we meet up and get the skinny on what’s going on in my crazy world of dating.
One of them started telling me about her experience of Tinder – she had been showing one of her best friends (lets call her Roberta) how Tinder works and flicking through pictures of random guys, swiping left and right as appropriate…when up comes a picture of Roberta’s very own boyfriend. Errrr cue really awkward moment, followed by shock and tears. Roberta is now single, in case you’re wondering, although my friend wasn’t sure if this was the reason why. So that little anecdote led us to discuss today’s topic and they asked me how I dealt with it. As they were surprisingly impressed by my approach, I thought I’d share it here with you guys and find out how you handle it.
So picture it, you’ve been seeing a guy/girl you like for a while and you’ve stopped logging on to the site but then you do one of those unsolicited checks to see if they have logged back on and guess what?! They’ve not only logged on but they’ve logged on today…or in some extreme cases, they are actually online when you check.
Yes, guys, you can probably tell I’m speaking from experience. There was one guy in particular who this happened with and I’ll admit it, I was gutted, hurt and really pissed off all rolled into one. Now I was aware, as much as the next person, that the online dating experience is all about keeping your options open and multi-dating etc, so how exactly are you meant to navigate this particular minefield whilst minimising the hurt.
Every dating experience was different but I knew, if I was to ensure I was enjoying dating as much as possible I needed to set myself some boundaries or guidelines to follow. After a lot of thought, I decided that if I was still seeing someone after about 4 or 5 weeks and things were still going well, I’d check to see if they were still going online and if they were then I would dump them.
Call me crazy but it worked for me. I would let them know why I was dumping them which gave them the opportunity to either walk away with their tail between their legs or come back fighting. It separated the men from the boys, if you will. More importantly, it allowed me to relax about this issue because I knew I had a strategy in place for dealing with it. It worked beautifully, I have to say, for the most part.
Not everyone will want to handle it like I did – I’m sure many of you may think this a bit extreme, but I think the most important thing is to figure out what you think is acceptable, set yourself some boundaries and stick to them.
I hope you found this useful? Happy dating amigos!
