10 Essential Ways to Succeed with Online Dating
Online dating is the greatest invention the world has ever seen. Think about it: it’s like online shopping for sex.
Online dating is not an effortless endeavor: you are confronted with many, minuscule choices as you try to convey just how awesome you are. And while those micro-decisions seem unimportant, they add up and do matter, because you’re only as good as the profile you craft.
Over the past few years, online dating has increasingly become a more widely accepted way of meeting a future partner and today, as many as one in five relationships are believed to begin online.
The reason why it may feel easier to approach someone online is related to how we’ve evolved to read each other’s body language. If you think about how we normally interact, we’re really social creatures and our species has developed over time to be really sensitive to non-verbal cues like facial expression and voice gestures.
Online dating can be fun and easy if you know the tricks of the trade. Read these helpful dating tips and you could be the busiest person on the block in no time.
Self-Evaluate. Be honest with yourself about the kind of person you’re looking for. Don’t settle; however, understand that the saying you can’t judge a book by its cover can be very true. If you can’t find anyone interesting in the current profiles, understand that new ones appear daily on popular sites.
Be thoughtful about your username.People gloss over this one too often, and maybe it’s because we’re in a time when people tend to use their real names, or variations thereof, in many of their online interactions. But it wasn’t always that way. Remember back to when picking your AIM username was a serious task? It was your identity, your marker, and you’d better be happy with picking “DMX123″ because you could be stuck with it for years.
Advertise.Put up several recent photographs of yourself — in both indoor and outdoor light, also a variety of full body shots as well as close ups of your face. Do not put the classic “Myspace angle” photos or any glamour pictures.
Be authentic. This is a tip that works in on- and off-line casual dating. Lying when you are online could mean awkward moments later on when you have to fess up to the truth. So save yourself the trouble and just be real.
Make your english teacher proud.Check and then double-check your grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Ask a discreet friend to read your listing over to make sure it makes sense and has no major lapses of logic, taste, or grammar. Always do a spell check. HINT: (D0nt SpEll Lik3 Th!S)
Play the field.Don’t put all of your focus on online dating. Don’t seem so desperate that the Internet is your last and only hope to find that someone special. For all you know the right person is out at the library, coffee shop, or buying groceries. You have to be positive and think that way as well. People are not attracted to desperation.
Your profile matters, but not that much.This one is tricky, I think. Isn’t there some statistic that college admissions counselors spend something like two minutes on college applications? That means that everyone is spending .42 seconds on each other’s online profiles. So don’t get overly serious and pour yourself into your online profile to strike the perfect balance of quirky versus confident. No matter what you decide to write, though, the business of writing about yourself in a public forum is an important, useful skill. I think the stuff that people feel nervous about sharing makes for the best profiles.
Date within a 25-mile radius. When you’re investing in the specific intent to find somebody, be reasonable and sensible and play the odds. Find somebody who is in your zip code so that you can actually get to know each other without driving 35 minutes just to make sure your online crush’s profile picture is really what they look like.
Interview. Always have a phone conversation with a match before any initial meeting. Be highly cautious of anyone who does not want to speak on the phone before meeting, or comes up with repeated excuses as to why they cannot meet you. You have a serious case of CATFISH on your hands if this is the case. Plus, who doesn’t want to make sure your match sounds hot on the phone?!
Thou shall not stalk. Do not hound the same person over and over, send them a message or two and after that leave them alone if they don’t return your contact — they’re probably not interested. This means do not add them on Facebook and LinkedIn, you will save yourself the desperation and rejection.
Look at this way: the online world is so much larger and more spacious than the worlds each of us inhabits each day. Appreciate that space, and realize how freeing it is. There are beautiful, open, conscious individuals everywhere, looking for love just like you are.