going on date after date after date to find “the one”).
Even if they don’t read your whole profile, they’ll at least know you don’t want children or are allergic to cats (my boyfriend and I never would have dated if I’d owned a cat instead of a dog because he’s severely allergic to cats). Read the profiles of your potential mates carefully: Just as you took a lot of time and energy to write a good profile for yourself, so did a lot of other people.
And just like you, those people are trying to communicate to you and the rest of their potential mates what they bring to the relationship table.
Men tell me all the time they hardly ever receive responses to their messages, while women’s inboxes are completely inundated with messages every day. These 10 pieces of advice are just the tip of the iceberg.
I don’t have enough data to back that statement up, and, honestly, I don’t feel that I need any data to back that statement up. But don’t allow yourself to remain in that state, and don’t allow that discouragement to affect the way you interact with people on the site you’re using. There’s so much more about online dating to discuss, such as the differences in the ways men and women experience online dating.
Think of it this way: as you’re perusing profiles looking for someone who might make a good match, do you contact the people with hardly anything in their profiles? There’s no formula for this; all I can say is do not try to be someone you think others want you to be.
It’s just like posting an inaccurate photo of yourself; sooner or later people are going to realize that’s not the real you, throwing your chances of a long-term relationship out the window. Don’t write a novel: Just as you don’t want to have too sparse of a profile, you also don’t want your profile to be a novel.
Obviously men’s experiences with online dating have made them feel this way, regardless of data. Accept the harsh reality of online dating and make it your mission to be graceful with rejection.
You can’t change the landscape, so why let it drive you to bitterness?
To oversimplify what I mean, let’s take coffee for example. Only use current photos in your profile: One of the most common complaints I hear from men is that women frequently misrepresent themselves in their photos by using old photos (sometimes decades old) or by cropping them in too tightly so you don’t realize they are of a certain body type.
Most people can agree they don’t like scalding hot coffee, but it’s tough to get people to agree on how they do like their coffee. Obviously men do this as well; I’ve just heard this complaint more frequently from men than from women.
I was excited to see some great conversation happening in the comments of my piece “The Top Three Mistakes Men Make in Online Dating.” Both men and women shared their experiences with online dating and debated over the mistakes and fixes I offered in the piece. How do you reconcile a trillion different preferences in order to offer men advice on what to do to be successful with online dating? All I can do is set some parameters and offer my advice based on my own experiences and hope that it helps at least a few guys out there.