The five most fundamental pieces of online dating advice

If you’ve never tried finding someone online before, you might be feeling a little in need of a 101 – which is why this list exists. This stuff isn’t rocket science, but it should help you avoid some of the more common and more obvious pitfalls of dating online – something that not everyone has help with doing, after all!

1. Look At Your Profile From The Perspective Of A Stranger

Imagine that you’d never met yourself before and you’re glancing through your profile as you would that of anyone else on the site. What assumptions do you make about what kind of person this member is? What do the photos they’ve chosen tell you about them? How easy to read and informative is their profile, and does it make it easy to think of something to send them in a message? If you have trouble with this, ask a friend or someone close to you to look over your profile and let you know what they think.

2. Don’t Sexualise Your Conversations Till You’re Certain It’s Welcome

One of the most common mistakes people seem to make is sexualising their conversations too early – by sending a message that comments on nothing but their physical attractiveness, for example. Mentioning in passing that you think someone is good-looking is fine, but don’t follow that train of thought out loud till much later on in your communications with them.

3. Join More Than One Dating Site

It’s a good idea to have a profile on several sites at once – you’ll have a wider pool of people to choose from, and there’s less chance of having to go back to square on if things don’t work Relationship Advice out with a particular person. It’s wise to be wary of sites that might be scams, though, so take some time to read a few reviews of different dating sites before you choose the ones that you’d like to sign up to.

4. Avoid Pinning All Your Hopes In One Place Too Quickly

Some people, when jobhunting, take applications one at a time. They find a job they want, slave over the application, wait for a response, go through the entire process, and then when they’ve been turned down for the position start all over again with a single new job. Those people, unless they’re extremely specialised, tend to have a lot of trouble getting work. Don’t make that mistake in your dating life – it’s encouraged to be chatting to more than one person at a time.

5. Trust Your Instincts About Safety And Genuineness

If you really think that someone isn’t safe to meet up with or might not be who they say they are, trust your instincts about them. It doesn’t do to be overly cautious – you’ll never meet anyone that way! – but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t practice good common sense about the people you’re going to see in real life when they are actually complete strangers.

Don’t get so caught up in the quest for fun and perfection that you miss the perfectly wonderful ordinary person right in front of you who could change your life.