Online Dating Advice

The advantages of online dating

Online dating – you’ve heard about it, might have dipped your toe in the water but you’re probably sat in one of two camps: the ‘it’s for desperate people, but I’m still single’ camp, or the ‘I have/haven’t tried it but think ‘why not it’s worth a go’ camp.  Whichever one you are sat in, there are some great advantages to online dating, so read on and start feeling positive about your dating search source!

In the UK there are approximately 14 million adults who are single, of which you can bet about 80% of them are looking for a relationship where they can settle down and share their life ambitions with someone.  You fall into this category, so you are starting off in a healthy pool of people.  Over the last five years internet dating has become the norm – it’s not about dating a desperate freak, but aligned with people like you, who are busy 24 / 7, with other things that preoccupy them and leave their love life firmly sat on the shelf.  Chances are your friends don’t have a suitable friend for you and neither is the gallery of office tottie to your taste!  So you’ve jumped into the pool of 4 million online daters and with that amount of people there is going to be someone out there for you – it just may take a bit of time and patience.

So how do you tackle the plethora of profiles out there?  You’ve done the first, and hardest bit, by creating your online profile (which don’t forget will need a touch of an update from time to time), and now you need to start looking at your search options.  One of the great advantages of searching online is that you can be picky!  You can set your search criteria to be generic, save it as your generic criteria and then start weeding out the key bits that are important to you.  So if you want to date a member that doesn’t smoke, occasionally drinks and is interested in having children – that could be one of your saved searches that you revisit.  By going through your search options, and revising your criteria you’ll start to learn what type of person you are looking for and you should see a common theme!

Each time you log in there will be new fresh faces and profiles to investigate, and you can scrutinise each one from the comfort of your own home.  You’ll have the ability to trawl through hundreds of potential dates, whilst sat in your loungewear, looking unkempt, totally relaxed and drinking wine if you so desire – and absolutely no one else will know! 

In a lot of the profiles, the other member will have submitted a photo, so you can also start gathering a picture from their photo and profile about that person.  If there is something that intrigues you within their details, bite the bullet and send a message or a wink.  What is the worst that can happen – they don’t respond.  You haven’t done anything other than send them a short message, so what do you really have to lose – you never know, they could be ‘the one’! 

It’s great being able to write to someone when you want to, but having said that don’t bombard them with messages, especially if they haven’t written back.  As a rule of thumb, it’s ok to send someone two messages, even without a response from them, but as you can see if they have read the message you sent, if there is no response by the second message, move on.  There are plenty of people who will respond to you, and when they do you’ll get a great feeling and may want to concentrate on them for a while.

If you are sending and receiving email messages from a member, don’t leave it too long until you speak on the phone and then meet up.  Take things at your own pace, and only meet when you feel comfortable in doing so, but if you aren’t miles away from each other and circumstances permit, a good guide to follow is 3 emails each, 2 phone calls and a first date.

Writing a good profile and scribbling your first message are hard tasks but without effort and time invested you can’t expect to reap the rewards of online dating (see also our article “What makes a great online profile?”).  By writing your messages online you get to review, check for grammatical errors and use that all important spell checker!  There is nothing worse than receiving a message that’s badly written, full of errors or in text speak.  We all make mistakes and the odd typo shouldn’t kill a budding relationship, but errors are made when we are excited, in a hurry or nervous so it’s well worth taking an extra few minutes to check what you have written. It shows attention to detail and says a lot about you as a person and how you want come across to someone.

Pretty much all of us know someone who met their partner online, so we know it’s a successful source of finding that perfect person – it just takes a bit of time, effort and patience.  With a bit of these three ingredients you’ll be well on your way to finding that first date!