What is a series about online dating doing on a psychology blog?

The quality of a person’s relationships is synonymous with mental health.  And, if you’re single you’re in a relationship with dating.  

You may be dating a lot, a little, or avoiding it entirely.  No matter which best describes you, you’re in a relationship with dating–and most likely online dating is a major part of this relationship.

As a practicing clinical psychologist in New York City, adventures in online dating are a part of the conversation with literally every single one of the unattached patients I treat.  

Some people do have success with online dating.  However, one thing I have never heard a patient say is: “I love online dating.  It’s so much fun.”

I don’t claim my sample is representative, but my patients’ view is consistent with commentary I’ve received from friends and colleagues.

The refrains are consistent.  

“It’s annoying.” 

“Lots of shady people.” 

“It’s a major time suck.”  

“People look nothing like their pictures.” 

“She ghosted me.”

And so on…

With all these complaints, why even bother?

Why should I care about online dating?

Online dating is the path of least resistance.  It’s also a way that people can take matters into their own hands.  Both of these options are appealing to the busy, type A hordes of NYC–and I suspect elsewhere.

Like it or not, it’s easy (at least the swiping part), it’s something you can actively do, and it’s the main gig in town.  You may long for the days when people just chatted you up in a bar, but meeting this way is becoming increasingly strange.  

And I mean strange, not just rare.  Norms have changed in such a way that if you don’t meet a partner through a friend or your immediate network, then the assumption is that you met online.  Meeting people in bars or other public gathering spots is very 20th century.

A final point here: I’m old enough to remember when people complained about meeting romantic prospects in bars.  And yes, the complaints were eerily similar to the current kvetching about online dating.

What is dating?

Dating is play.  We engage in dating with the hope that we’ll find someone with whom we enjoy spending time, doing activities both parties enjoy, feel desire and attraction, and feel sufficient trust and respect to build a partnership.

All of these criteria can be evaluated based on the quality of play.  Even arguments and conflict resolution, though they feel serious, are a form of play.  

Defining dating as play is especially useful when you consider the following:

The more you understand about what the “serious” relationship needs to look like, the more informative and useful the play of dating becomes.

Put another way, the dates themselves are not work (i.e., they are play).  The work of dating is figuring out how to simulate the “real” relationship you aspire to create in a playful manner.

The “rules” of dating

• Dating is not a substitute for other disappointing areas of life: If you’re unhappy in life, don’t expect to find the partner of your dreams. As the saying goes, “birds of a feather flock together.” Is it possible you’ll find someone great? Sure. Is it likely? No. Focus on getting your act together first.

• Dating is only as good as your understanding of what you want and need: If you’ve ever attempted to buy the perfect gift for someone notoriously difficult to shop for, you’ll understand this implicitly. What store do you go to? Where to start? What do they have? What do they want or need? What’s going on in their life?

When you’re dating, you need to be the picky person. Do the equivalent of figuring out what you want to spend, where you want to start, and how you’ll know if you’ve found the best option.

• Showing is better than telling: This rule goes both ways. If you are looking for a particular trait, look for behavior consistent with that trait. Don’t merely ask if someone wants children; see how the person behaves around kids. There’s nothing wrong with asking, but it’s not likely to yield the most valid answer.

• Serial is better than simultaneous: This is one people get wrong all of the time. While you may want to be talking to several people at once, it’s unwise to be dating several people simultaneously. This is how people get confused, hurt, and ghosted. If there’s no chemistry after a first date, inform the other person and move on. If there is, keep going until it no longer makes sense.

Having options is great during the early days of dating. Focus batching 3-5 prospects with whom you wouldn’t mind meeting up. Do informal, time-limited meet-ups with each and choose 1 (or none) to go on a second date. Don’t have sex while you’re in this elimination phase unless you enjoy making your life unnecessarily complicated.

Many will call this old-fashioned, but violate this rule at your peril. Sure, exceptions exist. But as they say, exceptions often prove the rule.

• Dating is assessment: Does your date have what you’re looking for, or not? Don’t lose sight of this question. Feelings and sexual chemistry are nice, but think of these more as intoxicants. There’s nothing wrong with a good buzz as long as it’s not a cheap thrill that’s going to give you a hangover.

• The best answer is yes, the second-best answer is no: If you’ve put the effort in to get to a first date, then you have a vested interest in something “good” coming from it. Let’s say your date goes well and leaves you both wanting more.

Hooray, mission accomplished!

In the more likely event that the date is either disappointing or underwhelming, you’ve accomplished the second objective: the ability to politely state that you’ll be moving on to the next prospect.

• Nothing definitively positive can be trusted until having seen one another consistently for at least three months: For whatever reason, the love drugs that flood our system seem to last for three months, give or take–and no long-distance “dating” does not count towards this time. If you’ve found someone who you’re “crazy about,” don’t do anything rash until you’re sober. Perhaps it’s meant to be. Whether it is or isn’t (meant to be), you will definitely begin noticing things you didn’t see before.

It takes a lot of strength to evaluate that new data honestly. If you’re able to do this second wave of screening, you have a healthy dating system that is very likely to produce a promising partner.

Why is (online) dating so difficult?

The amazing thing about online dating is that it provides access to tons of possible candidates to you that you might have never met otherwise.

The terrible thing about online dating, is that it provides access to tons of possible candidates to you that you might have never met otherwise.

Meeting people organically, that is, through work, mutual friends, networking, local watering holes, and shared activities/interests, does a lot of screening for us.

People you meet “the old-fashioned way” have some form of credibility.  Either you have something in common, or someone you know is indirectly vouching for them.  This is not a guarantee that someone you meet naturally is not a creep, but the odds do go down.

Meeting someone online, anything is possible.  Again, this is what’s good AND this is what’s terrifying.

Several other challenges also come to mind:

• Words and pictures can be misleading
• The people your preferred apps show you are kind of random
• The people your preferred apps show you are determined by an opaque algorithm
• Ease of access to new candidates leads to a devaluation of any one match (easy come, easy go)
• Most people don’t really know what they are looking for (that includes you)
• When people do know what they are looking for, they are often not honest about it
• Online dating over-values the first message

Deconstructing the process

If you want to take control of your romantic life by getting more out of online dating, a first step is to figure out exactly what specific skills online dating entails.  There are many ways to break down the journey of online dating, but here is one possible way of doing so:

• Who to swipe
• How to screen (pre-date)
• How to screen (after 1st date)
• How to accept disappointment
• How to move on from something bad
• How to nurture something good
• How to break up
• How to pace relationship and establish a commitment

Not only could you break down the process of online dating differently, it’s also probably desirable to deconstruct each item on your list one level further.  For example: “How to screen” could include questions to ask, creating reasonable hurdles, obtaining a form of collateral, probing for red flags, etc.

Breaking things down into meaninglessly small pieces is not desirable, but identifying opportunities for learning and improvement can be achieved through deconstruction.

What is in your control?

One of the paradoxes of life is that we don’t really know if anything is truly in our control, but we do know it’s healthy to believe that they are.  Online dating is no exception to this rule.

This statement should not be used to level yourself with harsh internal scoldings when things don’t go the way you hoped.  A healthy attitude is one that treats online dating as a problem to solve.  

Many metaphors would work here, but I like the image of treating online dating as a password to crack.  Designing a program that guesses passwords is a thing that can be done through strategic problem-solving and skill.  However, just because there are skilled and non-skilled ways of breaking into someone’s account does NOT mean that a good program will get into a forbidden account on the first try.

You can always tweak, revise, refine, rework, etc. your dating process.  This does not mean you’ll be perfect at it.  You’ll misjudge people, pursue bad apples, and get stuck with some real duds.  

Some bad outcomes will be preventable in the future, others are the luck of the draw.

Remain optimistic that you can create a positive outcome.  Make your system better.  Get more clear on what you want.  Make the process of meeting people smoother and less painful.  Play the numbers game.  

In short: give yourself the many chances (PLURAL) you need to find what you desire.

Join the discussion

One of the biggest reasons to offer content on online dating as a series is to provide an opportunity for dialogue.  Share your experiences of online dating in the comment section below.

• What are the main challenges you encounter meeting people online?
• What do you find most frustrating?
• Where do you seem to get stuck time and time again? 
• Have you ever had a “breakthrough” in your dating life where suddenly the process just seemed to get easier?