The Online Dating Survival Guide

I turned to online dating for an odd mix of reasons. I wasn't meeting people in college who I really gelled with and I didn't want to try pursuing a relationship with a colleague. After years of hoping for a serendipitous meeting with my perfect someone, I decided it was time to get a little more aggressive with my search for a partner.

1. Don't respond to anyone who starts with something sexual in their first message to you.

If you want a booty call, then sure, sext all you want. But if you're looking for a more serious relationship, don't even bother responding to those "hey sexy" messages.

If you want serious, then save your time for people who want the same thing you do.

2. Don't bother with people who are less than a 60% match.

The great thing about online dating is that you're opening yourself to meet a lot of great people who you might not necessarily run into in your day to day life.

Subsequently, let yourself be picky. Find someone you really like.

3. Find people who have a lot of common interests with you.

This is important for both regular dating and online dating, but it's something you might underestimate the vitality of. You need to have some hobbies and interests in common to really connect with someone and enjoy spending time with them after the honeymoon phase.

My only successful relationships have been with people who I have at least a few common interests and hobbies with. If you don't have a hobby in common, once you've gotten to know each other well enough, you're going to have nothing to do but eat together and go to movies. That's it. Meaningful conversation dies fast.

4. Get a sense of how many people your potential suitor is dating.

I had one guy who asked to reschedule our date planned for a Friday because he had something to do with his parents. My first thought: "How nice!"

Then when I suggested Saturday or Sunday, he admitted he was meeting two different girls on each of those days. He said we could maybe go on a date on Saturday morning before his other date, but confessed he felt a little uncomfortable going on dates with two different girls in one day.

...So how about attempting to date one person at a time, then?

5. Read those profiles carefully.

You can get a good sense about someone from reading their profile. Don't just skim it—give it a solid read through.

The things people reveal about themselves straight off the bat is the first glimpse you get at someone. While the art of writing a dating profile is hard and most of us aren't experts, you can get a vague idea of what someone prioritizes the most from what they write here.

6. Use a service that asks questions and review your prospective match's responses to those questions.

This can be really important. A person might seem perfect, but if you read their responses to certain questions and find out that they're a conservative and you're a liberal, or any other sort of big incompatibility of beliefs like that, it might be pretty hard to bridge a divide like that.

It could be any kind of critical difference. It could be that you're hardcore pro-choice and they're obnoxiously pro-life to the point that they can't even have a reasonable conversation about the science that goes behind these things.

That example runs partially on heteronormativity, so forgive me for that, but you get the idea—whatever kind of partner you're looking for, of any gender, of any sexual identity, read their question responses.

7. Remember, it's okay to follow the one and done rule.

If your first date goes terribly and you're not that into the person, it's completely okay to move on. If you want to be polite, it is good to kindly decline if they invite you onto a second date. If you can handle the conflict, it is a good move to kindly say no rather than to simply ghost the person.

At the end of the day, you do you. If you've turned to a dating app in the first place, it's probably because you're fed up with the selection of people around you. Don't be afraid to be picky, it'll help you find a person you're truly compatible with a whole lot faster.