Step one to successful online dating…breathe. If you skip step one at any point in the process, you’re going to fail. Sorry to sound so dramatic, but it baffles us how many people we see let online dating overtake their life and overwhelm them. When this happens, you can’t function properly, you start missing great Matches in front of you, and you get stressed and fed up with the whole process.

Breathe.

What we hope to be able to do today in this post is walk you through why it’s important that you slow down, how you can slow down, and what you can expect to see change when you slow down. Online dating needs to be something that you look forward to, not something that controls you and brings you unbearable levels of anxiety.

Have you ever seen a little kid in a candy store? Imagine what would happen if there were no adults around and you let that kid do as they please in that Candy Store. What would happen? Well, we can assume that kid would not know what to do with themselves. They would start eating every piece of candy they could get their hands on until they were sick and laying on the ground unable to move in a candy coma.

This is what online dating has a tendency to be like for a lot of new online daters. If you’ve been out of the scene for a long time or haven’t seen a quality match in months or years, online dating sites can feel like a candy store. You go from seeing no matches to all of a sudden seeing a seemingly endless number of quality matches. Not only do you see these matches, but you’re free to talk with them and indulge as much as your heart can handle.

What This Can Cause

This is a great thing, right? Well, here’s the problem. We have a tendency to turn into that little kid in the candy store and try and talk to every single potential match under the sun. This compounds if we’re getting a lot of messages from Potential Matches as well.  Without even realizing it, we end up spending hours and hours messaging back and forth with our matches. We start to get them confused and try and come up with as many ways as possible that we can respond quicker.

Basically, quantity takes precedent over quality. Do you think this is a recipe for success dating? Not only are your potential matches going to get frustrated with you, you’re going to burn yourself out. You’re going to get tired and frustrated and then you’re not even going to want to talk to any of your potential matches. Both of these things can cause you to miss out on that special someone that’s out there looking for you.

How would you respond if a match you were talking to was only giving you quick short responses and took forever to get back to you? How would you feel if they forgot basic things you told them? We bet you wouldn’t feel great about it and would probably end up telling that person to kick rocks.

You need to minimize the number of people you’re talking to at once. You also need to make sure that you’re not spending too much time on your search. A little bit of time each day will go a long way. Can you talk to multiple people at once? Of course you can. You just need to make sure that you are not spreading yourself too thin.

How Can You Slow Things Down

Here are a few online dating tips to help you slow things down and make sure that you don’t let the process overtake your life.

First, be more selective with your matches. You don’t have to talk in-depth to every single person that messages you. Use their profile to your advantage and see if they are someone that is worth your time. If they aren’t, politely let them know you aren’t interested and save your time for those matches that are more in line with what you are looking for.

Second, don’t feel like you have to respond immediately to every message. It’s totally ok if it takes you a few days to get back to someone or you set aside some time each morning or night to respond to your messages. Even if the people you’re talking to are responding right away, they need to realize that you have more going on outside of online dating. If you struggle with this, try keeping the apps off of your phone and only responding from your desktop. This will ensure that you don’t get the urge to respond every single time a message comes through.

Third, limit yourself to one quality site at a time. It can be tempting to join a bunch of dating sites at the same time to spread your net as wide as possible. The problem with this is that even a few matches on each site will keep you overloaded. Find a site that you like and one that has the type of quality you are looking for. This does NOT mean the free sites. Spend a few bucks and get a membership to a site that is worth it. One paid quality online dating site can do the work of all of the free sites combined. Trust us on this one; it’s worth the small investment.

What Can You Expect to See

If you follow these tips, you’ll see a lot of great things change in your dating life. First, you’re not going to resent it. It will not feel like a job or a chore. It’s going to feel like the fun and exciting experience that finding love is supposed to be. Second, you’re going to see increased results. By putting more time and effort into fewer matches, you’re going to see better results. You’ll be able to tell quicker if a match is someone special or someone that is not right for you.

Remember, it doesn’t take hundreds of singles to find that special someone. It only takes one. If you’re not taking your time, you may end up missing out on the match that you’ve been waiting for. It can be tempting to go crazy and talk to everyone under the sun, but you’re only going to end up burnt out and no further along than you are today.

Breathe. Just breathe and you’ll find what you’re looking for.