Full disclosure, I am by no means an expert when it comes to online dating but I do have a lot of experience with it. I probably online dated for about three years on and off. You should know that I have only ever had three boyfriends. I pretty much didn’t date from the time I was 18/19 to about 28. That’s 10 years people! I had NO clue what I was doing when I started dating. I worked an insanely time consuming job that I loved, but took a lot away from my social life. While all of my friends were dating and getting married I was hanging out with middle and high school kids, traveling around the world and throwing amazingly fun parties. I wasn’t meeting anyone in “real life” so I was encouraged nudged to try online dating. I had very little experience with online dating or really dating in general but I figured, why not? I tried what felt like ALL of the sites; EHarmony, Match, Tinder (no judgment), Bumble (one of my favorites), Christian Mingle (bleh!), and Plenty of Fish (aka POF).

I might not be much of an expert but I would say I was pretty successful because I landed one amazing guy.

Here are just a few tips for online dating:

1. Post real pictures.

Make sure that your pictures accurately represent who you are. I know, I know, that’s asking a lot but the saying is true, “a picture paints a thousand words.” I was super intimated by so many of the guys pictures online. These guys had pictures of them skydiving, rock climbing, and traveling the world. I’m all about traveling the world and getting your adeline fix (which is not for me) but what about the guy who works a “regular” job and doesn’t plunge to their death out of planes?! I wanted to meet that guy.

The worst pictures to me were the ones of a guy in front of a fancy AF car or my personal favorite of a guy naked behind a guitar. Don’t worry you couldn’t see anything 🙂 I felt so lame at first because the only pictures I had of myself was reading a book, at a coffee shop, or some selfies that I reluctantly took for my profile and of course a couple of my travels. At the end of the day those were the photos that represented me in my element.

Make sure that your pictures are recent, meaning, do not post pictures from 10 years ago! Most likely you don’t look like that anymore, time does a lot of things to the body. Allowing the other person to get a preview of what you truly look like is the first step.

2. Make the first move.

Ladies, we’ve been told the majority of our lives to wait for men to make the first move. Let me tell you, that doesn’t always work. Why do women have to sit back and wait?! If you want to meet someone then make the move! Go after what you want girl! You might not be meeting “the one” but you might get some practice talking to someone. A little flirting never hurt anybody.

Send a message saying hi and ask them a question about something in their profile, make a cheesy joke, or even compliment them if you’re feeling super confident. You want to engage the person and say something to them that asks for a response back to hopefully start a conversation.

3. Don’t be so picky!

This is big, I know but hear me out! There was a time that I didn’t want to talk to a guy online because he was wearing a shirt I didn’t like or had a grammatical error in his profile. In those moments I was doing two things; 1. being judgmental and 2. being closed minded. Was I really not going to talk to someone because they had a job I didn’t understand, or one of his pictures weren’t up to my standards? Talk about me sitting all high and mighty behind my computer screen.

A few months before meeting Joe (the hubs) I decided to try my best at being more open-minded when talking to guys online. I came to the conclusion that if I expected a guy to be open to dating me, I had to stop shutting them down over silly reasons. Sometimes we just need to give someone a chance. On the other hand, sometimes we give the wrong people too many chances, especially when they’re super cute. Major deal breakers are things like religion, desire to be married, addiction, anger, and kids. Those are big things that you need to stick to your guns about; but someone wearing a bad outfit or liking a different genre of music, or not having perfect teeth are not. Don’t shut people down so easily.

4. Don’t put all your eggs in 1 basket.

I think it’s a good idea to talk to multiple people at once. Some people might not agree but I think it’s a good thing. Whenever I would start talking to someone that was “my type” or we “clicked” I would automatically get excited and hopeful. There’s nothing wrong with hope but a lot of times it’s a big letdown. Usually when you’re online dating your desire is to meet someone to date and hopefully get married to. You might start

envisioning a life with them and put the cart before the horse. Remind yourself that you are just trying to meet and get to know someone. Get to know them, go on several dates and then see if you actually click enough to hit the pause button on meeting other people. Typically I stopped talking to other guys after the second date with someone.

I would say try and limit yourself to three people, anymore than that it gets really difficult to keep track of the conversations. A lot of times conversations fizzle out really quickly so it’s not hard to talk to a couple of them at once. It helps to keep things more light and not so serious. Just because you finally get to talk to someone doesn’t mean they are your someone.

5. Be yourself.

This is key. If you can’t do this then you should probably spend more time getting to know who you are and what you want. Don’t pretend to like the same activities just to impress them in some way. They might respect your honesty more than anything. It’s a lot easier to be super honest with someone when you don’t like them as much because you’re trying to impress them less. Make sure you are honest across the board no matter who you are talking to. This doesn’t mean go ahead and tell them all your deepest darkest secrets but if I had met someone that wanted to have a running partner I would have to tell them that I hate running because I might not be the type of person they are looking for. You don’t want to fool anyone. It’s better to be who you are with a person you really enjoy and upfront with them so they get to know the real you because I’m sure  you’re awesome!

If you have any questions about online dating feel free to ask!