How to Get Over Online Rejection

If you've online dated for any length of time, you know it can be an emotional rollercoaster. You spend time creating your profile, agonizing over pictures to post, and searching through a seemingly endless list of candidates.

At first, it can be exciting. There are so many people to choose from, how can you effectively narrow your playing field? You send off messages to the best looking women, or the most charming men. You write witty and funny musings about yourself in the form of flirtatious banter. You wink at them, send questions, or poke them depending on the site.

And then you wait.

Sometimes you wait to hear back from a particular man or woman that intrigued you more than all the others, only to get nothing in return. Or you see that the object of your affection has viewed your profile and decided not to respond. Or worse yet, you get a message saying "I'm not interested", and you want to remove every picture from the profile you painstakingly put together. It can be a major blow to the ego to be rejected by someone from only a brief online interaction.

The key to keeping your sanity and not letting yourself get down is to reign in your feelings and remember that you're not the only one experiencing rejection. It's easy to blow someone off when you don't have to do it face-to-face. Dating is a numbers game to start, and online dating only increases the numbers. You might meet more people, but you'll also experience more snubs and rejection. Don't take it personally. Your online matches don't know you at all.

If you've been messaging back and forth with your object of affection and suddenly she disappears, don't automatically assume you said something wrong or that she's some kind of gold-digger or player. When you're online dating, you are interacting with many different people. It's possible she started dating someone, and isn't going to remove her profile or respond to anyone else until she sees where the relationship can go. That's her choice, and it's yours, too. So don't keep messaging her, move on.

The main concern is that you don't take things personally. Online behavior is different from real life behavior. It's easier to go silent and disappear when you're searching and emailing from the privacy of your own laptop, so many people do. This isn't a reflection on you. Don't dwell on the rejection, move on to other matches and see if there's more of a connection.