Advice

Online dating is...well, let's just say it's not the easiest thing you'll ever do. It falls somewhere between “Waiting in line at the DMV” and “Your friend vomiting on you while you hold her hair after a night of too many tequila shots” on the frustration scale.

And yet, we can't keep ourselves away. There's something undeniably alluring about clicking profiles and swiping right, so we make the best of it and keep on going.

No doubt you have an online dating horror story of your own – or maybe even enough to fill an entire anthology – but you don't have to stumble from one bad date to another. There are good dates to be had too, and these 7 rules will help you find them.

1. Get Online: This is gonna sound crazy, but you can't meet someone online if you're not online in the first place. I know taking the plunge is scary, but it's less scary than not taking the plunge. Stop procrastinating and brave that first step.
2. Prioritize: You probably have a laundry list of Wants and Don't Wants, and that list is holding you back. Knowing what you want and need in a relationship is a good thing, but narrowing a person down to a list of qualities is limiting. Is anyone really going to match up with every single thing? Probably not, so prioritize your list and focus only on the top few entries.
3. Understand The Algorithms: Online dating sites seem mysterious at first glance, but their inner workings are hardly sorcery. Algorithms work by analyzing both what you say explicitly and the behavior you exhibit. So if you say you're into tall, dark, and handsome but tend to click on shorter blondes, the algorithm will adjust to present you with matches you'll actually be interested in based on your behavior.
4. Stay Short And Sweet: Shorter profiles tend to fair better than longer profiles. What you want is something brief but informative and intriguing. One sentence won't cut it, but one hundred is too many. The goal is to...
5. Create A Curiosity Gap: All those annoying headlines from BuzzFeed and Upworthy? This is why they're so successful. They create what's called a “curiosity gap” by offering enough information to pique your interest, and nothing more. Describe yourself if a few fascinating words, and leave them wanting more.
6. Be Positive: Use positive language in your online dating profile. Talk about what excites you, what you're passionate about, and the dreams you have for the future. People want to be around others who make them feel good, not those who dwell on the negative.
7. Think Like A Marketer: You are the product you're selling. Who is your audience? And what is most likely to hook them? If you know who you want to attract, you can figure out how to attract them. You'll have the most success when you can target your profile to the partner you want.

Tired of going to the same old clubs, bars and restaurants on the weekend? Are you looking for someplace new to meet people, or even to take a date?

Website AppPicker has come out with a list of the top nightlife apps, so you don’t have to do so much work researching and asking your friends where to go. Now, depending on what you like to do and when you have some free time, your app can be your new BFF.

Following are some suggestions from AppPicker about what you need to download next to improve your social life:

Speed Tapping – Party Night is an unfortunate name for an app, but it has some pretty cool functionality. Search for parties or events in specific locations and on specific dates. First, it provides real-time data from 9PM to 3AM of the hottest spots in town, giving you a “live feed” option if you want to move from place to place depending on what’s happening. It also makes reservations, gets you on guest lists and books tickets for you.

If you like going to clubs, check out DiscoTech – which offers VIP Bottle service, Tickets, and Guestlists. If you live in L.A., you know how long those club lines can be and that only bottle service will get you a seat in a hot bar. So if you’re ready to party, this app provides booking services, event listings, and adding you to guest lists. Plus, there’s free champagne for your first booking.

All In Nightlife is exclusive to Las Vegas, L.A. and New York, where nightlife tends to revolve around getting in to clubs. You can become a VIP with this app – placing yourself on guest lists, making reservations, and even getting discounted hotel rates (which is a great deal if you’re visiting for a girls’ or guys’ weekend).

Nightlife is an app that works through social networks – giving you “inside scoop” on what’s happening from people who are also using the app. It covers 20 cities and is adding more regularly, is free, and you can log in with your Facebook or Twitter account. You can also obtain pricing and menu items from different places suggested.

Night Flyer helps you find deals for happy hour, karaoke, and live music around your city. The app also has exclusive deals with some establishments.

GoinOut is a social networking nightlife app. You receive rewards for using the app, plus it hooks up with Uber so you can get around without having to worry about driving and parking to kill your buzz. You can find out where your friends on the app are headed, and you can add and share photos if you’d like.

Have fun!

A recent article in XO Jane was from a female online dater with a dilemma: she can’t seem to get any responses to her online dating profile. “Online dating has made me feel more alone and rejected than ever,” she said, noting the twenty emails she sent to potential matches with zero responses.

She is mystified by the lack of responses, something that happens to men on a regular basis but a lot less often to women. It does shake your confidence when you put yourself out there and receive no feedback, but why does it become an interesting story when it happens to a woman, but is still a regular occurrence for a man?

There is a double standard with online dating. Men have to reach out far more than women, and they get far more rejections and radio silence. Perhaps there is something to learn here about giving people a chance.

The writer does admit she got messages from a few men who “weren’t her type.” While I’m sure she reached out to the men she found most attractive, I can only assume the guys on the website were doing the same. And if she isn’t going to give a chance to the guys who messaged her, then why should she expect others to give her a chance?

Dating is a numbers game when you are reaching out to people online – you have to put a good amount of effort in, and depending on the site, use its features to your advantage. For instance, if it is OkCupid, answer a lot of questions and post your own for other site users. Start a conversation. Engage with the other online daters. If it’s eHarmony, check your matches every day and complete your entire profile and questionnaire before you opt out. If you are doing Match.com, then make sure you are checking all of your matches, posting new pictures, and changing your profile description on a regular basis to engage new members.

There are so many people online dating that sometimes it can be difficult to stand out from the crowd. But you have to make the effort, use the tools/features provided, and be diligent about checking your matches and reaching out to as many potential dates as possible, even if you aren’t sure about their profile. Remember, someone could be judging you for one line, like if you admit to “liking 90’s music” or are “a fan of the Muppets and cats.” So try not to apply the same judgment to others. Give everyone a chance, even if something in his profile doesn’t click with you.

People are more interesting than a profile, and they deserve a chance, just like you. So expand your options, keep an open mind, be diligent about sending out messages - and watch your own responses increase.

If you’ve spent any time online dating, you’ve run into some bad profiles, and likely some bad dates, too. How many of us have said at some point “online dating sucks” or “I can’t meet any good guys online!”

According to dating coach Evan Marc Katz at a Tedx Talk he did in May, there’s a reason for this negative perception, but it’s not what we think. He points out that men and women think of online dating very differently, because they have different experiences. Namely, men are typically the ones reaching out to women to try and capture attention and women are the ones sifting through a ton of unwanted messages. So neither one is getting what they want, and both are blaming each other.

Men tend to be reactionary when it comes to online dating. Katz claims they feel like failures at it because they don’t seem to get responses right away (and they tend to look for instant gratification), so they feel the pressure to come up with a more winning formula. This formula is casting a wide net – if they reach out to as many women as possible as quickly as possible, they have a better shot at getting responses and hopefully getting to that date.

The women however, are getting either mass emails, emails that are sexually forward, or long essays about why a man would make a good match. None of these tactics work, because women can tell when it’s a mass email, and they typically don’t respond to sexually aggressive or forward emails because it makes them feel unsafe, and they don’t read the long essays because there isn’t enough time! So guys experience more failure, they cast an even wider net, and keep on repeating the same mistakes.

As Katz says, if both genders understood what was going on behind the scenes, they would have a much better time online dating, and they would have more success. He goes on to give some tips to help:

Use the 2/2/2 rule. Katz suggests the following formula (over the course of a week) can accommodate both men’s and women’s objectives: start with 2 emails back and forth on the dating site, then move to 2 emails off the dating site via your personal accounts, then 2 phone calls (not a text), then go on the date. The point is to find a good balance for both of you, which makes the men more successful and the women feel more comfortable interacting. When you step back and try to treat online dating more like meeting for the first time in real life, you’ll be much more successful.

Think of how real-life connections happen. The reason people get frustrated with online dating is because it doesn’t feel as good as meeting in person and having attraction grow organically. But Katz maintains this can happen online, too. It's all about trying to connect instead of moving quickly through a bunch of candidates or dismissing most of your emails. Most guys get impatient, and most women feel uncomfortable unless there is some kind of connection before a first date.

Both sides just have to put in a little effort.

To find out more on how to find someone online you can check our reviews on some of Evan Marc Katz dating guides.

I read this great article in Mind Body Green, listing 10 inspired rules about dating garnered from the author's yoga practice.

While I love a good yoga session, I'm not quite as versed on the yoga sutras as he was. But still...there is something to be said for how yoga can improve your outlook, attitude, and overall well-being, "on and off the mat" as my yoga instructor says, even if you don't know all the Sanskrit terminology. Because the most important thing a good yoga practice teaches us is to turn inward.

With this in mind, I've put together my own top 5 list of what yoga has taught me about dating:

Just breathe.

Nothing is more important in yoga than breathing. It is the essence of life. It also is a way we can allow ourselves to calm down, be present, and turn that constant stream of mind chatter off so we are more in tune with our mind and body. This is helpful on a date because often we are worrying about what he's thinking, projecting our desires onto our dates, or otherwise not enjoying the moment. Just remember to breathe.

Pay attention to your movements.

We don't always realize how we come across to others, especially if we're busy, stressed, or otherwise not in the mood for connecting. Or we might be so nervous we don't realize our dates can see this. Approach your date with kindness and an open mind, ready to learn something new, and you'll both have a better time.

Trust your instincts.

You know yourself better than anyone. If something doesn't feel right, pay attention. If a relationship isn't working out, if he's not respecting you, if she is non-committal, then trust your inner voice enough to walk away.

Some of your muscles are tighter than others.

We all have weaknesses when it comes to dating, just like some muscles or joints in our bodies are weaker than others. We must take care of these places, but we also must try to open them up, work out the kinks, which can be uncomfortable. When you keep pushing forward gently, paying attention to the weak spots and nurturing yourself through, you move forward in your practice---just like in life.

Take a few risks.

Are you afraid to do a headstand, or frog pose? There are some parts of yoga that seem intimidating, and that's okay. When you push yourself to try a pose you don't like (provided you're not injuring yourself), you will undoubtedly feel better than sitting it out because you're scared. When you take a few safe risks on the mat, you're more willing to put yourself out there in life.

Ever wanted to get inside the minds of thousands of daters to see what makes everyone tick? Maybe that seems cool, or maybe you’d rather sit in a dentist’s chair for five hours, but either way – it does make you curious.

So it’s no surprise that OkCupid Co-Founder Christian Rudder has decided to harness the power of OkCupid’s user data and create a book that piques our curiosity. After all, we all watched with fascination as the dating site’s blog OkTrends revealed its latest research, informing us of what types of people we are attracted to, we’re doing wrong in our online dating profiles, or how to effectively message other users. Rudder found interesting trends in the details, helping us ask questions we didn’t even know to ask. For instance, why does the angle of the camera matter in a photo, or how you smile? Why is it preferable to write a less descriptive profile? Why is it more attractive to have a guitar in your hand than a tennis racket, or possess an unusually-shaped nose than to be considered average-looking? Or the million-dollar question: what do people lie about the most when they are online dating?

OkCupid has given us the sometimes surprising preferences of online daters, based on all of the data they mine from their thousands of users. Because of the site’s format of creative questions and answers, it’s allowed them to dig deeper than most.

OkTrends has been on hiatus since 2011, when Rudder started taking the information to compile it into a book, rather than just posting the information for free on their website. Rudder’s new book is called Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One’s Looking), which comes out on Sept. 9 and examines interactions for insights into whom and how we date.

For one of Dataclysm’s studies, Rudder analyzed how men and women approach attraction. It turns out that as women get older, they like older men. Men, on the other hand, consistently prefer younger and younger women. Men will message women close to their own age, but only up to a point. For example, men in their mid-40s rarely talk to women older than 30. “We have a lot of serial daters on the site—men who just keep dating women 10 years younger than they are,” Rudder told Business Week in a recent interview. “Eventually their tactics start to fail, and the young ladies they’re messaging begin rejecting them. The result is a lot of 40-year-old men and women who find it hard to get a date.”

OkCupid isn’t worried about user backlash for mining their personal data. Rudder recently wrote a post to address this issue, pointing out that all websites experiment on users, admitting that OkCupid once tested its matchmaking algorithm by telling users who were not suited for each other that they were a near-perfect match. “We got maybe five complaints,” Rudder told Business Week.

Since OkCupid users don’t pay for the site or its advice, does Rudder have an audience willing to buy his book? We’ll have to wait and see.

Check out our review of OkCupid for more information on this popular dating site.