Matching

There is a temptation many online daters succumb to, perhaps without realizing it. While the point of online dating is to widen your social circles and meet people you otherwise wouldn’t meet in real life, there is unfortunately a timing issue.

Most people start communicating with their matches online before they make plans to meet in person. There is a “getting to know you” phase, complete with flirtations, shared intimacies, and lots of texts back and forth. For some, this process can go on and on for weeks before the two decide to meet in person.

By that time, anticipation has been built. Maybe you throw on your cutest outfit or favorite pair of heels, or style your hair for the occasion. You have butterflies in your stomach, excited to think how well you connected online – so surely you must also connect in person, right?

Not so much. Many online relationships fizzle by the time two people meet and discover that in person, there is just no chemistry between them. Certain personality affectations are hard to guage online, and people get a false sense of who the other person really is when they only communicate online.

For one, it is easier to fantasize when you aren’t seeing each other face to face. Maybe your date is really witty over text, but avoids eye contact in person. Maybe he’s painfully shy, or maybe he’s not exactly what you pictured in your head. Regardless, there is a gap between the person you fantasized about and the person sitting in front of you.

Secondly, people tend to cultivate a false sense of intimacy online. It’s easy to share more personal information when you aren’t looking each other in the eye. When you date in person, there is a more gradual build, as there is a certain level of trust that has to be gained before you open up. When you are only communicating online however, it’s easy to overshare. You can text at all hours, so there aren’t any boundaries for appropriate timing, or what you can feel free to say. Maybe you are more bold about flirting online, and would never say those things to someone in person. So what happens when you finally meet? There is a certain vulnerability that can make both people feel uncomfortable or awkward around each other, which can lead to a lack of chemistry.

And lastly, you don’t want to maintain an online relationship with someone who keeps putting off meeting you in person. They might not be who they claim they are. Do you really want to make an emotional investment in someone who isn’t eager to meet you in person, no matter the reason?

It is better to meet in real life sooner rather than later. Don’t build up an online relationship thinking it’s the same thing as actually dating. It’s not. Meeting face to face is the only way to assess how compatible and attracted to each other you are.

We all have that friend: the one who dates jerk after jerk, ending up in a string of relationships so bad they make you question why anyone bothers dating at all.

A new app helps you give that friend's hopeless love life a lift. Spritzr allows you to refer potential love interests to single friends using Facebook. With you as matchmaker, you no longer have to put up with your friend's endless parade of unsuitable suitors.

To sign up for Spritzr, you must first indicate if you're a Dater or a Matchmaker. If you choose the latter, start suggesting friends to each other. Friends who indicate mutual interest will be sent notifications and can connect. If mutual interest isn't established, no notifications are sent and no one is the wiser.

If you’ve ever dated online, you have probably encountered a match who wasn’t completely honest. Maybe he claimed to be 5-foot-ten in his profile, but when you showed up in heels for the date, he was definitely more like five-foot-five. Or perhaps the last girl you met posted a photo from a couple of years ago, when she was 20 pounds lighter.

Do you think your dates misrepresented themselves? Do they believe they were lying in their dating profiles, or simply “enhancing” how they see themselves?

Most people would agree that these types of “enhancements” are misleading. But when it comes to your own dating profile, do you hold yourself to the same ethical standard you apply to others, or do you shave a couple of years off your age or add a little more to your annual salary?

Lying in dating profiles is a slippery slope. While it’s true that people do filter according to certain preferences more than others – like height, age, and weight – does this mean you should fudge the numbers so that you are more likely to be included in someone’s search? If you do, then what happens when you meet in person and you have to explain yourself? Or after you’ve been on several dates with someone you’re really attracted to, and she starts making cultural references that you don’t relate to? Do you fall silent or pretend you know what she’s talking about?

It’s easy to get caught up in your deceit. The problem is, when you lie in your profile, it’s much more difficult to continue in a relationship that seems promising. You have started off on the wrong foot, and your date might be resentful that you lied (even if he did, too).

It might seem counter-intuitive to be called out on your lie when your date might have misrepresented himself, too. But it happens. This is where so much mistrust has built up in online dating. Everyone is so busy trying to “get past” the filters people put in place. But if you take this route, it works against you. Plus, it will make you distrust more online daters, and probably set your filters with even narrower focus. For instance, if you set an age range filter of matches between the ages of 25 and 40, but you meet a few 45 year-olds who fudged their ages, chances are you are going to set your filters to a more narrow focus of 25-35, assuming you will get guys who are actually 40 or younger.

Instead of trying to outsmart the filters on dating apps, or trying to widen your options by lying, try taking the honest route. See if your dates respond more positively to you. And see if you have a better, more comfortable time with them.

We could all use more honesty in online dating.

Every online dater has been there: stuck in an endless exchange of messages. When the end finally comes, it almost always happens one of two ways.

Option one: you meet in person, realize you're not at all compatible, and are furious about how much time you wasted on pointless messages. Option two: you never even get to that point. Someone just ghosts and the conversation is over by default.

Rarely does it end with option three: you meet, click instantly, and ride off into the proverbial sunset together

A new dating app is hoping to spare you some of that trouble. Whim promises to cut to the chase and set up actual dates - with "no endless texting" and "no flakes or fakes."

The process is exactly as simple as it sounds. Users create profiles and then specify which days they're free to go on a date. The date can be any night of the current week or a recurring weekly evening. After that, users browse profiles and indicate who they are interested in meeting.

When two users express interest in each other, Whim automatically sets up a time and place for the date, based on your availability and preferences (a user who doesn't drink, for example, won't be sent to a bar). Users can message each other about logistics, but it isn't required.

OkCupid alum Eve Peters started the venture two years ago. She told TechCrunch that Whim “surveyed the users of online dating apps and found that matches resulted in dates less than 10 percent of the time.” In contrast, matches on Whim resulted in dates more than 90 percent of the time.

The idea has its perks. Whim requires only a small time investment, which is increasingly important to users. It also guarantees that, when someone matches with you, they're actually looking to go on a date. A right swipe is a meaningful action on Whim and users have to think more seriously before they do it.

The idea also has its downsides. Those who are concerned with safety may not take to Whim's insta-date premise. For them, messaging before a meeting is an important part of the getting-to-know-you process – a filter for creeps, weirdo's, and other undesirables.

To counteract those concerns, Whim's dates all take place in public places. Peters also says the service relies on “high human touch” to ensure safety. All profiles are read by Whim team members, and users are encouraged to give post-date feedback so anyone objectionable can be removed.

The service is currently free and available only in the San Francisco Bay Area. Peters said she plans to charge $10 a month and launch in a second city by the end of the year. You can download the iOS app here. An Android version is expected in 2016.

Tired of Tinder and endless swiping that leads nowhere? While the dating app is popular, it’s leaving most online daters a little cold. Many come across fake profiles, or they match with someone only to have them disappear before actually meeting in person. And then there is the whole hook-up reputation.

So what is an online dater to do? New dating apps like The Grade and Bumble are setting out to alleviate online dating fatigue by putting their resources into creating more quality matches, so users can have a better overall experience. Specifically, these apps analyze and the behavior of their own members, so other users can see how they rate.

Bumble, founded by former Tinder co-founder Whitney Wolfe, aims to give power back to female daters. Bumble only allows the woman to reach out and make the first move – not the guy. So she is in control of the dating experience. A recent article in International Business Times revealed that a new feature Bumble will be rolling out is a verification program called “VIBee” -- a system that rewards users with a badge if they have good behavior on the app. The feature will aim to discourage users from nonstop swiping (left or right), and from spam messaging. If a match sees you have the badge, you’re more likely to be contacted – or so the thinking goes.

The Grade operates in a similar fashion, and as the name suggests – grades people on their behavior while using the app. The grading system is three-fold: you are "graded" based on how complete your profile is, how long it takes you to respond to messages, and the quality of the messages you send. In other words, the app will analyze message quality, including length, spelling mistakes, slang and hostile words and then assign you a letter grade, like in school. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really check context, so while some words might be “red flags” in certain contexts but not others, you could be penalized for using them at all.

Founders of The Grade pride themselves on the fact that they are weeding daters out based on how they behave. With about 100,000 downloads of The Grade so far, approximately 1,000 have been expelled and 2,000 are in danger of “failing.”

Cliff Lerner, founder of The Grade, told International Business Times: “We’re not saying we’re going to take on Tinder. We don’t want every user. All of our users are going to be high quality and accountable for their behavior. A lot of people will be kicked off.”

Lerner’s app focused on the complaints he kept hearing from female online daters, who were asking for an app that allowed them to handle offensive or hostile messages from men. Most women who have online dated have encountered such messages from time to time, which has created a huge trust problem with online dating apps and services.

Behavioral monitoring might be the next Tinder after all, at least for female daters.

A recent article in Vanity Fair made the argument that apps like Tinder have ruined dating. Reporter Nancy Jo Sales interviewed single twenty-somethings to get their impressions of online dating, and it wasn’t pretty. They admit that “Tinder sucks” and yet they still keep swiping for lack of a better way to date.

Part of the problem, she argues, is that people have a hook-up mentality with dating apps, and men especially. They meet girls to have sex under the guise of pretending to date them, and women have been burned more than once – making them skeptical that any guy wants a relationship.

This argument isn’t a new one. But the reporter feels that dating apps are the real problem – the technology, not the people using them. Let me be more precise: dating apps make it easier than ever to meet new people, providing a way for those who are averse to commitment to do a date-and-dump.

The problem I see with this argument is that it assumes technology is the problem. If we ditched dating apps and online dating in general and went back to an “easier time” – say 1995 – when dating was supposedly alive and well, and all single people were looking for long-term romance. But this just wasn’t the case. In fact, people would hook up and avoid commitment with relative ease – they just did it in person at bars and clubs, rather than through a dating app. Maybe their choices were limited, but the behavior wasn’t much better.

Remember The Rules – dating advice lexicon of that decade? It centered around dealing with men who had commitment issues, basically teaching women how to use their sexuality and femininity to get what they wanted – a relationship.

We’ve come a lot further in our relationship progress in my opinion, partly in thanks to online dating. Dating apps have helped make online dating mainstream. They have allowed shy types to interact more easily with new people. And yes – while some people do use them for hooking up, many others are looking for real love.

Dating takes time. It takes meeting a lot of people before a connection happens. That is the nature of dating – and with a dating app, the haystack is considerably bigger when you are just trying to find that one needle. So it will take you that much longer.

Instead of getting discouraged and giving up dating apps and online dating altogether, it’s time for a different approach. Let’s embrace online dating. Be truthful about what you want so you don’t waste someone else’s time. And most importantly, be respectful to your dates and you’ll find yourself meeting people who will respect you in return.