Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer - Sex For Dummies

There are more “serious” apps that charge a monthly fee, supposedly using science to put you together with someone whom you’ll find appealing, while others are free. Which type of app you should rely on to find love depends on how much time you’re willing to invest. If you’re paying for the service, hopefully the weeding out process will be somewhat effective. If it’s free, then you become the one doing the initial weeding. And if you have a lot of money to burn, there remain matchmakers who work with you one-on-one.

You might also think of using a dating app that appeals to people who are similar to you in some way. Some apps are for an older crowd like Our Time or Silver Singles. Apps like BlackPeopleMeet or BlackSingles.com are, obviously, for African Americans while LatinAmericanCupid.com is for Latinos. And there are plenty of niche dating services whose titles are fairly self-explanatory including: Fitness Singles, BiCupid, Military Cupid, Dating4Disbled, and PostiveSingles. By helping you to hone in on other singles who have something in common with you, you’ll be increasing your chances of meeting with success.

Dating apps are often more suited to metropolitan areas, where there’s a large pool of single people. A dating app does you no good if most of the people on it live far away. Before you decide on an app, see which ones seem to have the most people who live nearby. Ask your friends which one they recommend. By doing some early research you won’t waste as much time becoming interested in people who aren’t suitable because of the distance you’d have to cross just to have a cup of coffee together.

For many, it’s the swiping away aspect that’s most appealing. If one of these folks has ten minutes with nothing to do, swiping takes the place of playing Candy Crush. But with so many people adopting the attitude that this is more entertainment than a serious attempt to find true love, what are the odds of meeting with success? And that’s especially true because some of those doing the swiping are actually in a committed relationship — they’re looking for a safe way to cheat, not establish a relationship.

Again, the trick is to slow down. Don’t just wear out your fingers swiping but spend the time to look more in depth at those you discover online by actually reading their profiles. Do this even of people whose picture doesn’t really appeal to you. You’re not a casting director or editor of a fashion magazine. You’re looking for qualities that run deeper than the surface. Make yourself believe that, and then using an app can become more rewarding.

There was a time I worried that the dangers of meeting total strangers were too great for app dating to be acceptable. But with so many people now actively taking part, the danger, while still there, becomes less. In other words, as the number of people using these apps grows, the percentage who are weirdos becomes smaller. But never forget that the weirdos are still out there.

There’s another danger presented by these apps, and that’s the one posed to existing relationships. If you have a fight with your partner, you’re unlikely to run to a singles bar to check out what alternatives are out there. But what about opening Tinder and swiping for a while? These apps can make it appear too easy to change partners, and so instead of being willing to work on a relationship, many people instead resolve to leave. In some cases the relationship wasn’t salvageable, but I would advise that if your relationship is rocky, make an honest effort to make repairs before you begin swiping.

A quick word about the type of picture you post online. It’s been shown that an action picture receives more of a positive response than a static one. Plus, a picture of you doing something you enjoy sends two pieces of information — what you look like and what you like to do.

This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t pick the best possible photo of you playing golf, for example. You could even hire a professional photographer to take the snapshot of you swinging a club, if you’re so inclined. Just make it an action shot rather than just you looking into the camera the way you did in your high school yearbook.

I witnessed a young lady taking a wide variety of selfies at a tourist spot in Greece. From the way she was posing, it was clear that these photos were for a dating app. She was being smart because the gorgeous background was definitely more stimulating than a blank wall. So when taking a picture for a dating app, think before you snap.

When you test drive a car, only you can reject the car. But dating is a two-way proposition, and so you’re bound to be rejected occasionally, or maybe over and over. Rejection is hard but becomes less so when it occurs regularly. The danger is that you put up a wall in order to protect yourself from being disappointed, and that in turn causes you to hide your true personality — thus making it even more likely that you’ll be rejected.

Is it worthwhile to be rejected again and again, each rejection delivering a blow to your ego? If in the end you’re going to discover true love, then the answer would be yes. But to hasten the pace of getting that one Yes you’re seeking, I’d suggest learning from those rejections and seeing whether there’s something you might be doing that is putting others off.

As app dating has evolved, so have those who abuse this new method of finding a partner. That’s not to say that everyone you’d meet using the old methods had perfect manners, but I do find that some of these new ways of making people feel miserable are almost worse as they can be such time wasters.

Ghosting, which you probably know but in case you don’t, means someone just stops communicating without giving any reason why. Suddenly your texts and any other forms of communication might just as well have not been sent.Would you ghost someone? If you would, or if you have, then you shouldn’t feel too badly if someone does it to you. If it’s behavior that you condemn, then chalk up being ghosted as part of the process of discovery and realize that you just learned something about this person that would have made him or her unacceptable to you in the long run.

Benching is when someone is stringing you along. It can be more harmful than ghosting because it gives you hope and might cause you to wait for this person, which is just a waste of time. According to my philosophy, wasting time is the worst thing you can do since we all have so precious little of it. So if you sense that you might be on the bench, forget about this person as quickly as possible and move on.

Orbiting occurs when you think you’ve been ghosted but discover that the person is still checking up on you on various social media sites. Is he/she still interested? Is this a form of flirting or just being curious? It’s hard to tell, which makes this habit very annoying.

Breadcrumbing occurs when someone is leaving a trail of social “breadcrumbs” so that you assume there’s some interest, but you don’t know for sure because there’s no direct contact, and you want to scream, “&^%* or get off the pot!”