Building Your Dating Confidence

“Everything worth doing starts with being scared”. OK, so Art Garfunkel wasn’t known as a great philosopher, but there’s a lot of truth in his statement and internet dating is no exception to rule. It can be daunting writing a profile for all to see and sending messages to people, but as Art says it’s worth doing.

So how do you go about building up your dating confidence if you’ve been in a troubled relationship or if you’ve been single for a long time?

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Get out and about

Meeting new people is a great way to rebuild your confidence, so next time your friend invites you to a gathering where you only know a few people, bite the bullet and say yes. If you are feeling nervous, ask your friend to introduce you to people, so that you don’t have to make the first move.

Meeting new friends will give you practice at making small talk, which will lesson your nerves when it comes to meeting up with a new date.

Share your best qualities

It’s a very British thing to put yourself down, but when you do meet new people try to talk about yourself in a positive way. Think about what you’re good at, what your friends and family know you for and what your biggest achievements are.

Thinking about all your best qualities will make you feel more positive and you’ll be surprised how well people will react to you when you take the “I’m just…” or “I’m not very good at…” out of your conversations.

Look good, feel good

If all else fails, give yourself a bit of a makeover. Have a haircut or get a new outfit to make yourself feel a bit more confident.

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Ask for help

Lots of people come to Muddy Matches through recommendations from friends who have found love on the site. If you have been directed to Muddy Matches through a friend, ask them for tips about how they found their partner. Did they check their account every day? Did they take a chance on someone who they wouldn’t normally have gone for?

Take it slowly

Once you’ve got your profile ready, with help from your friend, take things slowly while you get used to online dating. Take a look around and save some searches so that you can look again with the same criteria e.g. within 50 miles and aged 30-45. Then take a look at the new members to see if there is anyone new who has joined that you would like to get in contact with. Once you have found people who you would like to contact, it is a good idea to add them to your favourites list. That way they will know that you are interested and may add you to their favourites too.

Finally, when you are ready to contact people, you can upgrade your account to become a subscriber and begin to send messages. Take a look at the messages tab for advice for about to say in your messages.

If you’re really not ready

If you’ve written your dating profile, but don’t feel ready to start dating just yet, you can hide your profile. Hiding your profile means that other people won’t be able to see it, but it is still available for you to go back and edit it in the future.