How to Play Fair

When you are using an online dating website, it is all too easy to feel detached from the other people on the website as you can’t see them face-to-face until you arrange to go on a date with someone. However, every single person who you encounter on the site is a real person and has feelings. So it’s important to consider other peoples’ feelings during the whole process.

Don’t ignore messages

When you receive a message, bear in mind that they have put time and effort into writing it and are probably pretty keen to hear from you.

If you are interested in them, make sure to write back to them at your earliest convenience. If you are not keen on them, try to send them a message that says ‘thanks, but no thanks’.

As a template, you could say, “Thank you for your message, unfortunately I don’t think that we would be a good match, but I wish you all the best in your search”.

It may seem a little mean, but it’s much nicer than leaving them without a response.

Don’t send a horrified response to a message

Even if you really aren’t attracted to the person who has sent you a message, don’t launch a person attack on them for sending you a message. Saying “Yuk, I can’t believe that you thought that I would like you” is really rude. It will not help your search and it will upset the recipient. Please opt to send the ‘thanks, but no thanks’ message instead.

Don’t stop contact without saying so

You’ve started a conversation with someone and it’s all going well until you discover something that you really don’t like about them. It may be tempting to stop contact and just to ignore them, rather than telling them how you feel.

This will make them wonder if you have disappeared from the face of the planet, or if you have another partner.

Don’t leave your profile up when you start seeing someone

It might seem like a good idea to leave your profile up just-in-case it doesn’t work out, but it will upset your date and will cause problems if someone else becomes fixated on you.

When you start seeing someone, you can hide your profile until you are either happy to remove your profile from the website, or you can make it live again if it doesn’t work out.