Online dating can be a serious grind at times. Even on CMB, where your daily matches are highly curated and personalized to your network and tastes!
Can’t we just meet people organically and naturally within our daily lives? Oh, you mean the daily life where you’re not in school, working full-time, and mostly just head home after work? Yeah… good luck with that. It’s 2014, and if you haven’t noticed yet, online dating is the new organic!
By the time you are connected on CMB, the goal should be to begin a conversation as organically as this new medium allows.
Therefore, from my years as an online dating coach, (including authoring a book specifically for CMB) I present my 5 Fundamental Texting Commandments.
- Thou shalt actually message them. We all know that there is a horrendous drop-off between who you match with, and who you actually talk to with online dating. Maybe you’re busy, you need to travel, or you just plain forget sometimes. I get that. But barring life circumstances, there is no reason to not take a chance on beginning a conversation with someone that there is a mutual attraction with. That’s the beauty of the mutual-like system – rejection is an afterthought. You’re also not committing to marry them by starting a conversation. Go for it!
- Thou shalt not job interview. Nothing is more tiring or annoying than having the same conversation every day. What did you do this weekend? Where are you from? What do you do? Here’s a tip – pick a topic, stick to it for a while, and dig into it.
- Thou shalt get offline as soon as possible. A point that needs to be repeated – you’re on a DATING site/app. Ain’t nobody got time to message for weeks upon weeks before meeting up. Wouldn’t you rather test if you have actual chemistry rather than text chemistry? By the way, if you’re at the point where you feel like you can ask someone out… you probably could have a few texts ago!
- Thou shalt not use texts that are dependent on responses. You’re having a great conversation. You ask them a question. And then they disappear for 8 hours. All the while you’re anxiously checking your texts because you asked them a direct question, and they failed to answer! That means they’re ignoring you, right? Did they get bored of you? Did a truck run over them? Wait, are they still even on the app? See this insane train of thought? If you don’t use texts that are dependent on responses, you won’t always be waiting on one and driving yourself crazy.
- Thou shalt not wait hours to respond just to manipulate your availability. Let’s be better than the 3-day rule of texting, or whatever the kids are calling it these days. Feel free to not reply to them within seconds of receiving their texts, but don’t play it cool by always waiting hours or days to reply. It’s transparent, passive-aggressive, and usually serves to annoy the other party than entice them. Here’s a simple guideline: mirror the intervals at which they reply to you!
Now that you’ve got messaging swag, learn how to improve your profile with 3 easy steps!