Your Soul Mate Isn’t Online

Modern dating sites plant the same seed into your head: Go online and you’ll find the perfect match.

We each see the same commercials with the attractive, glowing couples canoodling and smiling into each other’s eyes. Wedding dates, engagement dates, quotes about finding the love of their lives float into frame.

I’m here as the lone voice yelling back, “No! Don’t listen to them! Please!”

I cringe at these commercials. I throw pretzels at my screen during these ads.

As an online dating expert, you may be puzzled at my stance. I should be the biggest proponent of online dating there could be. And I am.

There are some things I know for certain about my job and online dating. And like your job, there are things I find very challenging.

In my job, my number one goal is getting daters on dates and meeting people. But that isn’t the hardest part of my job at all.

The hardest part I deal with is daters’ expectations.

We all watch these commercials and the convincing idea that our life’s love could be on the other side of that screen lures us to bite the bait, throw down our credit cards and upload our pictures.

If you got a speech from your mother, it went a little something like this: “I think online dating is great! You can know so much more about a person than you would just randomly at a bar!”

“Use online dating to meet people

and get to know them there.”

We go into online dating hungry for information on others, eager to pick and choose through characteristics and (let’s face it) judge and scrutinize potential matches.

In your brain, you say things like, “I’m looking for my soul mate. I could never be with someone who has attached earlobes.”

You’d never say this out loud because you know it’s ludicrous. But you know you make these snap judgments in your head.

And the whole time you’re caught up in this idea that you’re shopping for the love of your life.

Stop looking for your soul mate online.

Start looking for new people to meet in person, via online.

Here is the bottom line: There is no laundry list of characteristics you can type into a web page that will manufacture your perfect love.

You won’t know your soul mate until you meet your soul mate. And by meet, I mean in person.

Online dating is a catalyst to meet people in person and get to know them there. In person is the only way getting to know someone as a potential romantic partner matters.

And people don’t know how to check the right boxes or say the things to adequately explain themselves. Use online dating to meet people and get to know them there.

Take the expectations off. Laugh at the commercials. Relax the restrictions. Pretend you didn’t see that nostril hair. Uncheck the boxes.

Remember that some people are better in person. Meet some new people and have some fun. I promise you will surprise yourself.