Could You be Addicted to Online Dating?

I often get asked if I get hit on by my male clients. It’s a natural question, and it’s certainly a valid concern for any man I date personally.

However, the interesting theme I’ve noticed is most of my male clients seem to be more excited by the prospect of me helping them get multiple dates, and the idea of pursuing singular me never looks like the better option.

In other words, they place their money on the two birds in the bush. I am grateful for this because it helps me avoid awkward working situations, but there is an important theme developing here that spans both men and women: The excitement of having a lot of choices stops you from ever making singular decisions.

Signing up is easy and it’s fun. As soon as you do, you’re flooded with just how many other singles are out there. You feel like a kid in a candy store, picking and sorting through all the attributes like cherry-picking green M&M’s in a bowl.

You start contacting people/getting contacted. Maybe you have a lot of success at getting the type of people you want to take an interest in you.

It certainly can give you an ego boost. You start setting up dates and even meeting some prospects you like.

“You have to take some time

to get to know a person.”

Do you pursue those real-life connections, or do you find yourself being drawn back to your computer, checking for new emails, searching for new dates?

Do you find yourself becoming hypercritical of the people you’re meeting, just to have an excuse to discard them and get back to your laptop to search for something that might be even better?

While online dating sites love you for keeping yourself in their rolodex of daters, this behavior could be costing you from finding long-term potential.

It’s important to be selective, but you have to take some time to get to know a person.

What I generally advise my clients to do to avoid getting into this self-defeating behavior is to ask themselves this question with every date: How excited would you be to have met this person in real life, had online dating not been the medium for getting you to meet?

Since generally you have more choices in online dating than by a random chance meeting, try to suspend the idea this person is one of many options for you.

Pretend you met more “organically” in some offline scenario.

As you’re talking and discovering all the things you have in common, whether it be movies or religion or food, how does that affect your opinion and feelings toward this person?

Would you still feel inclined to see what else is out there, or would you be stoked to have met this person with so many things you’re looking for and curious to see what could develop?

It’s important to try to give an assessment of your motives in meeting new people and give each date with some sort of connection a fair shot.

Otherwise you’ll continue to be the person looking for the quick gratification of a new person and never find lasting relationship satisfaction.