10 Interesting Online Dating Issues

Online dating is a fairly common way of meeting people these days. Despite how common it is, there remain quite a few differences between meeting people online and meeting them in some other more traditional way. Some of these differences cause interesting issues that you might have to deal with if you’re dating online.

Here’s a look at ten interesting online dating issues to consider:

1.     Take safety precautions when meeting in person for the first time. Of course, you should be careful when going out on any first date but the risk of having a bad experience with an unsafe person is higher when you’ve met them online. You don’t know them and you don’t know anyone who knows them. Keep this in mind and keep yourself safe by following some basic first date rules – don’t drink too much (and always keep an eye on your drink), meet at the date instead of going in the same vehicle and carry a mobile phone with you to use in case of emergencies. It’s better to be safe than sorry.

2.     How to represent yourself honestly. This is an issue in all relationships, of course, but it’s a more prominent one when you’re dealing with online relationships. You need to figure out how much to reveal, how to post flattering but honest pictures and how to make your writing voice match your true personality. It’s a tough line to walk but since we’re all used to being online these days it’s getting easier for us.

3.     Should you define a dating niche? One of the things that you have to decide when dating online is whether you want to use general dating sites or niche dating sites. Do you want to narrow down your dating people to just Jewish people or non-monogamous people or rich people or do you want to broaden your dating pool? This is something that you have to think about a lot when choosing to date online.

4.     Weeding people out quickly. After you’ve spent some time on dating sites, you’ll learn how to easily weed people out based on their initial message to you. This is something that we do in person all of the time but we’re so used to doing it that we don’t even think about how we’re doing it. Dating online brings this skill to the forefront of our attention where we can hone it in a new way.

5.     Answering the question of where you met. Many people are still uncomfortable with telling other people that they met online in spite of the fact that it’s increasingly common. Other people are open about this but don’t want people to know the exact site that they met on. Once you’ve formed a relationship with someone, people are going to ask you how you met and you need to figure out together how you’re going to answer that sometimes tricky question.

6.     Running into someone from the Internet before you intended to. You get to see a lot of people online and you only decide to meet a few of them in person. However, if you live in a small area or you’re looking mostly at people who live close to you then there’s the chance that you’ll run into someone from the Internet before you planned on it. You’ll recognize them from their picture even though they’re still a stranger. You have to decide how to handle that strange situation, a problem that doesn’t come up if you run into someone you know from the real world.

7.     The etiquette of getting rid of your profiles once you start dating. One of the issues that comes up when you start getting serious with someone that you met online is that you need to talk about when you’re going to take your online profiles offline.

8.     Accepting that you still need to get to know this person as time goes on. Something that often happens with couples that meet online is that the instantly feel like they connect. This is due, in part, to the fact that you can (mis)read into things easily when they’re printed online instead of said in person. Something you have to accept is that you still need to take time getting to know someone in person even if you feel an instant connection with them online. Your whole relationship won’t be as immediate as an instant message is.

9.     Keeping the online romance alive. An issue that many modern couples are dealing with is how to revive the romance of their early online days once they get into a relationship. There’s something really fun about exchanging emails and text messages and chatting for hours on instant messengers that gets lost once you’re seeing someone regularly or have moved in together. Learning to keep emailing each other is something that modern couples are working out.

10. Cyberstalking. This can be a serious problem that people who date online end up unfortunately having to deal with. Maybe you go out on a date with someone and decide not to date them again but they become obsessed and start constantly messaging you online. Or maybe you have dating profiles on multiple sites and the same person keeps contacting you on all of them even though you never respond. In some cases, the situation gets even more serious. Learning how to block people from your sites, report them to the right people and respond appropriately are all things that might come up when dating online.