Our generation has gained a lot from online dating. There have been countless relationships, marriages and children born from people who have met online. It is a very valuable service that connects like minded people who would normally never have met. Many of my friends, and even a direct family members met their partner online. I say this, because even though I rip online dating to pieces, I do believe it is a very valuable service.
That being said, I truly think over the last five years, online dating has evolved into something else entirely, and if you have met your partner online over the last half decade, you are one of the few lucky ones. You have found a diamond in the ruff. I'm sure many of us will admit, this has not been our experience online. I could sit here all day and talk about horror stories I've heard about online dating, but I won't. We can't control how people we meet from an app on our phone will treat us, but we can control our reactions to it.
Online dating is a tool to be kept in our dating tool box, among many other dating tools. I recommend to those I coach to only swipe right 10 times a week. It's not the app that drains us, it the quality and amount of people we give our time to. When we swipe right on any guy or gal with a cute photo with no regard to their profile and their compatibility with us, we are setting ourselves up for unnecessary disappointment, which will build up to frustration that will effect our ability to remain open to a good person when we meet one. When we limit ourselves to 10 right swipes a week, this will allow us to be more discerning. It will give us the time to truly look through the details of their profile to make sure we don't waste one of our limited right swipes. We will limit the amount of people we are chatting to at any given time, and reduce the chances of us getting drained or frustrated.
What ever we get from those 10 weekly swipes is what we get. Then it's time to pull out another dating tool from our toolbox, which could be Thursday night volleyball, smiling and saying 'hi' to a person in the Starbucks lineup, making flirtatious conversation with a cute stranger, going to a singles event, getting some friends together and going to a new pub, or finally asking out that person you've been interested in for a while. Reflect back to what was done before online dating existed, and do that.