Online Dating Tips for Men: How to Stand Out and Make Real Connections
However, despite being normalized, online dating still presents many challenges to both men and women. Female dating app and website users often suffer from harassment, bullying, and other unwanted attention. Naturally, this negative experience is created by men, sometimes even without the latter realizing it. Even if a man is not doing anything bad per se, he may still struggle to match the woman of his dreams.
Today, we want to share relationship advice for men who are looking for a partner on online dating portals. We’ll talk about creating an appealing dating profile, share tips on initiating a conversation and navigating common challenges, give you a couple of recommendations on safety and maintaining confidence, and cover other online dating tips for men.
Crafting the Perfect Online Dating Profile
The dating profile bio is one of the most important aspects of dating online.
While we all know that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, that’s exactly what we’re doing when scrolling through the list of potential dates. The key to a good dating profile is to make your personality stand out and follow a few simple rules.
- A picture says a thousand words. Choose your photos wisely, and make sure they showcase your personality, hobbies, and lifestyle. Where you post and how you do it matters.
- Make it easy for ladies to choose you. Upload high-quality photos where your face is clearly visible. Don’t add group photos, photos with other women, or only images where your face is covered or turned away.
- Keep your bio nice and short. Literally. Don’t write long reads, but rather sum up what you’re trying to say in a couple of sentences. Also, make sure you’re sharing who you are in your bio, and not a list of demands for future companions.
- Mention why you’re dating. It’s an optional thing you can add in case you’re looking for something specific, such as a short-term romance or a one-night stand. There are plenty of women who will match your needs, but try not to mislead those who have different dating goals than yours.
Starting Conversations: How to Make a Great First Impression
Now that we have a perfect dating profile set up and ready, and you are matched with a great girl, let’s not ruin it by making a terrible first impression in the chat.
Below are the tired-and-tested online dating tips for men looking to impress a woman right off the bat.
- Start by asking or commenting about something in her profile, such as photos, interests, or dating goals. For example, if she has a photo of her skiing in front of the mountains, you can ask how often she does that and what her favorite spots for skiing are.
- Avoid copy-pasted opening lines that you mass-send to everyone you match with. It’s usually pretty easy to spot those, and you’ll ruin your chances with a lot of wonderful matches.
- Clichés should go out of the window. Just don’t. Unless it’s some smart meta-irony that you’re sure she’ll understand. Just like copy-pasted intros, clichés make it clear that you’re not trying. And why should someone want to go out with you if you’re not trying at the very beginning of your relationship?
- Keep it positive. Yes, the state of the world is daunting, and we are all worried about a thousand things at once, but hey! Let’s keep it light at least for the first while, shall we? Avoid negativity and controversial topics, for now, you can get to them later.
- Compliments are good but don’t overdo it. Obviously, you wouldn’t match if you didn’t like each other. This means that you can probably come up with 5 different compliments for her right now. That’s great, but you better pace yourself and choose 1-2 genuinely unique compliments, and wait with the rest. If you don’t, you can overwhelm her with attention and she’ll mistake you for a love bomber, and we don’t want that.
- Pay attention and listen (genuinely). What many men don’t realize is just how hot and attractive it is when someone is actually paying attention to you. Ideally, the person should do it genuinely, and not for show. So if you really want to find a partner for a long-term relationship, practice your listening (and reading skills). Remember important details and smaller bits, follow up on them, ask thoughtful questions.
Navigating Rejection and Common Mistakes in Online Dating
Not every online dating experience will be positive, and that’s okay, that is part of the process.
The main hurdle that men can come across is rejection.
Not everyone will like you, and not everyone should. Sometimes ladies that you fancy a lot will not match your feelings, and when that happens, it’s important that you keep your cool and stay classy.
Surely, you can be upset, you’re allowed to feel these emotions, but never, under any circumstances don’t:
- Insult her
- Call her names
- Threaten her
- Report her to the dating app
- Look for her socials to harass her there
- Leak her personal data
Needless to say, if you do any of the above, then this woman dodged a bullet by rejecting you. And if you’ve ever done this before – don’t beat yourself up too much. Do your best to never repeat this behavior, and, if you can find her, apologize to the woman you’ve let down previously.
What you can do, when someone tells you they’re not interested in pursuing this relationship, is accept it, thank her for her time, and, optionally, ask for feedback on why exactly she’s not interested.
Common Mistakes to Avoid in Online Dating
This wouldn’t be a complete guide of online dating website tips for guys if we didn’t go over the main mistakes that men can make.
- Over-editing photos. Editing photos is such a social faux pas. Plus, imagine you edit your photos so much that when you meet in real life your date doesn’t recognize you. And what if she confronts you (loudly) in front of everyone? Are you sure you’re ready for that?
- Misrepresenting yourself. We get that you want to appear cooler and better, but sticking to your authentic self is always the best choice. It’s weird to pretend to be someone else, plus it’s really hard to keep up with your fake persona.
- Ignoring feedback and failing to adapt your approach. If one person tells you something, it might not be true, although they might have just given you the most real feedback ever which you can benefit from a lot. And if you’re hearing the same thing from multiple women, try looking into it for sure. Most of the time people won’t tell you that something’s wrong with the way you do things, so if they do share their concerns, there must have been a good reason for them to.
Safety Tips for Online Dating
When it comes to safety, most of the time we’re talking about safety for women, as it’s, sadly, a big issue. However, men can be victims of assault, robbery, scams, and other bad things too.
Here is the online dating advice for guys who want to stay safe and sound.
Watch out for your personal data leaks
Don’t be your worst enemy by sharing your phone number, address, photos of your home outside, or the exact work location. There’s no need for this information to be publicly available, and God knows who can view your profile.
Don’t invite strangers to your house
Stranger danger is very real, and you never truly know who you text in the dating chat until you see them. Even the photos and videos you are sent can be fake or edited with AI.
Catfishing and other nasty things happen more than you think, and naive horny men become easy targets when they look for hookups and happily share that they’re alone at home and ready for this hot girl they’re messaging to come over. There was even a whole trend in one of the Latin American countries where criminals would catfish US men and lure them into remote locations or get invites to their hotels, and then rob them of everything they had. How did they manage that? By pretending to be a woman looking for a date.
To help you stay protected against any of that, watch out for inconsistencies and red flags in the profile. This can be photos of seemingly different women in one profile; vague information in the bio, weird and inconsistent responses. Make an image search on the photos from the suspicious profile to make sure they’re genuine.
Plan the first date in a public place
Kill two birds with one stone – keep yourself protected from any potential scams, and make the woman you’re about to meet feel safe too. Both of you will only benefit from having your first date in a busy cafe or a popular city sightseeing spot.
Don’t ignore the red flags
Pay attention to red flags, even if you really like this girl, or she’s super hot, or both. Anyone acting weird, men or women, should be confronted. Don’t be rude or angry about it, but try to get to the bottom of the behavior that you’re noticing. Half of the time you’ll find that it’s a misunderstanding and move on happily. And if it’s not – don’t be afraid to call it quits.
Know a scam when you see one
This is not a 100% case because lots of men eagerly offer to send money to women, so the latter get used to it and start requesting it. However, if a person you matched with asks you for cash and/or shares an elaborate story about something going terribly wrong in their life, hence them needing money, – that’s most likely a scam.
Think about it. Let’s say there’s an illness in the family, or your house is flooded, or some other horrible thing happens. What is your course of action? Most likely signing up on dating apps and begging strangers for money is not one of your top choices.
Stick to the dating app’s messenger
One online dating advice for men that we don’t see very often is to stick to the messenger that’s built into the dating app or the dating website. The reason is simple – you can’t track your phone number there, and any conversation you have can be reviewed by the dating platform if you choose to report it. Also, don’t rush to share your social media accounts. Keep things lowkey for the time being, and create a boundary with new matches.
Transitioning from Online to In-Person Dates
Before we sign off, here are the final online dating tips for men looking to move things offline.
- Know when it’s time to ask for a first date. Follow your gut, but also try not to rush too much or, equally, spend weeks and months before asking her out.
- Plan a memorable first date experience. Come up with an experience that you can do and mix it with a classic dinner or lunch. Planning and preparation on your end will make a much bigger difference than the amount of money you spend. Women want to feel that you’ve spent time thinking about the date, and not just lazily picked up the nearest restaurant to your house.
- If she declines the first time, but you continue chatting, try again later, but don’t insist too much. There are many reasons why a girl may say No to a date for the first time. But if she continues to dodge your invitations, ask her directly if she’s interested in ever seeing you personally, and take it from there.
These are all the online dating tips for men we have for you for today. We hope that this guide will help you navigate the tricky world of online dating with more ease and confidence. Have fun!
