How to Keep Your Mental Health While Dating Online: Tips for Women

Though online dating gives you tremendous opportunities for women, it can also become an uneasy experience for your psyche. Though girls go online with an innocent dream of finding a special man, they often suffer rejection, become picky, and sometimes even lose any motivation to find a soulmate. The problem is not in the app itself, but rather in how we behave using online dating apps. If you want to find your love online, but are also puzzled about how to make it a pleasant experience for you, check our tips to keep mental health while searching for a partner online.

Problem 1: Self-esteem can go down because of the negative experience

Just like many social networks, dating apps that encourage evaluative behavior (say, rating or liking photos), can make some of the users suffer from low self-esteem. Let’s say, a woman uses a dating app to meet single guys for a serious relationship. Too much attention to the appearance of the potential partners while giving likes and dislikes eventually makes her think how good she is and whether she suits those guys in general. If a person has low self-esteem in the beginning and receives some negative comments, she can start looking at herself in a similar way, as an object that men evaluate. 

How to deal with this problem? No matter, whether you like your appearance or not, have an objectively ideal figure or not, keep in mind that people who like or dislike you can’t determine who you are. You should value yourself for a range of qualities and surround yourself with people who see those qualities as well. And don’t focus on physical appearance yourself, keep searching for qualities when you want to meet single guys. Remember that a dating app isn’t a means of telling how good you are. You should have other activities and interests and never spend too much time in the dating app. Choose you acceptable time limit per day for browsing photos and chatting. This will help you to avoid wasting too much time in vain and the stress that comes with it. 

Problem 2: Swiping can become endless

Another problem is an incredible choice that dating apps give you. Though a woman who wants to meet single guys has many options to choose from, too many options distract her and make it harder to pick. The woman can choose and feels that she has met a lot of new people, while, in reality, nothing has happened yet. 

To solve this problem and avoid getting stuck in endless swiping, psychologists suggest limiting yourself to five-six matches. This way the brain doesn’t get overloaded with information and you take decisions wiser. After you find your potential partners, don’t spend too much time chatting online. Offline meetings will make it clearer for you whether you like the person or not. 

Problem 3: Rejection hurts as much as in real life but can happen more often

We all know that relationships are often connected with rejections. Though online dating lets you get to know a lot more people than offline attempts, you also have to deal with a lot more rejections. Say, a woman who wants to meet single guys online can easily send a dozen of requests or messages to men. Every unanswered request will seem like rejection for her, so in the end, by dating offline she would have fewer negative experiences than by searching for a partner online. In addition, some people start acting more cruelly while dating online. Ghosting (avoiding answers for no reason) and keeping matches as back-burners are becoming quite frequent. 

The solution still exists. Remember that you want a meaningful response, so avoid texting people who don’t match you and your interests for any reason. Focus on your love for yourself and your happy future. Don’t get too overwhelmed with your negative experience. Plan your happy future instead. Keep in mind that there are dozens of reasons why people don’t respond to you or stop texting. At the beginning of the relationship, your bond is weak. It is not necessarily about you why someone doesn’t answer. Perhaps, she or he indeed got busy at work or with some other activity other than dating. So, don’t take it personally. 

Problem 4: Too much swiping can make you less compassionate and too picky

Just like the woman who wants to meet single guys is suffering from rejection because of unanswered requests, she also becomes pickier and pickier. People try to deal with rejection and start swiping more. They also develop a habit of criticizing those who they swipe and begin judging people by their appearance rather than character.  

The solution is very simple. Don’t stay for too long on the swiping stage. Go offline, don’t de-personalize people even if someone does like this. Think about what kind of attention and treatment you want to get and give your potential partner an equal degree of compassion and understanding. Go on a date being serious and innocent in your desire to start something new and meaningful to you. 

That’s it with our online dating tips. Have happy and enjoyable online dating and maintain your mental health.