The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
> Requests for advice
What's a reasonable "ghosting" protocol when it comes to online dating, assuming that I do want to rescue the conversation if-and-only-if the counterparty dropped the convo accidentally due to Universal Zoomer ADHD?
Trying out OLD recently, finally found what seemed to be a great match locally last weekend, but she went radio silence about 24h before a nearly-scheduled date. Not blocked, still "matched" on the site, and she shows up as "online" occasionally.
Current plan — asking in part for a sanity check on this — is to wait just under a week, maybe till Friday morning to allow for scheduling, then ask something upbeat and understanding like “hey, did you survive this week?” as the last outbound contact before writing it off as an intentional ghost.
She's not interested unfortunately. It's better if you dematch and move on.
In the future, I'd try to make date plans that are less pressure and more concrete. The coffee date was good! Moving it to a church was bad. It's just so much pressure to be with someone you don't know for multiple hours. And of course, never leave it up in the air.
Good: "Do you want to meet me for coffee at 1pm at Northtown Roasters"
Bad: "I'll be at the coffee shop so just hit me up if you're interested"
When I was online-dating, I followed some rules which people suggested to me. It worked well and I eventually met my wife after going on about 20 first dates.
You need to check your photos on a site like PhotoFeeler. Everyone can get at least an 8. Try to get a 9. People are committing dating suicide by posting bad photos. You might not even know what a good photo is supposed to look like.
Treat it like a job. Every day, spend a limited amount of time (maybe 15-30 minutes) swiping and getting matches. Once you get a match, you'll want to send a message soon afterwards. Try to make it good, but don't agonize over it. This is a numbers game. If they don't reply for a couple days, dematch and move on. Don't send 2 messages in a row if they don't reply. Definitely never send 3. Try not to get emotionally invested in people you've never met.
After a few messages back and forth (at most 5-10) but maybe less, assess the conversation. Is it going well? If so, then propose a real life meetup in the next 3 days or so. Good: coffee, a walk, a drink. Bad: anything complicated. After the meetup is planned, try not to text much anymore except you can on the day of the date to confirm details.
Hopefully you'll get enough dates to find people you find interesting and that like you back.
If you're not getting matches go back to step 1. Note: This was 2021 so things might have changed...
As far as I can tell, your first message makes absolutely no difference. I almost always just wri pplte "hey" now and that usually gets a response.
I don't recommend unlatching if they don't respond. One of my exes that I met on Tinder had been ignoring all her messages and then just scrolled through them all and responded to mine a few months after I had sent it.
I think most people are fine with not texting between the planning of the date and the date itself, but I have had people cancel on me because of that.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link