Online Dating Blog

I recently read an article AskMen.com that covered five mistakes men make early on that scare women away. I think this article is well worth reading regardless of how you are meeting women. I also wanted to offer my take in this area, but specifically for online dating.

Most of my thoughts revolve around one idea: not coming off as strange or the stalker-type. Appearing strange or appearing like someone who might stalk the woman is a great way to scare women off, particularly when dating online. You may not feel that you’re at risk of appearing to fit into one of these categories, however, on the internet we can send signals without realizing it. Also, there are many men who have likely come before you that have created a situation where the woman is now extra sensitive to certain signs that suggest she may be dealing with someone “crazy”.

In other words, this list aims to help you from being inappropriately stereotyped based on the certain actions that can cause you to be “red flagged”. In my mind, it comes down to the weird factor and what you can do to avoid incorrectly being labeled as such.

Five Mistakes Men Make in Dating Online That Scare Women Away

1. Long First Emails
As I’ve discussed on this blog many times, your first email serves as an introduction and a method to get the woman to view your profile. Your profile is where you make your arguments on why someone would want to date you, not your first email. Win the woman over in your profile not the first email.

In addition to the higher risk of appearing strange, writing long emails means you are spending a larger amount of time contacting one woman who may or may not respond to you. Assuming you only have a limited amount of time to write emails every day, if that same time period were spent contacting multiple women with shorter emails you will find you have greater success.

2. Too Much Contact
Another red flag is communicating too often because this can send the message that you have absolutely nothing else going on in your life. Now it may be true that you do have very little else going on in your life…but this is still not a message you want to be sending. I am not a student of the school that says, “wait two days before calling her” but I do understand why such a thought exists. Generally speaking, this rule is easy to follow: you should both be contacting each other in equal amounts. If you are sending her two emails for every one reply you contacting her too much.

Also, don’t send emails like: “Haven’t heard back from you since my last email, just wanted to make sure everything is OK”. If she’s not responding she has either lost interest or has become very busy. If she’s lost interest the second email you send only confirms to her that she made the right choice in stopping communication. If she’s just busy, when she does have time to come back to her inbox if she finds it filled with messages from you, you may have just killed your chances.

3. Too Many Compliments
It is fine to compliment a woman. Often it’s better than just “fine”; it can be quite a good thing! However, problems occur when compliments are excessive or are the main source of the conversations you are starting.

I believe this is particularly true of physical compliments. While women do enjoy knowing that their beauty is appreciated, I think most women want to be desired for more than just their attractiveness. If you do feel the uncontrollable desire to continuously complement the woman at the very least move it beyond physicality. At least in this way she knows that you are learning about her and not just staring at her photo for hours and hours every night.

4. Profile Insecurity
Profile insecurity is the popular approach that both men and women take where they degrade themselves in their own profile. Comments such as “I can’t believe I’m trying this” or “I failed at every other dating option” are both quite popular. Don’t do this.

It is one thing be able to poke fun at yourself to show that you don’t take yourself too seriously. It is quite another to paint yourself out to be some kind of loser or to suggest that online dating is for losers. Keep in mind that suggesting so is something of an insult to everyone who reads your profile!

So don’t beat yourself up: painting yourself as pathetic is not attractive.

5. Never Taking the Next Step
This one unique compare to the others: in this case the man isn’t so much scaring the women away as he is boring them away. It is fine to want to get to know someone but this is better done on something more substantial than just emails. My preference is getting to the first dates quickly but even moving to the phone is better than perpetually emailing each other. Online dating needs to include some actual dating so don’t wait around trying to figure out the best time to ask her out. Sooner is better than later. It’s not as if people are signing up for online dating to gain a pen pal.