Dating advice is in demand all the time but especially in the New Year as it tends to herald a time of massive change, in that it tends to be a time for introspection and considering what we want from life. Now, if you’re single, many people at this time of year consider making much more effort into finding love… as we know that being in a good relationship feels absolutely amazing, yet we often end up finding ourselves in less fulfilling relationships than we would like – so we either become serial daters, serial monogamists, or settle for singledom.
This is the time of year when most people start getting serious about sorting out their singleness, and therefore, what better time to take a look at some of the most popular ways to date in the modern age, as today, everything is online – from the ear piercings webshop offered by Piercing Mania to finding a one night stand, or the love of your life!
ONLINE DATING: SCRAPING THE BARREL?
In today’s world, more and more people are heading online to find the man (or woman) of their dreams… yet, whilst we’ve all heard of people that met on an online dating site and now live happily ever after – we also know there tend to be a ton of weirdos on these sites and often it can leave us feeling like we are scraping the barrel.
ONLINE DATING: A HIT TO THE EGO?
At the same time, online dating can be a huge hit to the ego, if you post your profile photos and don’t get any interest. Indeed, some people become addicted to checking their inbox each morning, almost to validate their existence, rather than find the love of their dreams. Ouch that is not the dating advice you were looking for!
ONLINE DATING: THE CORE CHALLENGE
The challenge, with online dating is simple – it’s more of a catalogue that forces us to peruse through profiles as if we are looking to buy a used car in the classifieds. There’s little room to truly get to know someone, it’s all about filtered communication, in that you filter out your preferences from the outset… defining aspects such as age, body type, location and so on.
In many ways these filters serve us, as they hone in on the most relevant matches for us – yet in other ways, we tend to filter profiles based on the image first (with no time or interest in truly getting to know the energy or attitude of the person behind the image) and as a result we make inferences based on our own biases, as to who the person is, and we become almost psychological investigators to work out who the person is behind the photo… analysing their profile intro, and so on, meaning that there’s very little room for natural chemistry and affinity.
ONLINE DATING: IS AFFINITY ALGORITHMIC?
Many dating websites try to match people based on their personality profiles and needs requirements. As a concept, this is a very logical and useful process – yet it endeavours to make something as intangible as love and attraction tangible.
The reality is “chemistry” is not something you can predict. Indeed, part of what creates “chemistry” within a dating scenario is the environmental and how each of you respond to ongoing instantaneous stimuli.
In summary, online dating may be the convenient choice but it leaves much to be desired… and, in very succinct summary of dating advice for the new year – the best dating advice is to go out and meet people the old fashioned way and actually get to know each other through an energetic and holistic exchange that has the context of the ‘real world’ rather than the trade catalogue format of the myriad dating websites.