It Was Time to Try a New Approach to Online Dating

“I want to give up,” I told him, reaching for the box of Kleenex and exhaling until my lungs deflated completely.

“That is a decision you can make,” my therapist replied. “No one is making you date.”

I was at my wit’s end. The final straw. I had been investing precious time and energy and even some money in meeting a compatible person. And, so far, I had seen no return whatsoever on that investment. Instead, I had suffered through countless dry text conversations and uncomfortable first dates which ranged from “bad” to “worse.”

Back at my apartment that evening, scrolling Instagram, I saw a post and was reminded of one accepted definition of “insanity”: doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. I took it as a message from the universe. How could I expect different results from my experience of online dating if I never changed my approach?

I opened the Tinder app with a new attitude. What have I got to lose? I tapped the “edit” icon on my profile and deleted the frivolous garbage I had generated three years prior. I was no longer “new to the bay area,” anyway. Did I even still like going out and singing karaoke with friends? I definitely did not enjoy running around Lake Merritt at that time. Had I ever?

I climbed into my tub to take a bath and sat for a moment, thinking about what to write, and then began typing. It felt like a Hail Mary:

“I will likely find you interesting if you: speak your mind, have awareness of yourself and the world, and are comfortable initiating deep conversation. For me, the experiment here is not in the app; I’ve had it for years now. The experiment is in how I interact with the app and with you. I have a long history in people-pleasing and in protecting others’ feelings at my expense (and, in the end, theirs too). The new journey is in honesty. And, in my opinion, honesty leads to connection.”

I paused before clicking “Done.” Surely, there were potential matches who would read the above and hurriedly swipe left. The people-pleaser in me wanted to try again, to create the most likable, most “swipeable” profile. To make every man like me.

But I didn’t need every man to like me. What I really needed was a way to filter for those men I would find interesting— the ones with whom I would be compatible. My profile suddenly went from Please like me? to Will I like you?

And it worked. When I reframed my approach, sharing what was authentic instead of what was expected, my experience began to change. Suddenly, I was matching with men who were willing to dive into deep conversation, willing to replace a “Hey what’s up?” with a “What are you working through in life?” Suddenly, I was matching with men who would not be turned off by the real me.

And the ones who I actually wanted to like me?

Their pick-up lines went something like this:

“Your bio is a breath of fresh air.”