Don’t you hate it when you send a prospective date a message and they don’t bother to respond? How frustrating, not to mention a waste of you time. It’s the new equivalent of sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring. This can be a problem with some online dating sites. How do you know if they actually received your message?

In fact, that’s what I want to talk about. Even though online dating is so much safer and secure these days, some sites just don’t get it. The two most common complaints are either the service is poor or you pay for a membership to an online dating site that has 23 members but you thought they had 23,000. Well, that used to be the case. Now, service levels on online dating sites are becoming sophisticated.

Here’s what I mean. When you make contact or attempt to make contact with someone through an online dating site you expect a reply. If you don’t get one, you might think that that person didn’t like your profile, picture or maybe it was that certificate you obtained in advanced cannibalism. Joking! On the other hand, maybe that person didn’t get it yet or is no longer a member. There are many reasons. My point is – don’t get upset, it can happen.

More importantly, when you do get a reply, you’d like to think that it was real and written specifically for you…right? Some aren’t! That’s right. There are some lazy members who have many accounts with many online dating sites who think they are clever by cut and pasting their responses and posting them on all of their profiles on many sites. Fortunately, these responses are not hard to pick. So you really don’t want these lazy members for a date or for that matter…anything!

On the other hand, you may get a reply which is pleasant and there are a couple of points made in their reply that take your interest. Reply to them and make it known that you have an interest in those areas too. You should ask questions on those topics. Get the conversation started. Stimulate the communication and peel back the layers to see what in fact you’ve got hold of. It might just be the right partner.

Have you met someone through online dating that you are now trying to get rid of? There are plenty of ways to finish up the friendship nicely. Try to remember that you should always treat others the way you would like to be treated yourself.

Obviously with online dating, much as in real life, the friendship moves through various stages. Different stages can require different ways of saying, or sending, the dreaded “It’s not you, it’s me”.

New friends are probably the easiest to brush off. If you have only been chatting a few times and haven’t gotten to the stage of exchanging personal details, there are a couple of ways to go. There are 2 extremely popular ways of giving your online dating friend the brush off at this stage. Personally I think both of them are a bit cowardly. The first is to just stop answering your friend’s emails. They usually get the hint and stop messaging you. The other is to constantly think up new excuses as to why you shouldn’t move to the next stage.

Why not just be a little honest? Why not say something like “It’s been great chatting but I don’t think there is any point in continuing”. Making up excuses can just leave the other person hanging on and continuing to message you till they get the hint. (Some people are slower than others.)

Online dating friends that you have exchanged details with or even dated a few times can be a bit more tricky. If you have met up on a date then you should tell them you are no longer keen. Ignoring phone calls, texts and emails is the coward’s way out. Give the person a call and tell them that you don’t think it is going to go anywhere. There is no need to be rude. If you have actually met up in person then dumping them by text or email is rude. You can either call them and tell them, or wait for them to contact you and then decline the date, explaining there won’t be any more dates.

Are You Being Given The Brush Off?

These statements and behaviours are virtual guarantees that they are no longer interested:

Unanswered messages and phone calls.

Your phone calls always go straight through to voice mail or message bank.

“We need to talk”.

“It’s not you, it’s me.”

“We just aren’t in the same place right now.”

“I’m too busy for a relationship right now.”

Effective and Fast Brush Off Lines:

I want to get married and have your baby as soon as possible.

I think I might be gay.

Ultimately, the most effective and the most polite way of giving your online dating friend the brush off is to use a little tact and honesty. Too much tact, though, and they may not get the hint. Try to be honest in a constructive way. The easiest rule for online dating brush offs is to keep it simple and don’t make a fuss.

After we’ve got to know our new date in the chat room, the time comes to meet. In the online dating world, things usually develop pretty nicely via emails and we can feel as though we know the person before we’ve come face to face with them.

But that’s not always the case. Often, during an online chat , we can be whoever we want to be – we can be a whole lot more confident behind a keyboard than we can in that place some call the real world.

So, you’re a bit shy. The single person you’ve just met is a little shy. You’re meeting for a coffee in your favorite café, but you’ve run out of conversation really quickly… What do you do?

1. Swap coffee for a beer Finish that coffee quickly and suggest going out for a drink or for a stroll. Conversation can be easier with the ultimate of social lubricants – alcohol – but subtly make sure your date is someone who enjoys a drink. If your date is a teetotaler then…

2. Go for a stroll Take it out of the chat room (or rather, out of the café) and hit the streets. There’s always somewhere you can take your date. Before meeting up, have a quick scan of the city guides and see if there are any art exhibitions or shows that look interesting, and keep them in your mind as a back-up. If you’re not a city-dweller, you’ve got the option of a nature walk. Wherever you are, walking will get the blood moving, the brain buzzing and the conversation flowing.

3. Break the ice with honesty What have you got to lose? Just come right out and say how nervous you feel. Take a leaf out of Jonathan’s book…Jonathan is a 24-year-old college graduate in between jobs. He ventured into the singles chat rooms because he was the shy type. He also had friends that had successful online dating stories, and thought he had nothing to lose.

“I met this great woman online,” says Jonathan. We chatted every night for almost two weeks – we talked about everything. We both loved the same books and movies – crime thrillers – and we had similar experiences working our way through college.

Finally the day came to meet. I chose this great funky little African-style café that was atmospheric. But once I got there with my date, we were stuck for words. It was crazy, we were getting on so well in the singles chat rooms .

“So, I thought, ‘What have I got to lose?’. It was so awkward so I just leant across the table and said, ‘I think we’re both a bit nervous…I know I am! This is the first time I’ve tried online dating.”

“It worked. She looked at me said, ‘Me too!’ and we started talking about the free dating websites we’ve looked at and the people we’ve known and from there, our real life chat picked up from where our cyber-chat left off.”