5 Mistakes You Need To Avoid During Online Dating

So, you’d like to meet someone and have decided to go online. That’s a good move — proactive and forward-thinking. But be careful not to be lulled into habits that will undermine your online dating experience.

Here are some tips to keep in mind as you peruse the seemingly endless stream of profiles from prospective partners.

* Don’t go crazy over the pictures

On the Internet, it's easy to feel nitpicky and maintain high expectations. With apps like Tinder, you snap-judge users as if you were scrolling Amazon for the best pair of speakers.This sense of being in the driver’s seat, of choosing, can be appealing. It makes you feel powerful. Fight it.

* Don't obsess about the details

Don’t worry too much about the particulars: which restaurants, bars, movies or books a potential date likes. After all, chances are many of your exes didn’t share your exact tastes, and nine times out of 10, it isn’t why you two broke up. If you obsess about the little things (this guy shares my passion for both dim sum and Noah Baumbach flicks!) you are likely to pass over the profiles of people who might actually make you happy.

* Evaluate the tone of the profile

What’s actually important in evaluating a profile is its tone. You want to try and get a sense of what the person is like, which can be truly difficult.It’s a challenge as a novelist to convey characters in meaningful ways it’s no less demanding for a person writing, or reading, dating profiles. It’s key to read between the lines to get a sense of whether the person seems well-adjusted pleasant, friendly and reasonable, someone you would be drawn to if you met him or her in person, even if you didn’t know her top five favorite movies.

* Ignore claims about personality

Ignore most of the person’s explicit claims about his or her personality for example, “I have a sense of humor about myself” or “I’m an optimist.”People are very unreliable self-reporters. hat’s not just because they lie (although that's a possibility, too), but because the way we see ourselves often bears little relation to how others see us. And only external events provoke our negative reactions, right? (We humans are expert self-justifiers.)It means nothing. The only explicit claims worth taking at face value are factual job, age, education and location. When it comes to less tangible qualities, people are just too biased.

* Don’t get attached based on a profile

No matter how much of an expert you’ve become at reading profiles, and no matter how well this girl or guy corresponds to your dream match, there’s still a lot you won’t be able to glean until you sit across from him or her at a coffee shop.It doesn't matter how many delightfully winning asides he has included in profile about his cute devotion to his 96-year-old grandmother. Think her passion for hot dogs and minor league baseball suggests just the kind of chill, fun-loving girl you’ve fantasized about dating?