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5 mistakes women routinely make in online dating
So I recently signed up for Tinder, Bumble, Match.com, OKcupid, and of course Plenty of flesh, oops! I mean fish.
I have literally spent the last many weeks swiping and scrolling through thousands of profiles, men’s and women’s. ( I am not even exaggerating.)
…And yes I am tired. Thanks for asking. Who knew swiping through thousands of profiles can be such an emotionally draining task!
So in this article, let me share with you the 5 most common yet devastating mistakes that women make in online dating. My hope for you is that with this knowledge, it will fundamentally change your thinking, your paradigm and your approach therefore giving you some immediate success, no matter how much you hate online dating right now.
Because online dating when you do it right shouldn’t destroy your self esteem, exhaust your patience and tax your soul.
It shouldn’t feel like you’re looking into a giant bin and trying to salvage the best looking piece of garbage.
When I said mistakes women make in online dating, I didn’t mean those surface, obvious and easy to figure out mistakes. Like I think you and most women know not to put too many bikini pics or suggestive pics on your profile, if you’re serious about online dating.
Sure that would attract a lot of attention, but is it really good attention?
You know the answer, right? Of course it’s not.
Oh, just in case you’re wondering how much more attention you can get with some bikini pics, one of our long time followers actually did the experiment and she received 5 times more attention from men.
Yeah, that’s a lot. However remember, attention is cheap, so she changed it back. Because you as a woman, you don’t want too much cheap attention in your life.
(It may even give you a false sense of reality over time.)
So in this relatively long article, let’s get to the core of the matter.
What are the 5 core mistakes women are making in online dating?
Ever since we did a survey at the end of last year and we received hundreds upon hundreds of responses with how frustrated women were with online dating.
So I knew I had to do something to help.
The truth about online dating is that it is NOTHING like dating in real life.
Sure you can have access to more variety of people through these dating apps, but the ability to connect deeply is severely impaired.
If all those studies were true about how words only represent 7% of all communication, which the rest is made up of tonality, how you speak, and body language, then you can kind of understand how online dating suddenly becomes a very limited platform to communicate, express and connect.
So what ends up happening is that men loses hope for a deeper connection, thus they start to play the numbers game, look for something that’s easy and casual OR just become forever pen pals.
(It’s not that men don’t want relationships, they do. They just find it difficult also to cross this barrier of superficiality and disconnects that online platforms inherently presents.)
So the point of the matter is that you can’t approach online dating the same way you approach traditional real life dating. You have to have a completely different approach, otherwise you will be burned again and again.
(This is why I’ve put together my “High Value Banter” class, so that you as a woman can learn the most skill in online dating to create a deep sense of emotional attraction and connection from the first moment, as well as weed out the wrong types of men in that process. CLICK here to attend it if you haven’t already.)
Alright, so here are the 5 most common yet devastating mistakes that women make in online dating.
1. Your dating profile is (sorry to say…) too boring!
Number 1, your profile is just too boring. Sorry to say it, but that’s the truth for most of the profiles that I encountered. (Somewhere in the range of 90%+ of women’s dating profiles on all platforms were rather generic and boring.)
After a while, profiles start to all look the same, like as if they were generic profiles with different faces.
Look, I get it. Most people, men and women have never thought much about what should go into their profiles, especially in a way that is going to be perceived from other user’s point of view. So as a result, people usually just spend 5 minutes setting up their profiles, and hope for the best.
And plus, no one really teaches you how to set up a what I would call unicorn profile, something that instantly and obviously stands out from the rest of the crowd.
So the end result, another boring and generic profile.
Do you want to know how many times I had read the same lines?
“…Oh I love my family, love my friends. Love traveling, love the weekend, love food. Etc etc.”
Does that sound familiar at all?
Now I’m not making it wrong for you to put that on your profile, but it’s a tiny bit boring because every other person does it as well.
Find me someone who doesn’t love their family, their friends, traveling, the weekend or food. That’s so much more interesting conversation.
Now there’s no need to feel guilty about any of this, because as I said, it’s sometimes counterintuitive to know what to do on your profile.
This is the game of online dating. It’s nothing like meeting someone organically. So, different rules apply.
Now here’s something I want you to understand and remember.
Information is not value, especially generic information.
No stranger would truly care about all the details of your life because all the details are not valuable to them. It’s not really a form of value. It doesn’t mean very much to anyone else but you.
Think of it this way, the purpose of the bio is NOT so much about what you do, what you’ve done or your “preferences” but rather it’s an invitation for high value men to want to connect with you and find out more about you.
Make sense?
Your profile needs to be crafted in a way that naturally creates a sense of mystery, curiosity and intrigue, and of course show you off explicitly or implicitly in a high value way.
If you’ve followed our work for sometime, you might know what true value is in a relationship, it comes down to 2 things really. If you know what they are, comment below share with others what these 2 things are.
But don’t fall into the trap of thinking that the more information you put into your profile is going to somehow benefit you.
On the other end of the spectrum, not enough information can also be just as bad as too much information.
In my experience, over 50% of all women’s profiles had no bio. No description, nothing. That was disappointing to see, because nothing makes a profile seem generic faster than having no written bio.
A profile without a bio is like the equivalent of a human with no personality. Alright maybe it’s not that horrible but you get what I’m saying.
It is so easy for men to swipe through hundreds of profiles in one sitting and most of them would not remember profiles with no bio.
(…And yes, through all my testing, men DO read your profile.)
Not to mention, having an interesting, intriguing and high value profile means that there’s more catalyst for exciting conversations. Otherwise it can be difficult to break the ice or have many different threads of conversation. (Then you tend to resort to small talk, which is the worst kind of “talk” in online dating.)
So I always recommend you have some sort of bio on your profile. It’s going to take a bit of thought, but you have to do it.
And of course, photos can also be boring. If you have series of photos that are too similar, too “generic”, that becomes super boring. After looking through thousands of profile photos, you don’t want to know how many times I saw a perfectly posed photo on top of Machu Picchu.
(…That seemed to be the most popular destination for travel photos amongst women.)
Look, I want your whole online dating profile to be exciting. I want it to stand out from the thousands of other profiles that men are looking through as well.
If you want to learn how to craft a unicorn profile for yourself, then join me in my new program High Value Profile & Banter. (It’s not ready yet, but it will be soon!)
However right now, if you want to take a look at your own dating profile, just ask yourself…
Is my profile fun to read?
Is it entertaining?
And ask yourself the toughest question of them all.. “Why should men even care?”
Additional reading: (3 things a woman should never put in her dating profile)
2. You have a value extracting profile.
OK, the second common mistake that I see a lot of women make when it comes to online dating isn’t a boring profile but a value extracting profile.
What do I mean by a value extracting profile?
It means your profile and in fact your whole demeanour is one to look for and take value.
Now don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with being able to receive value or even wanting value for yourself. That’s important and that’s what we’re all made for.
There’s no need to push that part of ourselves down. However with life in general, you and I can get SO much further by offering value first before even asking for anything in return.
As someone much smarter than myself once said, “The most selfish thing you can do in your life is to be selfless.”
Of course, some people may take that the wrong way and so I have to advise you to do it intelligently. Be selfless intelligently.
Don’t keep trying to give and failing to see that what you give isn’t actually value in that moment. Otherwise that’s how people get burnt out and go, “Giving doesn’t work! I gave everything and got nothing in return!”
Let me give you an example of a value extracting profile.
In fact, it’s much easier for you to perceive it when a man is trying to extract value, because you as a woman would be more sensitive to that.
So imagine a man wrote on his own profile…
“I’m looking for a woman with the perfect body, perfect smile and always ready to have some fun. She should always be ready to make me feel like a king, make me look good in front of my friends and always make me her first priority.”
Can you see how this is value taking or value extracting?
Even if you argue that this is simply this man’s preferences (or god forbid “standards”), it doesn’t take away from this being a value extracting profile. Make sense?
Here are a couple of real life examples of value extracting profiles from women.
“On here to find someone to give me the wife life, and understand that I am a first choice. However, be happy for me to bring other choices into play with”.
“Looking for my future husband here.”
I would go as far as to say that by stating you’re only interested in a serious relationship is one statement that is bordering value extracting. (I would simply leave that out of your profile, don’t include it at all.)
At the end of the day, it’s much better to show your intent rather than to state it. Show it through the way you communicate, show it through your boundaries and who you are.
Coincidentally when you become good at High Value Banter, you will naturally learn how to easily weed out the men who don’t want committed relationships. So you really don’t need to state that on your profile.
Because to a man, here’s what you have to understand- the only reason a woman states that she wants a serious relationship is because she’s thinking about gaining resources for herself. That’s it.
So this implies to men that you are actively wanting a man’s time, attention, energy and other resources. (Which is a value taking mindset or paradigm.)
Of course there’s nothing wrong with wanting a serious relationship, that’s what I believe feminine women are built to seek out. But just don’t lead with that. Let it be unspoken.
It’s much better to say you’re looking for “the one” rather than looking for a husband or something serious, because of the implied meaning and the association with resources.
But if it was me, again I’d leave that out completely. In my opinion, there’s absolutely no need to state that you are not here for hookups, and only want a serious relationship. It simply doesn’t need to be said once you get good at High Value Banter.
…Because this type of playful banter can be used to test a man’s intent, so you won’t have to “try” to protect yourself with these types of profile statements.
So as a general rule, always lead with value because attention always follows where the value is.
3. Your conversations start off too slow.
Online dating is inherently somewhat awkward. You are literally two awkward strangers trying to initiate some kind of online connection.
…And the only method of communication comes down to mere text messages through the cyber clouds, which of course has a great chance of being misinterpreted.
So how do you get past that awkward stage quickly?
I personally recommend that you as a woman initiate the first contact in online dating. Read here: 3 reasons why women should initiate in online dating.
The reason is that most men are terrible at conversing with women and so you need to lead that process.
And no, it doesn’t make you look like you’re chasing a man for initiating the conversation, IF you do it in a high value way.
Look, I get it, it’s much safer to let the man initiate. However, most men are completely and utterly awkward when it comes to communicating with women. They really suck at it.
They could probably fix any machine you put in front of them, but they get tongue tied if you put a woman in front of them.
So my opinion is that you as a woman have infinitely better capacity to initiate exciting conversations than men do. And you should take that opportunity to lead.
In fact, women actually initiate more than 70% of the time in real life through what’s called “subtle signalling”. More on that in the article, 3 reasons why women should initiate in online dating.
So get the ball rolling, create that conversation momentum and start off strong. (A great place to start is to give a playful yet backhanded compliment about something on the man’s profile.)
But don’t start off with small talk. Small talk will kill the conversation’s momentum faster than a speeding bullet. There’s literally no room for small talk in online conversations… why?
Because it’s boring and we might as well go back to *SWIPE* *SWIPE* *SWIPE*.
So what if I told you that there’s a way you can initiate any online conversation without looking low value?
Not only that but also sets a playful tone for the rest of the conversation.
As a result, you are no longer just another awkward stranger on these dating apps but instead you become the most interesting, mysterious and exciting woman men have ever spoken to.
So no downsides, only upsides.
That’s the POWER of what I call, “High Value Icebreakers.”
They break the ice in a high value way without overly expressing your interest, at the same time setting a playful tone for the rest of the conversation.
Would you like to learn some “High Value Icebreakers”?
If you do, here’s what I’ve done for you.
I’ve been testing some different “high value” icebreakers and I want to give you one of my best performing icebreakers for you to use. If you would like that… then CLICK this link to find out how this high value icebreaker works…
When you get there, you’ll see that Facebook messenger will be open. Just click the Get Started button. I’ve been secretly training my very own chatbot to deliver this high value icebreaker in a way that you can experience for yourself.
This is because I want to give you the full experience of what the conversation exchange feels like when you use a high value icebreaker.
Once you experience it first hand, you’ll get a better idea of how it works in the whole context of online dating.
My promise to you is that by using this specific icebreaker, it will help you instantly inject excitement into the conversation as well as create a sense of interest, fascination and mystery.
Not to mention this also pre-frames the tone of the conversation so that it won’t die another boring and disappointing death like how so many conversations end up.
Again, click here to learn my best performing high value icebreaker.
4. You’re not able to create romantic tension online.
OK, mistake number 4 that women commonly make in online dating is that they are not able to create any kind of romantic tension.
What do I mean by romantic tension?
It’s that sense of excitement, mystery and positive anticipation, as if you don’t know what is going to happen next but you look forward to it.
It’s the exhilarating uncertainty that comes with having that mutual emotional attraction with someone.
It’s a positive type of tension that drives the relationship forward.
Now this is important so listen up. If you weren’t able to create any romantic tension in the interactions you have with a man, then nothing will eventuate. Period.
It doesn’t matter how compatible you are with that person, it doesn’t matter how many boxes you tick or he ticks, nothing will eventuate.
Because ultimately it’s emotional attraction and emotional connection that brings people together.
(…And guess what kills the romantic tension? Small talk.)
So how do you create romantic tension?
The way to do it is for you to cultivate the skill of what I call, high value banter. It’s the ability and the skill of communicating that captivates, allures and spellbinds those who you interact with.
In case you haven’t attended my class on High Value Banter, click here to do so now. It’s free.
Most of the time, I’ve noticed that many women either become way too passive or way too straightforward, and therefore never really calibrated to the context or the situation.
They either push too hard, or pull back too much to compensate, but neither is right. It’s about the right balance for that moment in time.
To get to that place of becoming calibrated, you have to actually practice it.
It’s a skill. And you get better at it the more you practice it.
It’s like the more you do your makeup, the better, the quicker and more efficient you get at doing your makeup that particular way.
Your ability to establish romantic tension is a skill that I want you to acquire because it is one of the most important skills not just in online dating but also love in general for the rest of your life. Because it takes this same set of skills to keep the spark alive after 10, 20 years of marriage.
So to be able to successfully create romantic tension, you need to be willing to fully engage and metaphorically bounce back and forth with a man.
It’s like dancing, right? Think of a beautiful waltz, one person takes a step, the other person follows with a step. You would never take two or three steps in a row because that’s not how you waltz! You would destroy the form of the dance and you would completely throw off your dance partner.
So think of high value banter as a dance around the ballroom.
It’s not a race, there is no finish line. It’s about feeling and reacting to your dance partner and move accordingly. It’s not about getting to a certain “stage” or a certain finish line.
And it’s within this dance back and forth that you’re able to create romantic tension and emotional attraction.
By the way, some men will be better at this dance than others. That’s to be expected. But the good news is that once you get the ball rolling, most men will be able to join in. It’s only when both people are afraid to create any banter that ultimately creates awkwardness and lackluster interactions.
So that’s why I firmly believe that for you to ever succeed in online dating, this skill of creating romantic tension is absolutely critical for you to learn and master.
Again, go attend my free class on High Value Banter and learn exactly what it takes to create romantic tension. CLICK here to attend the class.
5. Not understanding how to escalate online dating to real life dating.
Alright, the last common mistake women make in online dating is that they don’t understand how to properly transition from online to real life dating.
How long should you wait before meeting a man? How do you make that transition? Should you wait until the man asks you out?
I’ve heard so many stories where women find themselves in a texting relationship with a man and the man finds all kinds of excuses to not meet. In other words, he is just a pen pal.
The problem in those situations would mostly comes down to the lack of romantic tension and emotional attraction between you and the man. In other words, he has no reason to want to meet you, it’s too much effort and to put it bluntly, it’s not worth his time.
So at the end of the day, I want you to know that it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been speaking to a man for, (it could be one day, it could be a month, or six months), if there isn’t enough romantic tension in the air, then it’s not a good time to meet.
…Because chances are, you’ll have a very disappointing experience if you were to meet anyway. I’ve heard way too many stories of women having a terrible time trying to force a meeting to happen.
(…sometimes the man doesn’t even bother showing up!)
If you were able to create that spark, that romantic tension in your online conversations, then it wouldn’t matter how long you’ve been speaking to each other, it wouldn’t matter who asks who out. Things will just progress naturally as it should.
I’ve known couples who have met just after speaking for a day. I know people who have met for the first time after speaking for months. The time is not the issue. The emotional attraction and connection are the real measuring sticks here.
So work on your skills in creating romantic tension. That’s where all your success in online dating will come from.
I mean the ideal situation would be that there’s so much romantic tension that it doesn’t matter where you meet, it doesn’t matter what you plan to do, you’ll know you’ll have a blast because you both feel like… “We just gotta meet!”
However in most instances, it’s best to keep the first “date” as informal as possible.
There’s already some inherent pressure in meeting for the first time, you don’t want to add to the pressure by committing to something big, like a super fancy dinner somewhere.
What if you don’t actually get along in real life? What if he doesn’t look the way he does in photos? What if he isn’t the kind of man you thought he was? And what if he thinks you are not the kind of woman he was expecting?
All this innate pressure and uncertainty can sometimes make things more awkward than they have to. You get tense, and that playfulness disappears.
So ideally the first time you meet, you want to keep it as informal as possible.
This way you can always back out of the “date” easily and quickly, without having to sit through a whole 10 course degustation or (god forbid) foot a large bill of any kind.
So start small. Start with small commitments. If the small commitments work out well, then you can work your way up.
Alright, so these are the 5 common mistakes that women make in online dating.
It’s imperative for you to understand that online dating is so very different from real life dating. Different rules apply and as such, you have to understand what works and what doesn’t.
If you truly want to succeed in online dating as a woman, there are 2 things you need to do very well.
Number 1, you need to have a profile that stands out from the rest in a high value way. A profile that is not just memorable but also instigates exciting conversations.
Number 2, you need the skills and the ability to create romantic tension and emotional attraction through these online platforms.
The way to do this is through what I call, High Value Banter. High Value Banter is a playful way of communicating online that creates curiosity, positive suspense and emotional attraction from the very first text.
Not to mention, it keeps the conversation infinitely interesting, keeps the interactions exciting and keeps the conversation’s momentum strong. All these ultimately mean a deeper and stronger emotional connection with your chosen man.
Because ultimately I want you to enjoy online dating without the pain, frustration and burnouts that women often have. I want you to have exciting matches, enthralling conversations and spellbinding real life dates.
So here’s what I’ve done for you.
I’ve put together a free class on the 3 rules of high value banter to help you create romantic tension and emotional attraction with men online and take you from being just another awkward stranger to the most interesting, mysterious and exciting woman he has ever spoken to.
CLICK here to attend this class now! ????
Let me share with you some initial feedback from women about this free class, just so you know what to expect.
Anyhow, go learn High Value Banter now. It will be the best thing you do all week. CLICK here to enroll in my free class on High Value Banter.
P.S. If you liked this article, CLICK HERE to check out my full article archives! Or you may greatly benefit from one of our highly popular paid programs, CLICK HERE to see what we offer right now.
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David is the founder of Commitment Triggers & co-founder of Shen Wade Media where we teach women how to show up as a high value high status woman whom easily inspires a deep sense of emotional commitment from her chosen man. Together with his wife Renee at The Feminine Woman, they have positively influenced the lives of over 15 million women through their free articles and videos as well as 10’s of thousands through paid programs through the Shen Wade Media platform.
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