advice file #7: rejection flooding.

Down to one. One of the guys from the last post is out. Ah well. 

Which leads me to my latest advice file about how to keep your spirits up while e-dating. Borrow a technique from psychologists who treat phobias: flooding. Basically, flooding means exposing someone to what they fear so much that they lose their fear of it. A friend that had a dog phobia, for example, was once trapped on a couch at a friend’s house with a broken leg and a very friendly dog for company. After a couple of days of aggressively friendly slobbering (the dog’s), he no longer had that fear of dogs.

In the e-dating context, when I start to take it personally that people don’t want to meet up because “the chemistry just isn’t there” or “the physical distance is too great” or whatever reason, I send out a slew of emails to interesting looking people on one site, or “start communication” with a bunch of the ones that I’ve been matched to on a different site. (Sometimes I even join a new site!)

On eharmony, for example, one of the sites I’ve used, I try not to even look at the profiles of the guys I’ve been matched to before I start communication. This is due to two reasons: 1) I’m fairly sure that 2/3 of my “matches” aren’t actually paying members for a variety of reasons I’m too lazy to list here, and thus 2) it’s much more time efficient to just start communication without studying the profiles of those potential matches that might not even exist. What I end up with is a bunch of people who never respond, a smaller but still quite large number who “close” me, and a smaller number who respond to my “request for communication.”  By not filtering on the the first round, it depersonalizes the large number of rejections I get. It also lowers the number of little (but disheartening) disappointments that come when you read a really interesting profile but don’t get a response.

On other sites where there isn’t the same computer-run system for matching you, I do actually read profiles carefully, but I try not to overanalyze them. Are they interesting? Seem sane? Meet other basic criteria like not showing obvious evidence of racism and meeting my own highly personal standards of attractiveness? Then I initiate communication. Not only does this keep you from filtering out people who are quite lovely but don’t know how to write a good profile, but more relevant for this post, this makes you take it less personally if they ignore you or tell you they’re not interested. Only invest in a relationship if you actually start one!

By the way, it’s funny how four guys responding “yes, let’s meet” out of 40 communications initiated feels so much better than one guy saying “yes” out of four emails sent, even through the the percentage interested is lower (10% versus 25% for you who math phobes.) 

So…initiate enough online contacts and go out on enough dates that it just doesn’t hurt that much when you’re rejected. This technique works really well for me. Sure, I’m disappointed when someone with a profile I really liked or who was super fun to meet for that first or second date flakes or lets me know they’re not interested, but it’s pretty easy to bounce back.

(A nice side effect of rejection flooding is that you end up with more potential partners-in-crime in the pipeline.)