This blog post was updated in April 2025.

Do you want to make some changes in your dating? Are you getting plenty of dates, but with the wrong people? Or perhaps you’re not getting replies to your messages and can’t work out why? Is part of you feeling despondent about dating?

Let’s explore some ways you could experiment with your dating, whether online or in real life.

1. Looking objectively at the efficiency of your dating

Get yourself a notebook and a pen and let’s start by analysing your dating data. Make some notes on your dating activity over the last year.

Be systematic: keep records of your dating experiences

(a)  How many people did you have conversations with online? How many did you meet in real life?

(b)  How many of those led to a first date?

(c)   On how many first dates did you feel good and were able to be yourself?

(d)  How many of your first dates led to second dates?

(e)  How many short term dating experiences (defined as 3-10 dates) did you have?

You may find that in writing down your data it isn’t as bad as you thought. And it might help to focus you on what you want to change.

It may also be validating or reassuring to appreciate that there are inequalities in gender and ethnicity in online dating and that you are not alone: in other words, it may not be you, but structural or systemic prejudice that is built into the online dating algorithms as well as into our attitudes, emotions, thoughts and behaviours.

In terms of getting responses to messages, one study[1a] of heterosexual daters (set in the US, as almost all studies on dating are) showed that men sent 80% more messages and received two-thirds fewer messages than women. Only about 3% of the messages sent by men got responses, in contrast with roughly 6% of messages sent by women. This study also showed that Asian men and Black women were the least likely to receive messages. Another study [1b] showed over 80% of initial messages by White daters were to White daters, and only 3% were from White daters to Black daters. Black daters were 10 times more likely to contact White people than vice versa.

Whatever your gender, ethnicity or orientation, there are lots of statistics on what kind of messages work, so you may be able to improve your reply rate.[2] Or you may decide that online dating just isn’t safe or healthy for you, or that you only want to use niche apps (e.g., for the LBGTQ+ community or for one ethnic or religious group).

It’s also quite normal for few conversations to lead to a first date, and few first dates to lead to a second date. I don’t have any published data on this, but one survey of 3,500 singles on the dating site RSVP found that 20% of users reported always getting a second date, 28% said they did so as often as not, and 8% reported never getting one, as reported in an article in The Sydney Morning Herald. The experience of my clients suggests only about one in ten conversations leads to a first date, and then about one in ten first dates leads to a second date. So you may not be doing anything “wrong”. However, if you want to improve your conversion rate, here are two areas to consider:

(a)  You might want to reflect on and develop your interpersonal interaction style. For example, research shows leaving gaps in the conversation that are slightly too long is linked with people rating social interactions more negatively, and completing the other’s sentences, and mimicry can lead to people saying they ‘clicked’ with their date and were willing to meet again.[3] Watch old episodes of First Dates on Channel 4 and see how very small errors in the conversation can affect the dynamic significantly. Do you see yourself in any of the daters? Are there triggers that would provoke strong responses in you, or things that you also do that aren’t helpful for creating a connection?

(b)  Are you dating the right people? Are you spotting the warning signs earlier on in the online conversations? Should you be ruling out people more quickly? Let’s think about this in the next section.

2. Spotting the warning signs more quickly

There are lots of clues in the initial messages that could indicate incompatibility or someone not being ready for a relationship. These might include: they don’t ask questions about you, their messages are sporadic, they don’t show an interest in forming a proper relationship, they talk about your appearance or sex and very little else, they don’t express any emotions, they don’t laugh at your jokes, they are self-obsessed, you don’t have any shared interests, you have very different levels of education or political views. These signs aren’t always an issue, but they could be.

Many people just aren’t that good at spotting them, especially when they’re attracted to the person or getting emotionally invested too early. You might need someone to read through your messages and give you an objective assessment. You can also get better at this by reading back over the messages after it’s not worked out, and making notes on what you can now see were warning signs. It’s not an exact science, obviously, but it can help, especially if you find repeating patterns. For example, you might find you’re always messaging people who are emotionally unavailable. (See my blog post on this for more information.)

3. Treating your fellow daters well

Online dating can make us treat people worse. It’s like a consumer experience in which we treat people as objects to browse and purchase or try out.[4] This can make us treat them as less human. We are also affected by the way others treat us. So if people just stop messaging us with no explanation, we are more likely to do it.[5] This is because for this new social context of online dating, there were at first no rules and we looked to others to find out what is acceptable. Social norms are constantly being recreated and we can influence these to promote good ones! So let’s aim to treat people really kindly, politely and gently. It’s not that hard to say to someone “It’s been great chatting, but I don’t think you’re right for me. Good luck with finding someone!” to close down the conversation. The same goes for after a date. People are often unsure and want to keep their options open, but it’s kinder and more respectful towards the other person to make a decision. Take some time to get clear about what you’re looking for and it’ll be easier to decide one way or another.

Photo by Taylor Grote on Unsplash

4. Enjoying the dates more 

When we’re dating, we can be too focused on finding the love of our life and not on having fun. If you tell yourself your date is probably not going to lead to another date, it can help you to relax and just enjoy meeting a new person. There is always something new to learn from them, and a chance to imagine how it feels to be someone else. Try dating people that have interesting jobs or backgrounds that are different from you, just to learn more about them. For example, if you’re a scientist, try going on a date with an artist! For a second date, plan interesting places to visit so you enjoy the activity even if the person turns out to be wrong for you. Then you are making your cultural and social life more interesting at the same time as dating.

One of Rachel’s dating workshops in 2017

5. Getting out there and meeting new people Can you change your balance of online and offline? To do more in-person interaction, you could sit in a café where the kind of people you want to meet are likely to go. Read a book there, or work on your laptop if you have to. You never know when you might get chatting to someone interesting. They might have single friends too. Expand your social network!

Photo by Jeff Sheldon on Unsplash

Find out what’s on locally and go along, on your own if necessary. Join local book clubs, go to farmer’s markets, quiz nights, join a choir, a salsa dancing class, learn a new language or sport, and then talk to as many people as you can.

Join lots of groups on Meetup and sign up for some evenings out. You might not immediately meet someone that you’re attracted to, but persevere. We expect everything to be instant these days because of online dating, but we can train ourselves to take time to get to know them. Stop asking yourself if you are attracted to them five minutes in and dividing people into two groups, those you’re attracted to and those you aren’t. And people you meet might have friends who invite you to their social events.

In particular, there are lots of Meetup groups for international people in London. People that have recently moved to London are great for being proactive in arranging social events and making new friends.

Speed dating and in-person events have become more popular than ever in the last year, so check out my Events page for some recommendations.

6. Try changing your goal from finding a partner to self-expansion

It might be better for feeling good about yourself if, rather than focusing on finding a partner, you focus on themes like personal development, making a difference in society, getting a better work-life balance, taking up new hobbies or activities, making new friends, or getting fitter. As well as feeling good about yourself, you’ll be more likely to come across as goal-oriented, rather than incomplete in some way. Finding a partner could then be a welcome by-product. Contentment and feeling fulfilled are attractive qualities.

Focusing on others rather than yourself is also psychologically healthy and attractive. Why not take up some voluntary work, join a political party or organise some fundraising events? You are likely to meet people similar to you in terms of values and goals. People rate similar political views as highly as they do similar educational levels.[6]

Find alternative ways of meeting new like-minded people

[1a] Lin, K. H., & Lundquist, J. (2013). Mate selection in cyberspace: The intersection of race, gender, and education. American Journal of Sociology, 119(1), 183-215.

[1b] Mendelsohn, G. A., Shaw Taylor, L., Fiore, A. T., & Cheshire, C. (2014). Black/White dating online: Interracial courtship in the 21st century. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 3(1), 2.

[2] Rosen, L. D., Cheever, N. A., Cummings, C., & Felt, J. (2008). The impact of emotionality and self-disclosure on online dating versus traditional dating. Computers in Human Behavior, 24(5), 2124-2157.

Schöndienst V., Dang-Xuan L.  (2011). The role of linguistic properties in online dating communication—A large-scale study of contact initiation messages. Proceedings of the 15th Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems, Paper 166, Brisbane, Australia.

Sprecher, S., & Hampton, A. J. (2016). Liking and Other Reactions After a Get-Acquainted Interaction: A Comparison of Continuous Face-to-Face Interaction versus Interaction that Progresses from Text Messages to Face-to-Face. Communication Quarterly, 1-21.

Ireland, M. E., Slatcher, R. B., Eastwick, P. W., Scissors, L. E., Finkel, E. J., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2011). Language style matching predicts relationship initiation and stability. Psychological Science, 22(1), 39-44.

Walther, J. B. (1996). Computer-mediated communication: Impersonal, interpersonal, and hyperpersonal interaction. Communication Research, 23, 3–43.

[3] Koudenburg, N. (2018). Regulating shared reality with micro-dynamics in the form of conversation. Current Opinion in Psychology, 23, 47-51.

[4] Frost J. H., Chance Z., Norton M. I., Ariely D. (2008). People are experience goods: Improving online dating with virtual dates. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 22, 51–61.

[5] Navarro, R., Larrañaga, E., Yubero, S., & Víllora, B. (2020). Individual, interpersonal and relationship factors associated with ghosting intention and behaviors in adult relationships: Examining the associations over and above being a recipient of ghosting. Telematics and Informatics, 101513.

[6] Huber, G. A., & Malhotra, N. (2017). Political homophily in social relationships: Evidence from online dating behavior. The Journal of Politics, 79(1), 269-283.