How Psychology Transforms Online Dating and Relationship Building
Our approach to dating with psychology at Consonance (Gleichklang) applies findings and methods of psychology to sustainably support the online dating and friendship search of our members. Dating at Consonance combines psychological insights for online dating and matchmaking with the opportunity to find friends. At the center is the understanding of how needs, values, and relationship patterns interact and allow genuine closeness to develop.
Through our psychologically based system of online dating, we also bring your relationship search to success:
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How Psychology Supports Online Dating and Partner Search
Psychology helps us in online dating to avoid superficial selection processes and promote encounters based on mutual understanding. In this way, dating at Consonance (Gleichklang) becomes a space in which both love relationships and friendships and communities become possible on a sustainable, humanly appreciative basis:
- In matchmaking and friendship matching, we provide psychologically compatible suggestions to create the foundation for meaningful and stable partnerships and friendships. This involves comparing a variety of search criteria that capture special characteristics of life philosophy, ethical-moral core values, gender identity and sexual orientation, as well as relationship models. This goes far beyond what dating apps offer their users.
- Consonance’s matching principles (matching algorithm) and our recommendations for effective dating are based on the comprehensive and continuous evaluation of scientific psychological research as well as on our own surveys and studies. The essential psychological principles for effective online dating and relationship search are presented in the book by Consonance co-founder and psychologist Guido F. Gebauer: ➨ A Perfect Match? Psychological Analysis of Online Dating. The book can be purchased as a printed publication, but we also make it available on Consonance as a freely available knowledge resource.
- Numerous psychological studies show that alignment in values and lifestyle is the most important factor for a happy and lasting partnership or friendship. Because only when people have something in common can they experience something together. At Consonance, we provide our members with a variety of search criteria through which they can design their search for a suitable person for a partnership, friendship, or travel acquaintance themselves. The suggestions result directly from the members’ search inputs.
- Dating at Consonance is aimed at people with serious relationship intentions. Serious dating means exploring encounters rather than gamification. Dating and online dating are understood by us not as entertainment but as processes for which reliability and responsibility are essential.
Approach to Consonance Dating
With this approach, we support your online dating and friendship search in an effective and reputable way:
- We collect the preferences, personalities, and lifestyles of our members using psychologically sound test procedures and methods. This allows for a preselection in matchmaking and friendship matching of people with whom the prospects for a meaningful connection in a partnership or friendship are particularly high.
- Our support team provides comprehensive advice to members on the best strategies for their online dating and friendship search. This includes an individual profile check for every new member, as well as ongoing advice on any questions or difficulties that arise. If needed, there is also the option of dating coaching (via video conference or phone) with Consonance co-founder Guido F. Gebauer.
- We provide our members with extensive information on findings from relationship psychology about love relationships, online dating, and friendships in our Psychology Blog. Here we also publish the results of our regular surveys, which provide further insight into problems, difficulties, and solutions for online dating and friendship search.
- With the help of a series of psychological tests in our Consonance Test Portal, for example on high sensitivity, 11 dimensions of sexual experience or on the questions “Why am I single?“, “What type of single am I?“, “What is my basic attitude to love?” or “Am I avoidant of attachment?” we support our members in better self-assessment, specifying their search criteria for online dating and friendship search, as well as in recognizing and implementing personal changes.
Structure of the Matching Algorithm at Consonance (Gleichklang)
- In many matchmaking services, the matchmaking or friendship search is done exclusively or predominantly through a general personality test. Dating apps primarily consider age, gender, and geodata. On singles sites and many other dating sites, there is no real matchmaking in the proper sense. At Consonance, we take a different approach by collecting from our members the truly individual important characteristics of their lifestyle and relationship wishes. The matching algorithm operating in the background at Consonance identifies those members who truly fit together in the central characteristics of their lifestyle, relationship wishes, and core attitudes.
- The psychological matching is based on recent scientific findings showing that similarity in very general personality traits plays only a minor role for relationship happiness. Much more important for compatibility is alignment in values, political and societal beliefs, sustainable lifestyles (e.g., veganism), or generally in rare central characteristics that people share with each other.
- Another important component of the psychological matching at Consonance is the acceptance principle: People often experience difficulties in online dating due to certain characteristics or special circumstances of their life situation. This can affect a large number of characteristics or special circumstances, such as special sexual orientations (e.g., bisexuality, pansexuality, asexuality), physical or mental disabilities or illnesses, including autism or Asperger’s, rarer gender identities (e.g., non-binary gender, transgender/transidentity, gender fluidity), high sensitivity, or also the situation as single parents or as Absolute Beginners. We ask all members – regardless of whether they have these characteristics or not – about their acceptance and willingness to enter into a relationship with corresponding individuals. This creates the maximum possible inclusivity and at the same time reduces hurtful rejections.
- Only in a second step is there an additional fine-tuning of the matchmaking according to general personality similarity, whereby primarily those personality traits, such as openness to experience, are included as criteria for which studies have shown a certain significance for relationship happiness. The three pillars of our approach are presented in detail in this blog article.
The Psychological Path to Relationships
Many believe that the best way for online dating or friendship search is to view as many profiles as possible and compare the corresponding people with each other.
However, psychological findings show the opposite:
- Many comparisons lead to a rejection mentality in which we become increasingly critical and eventually develop doubts about all suggestions.
- Studies also show that our willingness to commit decreases when we assume that better alternatives could appear at any time.
- The constant hope for a supposedly better suggestion blocks the ability and willingness to truly engage in a relationship.
- Research on dating apps that rely on profile scrolling even shows that often more than 60% of participants are already in a relationship. They cannot detach themselves from dating or seek other motives such as distraction from boredom, virtual eroticism, or self-affirmation. For serious seekers, this leads to frustration, insecurity, and decreasing motivation.
- Modern dating systems are based on superficial decision-making processes, choice overload, gamification, and encourage endless dating rather than finding a partner. Side effects include ghosting, harassment, unserious profiles, wavering between hope and boredom, and a decrease in willingness to commit. We counter this at Consonance with a system that is not based on addictive mechanisms but maximizes the prospects of finding a partner.
Dating, online dating, and finding friends at Consonance are based on psychological insights and value-oriented matchmaking. At Consonance, we therefore see it as our central task to accompany our members in their relationship search:
- We have developed a psychologically based schema or script that shows how relationship search becomes successful.
- In weekly psychological blog articles and in our videos, we address the needs and difficulties of our members and present scientifically based approaches for successful relationship building.
- In addition, our support team is available at any time in writing or by phone to solve problems directly and open up paths. Members can also be accompanied in their relationship search by our co-founder and psychologist Guido F. Gebauer through video coaching.
In short, Consonance (Gleichklang) is an online dating platform that places psychology at the center of its matchmaking and is thus able to bring together people who are truly compatible with each other and can build lasting relationships. Read also the 10 decisive reasons why you are in the right place with your dating at Consonance.
Relationship Search as a Process of Personality Development
Relationship search is far more than meeting other people; it always also leads to an encounter with oneself. Many people know the pattern of entering relationships that are not good for them because they were unable to clearly articulate their own needs or boundaries. Research findings show that people with an unclear or undifferentiated self-concept more often make dating decisions that do not fit them and feel insecure in the process. Those who know little about themselves are more likely to consider unsuitable profiles as suitable – not out of desire, but out of lack of clarity.
Self-knowledge therefore becomes a central element of any online dating. Those who understand which values, attitudes, and ways of life are truly important will recognize more quickly which kind of relationship can be sustainable in the long term. Looking back on one’s own relationship experiences reveals what should be preserved and what needs to change in the future. On this basis, dysfunctional patterns can be identified and new decisions can be developed that more strongly align with one’s own needs.
Often, incompatibility arises not from personality differences per se, but from differences in essential values and fundamental life and relationship models. When these values remain unclear, the risk increases of entering relationships that do not fit. Dating platforms can either support or hinder this process:
- Superficial profiles, consumption, and focus on ever-new profiles hardly enable self-reflection, while serious engagement with oneself has the opposite effect. A clear self-view improves selection decisions and strengthens the ability to recognize suitable people.
Relationship search – whether romantic or friendly – can at the same time give us an occasion to change ourselves:
- Often we do things we do not want to do, or we omit things we want to do. We do not live according to our ideals and longings. Whether ethical, religious, or health-related – online dating can provide the occasion to pursue desired changes now and bring them as a resource into the future partnership or friendship.
Dating at Consonance (Gleichklang) is designed as a process that goes far beyond short-term contacts. Personality development, self-reflection, and mutual understanding are central to online dating, matchmaking, and finding friends. Likewise, our members can find communities at Consonance that match their values and life goals. Unlike dating apps, the focus is not on quick selection but on a psychologically structured path on which encounters, relationships, and self-experience are connected.
Relationship search thus becomes part of one’s own personality development. Many of our members report that their online dating has gained depth through this self-reflection and that they now choose more consciously and confidently than before.
We actively accompany and promote this development process at Consonance (Gleichklang) – as an integral part of online dating and relationship building:
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