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Afterword to “Online Dating from a Psychological Perspective” – Consonance (Gleichklang)
Was it necessary to write this guide to online dating? Wouldn’t it have been better to leave partner search to people’s spontaneity?
A look at the many involuntary singles, disastrous partner choices, and broken relationships argues against that. With online dating, there is also wasted time, squandered money, and psychological injuries due to incorrect search strategies or ineffective communication behavior. Not to mention those who fall victim to lies and fraud, catfishing, love scammers, or sexual assault. Others, in turn, lose themselves in virtual chatting or casual encounters and, unnoticed, drift further and further away from their original goal of a long-term relationship.
All of this is unnecessary. Because online dating – done right – can be a very effective way to find the right person for a happy and stable relationship. This is precisely what I wanted to make clear with this guide.
Romantic love is possible and it remains – despite all social and technological changes – one of the most important factors in the life happiness of the vast majority of people. For many others, it is the longing for this happiness that continues to make them search for love online.
However, the structures and algorithms of online dating are difficult for most people to understand. With this guide, I wanted to shed a little light into the darkness and thereby make it easier to choose a suitable platform.
I also hope that this guide gives its readers reason to view love and partnership more openly and in more diverse ways. All too often, we repeat the same patterns over and over or imitate what others prescribe for us. With this guide, I wanted to show and demonstrate the diversity of love. Relationships can be monogamous or non-monogamous. Partners can live together, choose separate residences in the same place, or a long-distance relationship. Stability and satisfaction can be achieved in all of these relationship models.
But the most important recommendation of this guide is the call for radical honesty. This is both a prerequisite and a method for finding, establishing, maintaining, and developing romantic relationships. Radical honesty with oneself and others should accompany the entire partner search and should not end after finding a partner.
This closes the circle and brings us back to spontaneity: Radical honesty is the prerequisite for a spontaneity where people no longer present themselves, but rather behave and show themselves completely spontaneously as they truly are.
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