6. The Right Attitudes for Online Partner Search | Consonance (Gleichklang)

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The Right Attitudes for Online Partner Search | Consonance (Gleichklang)

Are you already well prepared to begin your online partner search? However, perhaps you (unconsciously) share the common negative attitudes toward online dating? If so, these attitudes will not remain without consequences and can ruin the success of your partner search.

In this chapter, you will learn more about which negative attitudes you should distance yourself from and which right attitudes toward online partner search can instead give your partner search a boost.

Negative attitudes, cynicism, and pessimism can become self‑fulfilling prophecies. Because we often begin to behave in ways that make our fears a reality.

But positive thinking alone does not help in partner search either if it is not tied to goals and actual options for action.

So it is about overcoming negative thinking errors and prejudices and arriving at optimistic yet realistic attitudes toward online partner search.

Such positive and realistic attitudes will enable you to have an active action orientation, composure, frustration tolerance, patience, and enough staying power to successfully complete your partner search.

Prejudices Cloud Your View

In online forums and also in discussions outside the internet, one repeatedly encounters the claim that online partner search is pointless anyway.

Women are supposedly only interested in wealth and prestige. Men are supposedly only interested in sex and good looks. Most profiles are supposedly fake anyway and have nothing to do with reality. Dating sites are supposedly pure rip‑offs. It is supposedly a market that lives by fueling longings that it does not fulfill:

“The fact is that you make your money from people’s longings, and you want to make it well and abundantly.”¹

Bitter and misogynistic attitudes are also not uncommon among some men.

Others consider themselves a hopeless case or think that at their age, online partner search is pointless.

The problem with all these quite widespread views is that they backfire on the person holding them:

• If you think this way, your online partner search will never even begin, end prematurely, or remain permanently unsuccessful. You will only confirm your expectations of failure.

A self‑fulfilling prophecy is an assumption that is fulfilled in the future because people behave in a very specific way. However, people often do not realize that it is they themselves who lead to the confirmation of their own prophecy.

Those affected explain their failure in online dating by saying that they have no chance due to their own person or the behavior of others. They often also blame the platforms.

But if one’s own needs are permanently not met, and if one explains this with one’s own deficits, helplessness, resignation, and depression can result. And if one externalizes the reasons, anger, rage, bitterness, aggression, or even hatred can arise.

In online dating, such problems can sometimes already be seen in profile texts in which cynicism and pessimism are reflected. Even first messages and replies can be characterized by this. The result is that the other people you actually want to get to know are put off. Unanswered messages or contact break‑offs are the consequence.

Such experiences can result in a vicious circle because the now truly negative experiences confirm one’s own prejudices. The result can be an even more negative communication behavior, up to complete inactivity or insulting‑aggressive behaviors.

Correct Your Thinking Errors!

Thinking errors can seriously hinder online partner search. Those who know their thinking errors and correct them have better chances of success.

Below are some typical thinking errors. Do you recognize one or more of these errors in yourself? All the better, because then you have the opportunity to correct your attitudes:

Dating sites are pure rip‑offs

The fact is that many people find a partnership online. Most people therefore know a couple somewhere in their environment that met through an online dating platform.

Rosenfeld et al. (2012) observed in a representative study on how couples met in the USA that the role of family and friends as traditional matchmakers has declined over the decades and that the role of online dating as a matchmaker had already reached a share of 22 % for heterosexual couples in 2009 – in the same‑sex area it was even over 60 % at that time.

In a follow‑up study, Rosenfeld et al. (2019) examined, based on another representative sample of heterosexual couples, what changes had occurred since 2009. In these data, which extend to the year 2017, it is shown that the role of the traditional matchmakers family and friends has continued to decline since 2009 and the role of online dating as a matchmaker has continued to increase. In 2017, the share of online dating reached 40 % of all formed couple relationships.

Of course, there are more or less reputable online dating platforms. But if online partner search were nothing but a rip‑off, all these relationships could not have come about.

Like all other service providers in a private‑sector society, dating platforms are generally oriented toward profit generation. But this does not distinguish dating platforms from other internet portals. The claim that all dating sites are rip‑offs is therefore a prejudice.

The main problem with this attitude is that it erects a barrier that will make it harder for you to exhaust the possibilities of online partner search. Because with this attitude, you will probably either forgo using online partner search altogether or not really pursue it sustainably.

But this deprives you of the use of one of the most effective ways of finding a partner in today’s world, as the findings of Rosenfeld et al. (2019) impressively demonstrate.

Dating profiles are full of lies and fraud

Honesty in online dating is a much‑discussed topic. How high the level of honesty is or, conversely, how much is distorted, lied about, or falsified in profiles depends largely on the choice of platform and is therefore to a large extent under your own control.

Incorrect information in dating profiles is a reality:

• For example, a study by Toma et al. (2008) observed that women’s information about their figure in online dating was more often inaccurate than men’s corresponding information, while men, conversely, tended to make false statements about their height.

Photos are also not always accurate:

• Hancock and Toma (2009) had 59 photos of people looking for a partner in online dating assessed for their realism by independent evaluators and trained experts. Approximately one‑third of the photos were rated as inaccurate. Photos of women were rated as less accurate than photos of men. Specifically, photos of women by professional photographers were more often rated as not current, retouched, or otherwise edited.

In addition to figure and height, age is also sometimes fiddled with:

• Hancock et al. (2007) recorded height, weight, and age of 80 people and compared these with the information in their dating profiles. They found tendencies toward incorrect information in all areas. However, it also became clear that the extent of such incorrect information was generally only small.

The small extent of incorrect information may be surprising at first glance. But why should people looking for a partner lie if they are looking for partners on a paid online dating platform?

In open social networks, flirt and entertainment platforms, such motivation may arise more quickly, especially since many people here also act out purely virtual needs without actually wanting to meet or even have a relationship with each other.

For serious partner seekers, on the other hand, such motivation is unlikely because the interest in getting to know each other is high and the false information would be noticed at the latest at the first meeting.

Psychologically, it is therefore to be assumed that incorrect information decreases when there is a serious interest in finding a partner.

This is also supported by findings from Guadagno et al. (2012), who investigated to what extent expectations about a possible meeting would influence the extent of dishonest self‑disclosure:

• Participants in a dating experiment were given a questionnaire about their personality. Some of them were told that they would actually meet the other person afterward, others were told that they would communicate by email. A third group was told that no meeting would take place, while a control group was given no information at all. The results showed that, in particular, the male participants exaggerated positive personal characteristics the more they assumed that there would be no direct meeting. When participants, on the other hand, expected to actually meet the other person, they tended toward a more authentic self‑presentation.

So there is no need to blow things out of proportion. Gross falsifications are rare in online partner search. Even if age, height, weight, and photo currency may be slightly fudged, most serious partner seekers strive to give a largely authentic picture of themselves, certainly also in the knowledge that otherwise the dishonesty would end at the latest at the first meeting.

Especially with reputable online matchmaking services, you can therefore assume that the majority of members provide correct information. The fear of being confronted primarily with false information and fake profiles is unfounded.

Partner search cannot be planned

You can be lucky if you rely solely on chance in your partner search. However, it is equally possible that you will remain single permanently in this way. Even in the past, people planned. Only then, others planned or participated, for example parents or friends. But these traditional matchmakers have now receded into the background, and online dating is in the foreground.

If you forgo online dating, partner search will be more difficult for you today, also because more and more people are placing their main focus of partner search on the online level and are less visible elsewhere with their partner search.

The assumption that partner search cannot be planned is exaggerated. Of course, it is true that there are no guarantees and that precise scheduling of search success is indeed not possible.

However, merely participating in an online dating platform requires at least a minimal plan, and subsequent search and communication strategies are also based to a large extent on conscious and plannable behavior.

The probability of finding a partnership depends crucially on your own activity, which in turn is closely related to thinking and planning.

Of course, love may still be found elsewhere, but by using online partner search you expand your search space and thus create new opportunities and chances.

Online partner search is unromantic

Some couples who met online fell in love before the first meeting; with others, deeper feelings only developed over the course of several encounters outside the internet.

The possibility of falling in love online can even become a danger when it is exploited:

• Ruthless criminal networks infiltrate online dating platforms, pretend to be the great love, and then approach the victims with requests for money. Some of the victims pay large sums of money and ignore the fraud for a long time in order to protect the great happiness they believe they have found.

I will come back to this topic in another chapter. Fortunately, romance fraudsters are the exception, and all reputable dating platforms make efforts to quickly identify and block such so‑called love scammers. Moreover, you can protect yourself by never letting your clear view be clouded, despite all the romance.

Thus, it is undisputed that infatuation and feelings of love can arise online. But they do not have to. The online exchange can equally be only the first step, and the emotional level develops later. Both courses are possible and can lead to sustainable love relationships.

Ultimately, the question of romance is a question of the chances of success in searching for a romantic relationship: can romantic relationships arise online?

Studies show that relationships that arise online do not fundamentally differ from other relationships:

• Anna Katrin Schwabeland‑Tuschy (2017) even came to the conclusion in her doctoral thesis that the relationship quality of couples who met online was higher than that of other couples.

• Cacioppo et al. (2013) also observed slightly higher marital satisfaction and a lower separation and divorce rate among married couples who met online.

• Paul (2014), however, came to the opposite conclusion with a slightly higher separation and divorce rate among married and unmarried couples who met online.

• Atkins (2019) also found slightly higher average relationship satisfaction and slightly higher secure attachment in couples who met outside the internet compared to couples who met online.

The inconsistency of the numbers already makes it clear that there is no clear direction. Also, all differences in the studies were only rather small. In this respect, the overall state of research suggests that relationships that arise online or outside the internet differ from each other at most only marginally.

Online partner search is therefore objectively a promising way to find a also lastingly happy romantic relationship.

Women seek money and status – men seek good looks

Women place more value on income, educational status, and professional position than men in partner search. Conversely, men place more value on appearance in their partner search.

A comprehensive meta‑study by Abramova et al. (2016) found clear evidence for all these trends. It also showed that men on dating apps are more likely to seek short‑term contacts and women to seek long‑term relationships.

A large‑scale study by Schwarz and Hassebrauck (2012), in which more than 21,000 heterosexual men and women aged 18 to 65 were directly surveyed about their partner selection preferences, also identified gender differences. The study concluded, among other things, that women preferred above all wealthy, generous, and intellectual men, while men showed a preference for physically attractive, creative, and domestic women.

Gender differences exist, but they should not be overestimated because the reported average differences do not yet say anything about an individual woman or an individual man:

• There are many women who place no or little value on income and status in partner selection. Conversely, there are men who do pay attention to income and status in partner selection. For some women, appearance is the most important factor; for some men, appearance is only of secondary importance.

• The finding that men are more likely to seek short‑term relationships and women long‑term relationships makes it quite clear that it always depends on the individual person. If all women and men were oriented this way, neither shorter flirt relationships nor long‑term relationships between women and men could arise, because for every heterosexual relationship there must ultimately be a man and a woman who are interested in that relationship.

The fact that gender differences in partner selection are often overestimated is also supported by a speed‑dating experiment by Eastwick and Finkel (2008) with the following surprising result:

• Even though at the beginning the male participants indicated a stronger preference for appearance and the female participants for income of potential partners, these gender differences did not influence their actual dating behavior in any way. In reality, the attraction associated with a contact and the desire to meet the person again were not more strongly related to income for women than for men, and not more strongly related to appearance for men than for women.

If, as a man looking for a woman, you are of the opinion from the outset that women only care about income and status in partner selection, you run the risk that, even if such status symbols exist, you will present yourself accordingly and thus be interesting primarily to people interested in income and status.

If, as a man looking for a woman, you have little income and no professional success, you should not believe from the outset that you have no prospects in partner search. Present yourself openly and honestly and put other values on the scale than money and prestige.

Conversely, as a woman looking for a man, you should not overestimate men’s preference for appearance: numerous men are searching for a stable partnership and by no means value only appearance and sex.

But if you are convinced from the outset that all men are only interested in appearance and sex anyway, you will have difficulty building trust and being convinced of the opposite.

Or you present yourself with corresponding photos in your profile so that indeed mainly those men are interested in a contact who correspond to the cliché.

So do not let gender role stereotypes unsettle you in your partner search, but emphasize the match of values.

Men are the oppressed gender

Remarkably often, men are found on dating platforms who experience themselves as victims of “feminist oppression.”

“The anti‑feminist men’s rights movement – ways of thinking, networks, and online mobilization” is a publication by the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the Gunda Werner Institute (2012) on this topic that is well worth reading.

It examines misogynistic and anti‑feminist ideologies in which men see themselves as victims of feminism and gender theory. The publication makes clear a connection to other right‑wing political ideologies.

These so‑called masculinists also exist on dating platforms. The men concerned are often bitter and experience themselves as disappointed or rejected in love. Instead of working on their own contributions and possible changes, they see themselves as robbed by women of their supposed rights to sex or relationships, for which some also blame online dating:

“Dating is almost pointless for average men and leads to permanent loneliness and sexlessness! … Online dating has no future except for a certain upper class! We must learn again to approach each other in real life! But green/left politics prevents that more and more through feminism!” (Facebook message received by the author.)

In their bitterness, these men do not reflect on the contradiction between their misogynistic basic attitudes and their wish for a love relationship with a woman – the possibility of which they actually block precisely through these misogynistic attitudes.

Do you recognize warning signs of misogynistic attitudes in yourself? Do you blame women for the failure of your partner search or your previous relationships?

Pause and correct yourself in order to overcome your bitterness and become capable of forming a relationship.

At my age, partner search is pointless

New partnerships are formed by people of all ages, from adolescents to the elderly. Online dating is therefore suitable for people of all age groups.

However, the number of participants in online dating decreases sharply from age 65 onward. Older singles should therefore expect a smaller number of suggestions in online partner search. However, this does not have to diminish the chances of success of your partner search, since it is not the number of suggestions but the encounter with a suitable person that is decisive.

All the more important, however, is to use realistic search criteria and to show flexibility in characteristics that are negotiable.

McIntosh et al. (2011) found, when comparing the dating profiles of younger and older women and men, indications of both decreasing and increasing flexibility:

• The authors found that older singles in online partner search approached the already smaller number of suggestions more selectively with regard to search criteria such as religion, height, and ethnicity. Older women, but not older men, also assigned a greater role to a partner’s income than younger people seeking partners did. These indications of higher inflexibility in older singles were contrasted, however, by a higher willingness of older singles to accept greater spatial distances or even to move themselves.

Since the size of the regional search space has a strong influence on the availability of potential partners, the greater spatial flexibility of older singles should compensate for the negative effects of the other inflexibility that increases with age.

However, the authors also observed another change in the age search range, already reported in several previous studies, which can have a serious impact on the number of possible contacts:

• With increasing age, both men and women shifted their interest increasingly toward younger partners. Thus, in the sample studied, a still partly complementary search relationship in younger years – in which men seek younger women and women seek older men – changed with increasing age to a search behavior in which both genders had a growing interest in younger partners. The authors suspect that the reason for the increased interest of older women in younger partners is the concern of otherwise having to take on a caregiving role in the foreseeable future.

This trend, which has been observed several times, can, as the authors explain, lead to a considerable shortage of options in old age, affecting women about three times as much as men because of their higher life expectancy.

So there are indeed factors that can make partner search in old age more difficult, especially for older women. However, this difficulty should not lead you to not even start online partner search in old age.

Rather, online partner search offers the opportunity to find a partnership even in old age despite these difficulties. What is important is sufficient flexibility without bending yourself out of shape.

Restrictions on the search should therefore only be made if these restrictions appear indispensable to you. You should, for example, dispense entirely with criteria such as ethnicity.

Because of the quantitatively smaller opportunities for contact, it is also particularly important with increasing age to take every contact opportunity seriously and to explore the possibility of a fit, rather than prematurely dismissing a contact.

Likewise, in old age, and especially for women, an increased degree of patience may be required to not let oneself be irritated by longer periods without contact opportunities and still hold on to online partner search. If you succeed in this, the chances of finding a partner are high.

Only those who cannot find partners elsewhere use online dating

This view should have long since disappeared into the mothballs of disproved prejudices. Today, social acceptance of online partner search is much higher than in the past. People of all genders, ages, and educational levels are looking for a relationship online.

Online dating is now accepted by a broad cross‑section of people as an effective way to give their own partner search a boost.

Aretz et al. (2010) identified three groups of users in a cluster analysis of 223 users of dating portals that differed in personal characteristics and search motivation:

• 62 shy, compensatory contact seekers were characterized by loneliness, low self‑esteem, anxiety, feelings of shame, and a great desire for contact. Members of this group use online dating not only for searching for partners but also to compensate for loneliness and shyness.

• 77 confident partner seekers used online dating exclusively for partner search and spent the least daily time on online dating overall. They considered themselves rather attractive and had significantly lower scores in neuroticism and shyness than the shy‑compensatory contact seekers.

• 83 leisure flirts used dating portals mainly for pastime and usually registered on free portals. They were predominantly extraverted, sociable young people with high self‑confidence and good integration into a stable circle of friends.

Dating platforms are therefore used by people with different personal characteristics. It is a prejudice that dating platforms are mainly frequented by people with psychological problems.

At the same time, dating platforms also provide opportunities for contact for people with inhibitions and shyness. This is not a disadvantage but an advantage.

So approach your online dating with confidence. There is no reason to be ashamed of your own online partner search.

I am a hopeless case

Those who assess themselves so negatively radiate their negative attitude and usually remain alone. In reality, the old folk wisdom is true: “Every pot has a lid,” even though people should not be compared with objects here.

A simple walk down the street can convince you that people with the most varied, more or less socially desirable or less desirable characteristics or quirks can find a partnership.

What is important is to be clear about your own person and your own relationship wishes, to pay attention to what is essential, to be flexible in other aspects, and to initiate the necessary steps to actively look for a relationship.

If you assess your chances as close to zero, you will behave accordingly, not become active enough, or give up too quickly. Escaping from resignation and tackling partner search can be effective medicine.

Are you still convinced that you have few resources and strengths, consider yourself unlovable, and see no chances for love happiness?

With such a negative self‑image, you should seek psychotherapeutic help before starting your partner search.

I only need to think positively

Negative expectations are harmful for online dating in any case. They act as negative prophecies because they reduce your own commitment. In addition, they generate rejection in other people and further reduce your response.

Some people have exactly the opposite approach:

• They do not want to think about problems at all because they fear creating them by doing so. They are convinced that positive wishes are realized almost magically.

Does the solution lie in positive thinking, which presupposes that everything will take a good turn and the right person will enter one’s life if only one believes in it strongly enough?

On the topic of the effects of positive fantasies, Oettingen et al. (2016) published a highly interesting study that showed that positive fantasies and wishes improve mood in the short term. In the long term, however, the more the subjects relied on positive thinking, the more depressed they became.

How can this be explained?

The explanation is that things in life do not happen magically but are consequences of our actions. Purely positive wishes and fantasies may cheer us up in the short term, but they do not lead to us becoming active to achieve our goals.

Certainly, the success of partner search may come by pure chance, for example when people meet someone on the street with whom they build a connection. However, if the same person had only imagined partnership in their fantasies and stayed at home, the encounter would not have happened.

Positive thoughts and wishes that do not provide an incentive to act in a goal‑oriented manner will not help you make your wishes come true. There are many factors that we cannot control and that seem to occur by fate, but on average, without goal‑oriented action, our wishes will not come true.

Positive thinking that lacks action orientation could therefore even worsen your well‑being in the long term because it reduces the probability of achieving your goals. Some people, for example, rely only on fate in their partner search and remain alone.

So it is not enough to think positively; effective action is required. You can act most effectively when you have a positively charged goal but also analyze the problems and barriers that separate you from that goal, search for possible action strategies, and apply them.

Do not rely on the idea or wish that the right person will simply enter your life one day. It will only make you happy in the short term to orient yourself toward illusions. In the long term, on the other hand, this is the best way to remain without a partner.

The solution is not to think negatively‑resignedly nor positively‑illusionary, but positively‑realistically:

• positively, by recognizing the possibilities of finding a partnership and being convinced that there is someone out there with whom you can be happy.

• realistically, by not waiting for a prince or princess to come by and kiss you awake, but rather initiating goal‑oriented steps yourself to get to know this person.

Online partner search is such a goal‑oriented action strategy that you should approach with the right expectations, patience, and commitment.