Inclusive Dating and Matchmaking for People of All Physical Characteristics
“In a world that normalizes people, you should not be alone but overcome all barriers.”
Dating for All Special Characteristics
Regardless of appearance, every person can find partnership and friendship. For every physical characteristic, there are people who are not bothered by it at all or even find it appealing. As a meeting community, it is important to us that no one is excluded who fits the core values of the community. We want all members to have high chances of meeting someone.
Appearance plays a role in partner selection. However, studies show that relationship satisfaction is not or hardly influenced by the perceived physical attractiveness of partners. Moreover, the perception of attractiveness is not fixed and unchangeable. Often, a second look or getting to know someone better can lead to a changed impression. For example, people who like each other tend to find each other more attractive than if they did not like each other. Cultural factors also influence the perception of attractiveness.
Likewise, there are people for whom appearance plays only a minor or even no role in online dating. This applies, for example, to people who identify as sapiosexual. Sapiosexuality is a preference for people with high intelligence, intellectuality, or broad general knowledge. The perception of high intelligence or intellectuality in another person triggers sexual attraction in sapiosexual individuals.
At Consonance (Gleichklang), we take a two-pronged approach to enable effective online dating for people of all physical characteristics:
- We inform our members about psychological research findings and advise them to allow themselves a second look and not to reject others prematurely based on appearance.
- We have established an acceptance principle in our matchmaking. We ask our members about their acceptance of certain characteristics and then use this as a basis for suggestions. This enables people who fear rejection to have a more relaxed and therefore more effective online dating experience, and allows us to find suitable people even for members with physical characteristics that often reduce the chances of successful matchmaking in online dating.
In our matchmaking, we therefore ensure from the outset that all suggested members have acceptance for the corresponding characteristics or view these special features positively. Thus, online dating at Consonance has fewer barriers caused by these physical characteristics.
Based on surveys and other feedback, we can see that there are a number of members who can flexibilize their appearance-related preferences and benefit sustainably from this. After all, relationship quality is largely determined by compatibility of values, which are independent of appearance.
Consonance (Gleichklang) is an inclusive dating community whose fundamental attitude is already oriented so that acceptance is often high and barriers are lower than in the general population. We try to further promote and deepen this through regular articles in our Psychology Blog on this topic.
In addition, through the acceptance principle in our suggestion generation, we can ensure that the likelihood of rejections due to physical characteristics is further reduced. This lowers dating anxieties and inhibitions. Effective matchmaking thus becomes possible, for example, for people with higher body weight or overweight, such as curvy or Rubenesque figures, as well as people with unusual body heights, such as short-statured or exceptionally tall people.
