If you’re an introvert, then the thought of dating might be your own personal version of hell.

• Regular conversations with strangers.

• Going out on dates.

• Starting from scratch in getting to know people.

Introverts love deep, meaningful connections with others.

But the process of getting there? They would rather fast forward through the beginning and skip to the end.

I’m an introvert myself, so I get it.

I love deep, personal conversations, but if you talk to me about the weather for more than five minutes, my eyes will probably start to glaze over.

Unfortunately there is no way to skip the early stages of dating, but there ARE ways of tailoring the process to make it work for your introverted nature.

And adapting the process is an absolute necessity in order to enjoy dating as an introvert.

If you try to date in the same way an extrovert would, rather than molding it to your own personality and needs, dating will quickly go awry.

First, you’re going to burn out quickly. The way to make dating enjoyable is to make it sustainable. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. So if you try to talk with five people at once, and then schedule several dates for one weekend, you’re going to collapse before you’re even out of the gate. This is awful in and of itself, but it also reinforces the belief that online dating is inherently miserable.

Second, you’re likely to go through your dating experience on autopilot, which means that you miss out on important data. For example, if you’re in the mindset that you just have to tolerate boring conversation to get to the good stuff, are you actually listening to the other person? Are you paying attention to whether the person is a good fit for you? Or are you just checking off boxes and slogging through?

If you try to date as an extrovert would, you also have no way to determine whether the people you’re going out with are going to respect your introverted nature. What happens if you set boundaries around how frequently you’re texting? Or if you try to engage in deeper conversation?

I went out on two or three dates with someone once, where the bulk of our conversation revolved around books and psychology. It was enjoyable, but anytime I tried to steer the conversation towards more personal topics, I would get very short answers in reply, and I would find myself being steered back to superficial topics. In the end, both of us stopped sending messages, and the conversation just fizzled out. It was good information that this person wasn’t a fit for me.

In contrast, if you tailor the process to make it work for your introverted nature, it’s going to be much more sustainable in the long run.

You get to do it at the pace that YOU can maintain. There’s no right or wrong here. If you think about a marathon, there are runners of all different speeds, so you get to pick the speed that will make you feel confident about crossing the finish line.

There’s also a myth out there that you have to tolerate superficial and boring conversation in online dating, but you really don’t. So when you can move away from this mindset, and move away from being an autopilot, you get to engage with others more deeply, even in the early stages of dating. For example, let’s say that you’re talking about movies that you like. Rather than just saying, “Great, we checked the movie box,” you can ask the person more about what they actually enjoyed about the movie. You can treat every interaction as an opportunity for deeper connection.

Finally, being your introverted self gives you the opportunity to see if that person is ultimately going to be a good fit for you or not. If you need a lot of alone time, and the other person wants to be attached at the hip, it’s good to find that out early on rather than five months into a relationship.

So now that you why it’s important to tailor the dating process for your introverted nature, here are my top five tips for doing this:

1. Only talk with ONE person at a time. Seriously. Just one. If you do this for a while and it feels sustainable, then try two. Going back to the marathon metaphor, you’re starting out at a 10:00 minute mile first, and then aiming for 9:30 once you’ve got that under your belt.

2. Guide the conversation in the direction that YOU want it to go in. What do you want to get you know about the other person? What drew you to them in the first place? What would be helpful for you to know early on so that you’re not wasting your time? And yes, you can ask these things in a way that doesn’t scare the other person off. “What are you looking for in a relationship?” is very different from, “My biological clock is ticking, so tell me now if you don’t want a family / kids.”

3. Set boundaries around texting and phone calls, and let others know from the start what those boundaries are. This doesn’t have to be complicated or difficult. Say something like, “I’m introverted and need time away from my phone during the evening, so if I don’t respond right away, that’s why.”

4. Set boundaries around your dates. Go for coffee in the morning, and set a clear time for yourself on when you’re going to end the date, so that you can attend to the other things in your day. This tends to be more manageable for introverts than something like a two-hour dinner. Also, limit yourself to one date per week, and only consider increasing that once it feels sustainable.

5. Be willing to walk away from connections that aren’t fulfilling. This is probably the #1 reason I see introverts struggle when dating. They’re having boring conversations and dates that are major energy drains, but instead of walking away, they keep going based on the assumption that this is just a part of dating. It’s NOT. If you’re bored and drained, then be honest with yourself as to whether you’ve taken a back seat in your dating experience. If you have, then see what changes if you take the steering wheel again. If you haven’t, then give yourself permission to walk away and pursue connections that are going to bring you the joy and connection that you’re looking for in your life.