Swiping Made Easier: Why Knowing And Accepting Yourself Are Crucial

Hi, I’m Amanda. Welcome to my blog, where I share online dating advice, tips, tricks, and strategies, all based on my professional training and personal experience.

Imagine This Scenario:

You just got home after a long day at work, feeling tired and ready for a mental break. You grab some dinner and hop on the apps, feeling at least a bit hopeful that you’ll come across a decent match or two. You swipe, and swipe, and swipe yet again. Twenty minutes later, you haven’t swiped right once, and now you have a strong urge to throw your phone against the wall. You’re cursing men, cursing the process, and feeling hopeless about ever meeting someone.

Grab my free Online Dating Red Flags Checklist, so that you know what to look for in matches, conversations, and dates.

Suddenly, you FINALLY come across a decent match, and you feel a spark of hope and excitement. The person’s attractive, they have a decent job, and they match your political and religious beliefs. Yet you suddenly experience a sinking feeling, because as you look further, you see that they explicitly state in their profile that they don’t like or want pets. And if you could, you would be adopting every rescue dog from the local shelter.

And now you start rationalizing with yourself. You know you’re not okay with this, and yet you negotiate with yourself on how you’ll adapt. Having a pet is really a lot of work, and maybe it would be nice to not have that added responsibility. Morning walks in the winter time aren’t exactly pleasant either. Or maybe instead you’re rationalizing about how you’ll get the other person to change. They haven’t met YOUR dog yet. Once they do, they’ll be an animal lover for life. At the same time, your gut is yelling at you to move on. You love animals. What the hell are you thinking? And then another voice chimes in, telling you that if you’re too picky, you’ll be alone forever.

You’re stuck, trying to decide whether to swipe left or right, remaining in dating limbo hell.

Swiping inevitably leads most women to this particular point. When you’re swiping left forever, it becomes all too easy to start justifying and rationalizing things that you wouldn’t if it felt like there were a plethora of men out there. However, when you do this, you move further away from who you are, which leads to a whole myriad of potential issues and problems.

First, you’re more likely to go out on dates with people who aren’t a great fit, and the issues that you were trying to rationalize away eventually rear their heads. Let’s say that you decide to swipe right on the guy who clearly doesn’t want pets. You start chatting with him, go out on a few dates, and things go well. As a result, you start digging a deeper hole of rationalization. This person likes you, right? Of course they’ll be willing to adjust and adapt. Having a pet isn’t that big of a deal. They wouldn’t end things just because of a cuddly, cute companion.

For your fifth date, you have them over to your place, and suddenly it’s a slap in the face when this person asks if you would be willing to give up your dog. This may sound far-fetched, but this actually happened to a friend of mine. To her credit, she never engaged in any rationalization, because this guy never mentioned upfront that he was opposed to pets. But yes, he did actually ask her to give up her dog for him, to which she promptly showed him the way out.

If this happens though, now you’re emotionally invested, and now you’re hurt. Yes, it would have sucked to swipe left on someone who seemed great in so many ways, but it also would have saved you the time and energy that you invested so far in this relationship, as well as the pain and hurt that you’re experiencing.

Second, this can lead to compromising and sacrificing key pieces of who you are. Maybe you decided in this case to give up your dog, believing and thinking that relationships require difficult choices. Now months into the relationship, you’re feeling shut down, depressed, and resentful, because you’ve given up something that was crucial to your life and your identity.

Another example? The TV show Married At First Sight. The experts sometimes pair individuals that have such fundamental differences, that at least one of them would have to sacrifice a key piece of themselves in order to make the relationship work. Virginia and Erik from season 12 are a perfect example of this, with Erik stating that he didn’t get involved in social issues because they’re too difficult, whereas for Virginia, social issues were incredibly important to her. It’s nearly impossible to reconcile those differences, unless you agree to disagree and not talk about it, which is likely to bring up a whole other host of issues.

Lastly, if you rationalize away issues or compromise too much, this only further solidifies the belief that online dating doesn’t work and that there’s no one out there for you. Our brains love to build associations because it makes life easier. If we have enough negative experiences with something, our brains are going to simplify this for us and start labeling this as “bad”. This is why quality is so much more important than quantity with online dating, so that you’re minimizing your negative experiences and increasing your positive experiences.

So what do you do instead?

Know yourself, accept yourself, and make the tough decision to swipe left when there’s a key personality or values difference that you know is non-negotiable. Yes, this is going to decrease even further the quantity of your matches, which I know might feel few and far between already, but it makes it much more likely that when you do swipe right that your experiences are going to be positive ones rather than negative.

If you’re honest with yourself, then you’re not immediately starting out knowing for a fact that there are going to be potential issues that arise. You don’t have to think about the elephant in the room, waiting for things to potentially blow up. Instead, you get to enjoy the process and have things naturally unfold with time, knowing that you do match with this person, at least on the things that you know about.

If you make decisions based on knowing and accepting yourself, you also get to spend time with people who are fully reinforcing who you are as a person. Imagine sharing that you have a dog, and in response, having the other person pull up photos of their own fur babies on their phone. By being yourself, you get to be with someone who allows the important pieces of you to grow and blossom. It’s kind of like watering your plants versus stomping on them.

So how to do this? How do you know yourself? How do you accept yourself? How do you use this information to guide your decision-making?

The first step is to make a list of all of the key pieces of who you are as a person. Focus on the substantial stuff: your values, your personality traits, and the hobbies / activities that are key pieces of your life. Think about the big picture stuff, versus the small stuff. For example, being a vegetarian would go on the list (value / identity); eating salads would not (like / preference). The person who clearly lists they don’t want pets? They’re actually doing you a favor and giving you a chance to remove yourself from the equation immediately by listing this key piece about themselves.

The second step is to work towards accepting key pieces of yourself. Accepting something doesn’t mean you have to love it. It just means that you’re not trying to fight it or change it. Self-compassion goes a long way here. Think about whether you would talk to a friend in the way that you’re talking to yourself. If not, you’re probably being harsher towards yourself.

The third step is to really allow this knowing and accepting of yourself to guide your decision making. Scarcity mindset and FOMO often get in the way of this. There’s the thought of, “Well what if this person is ‘the one’, and I’m swiping left on them for something that might not be that big of an issue?” But if you zoom out and look at the big picture, fear is not a great place to be making decisions from. That’s what settling is. Settling is going for less than what you want or need, because you’re afraid that there won’t be something better out there. The alternative is making decisions from a place of groundedness in yourself, as well as excitement.

So, the next time you find yourself rationalizing, pause, take a step back, and be honest with yourself. Who are you? What’s important to you? What do you need in a relationship? Trust your answers to those questions. And swipe left or right knowing that you made the best decision for you.

*Don’t forget to grab my free Red Flags Checklist! You’ll learn everything you need to know to scan for red flags in your swiping, conversations, and dates.