Online Dating after Divorce

Part of the decision about when to take your profile down depends on the kind of site where it’s posted. Some sites have social and business components as well as a romance component. If you’re on Facebook or MySpace, you’re probably using your profile for networking opportunities, not just dating opportunities. If you’re on a matchmaking service such as engage.com where members match their friends, you might be using your profile as a way to network with others who are also trying to help their friends find “the one.” In those situations, leaving your profile up, with some kind of mention that you’re not currently looking for romance, may make sense. The most important thing is to talk about it so you don’t send unintended messages.  

What if you’re on a traditional dating service where your very presence says “available and looking?” The experts say, don’t be too hasty about taking down that online profile. “While there are no hard and fast rules on time frame when it comes to taking down your profile, an expectation on a second date that somebody wouldn’t be also communicating with other people, is probably unreasonable,” said Match.com spokesperson Allison Clark.  

While you’re assessing the possibilities of a match, be honest about the fact you’re continuing to get matches. “When you’re doing online dating, you instantly have some common ground,” said Clark. “You can talk about your experiences thus far, which is a good entry point for broaching the topic that you’re continuing to get matches. Casually ask a date if they have other dates this week besides this one. You want to do that in a way that doesn‘t seem like you’re interrogating them in terms of their commitment to you. That would be premature when you’ve just started dating.”    

When making a decision about taking down your profile, it’s best to talk it over with your match. When you start thinking about exclusivity, there are two approaches to deciding when to take down your profile, said McDermott — the independent approach and the joint approach.  

With the independent approach, regardless of what’s going on for the person you’re dating, you decide to take down your profile because you want to concentrate on that person. If you take the independent approach and then don’t tell a match that you’ve taken your profile down, you can’t expect they’ve made the decision to take theirs down at same time, cautioned McDermott.  

“If someone told me they took their profile down because they wanted to concentrate on me, I would find that very flattering and it might prompt me to take mine down,” said McDermott. “But without a conversation, I don’t think you can expect a couple to spontaneously come to that decision at same time.”  

Be aware that if you don’t talk with your match about taking your profiles down, you could be setting yourself up for unnecessary pain. Many sites leave a romantic trail for someone to follow for better or for worse. So, if you take your profile down without knowing if your match has taken down theirs, you might be tempted to snoop on them. If the site you’re on reports most recent activity, snooping is as easy as clicking on a match’s profile and getting the message “Trish was active in last 24 hours.” Busted. Or is she?   

“People who play romantic sleuth, snooping to see when matches were last active or if they’ve updated their profile, can sabotage their relationship because they make all kinds of assumptions. They might think a match doesn’t like them because he’s recently been active; but, maybe the reason he logged on was to hide his profile,” said McDermott.  

To avoid jumping to conclusions, it’s best to make the decision regarding what to do about your profile using the joint approach. After all, if you’ve met someone special and it’s moving along and things are going great, taking down your profile is probably a topic of conversation that’s going to come up. Conversations like these, while they can be tough to initiate, allow you to air the decision factors.