Dating Apps Etiquette or Saying Goodbye Online

 

For more than 3 months I was keeping in nice dating app touch with a girl. It was like taking ease to me. No pressure from either side. We wrote when one had time and what one wanted, without expecting any immediate response from each other.

But something went wrong. Maybe she met a friend she had been longing for 5 years, or went to a half-a-year business-trip to some far land without the Internet. Or her long-standing jealous boyfriend came back. Don’t know what happened exactly, but she said she wanted to say goodbye and bring to a close our dating app communication. I knew I was not the reason; she didn’t have to say this.

Actually, I feel easy when parting with someone I don’t like. I think all of us are good in this. But when there’s someone I enjoy, could I simply say “You’re great, thanks for the dialogue, I need to go now?” Heck, no. Why should I?

Robin, 33, user of dating apps.

Dating apps etiquette 

Sending dating app messages is one of our most favorite adventures. A live stranger who is out of sight has only words to express themselves and trigger the “wow, I feel like being seduced” reaction from the second one. While specific etiquette and communication style that characterizes each particular dating app make the things even more charming.

You can guess a new dating app prospective etiquette by the way the app itself lures into joining it:

•         whether it insistently presses or unobtrusively demonstrates its ideas and thoughts,
•         boisterously entices more and more people by means of parties or painstakingly improves itself for initially selected target audience,
•         if it wants to have everyone in it, or people of one fantasy only,
•         whether it is designed for the most unfettered ones, or is it the one that liberates.

The dating app specific features and the etiquette it follows can make one see what parting shall be:

-    a blunt unmatch or
-    comprehensive answer to the question “why?”, or
-    changing status into social media friends, or maybe
-    transiting on the ice of lost unfinished dialogue or
-    into the routine swamp of polite once-a-month “hello, how are things?”.

The last option is the most scaring. Sometimes we understand the person to have come from a different fantasy with our body turning a “deaf ear” to them. But there’s an obstacle to saying goodbye and getting on a new trip that comes in form of proper upbringing myths, like:

-    “why? There wasn’t any particular reason”;
-    “but he/she is still a good person”;
-    “I don’t feel ok with this; it’s like giving the person a finger”;
-    “let’s see, maybe things are going to improve”;
-    “he/she has paid so much attention to me, I should at least let one be next to me”.

These thoughts bring us into the swamp of polite communication that one can get out of when aware of its destructive effect. We mechanically kill our time in exchange for illusion of having someone as a date. And only growing strong enough to give up this fake shall foster our step to saying goodbye to this.

The word farewell – a former fare-well – stands for wishing a good journey. That is, by saying goodbye we wish one enjoys their way to other people. We say we shall no longer stay in touch, point out, listen to and respond, and thus help the second one pass the way of searching for someone else instead of us, the way to the desired new. We cease promising, holding out hope and taking the place of somebody else.

Marshy politeness bears a vague resemblance to what we are searching for–a person we match by fantasies. But there is a definite difference between “seems to be” and “the one”: the desire we have.

Rules of online goodbye from Fantasy App user

...And then it occurred to me: we were simply spinning our wheels. This running in place was not a bother to anyone, but it wasn’t taking us anywhere. We had neither common plans nor common desires. When I was feeling a kind of emptiness or had some idle moments I used to drop her a message. She would answer, if she was ok with this. But we were like masturbation tool for each other, with no desired intensity in it. And when I understood the things, it came as a relief. It was so good that she had gone leaving me to myself and my further search.

Having thought this over I’ve laid down my own

Online dating etiquette and set of farewell rules

I Since saying goodbye without hurting anyone takes time and effort, my first goodbye rule is:

“Start dating app communication only with the one you really like much”

II Sometimes tension sets from the earliest phrases due to different cultural specifics. That’s why right from the start I offer that

“We give each other 30 minutes to understand whether we differ on fundamentals”

We take 30 minutes to chat on essential issues: I ask about the attitude to group sex, to health, secrecy, to fantasies. And if I see the person’s views to differ from what I have, I put it straight: “We totally disagree on things. Thank you for this dialogue, but I think I have no right to try changing you. Wish you an exciting match with other people”.  

III Then, if the person does not come from over the hills and far away, I proceed to offline mode.

“No dragging it out: I set an appointment to understand whether our bodies are attracted to each other”

If I don’t feel sexual attraction in the course of live communication, I tell the new contact–or contacts, if they are a couple: “We come close in intellectual aspect, but my body does not respond. We can further keep in touch in some other way, but I shall be looking for other people to act my sexual fantasies out”.

IV The phase when interaction has definitely entered upon sexual path. This is the realm when they are fantasies that have the upper hand, and the helm is taken by the rule

“Listen to your desires”

No more rules for this phase. I say goodbye when I want to leave.

V And a specific case–rudeness. Sometimes I send a message to a girl and in reply I get either cursing or her service cost. And my rule for this case would be:

“No wasting time”

I don’t respond to rudeness or inappropriate proposal. I simply block the user since I want to spend time with adequate people only.

Desire as the basis of online dating etiquette

If we are honest with ourselves and if we have found ourselves in a dating app following the call of fantasies, the question “what is the right way of goodbye” has an obvious answer. The one that a fantasy tells you, so that desire proceeds illuminating the way to its fulfillment.

Get more ideas about dating etiquette from our article Online Dating Style: What Are The Right Things?