Online Dating: 4 Ways to Know if You Should Take Down Your Profile

Four Ways to Know You Should Take Down Your Online Profile

In the world of online dating, your profile is your personal marketing statement. Written to showcase your best qualities as well as give some hints about the type of match you’re looking for, the well-crafted profile and photos function as a romantic resume designed to entice your future soulmate. When that first wink leads to a flurry of e-mails, which lead to phone conversations, and finally to a date or two, should you take down your profile while you explore the possibilities with this match?

“In the not-so-distant past, those with questions about how to handle decision points in their love life often turned to family for counsel. However, unless your parents are part of the fastest growing segment of online daters, the suddenly single baby boomers, they’ve never faced the kind of dating dilemmas cyberspace can pose. Unlike previous generations who turned to family for dating guidance, online daters don’t have the benefit of getting advice from parents and grandparents about how to handle situations like when to take down your profile,” said Trish McDermott, VP of Love for Engage.com. “This is new technology. It’s good; but, it does create some awkward social situations.”

“Among those awkward situations is knowing when and how to signal your intentions. In the world of cyber-dating, taking down your profile often signals an intention to take yourself off the market, so you can focus on exploring possibilities with a special match. It’s like laying down your cards,” said McDermott. “It says I’m interested in you and I don’t want to date anyone else.”

Do you wait for the perfect match or enjoy the great match you’ve got? With some online dating services boosting upwards of 15 million members, the sheer size of the sea means online dating offers lots of potential fish. Therein lies part of the problem in deciding when to take down your profile. Do you continue trolling, so the big one doesn’t get away? Or, do you take your profile down until you figure out what to do with your current catch?

“Online dating has changed the world,” said McDermott. “The overwhelming opportunity it offers can corrupt the romantic process. There’s always the thought there’s someone else right around the corner. So, online daters can have a kid in the candy store mentality. Otherwise reasonably mature daters can hesitate to take down their profile just in case someone a little better, cuter, thinner, taller, or richer is right around the corner. It’s important to remember that people are not commodities. If you meet someone special, you’re very lucky and you should do everything you can to cultivate the relationship.”

“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.

“So many people are afraid to just be honest,” said McDermott. “What’s wrong with saying, ‘You know I really like you. Where are you in terms of us as a couple? Are you feeling like you still want to shop? Or, do you want to settle down and see if this works?’ Just put it out there. We’ve become a society that’s always waiting for someone else to take the risk. If you like someone well enough, they’re worth the risk.”

After all, if things don’t work out, it only takes 20 minutes to put up another profile.

FOUR FACTORS TO CONSIDER BEFORE TAKING DOWN YOUR PROFILE

1. Decide if you have the time right now for online dating.

“Online dating can take a lot of time. As part of researching online dating, I posted my free profile on an online dating service. Within 48 hours, I had 52 e-mails and 138 winks. How do you spell o-v-e-r-w-h-e-l-m? If I were an active member, I’d have to hide my profile just to find the time to answer what’s in my inbox. Maybe a move, a job search or an illness is taking a lot of your time right now. Or, maybe, you’re off to hike Europe. Do you want all those e-mails piling up in your inbox? More importantly, do you want to risk ticking off someone who might possibly be the love of your life because you didn’t respond to their initial e-mail in a timely fashion? When life intrudes into your plans for romance, hiding your profile for a while can give you time to catch your breath. When things settle down, you can always surface it and before you know it, you’ll be back in the game. But, when you hide your profile, let any matches you’re currently in contact with know you’ll be offline for a while. Never burn a bridge,” said Dr. Gilda Carle Match.com’s weekly advice columnist for Suddenly Single, and founder of DrGilda.com. If you’re going through a bad period, leave the door open to talk later on. Be honest. Say, ‘Look this is not the right time for me. Can I get back to you after I’m finished with all this and pick up where we left off, if you’re available?'”

2. Decide whether it’s best to hide your profile or take it down.

There’s a difference between hiding your profile and taking it down. When you hide your profile, you make it temporarily unavailable to other members. Hiding your profile is as simple as a click; but, while it’s hidden, you’ll have to keep paying your monthly membership fee. Taking your profile down means you’ve decided to stop being a member of this site. Maybe you’ve met your match or maybe you’re throwing in the towel because you haven’t had any luck at all. Or perhaps you need a long break because something has come up that needs your time and attention. Whatever the reason, you’ll have to contact the dating service and inform them so they don’t automatically bill you. Otherwise, you’ll be on permanent renew status. Many dating sites store their member’s data. So, if you do take down your profile and later decide to rejoin the same online dating service, you may be able to access the information stored on your page if you use the same username and password. On the other hand, why run the risk? Before taking down your profile, copy it and save it as a word document on your own computer so you don’t have to write a new one should you decide to give online dating another try in the future.

3. Ask yourself if you’ve given this relationship enough time to know you want to be exclusive.

“In the early stages of a relationship, you’re just dating casually, which means you have the right to date others and so does your match. So, there’s no reason to take your profile down. Online dating is an unbelievable opportunity. So, give yourself the opportunity to sample a whole bunch of different people before you commit yourself,” said Dr. Gilda. “By not rushing things, you give yourself the chance to learn what really works for you and what doesn’t work for you. As you get clearer on your requirements, the superficialities such as how tall a match is and what color their hair is, fade away, which means when that right person comes along, you’ll be in a much better position to recognize them. You’ll have a pretty good idea of whether there’s good chemistry by the third date,” said Dr. Gilda.

4. What does my match think about this?

“When you ask your match for her thoughts about taking down your profiles, the conversation doesn’t have to be overly serious. Taking your profile down is not the same as getting engaged. It’s just an opportunity to more fully explore possibilities with a certain special someone. Likewise, don’t overwhelm your match by gushing on and on about how wild you are about him and how you can’t even concentrate on other men while he’s in your life. Just have a friendly conversation over a glass of wine that goes something like, ‘Honey, we’ve been dating for three months now, what do you think about dating exclusively and taking our profiles down?’. If your match says, ‘I’m really enjoying our time together. So, I think it’s a good idea to take our profiles down while we see what’s here for us’, then order the champagne and have a toast to possibilities. If your match says they still want to shop, wish them well in their search and keep getting those matches. In the world of cyber-dating, your new favorite four-letter word is NEXT!”