Feedback matters
One of the challenges I’ve encountered is trying to find out what does and doesn’t work best for finding the right matches. You can look in the mirror all you want, or ask friends and family (or even complete strangers) for feedback but ultimately the best quality feedback is likely to come from those who you are trying to match with.
This is because everyone comes with biases, and your friends and family will probably hold different opinions of what they find attractive. In any case, people who know you (even those who tend to be brutally honest) will often still filter their feedback when it comes to something so personal. They might tone down criticism to avoid hurting feelings or harming the relationship they already have with you, and pump up praise and reassurance in the interest of making you feel better.
Avoiding honest feedback isn’t actually helpful, because it prevents you from being able to identify what to work on within yourself. It could be something as simple as having poor quality photographs on a profile or a poor quality bio, or more complex things such as poor communication skills or even behavioural patterns relating to potential match selection (who you’re swiping on) and how you act when forming relationships.
Honesty with yourself
I’ve come to suspect that a surprisingly large number of people have trouble with this for some reason. Chances are there are whole tomes of research and discussion on the matter, buried in various psychology journals… But I haven’t had the time to go and read all about it. Whatever the reasons might be, it can end up doing some harm when it comes to dating because your own self-image is not what others actually see. Being honest with yourself about yourself is a good way to break down the dissonance between self-image and actual image because ultimately it can all happen inside your own head. In there nobody else can hear any of your internal dialogue, see what you’re thinking it or otherwise know what is going on, so there is absolutely no need or point in hiding anything from yourself anyway.
Feedback from others
Whether you can get useful feedback from potential partners really depends on the nature of the connection you have with them. They may be afraid of giving it for any number of reasons so while you can ask, don’t go in expecting to get answers every single time and be prepared to let it go if they are reluctant or just not able to tell you much. If you have been able to foster the right type of connection with someone for them to give you honest and frank feedback about things, listen and even take notes if it helps. While it might be tempting to argue about certain points or to disagree, resist the temptation to do so as it will just mean you won’t get more feedback in the future.
Getting feedback from others can also be rather confronting. It doesn’t matter whether the person giving the feedback is someone you know or someone you don’t, it can be a direct challenge to your own self-image which can cause some uncomfortable emotions to surface. I’ve found over time that the more feedback I get from different people, the easier it is to handle it with an open mind, whether it be positive, neutral or negative feedback (or any combination of them).
Why I like getting feedback
Dating can be tough! There is so much conflicting information out there on the internet, and fad after fad, weird trends and relationship advice blogs (no, this isn’t an advice blog!) and it can be confusing and frustrating to keep trying different strategies and ideas only to find they don’t work like they are meant to. Everyone is different, so I find real value in getting feedback about myself because it is pretty much the only way to find out what worked well and what didn’t work so well. While I’ve had plenty of contacts which never made it to anything more than a casual date or two, every bit of feedback I’ve been able to get from those has been another piece for me to put in context and adapt to improve the chance of things working out next time. In addition, it can also help you figure out whether some of the more subconscious readings and interpretations of their behaviour on your own part were accurate or not.
Why I’m always happy to give honest feedback
When you boil it all down, we’re all really in much the same boat when it comes to dating in the digital age, which is to say the majority of us are probably in need of learning how to do it better. That isn’t to say it is all about our own experiences, it is also very much about the experiences of those we interact with as well. Remember, every person you see on a screen on the various apps is (most of the time) just another person much like you, looking for whatever they’re looking for as well. They’ll be having both positive and negative experiences brought on by the way the people they’re interacting with are communicating or not communicating, and that includes you as well.
In the end, the reason I always give honest feedback if asked for it is simply because I’d hope others would give me honest feedback if I asked for it. Seems fair to me!