Thoughts on Dating Confidence and Comfort

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When I first started this site, one of the things that bothered me most about the online dating advice I had been finding was that everything had the same answer: be more confident.

I found this advice very hard to take and I actually gave up on acting confident. I think occasionally I might have been successful at appearing confident but I was consistently successful as not portraying who I really was…the gains weren’t worth the sacrifice.

At any rate, I discussed this topic in one of my very first posts which I originally titled The Importance of Comfort but have since decided to rename Dating Confidence vs. Dating Comfort.

dating comfort vs confidence

The point in this article is that I found great success with online dating (including finding my wife!) but never while I was pretending to be confident. Instead, I approached online dating and first dates as I would anything else I wanted to get good at: I practiced. The more dates I went on, the more comfortable I felt and before too long I was learning to love online dating instead of loathing it.

The last three months of my online dating experience was exciting and fun and never did this shy guy have to pretend to be something he wasn’t. Since it’s been years since I first wrote this article, I just wanted to point it out to any new readers as I still believe what I argued all those years ago. I’ve been giving advice several years now but I still prefer real comfort over fake confidence. I hope it’s helpful!

 

Related posts:

  1. Online Dating Success Story: Post-Wedding Thoughts
  2. 5 Tips on Re-Entering the Dating Scene
  3. Thoughts on Online Dating Success Rates
  4. With Online Dating, Meeting Matters
  5. Online Dating Advice for the Shy

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About the Author:

Brad initially struggled with online dating but over time became quite successful using it. He met his wife using online dating and has been giving advice and helping people improve their results since 2007. He has written a Free Online Dating Guide to help others find success with online dating. You can learn more about his personal experience using online dating and running this website here.

Comments

  1. B  June 13, 2011

    I love your approach to dating and the comfortable idea is very appealing. But my question is your approach to seeing numerous people at the same time, i am a serious person (i admit it) and ive been told I have no humor, ouch. But I also cant see myself dating several men all at the same time, I mean, its a little farfetched for me. Im very much a one guy at a time person, even when it comes to dating. So a little help here? I understand it can help a little in terms of lessening the pain of rejections, but I just cant see myself dating numerous men at one time. for example, I get emails from several types of guys and i usually make up my mind on just one, very rarely on two men, on whether i will email them. its hard for me to date a lot especially if ive already selected just one i want to date. your thoughts?

  2. Brad  June 13, 2011

    B – I guess I would really encourage you to consider changing your approach…at the very least try talking to two guys at once if only for a single time. If you gave it a try, maybe you would find it more appealing than you would think.

    Excluding that approach, I think I would recommend that you try to get to your first dates sooner rather than later. I believe it would be best for you to encourage meeting after a few emails (as soon as you feel like there could be a connection). I recommend this approach because you could accomplish similar results one at a time if you dated rapidly…I think it will be a lot harder but it might be a worthwhile compromise.

    That said….I’d still recommend you at least give dating multiple guys at a time a try! 🙂

  3. Jennifer  June 18, 2011

    Something that may help someone who is shy is speed dating. I ran a speed dating business and I would say most of the people there were shy or just not comfortable with dating. The people that attended loved speed dating they said it helped them understand most people are not comfortable with dating and a lot of people are a bit shy.

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