Online Dating Blog

Recently, a reader wrote to ask questions about re-contacting women at some point after the first email. He also talked a bit about my personal success compared to his and I wanted to address both of these areas in this article.

Here’s part of his email to me:

I enjoyed reading your article Women I Contact Look at my Profile but Never Respond, since when I was actively dating (a few months ago), this was me. If you do the math — its a tough, tough world out there and I still can’t figure out how you were ever swimming in dates, as you said at one point in your guide.

Which leads to my question. What is your view on re-contacting someone? Say you contact someone and she views you and does nothing. Say a couple weeks go by and she is still active on the site. What do you think of sending another message? The theory is that the first time you contacted her, you had bad timing–maybe you came in second that day, but her first pick has since flamed out.

My Dating Success vs. Your Dating Success

First, I want to address my personal success with dating online that this reader brings up. More than a few guys have expressed to me that they feel recreating my success is not possible for them. I understand why people could feel this way so I want to point out some things I did to have success that I see many people reject as “just not for them”:

1. I was using multiple dating services (eHarmony and Match when I met my wife).
2. I was willing to meet just about anyone. Obviously if I found something extremely unlikable about them I wouldn’t pursue it but I was definitely much more open about first dates than most guys I know. A good example: my wife didn’t have a photo on her profile. I know plenty of guys who announce (almost proudly) that they would never contact a woman who doesn’t have a photo. That wasn’t me.
3. I went on lots of second dates. Even if the first date wasn’t awesome or amazing. This improved my feelings of success and comfort with online dating…and it was also part of the reason my dating schedule was so busy.
4. I contacted lots of women on Match and went through most of my eHarmony matches.

It’s not like I was doing AMAZING as much as I had really changed my approach to give myself the most opportunity. Was every woman I contacted was desperate to meet me? Far from it. Instead, it was more about being open and willing to date in general.

As I’ve said before, I my strategy was:

instead of what most people want to do which is:

I won’t rehash my opinions on this since I’ve covered it in my guide but the second approach puts a lot more pressure and annoyances on you than the first. It also limits a person’s ability to be swimming in dates by its very nature.

Even knowing that, many people are still unwilling to try the second approach. So if you’ve made the decision that the second approach is unacceptable, then you should also accept that not swimming in dates is going to likely be a part of that decision. That’s not necessarily a bad thing if you accept your approach as the best for your situation.

Should I Re-Contact a Woman After Some Time?

On re-contacting, I’m for it. On the one hand I feel like the odds of success are low but on the other hand there’s very little to lose. It doesn’t take long to write another email and you can even have fun with it.

The first time I wrote about this was in my article Should I Email Again if My First Email Gets Not Response? In this article, I talk about sending another email fairly quickly after the first contact.

Another Great Way of Looking at It
My previous article aside, I think this reader has a very good point I’d not previously considered: women are often contacted by many men. This process can continue as they date online and the odds of them remembering to go back to an old email is unlikely. They might have even liked your email/profile, just felt unable to pursue the conversation because of all the communication they were already engaged in.

I think this is a great point! If you wait a few weeks and contact the woman again, you may find a much better response. You’re the same guy, she just has more time to respond now. I’d never tried this when I was dating online so I can’t speak from personal experience. That being said, in theory this sounds like a logical approach that again has very low risk (you only lose the time it takes you to write another email).

Yet Another Way to Approach This Situation
Also, at the end my article on More First Email Examples, I talk about contacting the woman again but “disguising” yourself by placing a new primary photo in your profile to try to encourage her to give you another chance (even though she may not realize she’s giving you another chance!). You can see one woman in the comments of this article confirms that she’s not offended that a guy would do this.

Again, it may be a long shot to have success if your first email went unanswered…but there really is little to lose.