Online Dating Blog

If you are asking this question, congratulations! I hope you’ve found what will be a wonderful relationship.

That said, you may be at a point so early in this new relationship that you aren’t sure what you should do about your profile. Should you take it down? Or is it better to delete your profile? While not an area where a lot of people struggle, I have seen some misconceptions about how you should handle this so I wanted to speak to handling your profile when you’re in a relationship.

I’ll discuss this in the context of Match.com since most of the questions I get regarding removing a profile are for this service.

Recognize the Difference between Hiding and Deleting

First, it’s important to recognize that there are differences between a hidden profile and a deleted profile. When you hide a profile:

• All of your information is maintained. For example, you won’t lose your profile text and you can continue to edit your profile.
• People can’t find you through search.
• However, anyone who had added you as a favorite, winked at you or sent you and email will be able to view your profile through their communication history (even though everyone else can’t access it). This will give them the ability to see the last time you logged in as well since “last active” is a part of your profile.

When you delete your profile, it’s gone. All of your text, your payment methods, your communication history…gone forever. If you are in the middle of a period of time you’ve paid for, I believe you would lose any remaining time as well.

Given the unforgiving nature of deleting your profile, I would recommend that for a new relationship it’s probably best to hide your profile instead of deleting it immediately. Hopefully that doesn’t come off as pessimistic, but if the relationship falls apart in a week

Recognize the Risk

So it might seem that the only answer between hiding and deleting would be to hide the profile. Why take a risk?

However, there are a few things I would want you to keep in mind if you’re going to hide your profile:

1. The person you are now starting a relationship with will be able to get to your profile since you’ve been communicating. There can be confusion created where a woman “checks up” on the guy she’s started dating. He says he deactivated his account but she can still access it. This has the risk of creating arguments so be aware that when you tell someone you deactivated your account, they may think you lied if they can still see it. Better to say that you hid your account so no one can find it if challenged on this.
2. If you had a breakup, tried online dating but are now getting back together with the person you broke up with, there are extra risks here. This is a case where deleting the profile is a better option, especially if the cause of the breakup was related to fidelity in any way. I’ve been contacted by women who winked at a man so they could keep track of him (and they can still see the profile after he hides it). I don’t think most of these women intend to be stalkers…but regardless of their motivation they could get very angry if you only hide the profile. If you’re repairing a relationship and are in a sensitive area around trust, better safe than sorry in my opinion.
3. For Match.com, there’s something that adds drama to this area: if you open an email from Match.com, it shows you as active on their website. They apparently do this through cookies. This is normally fine but if you only hide your profile and then view an email from Match.com (even if it just comes up in your preview window of your email), it will look like you’re active on the website. This has created many, many problems based on the number of emails I’ve received. Just something to keep in mind…see some comments in this article for examples of the drama created.

So normally, I think hiding is the right choice. But be aware of the details above…knowing could save you a big headache based on a misunderstanding.