Swipe, match, repeat?: How to get more out of your dating apps

It isn’t easy. It often isn’t even fun. Amid the many evolving hacks and rules, what can you do differently? Here are our top tips from the experts.

* Define what you want: There are no wrong answers here. But there are a lot of dishonest ones. That is a big part of what makes online dating so exhausting.

In Nobody Wants This (2024-), Kristen Bell’s character develops the ick for the otherwise loveable Noah (played by Adam Brody). His fouls: Referring to a blazer as a sports coat, carrying enormous sunflowers, and using a fake Italian accent in a joke.

It can be the simple, maddening cliché of “Loves adventure”. Do you? Would you like to be stuck in a tent in the pouring rain, craving some hot coffee, but with nothing to plug your kettle into? Be honest about the littler things, and the bigger things will likely follow.

* Cut the sweet talk: This isn’t 2012. “I once told a date that I was worried about a project at work and his instant reply was ‘But I believe in you’,” says Mumbai entrepreneur Prakruti Maniar, 30. “We had barely spoken for two days, and he knew nothing about me.” It was so superficial that it put her off completely. Avoid feigning emotion or intimacy. If you’re genuinely interested, engage. “What’s worrying you specifically?” Not “I believe in you”.

* Let the small stuff go: Maniar now thinks she may have been too hasty in dismissing a whole person based on one flippant comment. It gave her “the ick”, she says, which is cool Gen Z slang for behaviour that seems unreasonably distasteful but shuts the door on further romantic engagement.

But the ick isn’t new, and it has never been very helpful.

If a person seems worth a shot, just give them the fair shot, says Kasturi Mahanta, a counselling psychologist, relationship coach and the author of Red, Green & Sometimes Beige: The Ins and Outs of a Healthy Relationship (2024).

“We spend so much time fixating on what someone lacks that we rarely stop to consider whether our demands are rational or justified. It helps to ask,” she adds, “is the habit or trait truly a dealbreaker, or is it an irrelevant flaw?”

Is it a story you could potentially laugh over, years into your relationship: “Do you remember what you said on our first date?” Or is it something you wouldn’t repeat to another human? In other words: How awful is it really?