Swiping the right way to find love: Helen Chik’s guide to navigating dating apps

Finding herself in the turbulent singles pool and swiping left, right and centre taught Helen Chik the art of the dating app. Here’s what she learnt.

Navigating dating apps and modern romance is not for the faint hearted. After two divorces, Sydney fashion, lifestyle and travel writer Helen Chik became all too aware of this as she found herself back in the turbulent waters of the dating pool and swiping left, right and centre in her quest for love.

Her experiences led to her writing Sex, Swipes and Other Stories — a dating blueprint and part memoir for others with real and raw advice. Here are some of her tips about what to keep doing on dating apps:

Book cover of Sex, Swipes and Other Stories

KEEP A LIMIT

With literally hundreds of thousands of profiles available, it’s easy to get lost in the dating jungle. Swiping till your fingers give out isn’t a strategy for quality matches.

Give yourself a time limit or a swipe limit – both are useful to manage your time and your consideration for each profile. Limit yourself to 15 minutes of swiping in the morning and 15 minutes in the evening each day. If you match with someone, then engage with them during your allocated time and eventually you can move off the dating app.

Another approach is to allocate a set number of swipes – such as 30-50 profiles before you cap yourself for the day. This means you need to be more considered in your swiping.

KEEP IT REAL

This is specific to profiles and what you choose to put on there. The biggest complaint I’ve heard is that people get cat-fished (or the milder version – kitten-fished) when people use photos that are not of them or are so outdated they look nothing like them.

Your photo is your billboard across apps such as Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge and it needs to be recent (no more than two years old) and preferably of you smiling. Leave the silly filters for your instant messages on Instagram or Snapchat.

Oh, and no group pictures. Playing Where’s Wally is fun with your nieces and nephews, not when you’re trying to find Mr/Mrs Right.

KEEP IT POLITE

It shouldn’t be hard to keep the conversation flowing when you show a genuine interest in someone. Asking open-ended questions and giving considered answers should go without saying but there are a few things to look out for if when determining what the other person wants.

My pet hate is when people get overly friendly too soon — calling you babe, baby, toots, sweet cheeks, honey – you get the gist. Other obvious things is when you get sent an unsolicited picture of genitalia, or worse, asked for ones of your own.

Helen Chik is teaching others how to become comfortable with dating apps.

KEEP THE MOMENTUM

The best part about dating apps is they’ve made making plans so easy. The worst part is we’re paralysed with too much choice at the tip of our fingers.

If you match with someone and don’t make plans to meet within the first 10-14 days, you will never meet – let’s be realistic. People lose momentum because they’re too busy splitting their finite attention between multiple matches to see one potential interest through to completion. By completion I mean, either you date them for a short period (3-5 dates) and realise that you’ve found the JayZ to your Beyonce – or you’ll want to put everything they own in the box to the left. You will have explored and kept the dating continuity uninterrupted which is more important than the result in my opinion.

KEEP IT SIMPLE

I’m referring to the first meet-up. I wouldn’t call this a date – it’s a vibe check. You want to check the person is who they say they are, and ensure your on-screen chemistry translates off-screen too.

Meet over a coffee or juice or go for a walk — it’s a low-cost, minimum-effort solution with maximum efficiency.

Some argue it takes time to warm up to people but I’d say that 99 per cent of the time, your gut knows within 15 minutes if you’ll get along with them. Don’t overcomplicate things by putting yourself into analysis paralysis. If it doesn’t feel right, move on.

KEEP LOOKING

Sometimes it might be the app and the other times, as hard as it is to hear – it might be you and your invisible checklist. If you’re not having any luck, it may be because you’re only right swiping profiles you’re accustomed to – or your type.

This is never going to yield the best results. Why? Well, how do you know strawberry flavoured gelato is your favourite without trying all the other flavours? It could be the circuit breaker you need after a bad dating streak.

Sex, Swipes & Other Stories by Helen Chik is available from February 14.