Online Dating Tips: When to Give Him/Her Your Number

Posted by Vanessa under Online Dating Tips

Here’s the scenario – you’ve been chatting or messaging someone for a while on an online dating site, and you’re thinking about taking it to the next level. When should you exchange phone numbers or emails?

The beauty of online dating is you can remain relatively anonymous. Because online dating sites typically do a pretty good job of maintaining your privacy, you can flirt/talk with as many people as you want without having to worry about creepers. But once you give them email/phone number, it definitely takes the relationship up a notch.

Giving someone your phone number may seem to be a daunting step, but it’s really just the logical next step after communicating with someone online. If you are concerned about giving someone your real number, you can get a free mobile number with Google Voice and foward it to your cell phone. Exchanging phone numbers is the logical step between meeting someone on a dating site and meeting up in real life.

As for emails, some people feel that it’s less personal than a phone number. After all, if someone has your email the worst they can do is keep sending you messages that you can drop into your spam box. However, some people also prefer to hold off on exchanging emails until after the first date. With Google and LinkedIn and all these social networking sites, it is increasingly easy dig up information about you using your email. I prefer to wait til after my first date to exchange emails – for me, emails are a great way to have deeper conversations than you might have via text, and they are also a good medium for flirting – sending each other funny links, pictures, videos, etc.

Good luck, and feel free to email me or leave a comment below!