Beyond the Swipe: Mastering the Art of Online Dating with Dating Coach Perri Schneider

Hey everybody, Jen Hatmaker here, your host of the For the Love Podcast. Welcome to the show.

Okay, you guys. Right now we’re in a series called For the Love of Dating, Sex and Relationships. Whoop! This series is so fun. And the truth is, inside of our community, there are a ton of us who have wanted this series for a while. We’ve been workshopping this one for quite some time. So this is for those who have been married forever, it’s for single people, it’s for new dating people. I mean, it’s all in here, all right?

But today’s episode is a fun and informative ride.

And so, because we met in person via an introduction, I really haven’t engaged much with the online dating world, which is what we’re talking about today. The Match.coms, the eHarmony’s, the Bumbles and so forth. Of course, when I was going on my first dates back in 1990, ’91, ’92, for Pete’s sake, we barely even had the Internet. We didn’t. What am I saying, we barely, we didn’t have email.

And so, a lot of this I’ve had to witness through friends and my kids and their friends, and others who are really immersed in the whole online dating scene. Pretty much all of us know someone who has met their special someone online at this point–I can’t even count them–in my life. It’s not even a big deal anymore for someone to meet their life partner through an app or through a digital dating service.

But some of our friends, or maybe even you, yourself, could regale us also with crazy stories about the online dating world, and sort of getting to know people through their digital selves before meeting their real selves. I have also amassed a ton of stories like that from my people. In fact, you guys, I spent exactly one day on a dating app, and it was on Bumble. And it was because I saw Chrissy Metz talk about Bumble online. Chrissy, she’s one of the stars of This is Us, and how she found her person on Bumble.

And all I knew about anything is that Bumble is where women get to choose. That’s all I knew. I didn’t really know anything at all. And so, what I thought that meant was that only … That nobody can see my profile, like only I could see other people’s profiles, and if I was interested in them, that I could say something.

So I thought, well, you know what? This is kind of a good idea just to see what’s out there, let me just

make a little profile. It doesn’t even matter, nobody can see it. And I’ll just peek in, right? I’m going to peek into the online dating world and just see who’s here, like, who is this? So when I tell you I did the most skeletal bio, I put my first name because I had to, my age, because I had to, and two pictures because I had to, that’s it. Not a single other thing. Not where I live, not my kids. I was thinking that’s essentially incognito. So all I really did was put the bare minimum stuff on there, just so I could have the account, and assuming no one’s ever going to see it.

And it was so wildly overwhelming. I just didn’t realize they could see me. I thought … So then I’m scrambling, trying to find the thing, like how can I be invisible on this? And I found literally an incognito option and I clicked it so nobody could see me anymore. And that night I was with my girlfriends at my friend Jenny’s house, and I just casually kind of say, “You guys, I made a Bumble yesterday and then there were all these people that were bumbling me and these men. And I freaked out and I hid my profile.” And my girlfriends scream. This is my very first thing I’ve done toward dating since my divorce, the very, very first thing.

And so, LOL. So, when we were putting this series together about love and sex and relationships, we knew we had had to have someone on, well-versed in this arena, and it was certainly not going to be me. We needed practical tips on how to navigate it all, like what should you look for when you look at an online profile? What are the red flags? How should you construct your own profile to set yourself up for success? And how do I make sure I’m not going to coffee with a serial killer?

So, I’m so happy to introduce you to online dating coach, Perri Schneider today. She’s going to answer all these questions for us and then some, and I’m so excited to hear what she has to say. I am clearly not your personal guide through this landmine.

Now, Perri’s story is so relatable. After essentially getting fed up with tons of negative experiences with modern dating, she decided to help others navigate this online space. She learned through trial and error, and literally now she’s an expert at it. She helps her clients shift their approach and their intentions with dating apps, of course, in the hopes of helping her clients find whatever it is they’re looking for. Whether it is new experiences, whether it’s casual fun relationships, or whether it’s a dream partner.

So I’m going to let her share her story and give us all the 411 on how to manage dating in the digital age. You guys, this conversation is so fun and so hilarious, and anybody who has any experience around online dating, you’re going to love this one. And especially if you don’t but you’d like to. Guys, this is your field guide. So with that, please enjoy my conversation with the absolutely charming and delightful Perri Schneider.