Why Aren’t People Responding to Your Messages?

woman waiting for a response

Online dating conversation can often feel discouraging. Sometimes, when the response rate to your messages is particularly low, you may question if you’re just sending messages out into the oblivion.

If you’ve found yourself wondering why it seems like no one wants to start a conversation, you might begin to think it’s because of some lack or insufficiency in you.

Strategy and thoroughness on your part certainly might contribute to how often you receive message responses. But there are also some factors beyond your control.

Here are four reasons you might not be having a very high response rate when it comes to sending messages to other online dating users.

1. The person you’ve messaged is inactive

messaging someone else

Not all online daters are the same. That’s one great aspect of online dating, but it could also cause you some trouble.

Some men and women on the look for a relationship might only sign up for a free version of an online dating account on a site like CatholicSingles.com. Since the free version doesn’t have as many features as a paid account, they might fill out their profile, do some browsing, but leave their account alone for some time.

If the man or woman you’ve messaged falls into this category, there’s a chance they might not even know that you’ve sent them a message.

The hard part is that you can’t always tell whether an account is inactive just by looking at someone’s online dating app profile.

However, one way you can help yourself out in this area when you’re using CatholicSingles.com is by reaching out to members who respond to user polls.

If the person has participated in a poll, it means that they’ve been active on the site – and it can also help give you a glimpse of their personality.

When it’s not obvious whether or not the person you’re messaging is in fact still active, you might end up messaging someone who is no longer even interested in finding someone online.

2. Your messages aren’t engaging enough

disappointed man

If the person you’ve messaged doesn’t fall into the inactive user category, they might have failed to return your message because they didn’t feel engaged by what you said in it.

This is a tricky issue. It can be mentally and emotionally difficult to send thoughtful, engaging messages. This is especially true if you’re messaging multiple people in attempt to be as proactive as possible.

But if you do opt for sending a sort of generic, unoriginal message to a bunch of potential dates, it will probably be clear that you haven’t put a lot of personalized thought into your text message.

It might not really be worth your while to send out a lot of messages that say nearly the same thing as you try to introduce yourself to people that interest you.

A better strategy might be to find a smaller number of people that you can message about something in particular from their profile.

Look for their interests or other points of commonality you might share with them. Then, write some conversation starters specifically for them. Get to know their sense of humor, interests, and hobbies. Then, break the ice with them.

This extra thought can go a long way in convincing someone that they should reply to you.

Is this more work than sending a generic “Hi, how are you?” type of message?

Definitely.

But it can also help you get a lot better results.

3. Your profile is too vague

disappointed woman

You might not really think that the quality of your online dating profile has much to do with the response rate to your messages. But in reality, a vague or half-complete profile might hinder your success quite a bit.

Put yourself in the shoes of the person you’re messaging. Consider what you would think if someone messaged you, but then you read their profile and couldn’t find out much about them. That’s not a great first impression.

If this happened to you, you might wonder whether this person is a good fit for you or not. When there are too many blanks in a person’s profile, it can difficult to figure out the kind of essential information needed to decide whether you think they could be right for you or not.

Or in more extreme cases, where there’s almost no information about the other person in their profile, you might even wonder if the message-sender is a scam artist. That’s a quick way to lose someone’s attention.

If your message response rate is less than stellar, check out how completely you’ve filled out your profile.

Give details about your personality and interests in your profile.

Make sure it gives a clear picture of who you really are, if you want to make it easier for someone to connect with you.

4. You aren’t a good fit for each other

disappointed woman

This one can be a tough pill to swallow, but the reality is that you might just not be a good match for the person you’ve messaged.

Maybe you think that the two of you would be great friends. Perhaps you get your hopes up and check eagerly for a response from them, day after day.

But online dating sites can really only tell us so much about another person, even if a profile was filled out by a dating expert.

It’s difficult to tell whether the other person has preferences that don’t match up with you, or whether they just don’t think they will like you.

This potential rejection can be hard to bear. But keep in mind that, though this incompatibility can be the reason for a lack of response sometimes, it isn’t always the case.

One person’s rejection does not mean that the next person you’re interested in will feel the same. We should also keep in mind that, as the old cliché goes, there really are other fish in the sea.

As difficult as it can be to let go of your hopes or expectations in this area, rely on your faith in God and give your search for a partner over to his loving providence.