Healing Space | Red flags in online dating

An online space is a collective space, it’s not a safe space. Don't do anything online that you would shun offline. (Illustration by Suneesh K.)

Note to readers: Healing Space is a weekly series that helps you dive into your mental health and take charge of your wellbeing through practical DIY self-care methods.

The world of online dating is vast and ambiguous. There are no clear rules, people may not look like their profile photographs, may use false names, and may be speaking to more than one person at a time. You could meet someone sufficient number of times offline and find that they suddenly ghost you, i.e., disappear without any communication or explanation. These behaviours, which you wouldn’t participate in in a relationship that originates in an offline encounter, the kind you have through friends, at a party, or in a workplace group, have become normalized. The problem with normalizing them is not that we should never change how we date (technology has made us adapt to many new ways of relating), but that we are throwing out old tried-and-tested techniques of safety. There’s no need to throw out the baby with the bathwater. An abusive relationship is abusive in any situation, regardless of the technology involved and is waving some clearly visible red flags.

For one, at its very basic level, politeness is politeness. If you wouldn’t say something in person or offline, don’t say it online and don’t accept it being said to you. Of course everyone’s standards differ. Some people are used to peppering speech with expletives. Others are more formal. Whichever way you choose to communicate is fine, just if you wouldn’t use or accept expletives offline, don’t start normalising them online because, well, technology makes us look at it different. That’s just a very basic example of how we modify we who are, and the way we react in these spaces. You can extend it to clothes, speech, flirtation styles and comfort levels on dates. If you wouldn’t take off your clothes when you met someone for the first time, do everyone a favour and don’t send pictures of your body parts. Don’t accept them either as a ‘new’ way of relating if it offends your sensibilities. Principally, don’t change who you are because it’s online.

An online space is a collective space, it’s not a safe space. Those are two different things. It only lends the illusion of safety because of encryption and the feeling of being one among a crowd where you may share interests or an age group or other demographic bracket. There are so many of us online, and such a variety of connections, that it can feel like a community. This can lull you into a false sense of security. ‘I met them on XYZ popular app’ does not make them safer to meet than a date with a stranger just because they were on the same local train or bus. It just feels so because you have seen their pictures and read their interests and the app makes it feel like a school yearbook, a familiar cohort, a sense of tribe. It is not. Each is an individual user whom no one knows anything about.

There are tried and tested, evidence-based patterns of identifying abusers. The first is trust your body. If you feel physically uncomfortable in the presence of a person, even if you don’t know why, this is because your primal body is kicking into a flight or fright response. The autonomous nervous system is put on alert by the amygdala to brace you for a potential threat. This increases heart rate and pulse rate, to prepare to flee. Now here’s the problem: since we’re not in a jungle and unlikely to flee from a coffee shop on a first date, many people mistake the initial rise in a heart rate and pulse, or the freezing of the body, tongue tied-ness, feet feeling wobbly, butterflies in the stomach (recognise them?)… yes, for love at first sight. You are not making in that moment a distinction between your fear, anxiety, autonomic response system and this romantic notion of love. Trust your body, your discomfort, your sense of unease and your instinct first.

Abusers are the same everywhere. Their tools are control and isolation. Cutting you off from family and friends, ensuring you don’t have a sounding board and are dependent on them physically, sexually, emotionally, financially, spiritually. Using threats if not actual violence towards you and those you love, whether a parent, friend or pet. Threatening to spoil your name, and reputation, threatening to or complaining to family, friends, to enforce ‘good behaviour’ especially in public. Gaslighting, that is denying your perception of reality, telling you that you misheard, misrepresented, misunderstood what was actually going on, it’s your imagination, and then getting into verbal, emotional and physical abuse cycles that end with an apology, a promise never to repeat it, and then a period of calm. You may engage mediation by friends, parents, but you have to remember you are assuming the abuser is being reasonable when they are only vying for control and will say what needs to be said to regain control.

If you spot or suspect you are facing signs of abuse, speak to family, friends, a qualified counsellor, psychologist or social worker and use support to remove yourself from the situation. Seek help as early as possible.

How to protect against abuse in dating

1. Have your family and friends meet the partner. Meet theirs. Yes, even before getting serious. Slip it in when you pick each other up before heading out. Know where they live, spot their neighbours and smile, be seen in public in places relevant to them (such as a workplace). Do not break ties, even conflicted ones. Better conflict than absence. Isolation is the first tool of the abuser.

2. Listen to reasonable objections. You can ignore irrelevant social factors, but listen to observations about their behaviour, mannerisms, “vibes”. Trust the people who love you most (it can be friends, whoever you trust the most) about how they feel about this person and take it on advisement.

3. Observe how they react with others socially; who are their oldest friends, colleagues, what does their family think of them, do they help around the house, how do they react when angry, do they snap at waiters and delivery boys, how connected are they, whom do they rely on?

4. Believe it or not, some minimal or casual contact with their exes and their new significant others is a good thing. It signifies mature and healthy moving-ons. Exes give you the best feedback about a potential partner if they’re not still pining for them. Or even if they are, you’d know why the relationship ended. Offer to meet up where possible. Ask a friend to speak to them if you can’t do it.

5. Leave at the first red flag. Don’t be too embarrassed to exit a situation that is unhealthy for you because you’ve already invested in it.  Swallowing one’s pride and telling a parent or friend they were right and your judgement was off is better than being unsafe. Don’t keep ‘trying’. In a healthy relationship, you won’t have to.