You open a dating app thinking, maybe this time will be different. Then it happens: ghosts, cancellations, silence, or that slow erosion of confidence these apps can create.

If that feels familiar, this video is for you. Because the problem isn’t that you’re doing dating apps wrong . . . it’s that most people use them in a way that drains energy, kills momentum, and makes real connection far less likely. If you want dating to feel lighter, clearer, and more intentional, watch this before you swipe again.

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Matthew Hussey: 

Let me know in the comments if this sounds familiar. You download a dating app with enthusiasm that this time could be different. Maybe this time you’ll find someone special. Someone who will be worth investing in. Someone who you can possibly build a life with. So you start swiping and then it begins. Someone goes to you after a couple of messages, or you match with someone intriguing, but they don’t message you at all, and suddenly you’re afraid you’ve matched with a bot.

 

Maybe a couple of matches, cancel your date last minute, or worst of all, you get no matches at all, making you feel hopeless. Killing your self-esteem and making you regret having ever tried at all. If you’ve gone through this. You’re not alone. Millions of people share your struggle, despite the fact that a lot of people meet on the apps now.

 

They’ve also become one of the biggest points of pain and frustration for daters. Well, what if this year it didn’t have to be that way? What if you could approach these tools differently to maximize your chances of actually finding something meaningful there? In this video, I’m going to show you the four keys for how you can do that.

 

Before we get into it, subscribe so that you do not miss future videos and give this one a quick like so that others can find it. And if you’re new here, I’m Matthew Hussey. I’ve spent 18 years coaching thousands of people at all stages of their love lives. I’ve written two New York Times bestsellers, and my Love Life coaching program helps thousands of people find the love they want every month.

I’m also the creator of Matthew AI, the world’s eye authority on dating and relationship advice. In the time that I’ve been working with people, I have made plenty of mistakes of my own. But I have also become a husband and a father, and I have never had more love in my life than I do today. I believe the truest form of wealth is the love that we have in our lives, in all forms, and in a world that feels increasingly disconnected, fractured and lonely.

 

I am here to create more of it. So let’s get started. The first key to maximize your chances of success is to be intentional about your profile. You have a few seconds to stand out before someone decides to swipe right or swipe left. But apart from clear solo photos of you smiling, there are other, more subtle things that make a great profile.

 

A great profile does a number of things. For one, it avoids cliche. There are certain things that come up on many different profiles. One of them is golden retriever energy. Now, when someone writes that they’re often trying to communicate that they’re emotionally available, that they’re consistent, that they’re loyal, but it just ends up sounding like a meme or a cliche.

 

So we have to say something that feels like it could only have come from us. Maybe instead of golden retriever energy, you write still enjoys phone calls. This subtly differentiates you from the toxic dating trends without slipping into cliche. A great profile also doesn’t bore someone with our hobby. I do Brazilian jiu jitsu in my spare time when I don’t have a six week old baby, so if I were creating a dating profile, I might be tempted to mention this multiple times while also showing multiple photos of me doing that hobby.

 

But in a partner, I’m not trying to find someone who’s into jiu jitsu. I would be trying to find someone who thinks they would enjoy hanging out with me. And for that, I would need to show more of myself. Look, your hobby can be an interesting string to your bow. You don’t want to be defined by your hobby, and for that matter, your job and your education is not your personality.

 

A great profile also doesn’t use empty words. I read a profile recently that said, truly value someone who’s ambitious, kind, and knows how to enjoy the ride. That may sound fine, but it’s dead language. It’s inoffensive, it’s common, and it signals little. Compare it with this phrase ambitious but protective of my time with the people I love. Now that’s still punchy, but it makes a statement about who you are, and it says something you value in an emotive way.

 

It’s sincere. It’s not trying to be cool, but it’s also not using vague catchall language that everybody uses. However, it is earnest and we want to be careful not to live in that. Get all of the time, which is why a great profile is more than one note. Now, what do I mean by that? Look, it’s good to know what your unique advantage is.

 

And how to use it. Maybe it’s your wit, maybe it’s your sincerity or your empathy. But we don’t want to overdo our strengths and become one dimensional. There is nothing like realizing that someone is sincere and funny or humble and confident. It’s the end that gets us hooked. That’s what creates what I call a unique pairing. So we’ve talked about the profile.

 

Let’s talk about the second key to having more success on the app. This one is designed to help you avoid burnout. It is so easy to get on an app and then get lost in the options for hours, and eventually you just burn out. One effective way to use the apps is to limit how often you check them, and how you use them when you check them.

 

So instead of endless swiping or having one shallow conversation after another, maybe you limit yourself to ten swipes a day. Or maybe you actually try to start conversations with the people you’ve already matched with, instead of swiping for a new batch. If you keep finding yourself in too many shallow conversations at the same time, that might be a result of you playing it too safe.

 

So maybe you actually take risk to upgrade the interaction to a phone call or an easy casual date. Even if it ends the conversation, at least you won’t be wasting any more time there. And remember that sometimes the reason we get stuck in boring conversations is that we’re just two strangers on an app. Texting is kind of natural for it to be stunted and boring and a little awkward in order to see who might progress.

 

Sometimes one of you has to take a little risk. So when you’re messaging someone, share a little about yourself. Ask questions. And if someone isn’t giving you anything back, move on. Before we get to number three, which is the most challenging, I have a quick announcement. I am hosting a worldwide free event called The Year of Love this month.

 

For anybody out there whose biggest intention in 2026 is to find love. If that’s you, you have to be there. This event isn’t about tips. It’s about lifestyle. That’s what brings love into your life. It’s not when you’re practicing some strategy. It’s when you design your year to be an environment where love happens, where you become a magnet for the right kinds of people, where you naturally attract people because you’re at your most confident and in control.

 

It’s a lifestyle where you have the time and the energy to actually invest in yourself, in your personal life, because of the way your life is set up. I am inviting you to the Year of Love to help you design that year. This year and we are going to do it together. I want to help you create a sense of inevitability, a sense that if you just get the fundamentals right and design your year the right way, it is going to happen.

 

And I want us to go into this year positive. I don’t know about you, but I was a little negative in certain areas of my life last year. It kind of felt hard. It felt like trudging uphill. I don’t know if it felt like that for you too, but I want to go into this year positive. I’ve made that commitment to myself because I don’t believe that these things happen when we’re coming from a negative place, and we’re going to make this plan sustainable.

 

In some ways, it’s going to feel like less effort than you’ve put into your love life before. It has to be sustainable because you don’t know if you’re going to meet the right person four weeks from now or four months from now. So it’s no good if you give up by week ten, because it’s all too painful and difficult.

 

And so much of what I’m going to show you on this event are the indirect ways that you can influence love coming into your life the habits, the routines, and the mindsets that changed the game. When I was single, I did not want to focus all of my time and energy on trying to find love. I had other important things in my life, so this plan is not designed to make it.

 

The focus is designed to make it happen. You can sign up for The Year of Love at this link: Lovein26.com. I am only doing it this January because then we are off to the races and we are all going to be doing this plan. So don’t miss it. Don’t let another year pass you by. I will see you there.

 

Go to Lovein26.com. Now, the third key to having more success on the dating apps is the most challenging, because it invites nuance on a platform that isn’t designed for any. It’s about when to give an interaction the benefit of the doubt. If someone cancels a date last minute because something came up, or they drop out of the conversation that was going well, do you message them or do you go out and find somebody else?

 

If you give your number to take the conversation off the app, but then they never messaged you. Should you follow up on the app or let it go? We risk burnout if we’re too generous with our time and our energy, but we also risk letting go of a good thing if we cut anyone off at the first sign of them doing something that doesn’t sit well with us.

 

I can tell you from many years of coaching people in this area that many of us have become so gun shy because of our experiences that we’re extremely fast to slap the red flag label on someone and then move on without giving it the time to figure out whether something truly is a red flag or not. So when do you give people the benefit of the doubt?

 

When the risk of doing so is low? If someone stands you up on a date, cancels last minute, or ghosts after setting up a date that feels more like a character flaw, doesn’t it? It also requires heavy emotional lifting from us to try to correct it and give this stranger a second chance. If someone drops out of a conversation because the last message you sent wasn’t a question, or if someone is being slow to ask you out, it doesn’t hurt to nudge them in the right direction without over judging it in the moment.

 

These things are low emotional effort and low risk, because you don’t have much to lose if a person doesn’t move in the direction you want. On the other side, giving someone a second chance who stood you up means that you risk wasting your time and your emotions again by showing up. For someone who’s already shown you that they’re disrespectful of your time and careless with your feelings.

 

Okay, the last key to keep in mind before you download another dating app is to remind yourself that despite all of the downsides to using this platform, there is actually room for it to be fun. Or at the very least, less triggering. In my last video, I talked about the principle of obliquity focusing on the indirect activities that bring us something we really want.

 

Just because you’ve downloaded an app, it doesn’t mean that it has to be your whole focus and your only focus for finding love. And ironically, when it isn’t, you are more likely to get a positive result. I was speaking to a friend of mine the other day who found herself at a wedding where the bride and groom met on a dating app.

 

She said to the bride, how did you do it? And the bride said, I used to play World of Warcraft. I treated dating apps the same way I treated World of Warcraft. I treated it like it was a video game where I got to have fun conversations with other players. It just so happens that one of them turned out to be my husband.

 

That framing changed how she approached the whole thing. Well, what if your life was the real game? And it just so happens that there are other players that you get to talk to while you’re playing that game? A lot of the conversations you have on the app while playing that game won’t be that serious, but somewhere along the way, you might just meet someone who turns out to be your best friend and a lifelong teammate.

 

Of course, none of this is guaranteed to get you a partner on a dating app. We’ve shared here is designed to help you protect your energy, your time, and your effort while maximizing your chances of meeting someone. If you’re finishing this video and you feel like you have done all of these things and still haven’t been successful, at what point do you simply say these don’t work for me and delete the apps forever?

 

What if you’re the woman who feels invisible because of her looks? Or the guy who feels he’s constantly rejected because of his height and can’t even seem to get one match, let alone have the opportunity to have a conversation off the app when you can do everything right and still not see success, or realize that so much of the dating app journey is purely luck.

 

It makes you want to stop altogether, and there is nothing wrong with that. At the very least, I am a huge believer in never relying on an app as your only option. I believe in continuing to meet people in our everyday real lives. Apps should be additive to our overall plan. They should not be the planets self. If you want me to help you create a much more sustainable and well-rounded plan for finding love this year, that does much more to guarantee your success than a dating app can on its own.

 

Don’t forget to sign up to my free event this month, The Year of Love, and we will do it together. Thanks for watching. I’ll see you next week.