Most people are looking for a certain product and it must do for them what they want it to do. We read the product info and decide great that is just what I am looking for and we put it in our shopping carts and checkout. A few days later your package arrives. You open it up as fast as you can like a kid at Christmas. You can’t wait to start using your new Super Duper Deluxe Thing-a-ma-jig. At that point you realize you’ve been taken for a ride and that product does not work as advertised.

So, what do you do? You call or write an email and complain. Then you send it back wasting your time and money. You tell yourself that you are never going to buy anything like that again. Then you see the new and improved Super Duper Deluxe Thing-a-ma-jig 2.0. It has everything that you could possibly want and more and it just looks so darn great. A few weeks later you’re packaging up another piece of flotsam and sending it on its way. Once again wasting your time and money.

Online daters do this. They browse the online catalog of potential matches out there in the online world. They find what looks to be the can’t miss Super Duper Deluxe Mate and drop them in their proverbial shopping cart and a few days later after that first meeting decide that this was the last time they do that again. Then Super Duper Deluxe Mate 2.0 signs up at your online dating service and off you go again.

This is quite circular and leads you right back to where you are. Which is where you don’t want to be or you wouldn’t have tried online dating in the first place. Why do we keep using the same flawed match selection criteria? Why do we think it will be different this time?

Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity “is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” Do we see ourselves as insane as online daters? Have we just taken our faulty offline dating practices and moved them online. The main difference being that we can now really zip through these bad dates in greater quantity and at a faster pace than offline.

If this has been your online dating experience then try something new. Try a different online dating or matchmaking site. Fiddle with your match criteria, you could be missing out on some great people. If for no other reason than to just get yourself out of a rut, try being George Costanza.

Remember the episode of Seinfeld where George decides to do the exact opposite of whatever it would be that he would usually do in any given situation. Taking every instinct and doing the complete opposite might be an interesting way to go. Go ahead and try it. What you’re doing now isn’t working, so why not? At the very least you could meet some fascinating and out of the ordinary new people. Online Daters get off your not so merry-go-round and maybe you’ll find someone you won’t want to ship back.