This isn’t how it began.

Your first foray into online dating was filled with excitement, hope, and yes, nerves.

But the passion was there.

You were hoping for the best.

The fact that some of your friends and family have found their significant others on online dating apps only added to the hope that your fate would be similar.

That feels like a lifetime ago.

Your foray into the morass of online dating apps has left you mentally and physically exhausted.

You’ve lost count of how many times a conversation that was promising fizzled out.

The number of dates you have arranged with people who ended up ghosting you are jaw-dropping.

On the occasions where you got to meet someone from a dating app, they were a disappointment.

Not that you are that picky, but would it be too much to ask for to have people post truthful photos of their appearance on their dating profiles?

Several of these dates were older than their online photos suggested.

Others had clearly gained a lot of weight since their photos were taken.

Even when there wasn’t a discrepancy in their age or weight, they looked so different.

Why post multiple photos of yourself with long natural hair when you are presently wearing it short and dyed it green?

Do people on dating apps think about stuff like this?

Don’t they realize how this deceit or insensitivity can leave their date combusting and reeling inside?

Apparently, they don’t.

Alas, you have no other way to say it, but online dating apps have you feeling sick.

No longer are you opening your app with giddy excitement and anticipation.

Rather, you dread doing it.

Is this going to be yet another fail?

A dead-end conversation.

A person artful in the heartless art of ghosting.

A dating profile of a person who hasn’t bothered posting recent photos.

A catfish who uses dating apps to feel better as a person or play a sick game.

When your giddy excitement and glee has been replaced with a never-ending thread of negative thoughts whenever you log into your dating app or receive matches, things have changed.

With these mental obstacles, it’s only fitting to surmise that you are sick of online dating apps.

You are in good company in this notion.

There are several of your online dating brethren who have walked in the same shoes you have since those early hopeful days of online dating.

Don’t lose yourself in your melancholy.

Online dating apps attract so many different people who have contrasting intentions and personalities.

Everything isn’t always as it appears or sounds.

People are people.

There are those who are for real and those who are there to play around.

When you figure out why it is you joined online dating apps, you will get better at knowing who is on the same page as you and who isn’t.

It’s impossible to eliminate every impropriety, but you can mitigate them.

Don’t get so bedazzled in how attractive a person appears that you lose perspective.

To determine whether the person has posted recent and representative photos, and is for real, ask them to do a video chat with you a few conversations in.

A refusal to do so or an excuse in response is your cue to ditch the person.

This saves you from the trouble of having further conversations with the person, meeting them in person, and being disappointed.

Video chat is your friend, use it.

This is how you filter out the people who are on the same page as you and serious about their intentions and those who deceive.