You don’t owe anybody anything.

When you start online dating, you don’t sign a contract that dictates that you must give an explanation whenever you unmatch with someone or choose not respond to a message or interest signal from an interested party.

Everybody knows what they signed up for when they start online dating.

Most people on an online dating platform are strangers to each other.

No one owes anyone anything.

That being said, you may be the type of person who feels that an explanation is appropriate in certain circumstances.

Perhaps you feel that not giving an explanation would only make you feel worse as a person.

You may have some sort of code when it comes to situations like this.

In that case, you should proceed with caution.

Just because you have been able to operate with this kind of relationship philosophy in the real world doesn’t mean that it works the same way in the online dating world.

Oftentimes, if you allow yourself to get caught up in explanations with various parties that have shown romantic interest in you on an online dating site, you could fall into the trap of having to constantly accommodate those interested parties and their egos.

In essence, these parties may keep coming back to you time and time again for your attention.

They know that you have a conscience and a code.

They then choose to keep interrupting your online dating experience just so that they can get another explanation or apology from you or even get you to change your mind.

It can get old really quick when you realize that you are still conducting conversations with guys that you long since rejected by kindly explaining why you unmatched them.

But, no, they are still around and you are facilitating them because you continue to respond to their messages in an attempt to be polite.

They are sucking up your time and energy and you don’t even know it.

When you do finally come to this conclusion, you may have been conducting so many conversations at once in an attempt to continue stroking these egos, as they milk you for attention, that you lose track of other conversations that you have been having with better matches.

By the time you are trying to get back into those conversations with better matches by answering a question that they may have asked you days ago, they have already moved on.

This is why you seriously need to be careful when you possess the mindset of owing a match an explanation for unmatching them or for simply not liking them.

Again, when it comes to online dating, you don’t owe anyone anything.

Online dating is the Wild Wild West and only the best cowboys and cowgirls make it through that landscape.

Now, if this is a match that you have already built a strong amount of rapport with over time through conversation and possibly even a date or two, then it makes sense to let them know about your change of heart as far as no longer feeling like a match.

This doesn’t mean that you need to explain every single reason to them for unmatching.

Doing this may make them feel compelled to counter your reasoning and this could further cause you to feel a sense of guilt.

Again, being the kind of person that you are, someone could easily manipulate you into feeling guilt so that you agree to a date, even though, deep down, you know that this person is just not the right match for you.

For this reason, you should keep your explanation brief, even if the person tries to ask for more of an explanation.

Explaining why you unmatched a person works best in the scenario where the both of you have already built up quite a bit of rapport and mutual respect over a sustained period of time.

In most situations in online dating, you won’t have this kind of buildup.

It would be best to avoid explaining yourself in most situations.

The pitfalls are simply too steep and you could end up jeopardizing your entire online dating experience.