The hardest part of putting yourself out there on the dating market, online or otherwise, is rejection. Nobody likes it and it doesn’t matter the reason why it happens, it just feels awful. There’s no magic cure, but here are some thoughts to ease your pain.

Never feel bad for the things you can’t change. If you’re short, for instance, there’s absolutely nothing to do about it. I had a vertically-challenged friend who said, “We’re all the same height lying down.” It depends on what direction you measure, but his point is well taken. Superficial things can seem important when they really aren’t. The more you obsess about them, the harder you take it when someone else confirms your worst fears. Learn to accept your unchangeable “shortcomings” whatever they are and you realize that people that base attraction not on the big picture but on “little” details aren’t really worth it. Most of the time, they’re rejecting you before you can reject them anyway.

Take people at face value. Most folks don’t like to hurt others, so they come up with elaborate reasons for rejection. Obviously some seem reasonable and other excuses can be seen right through, but chose to believe rather than argue and you win either way. If you overanalyze everyone secretly believing you can read minds and know the unspoken truth, then you’re fooling yourself far more than someone who accepts that “it’s not you, it’s me.” No one ever has to explain why they like vanilla more than chocolate, so stop searching for a reason when there isn’t any. Many people are better at deciding what they don’t like than what they do like, which leads them to never being satisfied. You’ll go crazy if you try to find logic in that kind of indecisiveness.

A wise man angrily told me once, “Beauty is not enough.” Yeah, it was kind of brutal, but at least he thought I was beautiful, right? Anyway, his point remains poignant to me since he was trying to say that a relationship, beyond extremely casual, can’t be based on mere physical attraction and quite frankly he was right. Even two beautiful people need to have more in common than just their looks; Hollywood is a prime example of gorgeousness not guaranteeing they’ll be no break-ups or rejection in someone’s life. There is no denying looks are important, but when you look around, it’s not often the most attractive people who are happy. Weeds flourish more than flowers.

Finally, change what you genuinely want to change for yourself, but be prepared for rejection in the meantime. There are things about ourselves that we could change but for some reason don’t. Learn to see those things as a choice and accept that other people may never agree to accept this decision. Many times, people recognize they have things they can’t seem to change or habits they can’t break and it’s always easier to tell someone else that he should stop smoking, eat less, exercise more, work harder, etc. If you become defensive you feed their need to outsource their problems onto you and you want to be a date not a therapist.

All of this to say, always remember, people never reject “the real you.” They reject what they imagine you to be before they ever really have the chance to know.