It depends on how you paid. If you bought Full Membership through Apple, cancel it in your iPhone's subscription settings. If you paid through Google Play, cancel it in your Google subscriptions. If you paid by PayPal or card, cancel inside the Inner Circle app by unchecking Renew subscription under Advanced settings. Whichever route applies, your membership stays valid until the end of the period you already paid for.

Find out how you paid first

Most cancelling mistakes come from looking in the wrong place.

If you signed up on an iPhone and paid with your Apple account, the subscription runs through Apple, and that is where it has to be stopped. The same goes for Google Play on an Android phone. If you paid Inner Circle directly by PayPal or with a card, the setting lives inside the app.

If you are not sure which it was, check your receipts. An Apple or Google receipt points you to the store. A PayPal receipt or a card charge from Inner Circle itself points you to the app. If you use more than one Apple or Google account, check the one you were signed into when you joined.

Cancelling through Apple or Google

For an Apple purchase, open the subscription settings on your iPhone, find Inner Circle, and cancel it there.

For a Google Play purchase, open your Google subscriptions, find Inner Circle, and cancel it there.

In both cases the store is the one taking the payment, so the store is where you stop it. Changing a setting inside Inner Circle is not the route for these.

Cancelling a PayPal or card payment

If you paid Inner Circle directly, open the app and go to Advanced settings. Uncheck Renew subscription. That is the step that stops the membership renewing when your current period runs out.

Keep any confirmation you receive, and make a note of when you changed the setting. If a charge ever turns up later, you want to be able to show when you stopped it.

What the terms say about renewal

Inner Circle's terms say Full Membership renews for the same duration you bought. A membership bought for a set number of months comes back for that same number of months unless you stop it.

The terms add that after the initial period, you can end the membership with one month's notice. If you are already past your first period, read that part of the terms before you cancel, so you know when the last charge will fall.

Either way, cancelling does not cut your access short. Inner Circle says a paid membership stays valid until the end of the period you paid for, so you keep everything until then.

Hiding is not cancelling

Two shortcuts look like cancelling and are not.

Hiding your profile takes you off the app for a break, but Inner Circle says a paid subscription carries on while you are hidden unless you cancel it. And removing the app from your phone does not even delete your account, so it should not be trusted to stop a renewal.

If you want the payments to end, cancel through the route that matches how you paid. Then decide separately whether to hide or delete your account.

Use the time you have left

Cancelling early costs you nothing, because your access runs to the end of the period either way. So cancel the day you decide, rather than waiting and risking a renewal you forgot about.

Then use the weeks that remain. Answer the conversations you have, ask the warm ones out, and put a little effort into your openers with the women you like most. If the last stretch turns into a couple of good dates, you will know the membership was doing its job. If it does not, cancelling cost you nothing.

Judge it by dates, not matches

Before you cancel, ask a blunter question than whether the membership is worth the money. Ask whether it has been turning into dates.

a dating coach's rule for anything you pay for on the apps is to treat it as a test. Try it, compare what happens with it and without it, and drop it if it is not making a real difference. A membership you have been paying for is a test that has already run, so read the result honestly.

He also points out that paying multiplies what you already have. If your page is getting little interest, a membership will not fix that, because a multiplier of zero is still zero. In that case cancelling is sensible, and so is using the time you have left to fix your photos and your openers. If you are having good conversations that never become dates, the membership is not what is failing. The part to work on is getting from a good chat to a plan.