How to Pause Your League Account

The League calls a pause a timeout. To take one, open your account, scroll down to Support, tap Pause My Account, then tap Request Timeout, and follow the same steps when you want to come back. While you are paused you are hidden from other members, but you can still chat with the matches you already have.

1. Tap your Profile.
2. Scroll down to Support.
3. Tap Pause My Account.
4. Tap Request Timeout.

To unpause, go through the same steps again.

A timeout hides your profile, so other members stop coming across you. It does not close your existing conversations. The League says you can still chat with your current matches while you are paused.

That makes a timeout gentler than it sounds. You are stepping out of view, not out of every conversation you have going. If a date is nearly set, you can still finish setting it.

A timeout is not a cancellation. The League says your subscription keeps auto-renewing until you turn it off.

So if you are paying for a tier, decide about the payment separately. For a short break, leaving it running may be fine. For a break with no end date, cancel the renewal too. You can do that in your phone's subscription settings, or through Account Settings, Support and Manage Subscriptions in the app. The League's terms say you keep the paid features until the period you paid for ends.

It helps to keep the three straight, because each one does a different job.

A timeout hides you and keeps your chats open, while your subscription carries on renewing. Canceling stops the next charge, and The League's terms say it does not remove your profile. Removing your account is a separate decision from both.

For most breaks, the timeout alone is right. For a long break, pair it with a canceled renewal. Save the bigger decision for the day you are sure you are done.

Whichever you choose, give a break an end date, even a loose one, and put it in your calendar. Without one, two weeks quietly turns into three months, and a renewing tier charges you for every one of them.

A timeout earns its place in three kinds of situation.

The first is a new relationship. If you have been out with someone a few times and it is going well, stepping out of view lets you see where it leads without the app tugging at you every evening.

The second is a busy stretch. A month of late nights at work, a family event or two weeks abroad all make you slow to reply, and slow replies waste good conversations. Hiding for a while is fairer to the women you would otherwise leave hanging.

The third is fatigue, and men tend to wave it away. a dating coach's view is that online dating belongs in your spare time and should never swallow the rest of your life. He gives it two short sessions a day and then stops. If the app has become something you dread each night, and your openers have gone stale because of it, a week or two away will help your results more than another fortnight of going through the motions.

Because you can still chat while paused, a timeout does not have to leave anyone waiting. Still, the cleanest way to step away is to tidy up first.

Deal first with any woman you are close to meeting. If a plan is nearly settled, settle it and get her number, so it no longer depends on the app. For conversations that are going well but are not near a plan yet, one short line is enough. Say you are off the app for a few weeks and would still like that drink once the break is over.

A short, honest heads-up keeps the door open. Silence with no explanation tends to close it.

When you return, come back steadily. Run through the same steps to unpause, and reply first to anyone who messaged you during the break.

My experience is that small, regular sessions beat bursts. He gets more from thirty minutes a day across ten days than from the same five hours packed into one. So pick your old rhythm back up rather than trying to make up for lost time in one night.

If weak results were part of why you left, come back with one real change. Take a new lead photo outside in daylight, or rewrite one line about yourself so it gives her something to ask about. The same page after two weeks away tends to get the same response it got before you left.