How to Unmatch Someone on Match.com

In the Match app, swipe left on her message to unmatch her, which also deletes your messages with her. On a desktop, open the conversation, click the three dots, and choose Unmatch. There is no limit on how many people you can unmatch, so you never need to save it for special occasions.

Go to your messages and find the conversation. Swipe left on it, and Match unmatches you and deletes the messages between you in the same step.

It is quick, and that is the reason to slow down for one second before you do it. The swipe takes the conversation away along with the match, so there is no looking back through it afterwards.

On a computer, open your conversation with her. Click the three dots and choose Unmatch.

Unmatching deletes your messages with that person. If there is anything in the conversation you still need, copy it out first: a phone number she sent, the name of the bar, the time you agreed on.

Match's help page also says an unmatch stays valid for a fixed stretch of months, not forever. If you want someone to stop contacting you, blocking is the stronger tool, and it is a separate button.

a dating coach's advice on matching with a woman you turn out not to be attracted to is refreshingly short. Just unmatch. It is not a big deal.

He is right, and the same goes for a few other situations:

• A conversation that turned rude, pushy or strange.
• Someone who asked you for money, whatever the story.
• Old conversations that ended weeks ago and now clutter your list, so the live ones get buried.

That last one matters more than it sounds. A long list of dead conversations makes it easy to miss the one woman who actually wrote back today. Clearing the dead ones out keeps your attention on the conversations that can still turn into a date.

Do not unmatch because she took a day to reply. A slow answer is not a no, and plenty of conversations pick back up after a gap. Unmatching in a sulk only makes sure this one never does.

Do not unmatch to make a point, either. She will not learn a lesson from it. She will just see one fewer conversation in her list, if she notices at all.

If a conversation has gone quiet and you are not sure, send one light message and give it a few days. If nothing comes back, unmatch then. You will have lost nothing.

If you have been on a date and you do not want another, it is decent to say so before you unmatch. One or two sentences does it. You enjoyed meeting her, you do not think the two of you are right for each other, and you wish her well.

A conversation that simply disappears after a date is the version she remembers badly. The short message costs you a minute, and it is the kind of thing that makes a man easy to say good things about.

The other good moment to unmatch is when one woman has become the one you want to keep seeing. Leaving a dozen half-finished conversations open invites the old habit of checking them, and it is unfair to the women still waiting on a reply from you.

So close them out properly. If you had floated a plan with anyone, send her a short, honest line saying you have started seeing someone and wish her well. Then unmatch. Anyone you had only swapped a message or two with can simply be unmatched. It takes five minutes, and it leaves you with one conversation that matters instead of fifteen that do not.

coach makes a point about the other side of this button. If you are offending women to the point that they complain about you and unmatch you, the app's algorithm notices. It wants its users happy, and a man who gets complaints gets shown to fewer people.

So if unmatches tend to arrive right after your first message, look hard at your first message. Crude, pushy or copy-pasted openers are what get a man unmatched. A message about something on her page, written the way you would actually talk, rarely does. The goal is a first message she is glad she got, not one she has to decide whether to report.