32m here and ive been on dating apps for over 10 years and think they’ve gotten worse since the whole swiping algorithm. I always do max swipes daily on fb dating, tinder, and bumble with minimum to no success. Tinder being the worst of the three. Ik irl is better, I just am not good at it with social anxiety and overthinking. Anybody find what works on these apps if you’re an average looking man?
Data shows that something like 80% of guys on dating apps don’t get any attention from women. I don’t remember the exact figure. But dating apps are a tough demoralizing place for most men. I’d say branch out in your hobbies and focus on self improvement and hopefully you’ll bump into the right person with some shared interest.
Are you going to therapy for your social anxiety and over thinking? Cuz even if you got a match on the apps, you’re still going to face those issues when you actually meet up.
One thing I’ve seen reported in recent times is that men hardly show up to singles events and speed dating type things anymore. But that might be a lot of pressure for your social anxiety if you showed up somewhere and you were the only guy in a room of women.
sexy horny gay dudes are always ready to show you what a real sexual revolution looks like.
Remember when conservatives used to say it was a choice? If it was a choice, I would have lost my virginity a lot sooner.
Same here. I’m like a classic bear IRL and I get attention. My luck with women is nowhere close.
Posted this 2 years ago and dug it up for you!
Here to offer hope and advice to anyone that’s given up. I’m a 52-yo American male and have knocked it out the park with dating apps. In the 4-years since my wife left, thank god, I’ve had 15-20 dates and 5 steady gf’s for a bit. Getting married 11/24 if y’all want to come!
Pro tips:
- Post a variety of pics. Nothing controversial like guns, dead animals, any other women your age. Or your fucking truck/motorcycle/sports car. If your Confederate flag bed sheets are really important to filter people, go ahead I guess. If the person you’re looking at does not have a wide range of pics, red flag. Women are great at glamour shots. Take the worst pic of the bunch and assume that’s what they look like IRL. Worst case, you’re pleasantly surprised. (Happened to me many times!)
- Don’t be too judgmental. All you’re aiming for is a first date, see how it goes. What’s it cost a man? Dinner for two? Better yet, I dated a woman who said neither party should pay anything on the first date. If you don’t click, no one’s out anything. Go to a park, thrift storing, antique mall, whatever floats your boat. It costs nothing to walk around, talk and gauge each other’s interests and mutual attraction.
- Sorry, but this bit can be expensive. Sign up for half-a-dozen sites. If you’re fishing, it’s best to bait 6 poles vs. one, right? Try the free options of course, see how it goes, but spread yourself around as much as possible. You never know. And that bears repeating. You never know what will happen. More on that shortly.
- Keep initial communication short and sweet. Too much gets lost in text, too many misunderstandings. "Hey! Love (something in their post that you’re seriously interested in, or why else are you contacting them)! (question about something you want to know about them)? Want to (go to the park, get coffee, go thrift storing, whatever)? And then go on the damned date, and do it ASAP, before something stupid happens like a misunderstood text, other plans/dates cropping up, whatever. Just go. If I have to say, “Don’t be an ass and pressure for the date.”, you’re not ready for a relationship.
How I met my fiancé:
She hit me up on eHarmony. Gods that site sucks. Only date I ever got there. Blew her off because her pics were… not so great. She had nothing interesting to say about herself, barebones bio. 3-months later I’m revisiting and saw her “like”. “Yeah, what about this girl again?” She posted more about herself, and more attractive pics and here we are.
You basically need to buy premium. It sucks and is predatory but it makes a huge difference. I would drop $20 on boosts Thursday afternoon and end up getting a date for Friday/Saturday maybe 2/3 of the time. About 75% of my matches came from paying for buffs.
My friend bought a camera, learned to take good pics and we made ourselves a photo session. It helped, I got more matches, but I couldn’t get along with any of them. Well, I did with one until I fucked it up…
Anyway, I ended up joining an AuDHD meet up group on FB and soon after my now girlfriend posted and we’re now 1.5 year together
- Be rich
- Don’t be poor
I think that’s the only legit cheat code
It’s not that simple.
- Be attractive.
- Don’t be unattractive.
2a. You gain half a point attractiveness bonus for every $200k you have in the bank.
Tell us more about your current usage. What are you doing and where is it failing?
Some of the other posts already hit the highlights. Have a variety of well lit photos. Your profile should be short, but with some unique-ish hooks for people to talk about (eg: “reading ‘such and such’ for my book club!” - several things for someone to ask about there).
When you do match with people, don’t send generic messages. Don’t just send “hey”. Go read https://nohello.net/en/ for a post about that in other contexts.
After you’ve had one or two successful exchanges, clear any deal breakers you might have (eg: “really enjoying this conversation but wanted to make sure you saw on my profile I have a toddler. Are you okay with that?”). If that succeeds, ask them out.
Don’t provide too many choices. People get overwhelmed easily. “I’d love to talk more about (whatever we we were talking about). Do you want to go on a date? I like (local bar), but (other bar) in your neighborhood looks fun, too!”. Two choices. They’ll probably pick one.
More specific advice may be available if you tell us more about your specific experience
Just haven’t gotten any matches although I got back on the apps like a month or so ago
What part of the world are you in?
In my experience, tinder is pretty bad. I don’t use facebook so I can’t vouch for that one, but I assume it’s also bad. I never got a single match on Bumble.
Hinge, I got pretty good results on. Even though they’re all owned by the same Match Group, hinge seemed to work better. I could get about a date a week on hinge, as an average guy.
I think it worked better for me because you can send a note when you see someone you like, so if you can write complete sentences you’re already a cut above the average guy.
I’m in the northeast of USA. I paid for hinge before but only got a couple matches. It’s the most expensive one but offers the most I’d say
I never paid for it out of stubbornness.
Are you writing good messages to potential matches?
On hinge? They weren’t creepy or anything
That’s good but there’s a lot of room between creepy and effective
After a long discussion with all of my co-workers comparing everyone’s experience, it would be safe to assume that they do not work effectively. They are a commercial product whose entire purpose is to make money. The algorithms are designed to keep people on the app as long as possible. They don’t work on purpose. Every single person in the discussion that met their SO on an app, were marched because some sort of fluke or exception. It only works when the pattern is broken. We were even calling people’s SOs up to hear their full stories.
This may sound like an odd question, but why are you dating? What are you seeking out that you don’t have now?
I guess what I’m trying to say is my philosophy is to not go out of the way to find someone directly, but rather build one’s own self confidence and communal hobbies that naturally draws you to people, friends or love interests alike.
Ironically I ended up meeting my soul mate within a year of committing to being content with being single. That altered my mindset and I guess made me more attractive and focused on self-improvement.
Because I never had a partner and it’s frustrating
I’ve been there. Always been awkward, always struggled with it, always had complex emotions about it. I can confirm though what the previous person said: building yourself up as someone with your own rich world that people would be interested in, that’s the healthiest way. You should try as much as possible to do this, I know it’s hard. I know you just feel like it’s never your turn. But you have to try. I’ve never met anyone on dating apps but that’s also because I used to go out a lot for specifically this reason. But pubs and clubs aren’t exactly healthy, it lead more to wasted years, wasted money, and meaningless hookups that left me just as miserable… It was eventually when I took up traveling with organized groups (where I could socialize with like-minded strangers around a healthy topic that we had in common) that I met my current partner.
Nice. I hear ya there
be hot
If you figure it out, let me know. I am also in my 30s and have never had any success with dating websites/apps. I’ve only ever had success meeting people the natural way.
Personally I wouldn’t even bother with dating apps. Date someone from work or go to a singles event. I’ve had great success with those methods.
My wife said the “no fuckboys” line in my profile made her laugh.
its always attractive or not, race also matters because people are that vain; white people and attractive would get more hits, and it goes down the list least likely. do they ask income , and some ask about your “size”
- Don’t be a misogynistic piece of incel shit
- ???
- Profit!
Here are the steps
- Don’t be ugly
- See step 1
It’s
- Be attractive
- Don’t be unattractive
Just not being ugly isn’t enough, you gotta be actively hot.
I wouldn’t describe myself as attractive, just not unattractive. And I’ve always gotten a lot of matches (with actual people). My social anxiety has been in the way of going further with it most of the time but it’s always been easy to find a date almost immediately when I want. One thing I know helps is my clothing style, 60s-70s, and I recommend people to try to find a style that they like and use photos that show it.
I’m not hot. I’m not ugly, but also not hot and had plenty of dates from dating apps when I was on them.
Good job, not a slob, decent bio, and quality photos of myself.
I was also really selective in who I swiped on. I didn’t swipe right on every hot chick. I swiped right on girls I found attractive and best guess from profile lifestyles were similar.
I went out with plenty of attractive women, hooked up with a handful and dated a few. I also went out on plenty of bad dates, the girl who carried a dead lizard she found on the ground. The autistic racist. The girl with gnarly teeth.
Then I randomly met my wife through a coworker.
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Ok, obviously people being attracted to you is a huge plus but there are plenty of average and even below average dudes out there with amazing women. Why?
Because they’re typically genuinely nice, caring dudes that don’t treat women like some mountain to be summited.
You want to know how to have enjoyable relationships with women? Maybe try actually being friends with a woman; no ulterior motives. Just find a friend and nurture that friendship. It’s incredibly easy to be around women when you don’t tack a bunch of sexual bullshit onto every situation involving them.
Inevitably, you’ll either find a suitable partner organically or you’ll be introduced to someone that meshes well with you.
Women make up 50% of the population. If you can’t have a normal interaction or a friendship with them, that’s a problem that requires you to look inward to resolve.
I feel you are mostly right in this one but I heard women hate people who befriend them for sake of seeking a relationship beyond friendship.
On the other hand, let’s say you always looked at a woman as friend and suddenly she expresses her feelings for you down the line. Would you be ready to mold the relationship on the spot, which you have seen as a platonic friendship from the get-go? Why is that they can do it but not men?
And if you had crush on someone and you intentionally made friendship with them to give you a chance for it to go beyond friendship, would that be a wrong thing? And if in case, they had expressed feelings to you because they liked your personality, would you be able to say that they were always was your crush? Wouldn’t that throw then off seeing you were seeking romantic relationship with them from the start?
I might’ve gone slightly off-topic but this is a good discussion I feel.
Would you be ready to mold the relationship on the spot, which you have seen as a platonic friendship from the get-go?
I’m not a relationship expert so I can only give a response based on my own subjective feelings and opinions.
I’d say that you’d probably be able to tell pretty easily if a friend would be a suitable partner if you’ve spent a decent amount of time around them. It might be a bit of an uncomfortable conversation to turn them down, but good friends should have healthy communication and a discussion about why the interest isn’t mutual would probably go over well. If you just say no and provide no context as to why, that would likely end badly.
would you be able to say that they were always was your crush?
I did exactly this with my wife. We initially became friends because she was one of my roommate’s girlfriend like 15 years ago. We had a strictly platonic relationship for about 10 years, but I was crushin hard after 5.
Turns out that so was she.
Ah you’re right
