FWIW I had a lot of success (and I mean success as in getting dates, not getting laid, but they’re obviously related) using Bumble and Hinge. IMO the dating apps go Hinge >> Bumble >>>>>>> Tinder. Tinder seemed to be a joke. Bumble is more serious since women have to message first. Hinge seemed most serious to me and is actually the app I met my current girlfriend on.
My approach was to be patient and picky with my likes/swipes and to go for an in-person meeting as quickly as possible. I treated it as a screening system for first dates, not as a conversation tool. I was ~30 at the time so first date basically meant grab some drinks or a casual dinner–I would not recommend doing anything expensive or fancy.
If you hit it off, great. If you don’t, that’s fine too–you haven’t invested too much time or emotion into the person yet anyways. Ghosting happened a few times both ways, but it usually seemed apparent to both parties whether we were hitting it off or not.
Also this unkillable trope where the guy musters enough courage to march up to the girl in public after weeks or months of premeditation in a do-or-die knife edge scenario is not a realistic representation. For one, it’s a super aggro, anxiety-filled maneuver that is awkward for all parties involved and often ends in humiliation. The other aspect is that it leaves out all of the important parts like building rapport and gauging interest through casual conversation. The presentation is basically from the perspective of a serial killer harboring a secret fuck fantasy. Bigly surprise that in practice they tend to give off creeper vibes and lead the league in strikeouts.
No idea. I haven’t done it in almost 10 years. Probably any of them, tbh. I do think it’s possibly off putting if you’re super up front about not wanting fuck buddies and wanting something long term, because it’s like asking someone to commit to something before they’ve even met you. And, per my next point, it’s also actively driving away people who are doing it right IMO.
IMO if you’re doing online dating you should be trying to meet lots of people for drinks (maybe aim for two dates a month?), and not having second/third dates with most of them. You should aim for casual dates that either party can leave within an hour if they want to (so no dinner, no movies. Drinks or coffee or walks in the park are good. If you have a few drinks at happy hour and both decide to get a table for dinner, then great.). You can quickly get a feel for what YOU want out of a partner and how to best present yourself to attract that kind of person.
And honestly, the quicker you realize that “hey I can get someone to meet me for a beer at basically any time, as long as I keep it casual and accept that 9/10 times nothing further will come of it”, the less daunting dating seems and the more comfortable you get talking to women in general.
Have you thought much about how you’re positioning yourself as a dating candidate? What are your strengths and weaknesses iyo? Have you read any social psychology research on dating and attraction? Something is off and you have to figure what it is and fix it.
Yea this is basically what I did when I was on dating sites. This was over 10 years ago as well. I have no idea what the sites are like now.
I was just always swiping or winking or whatever the app used to reach out. Then send a message and try and set something up. It was usually happy hour or coffee if they weren’t into drinking. I was meeting up 3-4 times a week. A lot of the time it would just be the one drink and never hear from them again. Sometimes I would ghost them. Can’t let this bother you just keep at it. I ended up meeting my wife on one of these sites.
Basically exactly this for me too, except I generally didn’t do the swiping/winking stuff, I’d send short cheeky messages about something in their profile that caught my eye. Also met my wife this way.
Yea this brings up a good point and is another reason why I preferred Hinge to Bumble. Hinge kinda forced you to put some personality into your profile and allowed people to send a like in the form of a comment on one of your profile elements. I had much more success with messages than with just “liking” things.
Find some IRL activity you enjoy that has a social component with like-minded people. It’ll get you out of the house with a new hobby, and it will probably get you laid.
I have spent most of my life thinking about positioning myself as a dating candidate. My main weaknesses are no steady job, no physical attractiveness and an off putting personality. Strengths? Enough free time to work around someone’s schedule and a sailboat.
Good news, though - you don’t want to date someone who would judge you for not having a steady job, right? And obviously you don’t want a partner who finds your personality (which seems like just a standard pleasant personality to me) off putting, right? So the people who fall into that category literally don’t matter. You don’t want to date them, even if they decide to give you a shot. You’re not positioning yourself for them. They’re fine lovely people but they will not work as a partner for you.
There are like 2% of guys who aren’t at least kinda ugly. I’m kinda ugly. Short too. Again, doesn’t matter.
I couldn’t possibly care less what they think about stuff like my job, I’m not in a position to be picky.
The last woman I dated showed me a video explaining that the Malaysia Air crash was an assassination plot by the Rothschilds to kill a team of engineers who had built a cloaking device. I showed her the Snopes on that and she dismissed it. She also is convinced that blood that she withdrew from herself and distilled to plasma has medicinal properties. A few months ago, long after she dumped me, I was helping her retrieve her daughters belongings from jail. She showed me another video explaining that microchips in the vaccines were a “distraction from the real conspiracy” and then went into detail what that conspiracy was.
In the most unjudging way possible - have you tried therapy? I was lucky in relationships (at least as in having them) even though I was/am so insecure in that department that the expected outcome of my dating life would have been pretty grim.
I don’t think much would work out unless you are able to raise your self esteem, even though you are convinced you are being ‘realist’ or something. It’s hard to do so without therapy.
Height is working massively in your favor and you aren’t using it. You probably need to trim down just slightly and add muscle in certain places. Specifically, your waist:hip and shoulder:waist ratios are important. Don’t have to be on the cover of Fitness magazine with 8% body fat but rather just enough contour to suggest V shape with broad shoulders. You can “fake” it by overemphasizing deltoids and upper thighs. Three days a week for 45 minutes is probably enough combined with the right diet.
Obviously faces are important and the least changeable. I’d suggest figuring out where you are strong/weak and then trying to emphasize sexually-dimorphic traits with hair style and maybe eyewear. Your clothes matter. Your disposition matters. You can nudge all of this stuff in your favor with relatively little work. This is just basic lizard brain physical attraction stuff between sexes. It goes deeper than that so you should start by reading this review chapter. Seriously, read all of it–the text is only 25 pages with huge margins.