The short answer is, for most men, dating apps are going to be time-consuming, expensive and probably a complete waste of time.
After I got divorced, I thought that dating apps were going to be the answer to all my dating needs. I’d take a few pictures and write a bit about myself, and the dates would come flooding in. How wrong I was!
Why Use Online Dating
The main reason I was using dating apps was to get genuine, old-fashioned dates. I wasn’t looking to boost my body count (have sex), which I know many men do. I wasn’t particularly looking for a short-term or long-term relationship. I wanted to go on dates and see how things went.
Inactive Profiles
When I was on dating apps, there seemed to be a lot of inactive profiles. You can’t tell this on all the dating apps, but on some, like Match.com it shows when the person was last active. I saw many profiles with no activity status on them, which means the last time the person was active was over a month ago.
I think that many women leave the platform (because they’ve found love ❤ or some other reason) but forget to suspend \cancel their account. This means that you can send ‘likes’ and messages, but you’re just wasting your time as there’s no one at the other end.
I suspect the online dating companies leave these inactive profiles for a considerable time before cleaning them up, as it makes them look as though they have more profiles.
Imbalance Of Men And Women
I’m not sure about the exact numbers, but I do know there are many more men on dating apps than women. How do I know this? because I’ve spoken to my female friends, and they see way more male profiles than I see female profiles and I mean way way more.
I’m not sure how accurate it is, but most online sources I’ve seen suggest that there are twice as many men on dating apps compared to women. Obviously the numbers are going to vary from dating app to dating app and probably location to location.
Another factor that makes it appear as though there is an imbalance between men and women is that women are more likely to hide their profiles from public view.
Hiding a profile means that it won’t show up in the dating app so it can’t be ‘Liked’, ‘Not Liked’ or have messages sent, unless they’ve ‘liked’ you first.
Again, from what female friends have told me, they hide their profile to stop any unwanted messages, for security reasons and don’t like the idea of dirty old men perving over their photos.
Women Get A Lot More ‘Likes’
Partly because of the imbalance mentioned above and also because men are much more generous with ‘Likes’, women get to pick the cream of the crop. So, unless you’re a super hot guy with bucket loads of cash, you are unlikely to get noticed by the ‘best’ women.
One of my female friends had literally hundreds of ‘Likes’ a month. I was lucky to get 10 ‘Likes’ a month.
Getting ‘Matches’ Is Rare
Getting likes is hard enough, but of those women who have liked you, how many of them do you like enough to ‘Match’ with? I can tell you the answer is very few.
Many of the ‘Likes’ I had were from women who lived miles away from me, it simply wouldn’t be practical to date them. I don’t know why women ‘Like’ you when they live hundreds of miles away……strange.
Of those women who do live locally and ‘Like’ you, there will be very few who you find attractive and also think might be compatible with you based on the information they provide in their profile.
I found getting a genuine ‘Match’ was extremely rare; I could go months without having a match!
A ‘Match’ does not mean a guaranteed date
Getting a ‘Match’ is great, but there is still a long way to go before you get a date.
I found women I matched with often didn’t reply to my messages or replied a few times and then just dropped off the grid.
Never Ending Messaging
You’ve got a ‘Match’ and have started a chat conversation, and it goes on and on and on. The majority of women I matched with seemed to love messaging. I do not, I find it slow, and you can’t really get to know the person.
I would try to persuade my ‘match’ to meet up in real life or have a phone conversation, but often they just weren’t that interested and wanted to continue messaging ‘a bit more’!
After about a week of messaging, I would, in a very polite way, say to my ‘match’ that if she didn’t want to meet up or have a phone call, I was going to stop messaging.
In my early online dating days, I could have chats that lasted a month or longer. However, these chats were always a complete waste of time and never went anywhere.
First Contact In Real Life
If you manage to get to the stage of planning a first meet-up in real life, well done, but you still have a way to go.
I had one woman who didn’t turn up and didn’t have the courtesy to message me to say she was pulling out. When I messaged her to ask where she was, I found she had blocked me……nice!
On several occasions, the women didn’t look like their profile pictures.often considerably older than they said they were. This made things a bit awkward, as personally, I wouldn’t date a woman I didn’t find physically attractive. Call me shallow, but that’s just the way it is.
I had other dates that I thought went pretty well, but there was never a second date for whatever reason.
One tip, if your first date goes well, organise a second date at the end of the first date. If you leave it too long or try to arrange a second date via chat, it often doesn’t work out. It’s also a good way of finding out how the date went from the other person’s perspective. If they don’t want to organise a second date there and then, the date probably wasn’t so good for them.
First Date
How much time and effort has it taken to get to your first date using a dating app? Probably a lot more time and effort than you were expecting.
I had been on dating apps for about two months before my first date. I dread to think how much time I spent going through profiles and messaging in those first few months.
None of the dates I went on led to anything long-term and were just short-term fun, which was fine for me as I wasn’t specifically looking for a long-term relationship at the time.
Conclusion
Everything I’ve discussed above is based on my own experiences. You may find that dating apps work for you, or you may just get lucky. However, nearly all of my male friends who have used dating apps have had experiences that are very similar to my own.
I can’t see myself using a dating app ever again.
