My experience as a woman on dating apps

32 comments

1. I can’t even imagine what it’s like being a woman on dating apps. I’ve been on-and-off them as a guy, but it usually just feels like a chore because I have to consciously open it and start swiping just so my profile stays in that sweet spot of visibility.

   And my big thing about apps is, yeah, people don’t read. People never read; they see an attractive face and think, “yep, that’s all the confirmation I need.” From my experience, people are using them as shortcuts to obtain what had to be earned through vetting face-to-face. It’s convenience wrapped in the shallow realities of having to display yourself as someone searching for something.

   For every one woman that has matched with me on an app, I’ve found three women in-person who were willing to have a better, more personal experience after talking with me for five minutes or so. These apps are just getting in the way of what people really want, so I don’t use them.

2. Well I get a like maybe once a month as a dude. The conversations tend to be really short as well and the girls tend to be unavailable/slow messagers anyways. So it really feels like I’m pulling a slot machine with each match or get too invested a lot of the time. Nowadays I figure if a girl is really interested I shouldn’t have to try that hard.

3. Just curious. If you had a man that was semi decent looking with a good job and independent. However he is trying to get to know you through different questions instead of funny pickup lines. Are you still continuing this? Men like me have the issue where we have conversation through asking questions on different topics and get ghosted or told by women they are not ready for a relationship.

4. “It’s just to let you know that things
   aren’t all rainbows and sunshine for us either, even
   If it may seem like it. And I feel bad for all the good men and women out there who are getting lost in the crowd that seems to only consist of weirdos.”

   Respect. Decent people who are willing to be open-minded, considerate, and to not project their negative life experiences on their potential next match before they’ve even interacted with them, have it tough. Appreciate you recognizing that it’s on both sides – 1000% agree. 👊🏽

5. Yuuuuup. I am not looking forward to online dating again…sigh.

6. I feel it is so important to keep both sides of this coin in mind at once, no matter who you are. — to keep in mind the way that experience is different between genders. Not only for empathy, but to understand how it effects behavior on average, even if what we see there is difficult and unsettling.

   The adage goes “for men, dating is like looking for a drink of water in a desert. for women, dating is like looking for a drink of water in a swamp.” Let’s stick with this uncomfortably long, looking at how it effects the dating landscape

   (“average”) Men: women hardly see you at all. it is incredibly difficult to even get a date, for the average guy. Possessing neither looks, nor income, nor charisma, or humor. Body out of shape, no aspects standing out, we have the average guy. He looks around and says “I am basically invisible to women, I must take what I can get”

   (“average”) Women: for the average woman, with no effort at all, men are clawing at her profiles, seemingly everyone scrabbling to stand out and get a date. She looks around and says: “is there anyone who actually cares who I am? I must pick out men of quality”. But how??

   (obviously these are stilted caricatures, but I hope you can see that they are caricatures built to highlight the respective plights of the two groups)

   Next, what does the above do to the dating landscape?

   I submit that it is as follows:

   Women, able to get dates with a seemingly unending pool of men, take the best of what they can get, from these surface level appearances we see on the apps.

   Men, only getting the opportunity to even go on a date only very very rarely – perhaps less than a handful of times a year, much take what they can get.

   Here we set the stage for heartbreak and frustration (again, on average!)

   This landscape will tend to have men hungry for dates, and hungry for sex. It’s so rare and so precious.

   Women will pick dates only with the (relatively speaking) top tier of men they get a like from. Meanwhile, thanks to the tilted landscape, those same men will likely see this woman as “taking what they can get”

   So it naturally arises from this asymmetry that men will not want to commit, believing that surely they can do better “if they can only get their life together” in one way or another – to get more attention and retain it. Meanwhile women will have their pick of dates, relatively, but cannot seem to find a man who will commit.

   –It’s all due to the structural asymmetry of the dating market.–

   That same asymmetry can expected to pull for situations where the man is less invested once he has a date, has a girlfriend, etc., because “every woman he dates for a little while wants commitment” -commitment is not special or rare to him. (again, this is a tendency, a speaking of averages, and speaking of the behavior this landscape pulls for)

   And for women it’s the opposite, in the law of large numbers, in the tilted landscape. Dates and sex with “(relatively) hot” guys are relatively easy to get, but finding a man “of quality” who will commit, seems a rare thing indeed.

   And the heartbreak, pain, and guilt goes on

   —

   edit: what is most interesting to me about this rather dismal analysis is that it suggests a different kind of dating app could, in theory at least, present a better solution that the current mill of swipe left and swipe right on or off choice. With a sort of ranked choice dating app, if it could be streamlined in some fashion to make ranking choices worth doing (certainly just swiping on everyone is no longer going to work at least) – worth doing for people, then an algorithm could pair up people for test dates in an order that finds a local minimum – a local best fit, in the technical sense, such that people link up with others knowing that of all their choices, this is the best fit so far, according to yours and your date’s rankings. The math might take some doing, to prove any claims the marketers would want to make, but the idea would be that for two people somewhere in the vast middle of the scale, ranking those around them (geographically, age wise, whatever criteria are important – and specifically not meaning anything like “you have to rank those around your level” <= not that, not at all that), that if they are the highest matching pair between all the ranks that they have ranked in their physical radius of search, and all the other criteria, that they would be paired up and the app would suggest they go on a date. The idea being that the two people so paired could have a good sense that of all their personal choices (no doubt some measure of them would be ranked higher) the two of them are the maximum of what candidate pairs where both selected the other candidate and ranked them by personal preference (yes I mean the very impersonal preference with which we currently swipe left or right). If we could put that into digestible marketing speak, perhaps it could get off the ground for a trial. lol

7. Let me tell you a story.

   Once upon a time I was living in Europe and doing a lot of online dating. I meet a woman and we got together at her place. She shows me her profile and there are HUNDREDS of messages.

   “Wow,” I say, “I have to send a 100 message, and of those, 10 might reply. 3 might turn into a meeting and one might turn into something”

   “Yes,” ahe sais. “But I get 100 messages, and of those, 90 are from losers. 10 might be interesting. 3 might show up to meet, and 1 might turn into something.”

8. I think the men who complain about apps understand what they’re like for many women, which is precisely why they’re complaining. If they felt like women were having an equally bad experience, I don’t think they would be as upset.

9. Well, we can all agree in that they are demoralizing, twists your view of the opposite sex, and overally terrible

10. as a woman.. I’ve had a great time! particularly on hinge although I met the guy I’m currently seeing on bumble. I found it really helps to have something that distinguishes me, not in like a flashy way, but more unique interests, things I like to chat about etc. I was honestly so impressed and happy with my matches and the effort guys have put into making conversation and engaging with what I have on my profile. bumble (haven’t even bothered with tinder) was a big nosedive in terms of success and effort, but still not terrible. I also filter a lot in terms of age, location, and hinge also lets you filter by relationship and child preferences which I love. I had like 3ish dates each week and very quickly found someone who made me not want to date others. it’s been.. very efficient lol

11. Nice job! You nailed this !

12. My heart breaks for you that model type men just want to mess with you. Boo hoo.

13. what dating app still lets you send pictures lol

14. 1. Ive heard that online dating for men is like looking for clean water in a desert, but for women it’s like looking for clean water in a swamp. This anecdote just supports that analogy, I’d say.

    2. I laughed so hard at “I’m popular in southeast asia, for some reason.” It was just such a superfluous detail that added so much.

15. How are you receiving dick pics? Most apps don’t even allow sending images no?

16. I’m a woman and I’ve had hinge for 3 days and have gotten 4 likes lol

17. I tried the burned haystack method and got some good results, had 3 dates lined up, but one the guy wanted me to instead drive across town to get coffee then to his place to play board games. I decided it wasn’t worth it with two other dates on the calendar. So I cancelled. Then my 1st of 2 dates went well enough that we talked for a few hours and I ended up messaging the next about being late and he unmatched me. This is after months and months of absolute crap.

    For anyone interested (esp women) you block anyone who doesn’t meet your criteria. Dont swipe left. Too old? Not attractive to you? No bio? Mentions of things in bio not 100% compatible? Block, block, block and algorithm ends up HAVING to show you different people and it kind of breaks there being an algorithm and ends up showing you everyone and most have been positive experiences

18. [removed]

19. The thirst is real with us dudes haha

20. Being a woman on dating apps is SO dehumanizing

21. I *was* thinking about trying an app again…

22. I’ve never understood the mindset of guys who send the UDP. Like the woman is going to say “OMG I’ve found the one! TRUE LOVE!!!” Maybe they do… Maybe they can share fond memories of “how I met your mother” over dinner parties and show the text that set the whole thing off ♥️

23. Just came to say, well written! Entertaining read. Also I’m petrified to join an app for this very consensus.

24. Yeah this sounds about right. From the outside it looks like having a lot of options, but most of it isn’t really usable.

    I’ve had the same feeling where you’re technically getting attention, but you’re still just hoping to find one normal, consistent person in the middle of all that noise.

    It’s less “having your pick” and more just filtering nonstop.

25. 28F here from SE Asia. I get hundreds and even thousands of likes in a week or so in bumble and okcupid but barely had matches and decent conversations. I usually get weird arrangements, convos turned into sexual innuendos, misogynistic remarks when I reject some, and unavailability. Rarely get asked for a date because of the distance but even with guys who are in close proximity hardly none of them could pass the texting stage. It’s humiliating even if I only require a decent conversation and mutual interests but even that it’s just impossible. But what can I do, I hardly go out to socialize. I’m still open to dating though but Idk if I’ll go back to dating apps, it’s just disappointing atp.

26. You have dozens or hundreds of likes and the average dude has 0 lol. But let’s say a handful for argument’s sake: what makes you think the rate of compatibility is better for men with fewer matches/likes? You have 300 likes to sort through. A dude has 3. He’s not having more success proportionally, just a smaller sample size. He still has to deal with crazy women, some who are far away, women with whom he’s misaligned for a million different reasons, etc. how is having orders of magnitude more options not better? I just don’t see the logic of this argument

27. Thats why I like hinge. I have to write something clever to stand out but it doesn’t make a difference

28. As a guy, I can say when I received a Like from a woman and liked her and matched with her, most of the time it ended up in a date

29. Do guys that send out dick picks actually get a serious response? Asking for a friend ….

30. My experience is first 2 weeks 15 matches, after that maybe, 1 in month. 13 out of those matches doesn’t start conversation or answer. Last 2 will disappear (maybe, found man)

31. This is fairly well known. What I want to know is, as one of the “decent” guys who actually engages in conversation, and doesn’t exhibit obvious red flags, why do women keep disappearing on me mid-conversation?

    In the last month I started talking to 6 promising women, and each and every one just disappeared a couple of days into chatting. Just gone. Mid-conversation. I used to be able to at least set up a date only for them to cancel or ghost the day before, but this year I can barely even reach that point.

32. Why are you looking at and filtering the guys that like you? It’s of no interest to you that they like you.

    Why not filter the people available on the things that interest you, then if you like them, let them know. You’ll get their attention. Why pay any attention to the noise?