No matter what you use, it seems they always fail and no one is interested.
Even a free app like duolicious has this problem.
No matter what you use, it seems they always fail and no one is interested.
Even a free app like duolicious has this problem.
I’m a man and I sought out relationships exclusively through online dating*. It was extremely discouraging, but it did eventually work three or four times (depending on how you define a long term relationship) over the course of years of trying. Each success was a big deal.
I used the free version of the old OkCupid - the one where you wrote a long profile and answered a bunch of multiple-choice questions. I only sent messages to women who seemed highly compatible with me, and I put some thought into every message. My rough estimate is that one in twenty messages received a reply. One in five replies lead to a date. One in five dates was the start of a long-term relationship. So that’s “only” about 500 messages per relationship, and that took several years. (There weren’t 500 women on the site who lived nearby and seemed compatible with me at any one time.)
I have no idea how well the modern “swipe” apps work. Frankly they seem gross and I never seriously tried using them.
Edit: I should add that I looked a little worse than average, had weird hobbies, and possessed enough social skills to sit quietly and not embarrass myself or the people I was with. I wasn’t exactly hot stuff.
*I have been introduced to women by a friend or relative a few times, but that friend/relative was the one who took the initiative.
With that kind of hit rate and timescale did you ever think the apps were unnecessary vs just meeting people? Or were you not really in a position to meet people by other means anyway?
No, there were always lots of people relatively near me. Even when I lived in New Hampshire, I was only an hour away from Boston. Now I live in Manhattan. My issue is the standard one that nerds have: intense social anxiety, and all the solitary habits formed by decades of social anxiety.
The funny thing is that when my dog was alive, I made sure that he had an active social life. I would even ask strangers with dogs if their dogs would like to meet mine.
Damn, I can’t even do this: my dog has worse social skills than I do (we tried but she is a rescue with a hard previous life)
Mine was weird because he had very intense separation anxiety but as long as I was with him, he loved everyone and wasn’t afraid of anything. He could even watch fireworks with me - when the noise started, he gave me a look and when he saw that I was calm, he didn’t worry either.