9 ms·

Does anyone else end up feeling bitter by using these online dating apps? How do you deal with constant rejections, ghosting, not matching with anyone that you

Does anyone else end up feeling bitter by using these online dating apps? How do you deal with constant rejections, ghosting, not matching with anyone that you like etc.

02020202 6y ago
you, my friend, need to take the red pill.
HeyHoJoe 6y ago
Yeah, most men who use them feel this way. I met a guy one time who claimed he had been active on tinder for a year and hadn’t gotten one match. Granted he wasn’t much of a looker but that’s just rough.
- im3w1l 6y ago
  At that point it sounds like he was shadowbanned? Surely someone must have at least misswiped?
  - toyg 6y ago
    Expectation mismatch is real. Unless you pay so you can see what “lowering your standards” could bring (by looking at people who liked you even though you didn’t like them), you can go ages without ever matching, or matching with dead profiles who will never answer.
mhh__ 6y ago
I assume they're at best knowingly designed to be like that. Ignoring that the whole premise probably isn't that healthy, there's a reason why people just do it for an ego trip (predominantly women)
stared 6y ago
Well, it is the fate for almost everyone: https://medium.com/@pmigdal/tinder-anecdata-and-sankey-diagrams-c1c0e5dfff18 https://medium.com/@pmigdal/tinder-anecdata-and-sankey-diagr... Even if people get many matches in the first place, the rate of any meaningful interactions is low.
- taigeair 6y ago
  very interesting article
jconley 6y ago
Don't take it too seriously. Play the game. It's just sales and marketing and you are the product.
snarf21 6y ago
It is like anything else. It is just a tool. I think getting rejected in person would be a lot more depressing than just being ignored online. When I was a user, I met a lot of people outside of my town and social circle. I dated a few here and there for quite a while. It isn't magic but it can be a controlled way to meet other people.
radihuq 6y ago
I go in assuming I will get no matches, and that all conversations will die in ~2 days. And I'm okay with that
- ComputerGuru 6y ago
  Humans aren’t very good at believing the lies they tell themselves when they’re in conflict of their true emotions, whims, or desires. We’re also evolutionarily optimized to recalculate and reconsider almost constantly, so even if that works for you at the start, as soon as you have just one conversation that goes on a week, you’ll forget that little lie and pine for what you got a taste of. Or most people would, anyway.
csomar 6y ago
No reason to feel bitter. It's just a broken system to milk as much money as they can from you. Stop using them and maybe also remove your Facebook account. Online dating is a waste of time.
- raducu 6y ago
  Its also a system to milk attention and validation out of men.
legolas2412 6y ago
You get tired and stop using them.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
Patient: "Hey doctor, it hurts when I do this." Doctor: "Then stop doing that." I gave up online dating 10 years ago. A few months ago I tried again after a relationship ended. I'd quit again within a week. Honestly it was even worse than I remembered.
- hawkoy 6y ago
  I laughed so hard at the doctor example. Thanks. Patient: decides to ignore the advice and seeks medical advice on the internet
burnthrow 6y ago
IMO dating sites are geared towards below average-looking people who have no shame about being overtly picky. Most desirable single men and women are not online dating. My only brush with online dating was installing Tinder many years ago. The first girl it showed me wasn't very attractive, but I wasn't going to judge her ("swipe"), you know? Uninstalled it, felt like when you wander into one of those grimy "meet-market" bars. If you already turn down advances from average-looking people IRL, why would you create an account to do that online? I think attractive women feel the same, there are already enough real-world opportunities. None of the girls I've dated have even considered online dating.
- lalwanivikas 6y ago
  > None of the girls I've dated have even considered online dating. Is this still true? When was the last time you tried Tinder/Bumble/OKC? There are tons of attractive people there.
  - bradlys 6y ago
    > Is this still true? Definitely not true and likely has never been true. Many of the most attractive women I know are active on online dating. People join online dating for various reasons. One is to expand your dating pool. If you've burned through a lot of your social network (or you don't want to poison it) then online dating is a great way to expand your horizon. From what I gather, it really only amplifies what you experience in real life already. If a significant amount of people show interest in you from a very early stage - you will have no problems with online dating. If you require any kind of barrier to get interest, I wouldn't bother unless you have the incredible ability to not evaluate your self-worth from the app regardless of what happens.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
swat535 6y ago
The incentives are not aligned, they want to keep the users paying and they will stop if they succeed. Therefore it's in their best interest to give you illusion of success in bite size chunks. These services only amplifies the already attractive people who don't need matches anyway.
ehmmmmmmmm 6y ago
Yes. A while ago when I was single I tried using online dating apps for a while but ultimately I met someone in real life and it's going well. Previous relationships were also people I met in real life. Don't get discouraged if online dating doesn't work for you either. It didn't work for me. I know it's hard during COVID, but work on yourself in the meantime, and COVID will be over sooner or later. Online dating just never worked for me, for the same reasons you describe. I think part of it is a combination of paradox of choice and part of it is people just not having faith in technology finding them something human. I went on dates where the other person sooner or later doubted the possibility of marrying someone they met online, and it usually degenerated from there into either friendship or nothing. There's also the weird social expectation on many apps that males should message first, which results in females getting spammed, which then further results in females not messaging first, and the cycle perpetuates. As a technology lover I really want online dating to work in bringing more compatible people together and increase overall societal happiness by increasing the average quality of marriage, but time and time again it seems to me that the best way to bring compatible people together is with offline events. Compatible people tend to want to go to similar places and do similar things, and any successful online dating app really should exploit that fact. In fact, the most successful organizations I have seen at bringing together singles into stable marriages were not even explicitly about dating. I've seen far more stable couples form at mixed-gender sports teams, hiking groups, volunteer organizations, conference organizing teams, and other professional organizations where participants largely cared about the same causes.
deedub 6y ago
I met my wife on a dating app. I had met several women through dating apps and was pretty burnt out on all the dates and messaging. People are pretty fake via msg and you can figure it out quickly in person. After awhile I decided I'd just go back to the normal way of meeting people and it would be more sincere. I figured I'd meet someone when out with my friends or co workers, at a wedding, whatever. I was about to delete my OK Cupid account and she msg'd first, sending me something kind of clever and we met up for a beer. Before the date I decided it would be my last dating app date. Friday is our 2nd anniversary.
- lalwanivikas 6y ago
  I am happy for you man! Sometimes success is just one step away as proven by your example :-)
  - deedub 6y ago
    Thanks! I feel like sometimes, just like you say, things in life are one step away. One last attempt. It's a pretty great reflection actually...looking back and seeing how many last attempts actually worked out.
closeparen 6y ago
I find it emotionally a lot easier to be evaluated and rejected for romance by a stranger over the course of a few days, than to have a friendship that grows for months/years but ultimately stops short of romantic territory. The latter is usually what happens with people I meet organically.
- User23 6y ago
  The people you met organically did evaluate and reject you for romance over the course of a few days, you just didn't notice. Now that you know what to look for you'll see it. Feynman's method[1] has always worked exceptionally well for me. If the person is into me they like it, and if they're not they say so and time to move on. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surely_You%27re_Joking,_Mr._Feynman!#The_%22You_Just_Ask_Them?%22_chapter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surely_You%27re_Joking,_Mr._Fe...
  - ComputerGuru 6y ago
    Someone may be into you but have different norms and values. It’s an incredibly uncompromising and disrespectful approach (not from the PC or objectification perspective but from the perspective that you’ll “open negotiations” on your terms rather than signaling a willingness to compromise).
  - rblatz 6y ago
    I’m married now, but I had a realization a while ago that all the women I’ve dated or hooked up with were because I made it extremely clear what I was interested in, and not accepting being put in a friend-zone. It’s not quite as bold as Feynman’s approach, but clear intentions and not trying to hedge a situation or avoiding being shot down was the key to success for me. On multiple occasions I met a girl and just said out loud to my friends or hers that I am going to date her/go home with her and in the case of my wife I told some of her friends that I was going to marry that girl. My wife and I took another 5 years after that to get the timing right, but when either of us were single we’d start chatting again.
    - 6y ago
john-tells-all 6y ago
OkCupid got me a number of dates, with lots of weirdness, rejections, and of course tons of ghosting. So I got bored, and posted haiku to entertain myself. I realized that it was actually more fun than dating :) Then I got a long rant by a crazed creative woman, she actually was perfect so I said whatever, let's meet and see what happens! Today is our 3rd wedding anniversary :)
- deedub 6y ago
  Dude, fuck yea! Friday is #2 for me, OKC FTW!
  - deedub 6y ago
    Downvoted for being stoked about someone's 3rd anniversary? HN is so weird sometimes.
- worker767424 6y ago
  Okcupid got me dates with girl who did reality tv, a girl who did porn, and girl who would go on to do porn.
the_only_law 6y ago
Not really bitter per say, but the whole idea seems foreign to me. Don't know how to explain it well, but I don't feel my persona is very fit for the way online dating works. It all feels very artificial. On the other hand, though I just don't meet people organically.
trynewideas 6y ago
When I stopped looking for dates and started looking for friends, it worked and felt at lot better. I met and became friends with one of my still best friends by contacting them on a dating site and having zero expectations of ever meeting them, just because I thought they'd be cool to hang out with online (and they were). My partner of the last 10 years was a friend of theirs. Never would have met my partner if not for the dating site, and never would have met them on a dating site.
CapricornNoble 6y ago
The same way men deal with it every day of their lives dating in the real-world? It sucks. We power through it, pick ourselves up, and keep fighting. Some of my buddies have triple-digit notch counts....and they still get rejected (although it's rare enough that it becomes a subject of conversation). It's just a part of The Game for men. Lesbian Norah Vincent spent a year living as a man and practically had a mental breakdown (timestamp is where they discuss cold-approach dating and rejection): https://youtu.be/Ip7kP_dd6LU?t=563 https://youtu.be/Ip7kP_dd6LU?t=563 A lot of it boils down to mental framing. In other words, think of yourself as providing an opportunity for someone to participate in something great. If they don't take advantage of that opportunity, that's their loss not yours. One of the best quotes is from Patrice O'Neal: "You MUST believe in your own righteousness."
- indigo945 6y ago
  > Lesbian Norah Vincent spent a year living as a man and practically had a mental breakdown (timestamp is where they discuss cold-approach dating and rejection): To be clear, she had a mental breakdown when at a therapy session with a bunch of men who were talking about chopping up their wives. The context in your post frames it as if it had been because of her lack of success in dating, but that's not what it was. (Also, she talks about how she actually had dating success to the point that straight women she was dating would agree to sleep with her even after finding out that she has female parts. I wish I was that hot.)
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    Wow that's pretty disingenuous of the guy you're quoting, it's almost as if he's holding a grudge or has an Agenda.
  - ad404b8a372f2b9 6y ago
    In multiple interviews she explains that the building anxiety from the whole experiment led to her breakdown. The group session might have been particularly traumatic but it's not an isolated incident where her mental state went from 100 to 0, so the GP isn't inaccurate to state that living as a man for a year gave her a nervous breakdown, to be clear.
raducu 6y ago
In person dating is hard, online dating is harder. Dealing with anonymous people who get no penalty for being assholes is hard. Relationships are hard, even with people you have a lot in common. The last part -- matching with people you like is where I see a real need for a specialist that I'm an unaware to exist -- there could be soooo much at play there. The demographics of that group, what that group REALLY wants in a partner, honest feedback for yourself, what to improve in yourself etc etc.
- xenihn 6y ago
  Dating coaches? Or matchmakers. I don't know, I've never used either.
- corpMaverick 6y ago
  We just matched a friend of mine from New England with a friend of my wife from Mexico. He is a great guy but he had already given up on dating. And it was actually the girl who asked if we knew someone. But most people will not ask their friends. My wife and I are wondering how the Indian Matchmaker business model work. How do you align the incentives so you can help people and get some extra income?
- eckza 6y ago
  You ever ask a date why they swiped on your profile? It's a good question for 10-15 minutes in to the first conversation. It's always revealing - about you, about how you're perceived, and about how the other person perceives you and what matters to them. Also - bug your desired-sex friends and family. Show them your profile. Focus-group it. This has been massively helpful for me. At the end of the day: change stuff and see what happens.
- closeparen 6y ago
  The social penalties that constrain people in your circle from being jerks also constrain you from expressing potentially unwanted interest, though. People will stop introducing you to their friends if you’re constantly asking them out. I feel a lot more confident expressing what I want to strangers. Have you not found the same?
worker767424 6y ago
Depends on the dating app, but my only real problem is that I find doing nothing at home more entertaining than first dates, and second dates bring fear of commitment. Actually getting dates? That's easy enough. Being white, attractive enough, 6' tall, between 150 and 180lbs, no kids, and make a tech salary seems to tick off a lot of boxes for girls.
- toyg 6y ago
  That’s like saying “buying anything I want is easy enough, being rich seems to help”.
  - worker767424 6y ago
    I'm engineer-awkward, though.
- barnacled 6y ago
  The height is by far the most important factor. Surprised me but as a 5'5" guy, shedding excess weight, new wardrobe, good job, approached women IRL and online, none of it mattered compared to height. Goes down exponentially proportionate to how many SDs from the mean you are... I have had relationships and am engaged to a beautiful woman now so I found a way to work around it but it is near impossible. My short male friends are either single or have made considerable compromises. It's a factor that is weirdly denied in society too. Nobody wants to hear that an immutable characteristic plays such a role on the male side...
  - toyg 6y ago
    I think it's due to society still fundamentally adjusting to female parity of power and the reduced value of marriage. Until recently, single women suffered huge economic insecurity; they had a massive incentive to compromise on their attractiveness standards. This said, you can still somewhat compensate for height with status and other looks. Tom Cruise is 172cm but I don't think he ever struggled for dates.
    - 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jariel 6y ago
That's just 'life' not 'online dating'. If in 'real life' you could communicate with that many people outside of your social circles, it'd be the same.
marvin 6y ago
I've never felt as disposable and low-value in my entire life as when I tried online dating for a year or two. Ended up ditching the entire thing and only went for real-life interactions instead. Happily had much more success there, in spite of being a big-time introvert.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

Does anyone else end up feeling bitter by using these online dating apps? How do you deal with constant rejections, ghosting, not matching with anyone that you like etc.

02020202 6y ago

you, my friend, need to take the red pill.

HeyHoJoe 6y ago

Yeah, most men who use them feel this way. I met a guy one time who claimed he had been active on tinder for a year and hadn’t gotten one match. Granted he wasn’t much of a looker but that’s just rough.

im3w1l 6y ago
At that point it sounds like he was shadowbanned? Surely someone must have at least misswiped?
- toyg 6y ago
  Expectation mismatch is real. Unless you pay so you can see what “lowering your standards” could bring (by looking at people who liked you even though you didn’t like them), you can go ages without ever matching, or matching with dead profiles who will never answer.

mhh__ 6y ago

I assume they're at best knowingly designed to be like that. Ignoring that the whole premise probably isn't that healthy, there's a reason why people just do it for an ego trip (predominantly women)

stared 6y ago

Well, it is the fate for almost everyone: https://medium.com/@pmigdal/tinder-anecdata-and-sankey-diagrams-c1c0e5dfff18 https://medium.com/@pmigdal/tinder-anecdata-and-sankey-diagr... Even if people get many matches in the first place, the rate of any meaningful interactions is low.

taigeair 6y ago
very interesting article

jconley 6y ago

Don't take it too seriously. Play the game. It's just sales and marketing and you are the product.

snarf21 6y ago

It is like anything else. It is just a tool. I think getting rejected in person would be a lot more depressing than just being ignored online. When I was a user, I met a lot of people outside of my town and social circle. I dated a few here and there for quite a while. It isn't magic but it can be a controlled way to meet other people.

radihuq 6y ago

I go in assuming I will get no matches, and that all conversations will die in ~2 days. And I'm okay with that

ComputerGuru 6y ago
Humans aren’t very good at believing the lies they tell themselves when they’re in conflict of their true emotions, whims, or desires. We’re also evolutionarily optimized to recalculate and reconsider almost constantly, so even if that works for you at the start, as soon as you have just one conversation that goes on a week, you’ll forget that little lie and pine for what you got a taste of. Or most people would, anyway.

csomar 6y ago

No reason to feel bitter. It's just a broken system to milk as much money as they can from you. Stop using them and maybe also remove your Facebook account. Online dating is a waste of time.

raducu 6y ago
Its also a system to milk attention and validation out of men.

legolas2412 6y ago

You get tired and stop using them.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago

Patient: "Hey doctor, it hurts when I do this." Doctor: "Then stop doing that." I gave up online dating 10 years ago. A few months ago I tried again after a relationship ended. I'd quit again within a week. Honestly it was even worse than I remembered.

hawkoy 6y ago
I laughed so hard at the doctor example. Thanks. Patient: decides to ignore the advice and seeks medical advice on the internet

burnthrow 6y ago

IMO dating sites are geared towards below average-looking people who have no shame about being overtly picky. Most desirable single men and women are not online dating. My only brush with online dating was installing Tinder many years ago. The first girl it showed me wasn't very attractive, but I wasn't going to judge her ("swipe"), you know? Uninstalled it, felt like when you wander into one of those grimy "meet-market" bars. If you already turn down advances from average-looking people IRL, why would you create an account to do that online? I think attractive women feel the same, there are already enough real-world opportunities. None of the girls I've dated have even considered online dating.

lalwanivikas 6y ago
> None of the girls I've dated have even considered online dating. Is this still true? When was the last time you tried Tinder/Bumble/OKC? There are tons of attractive people there.
- bradlys 6y ago
  > Is this still true? Definitely not true and likely has never been true. Many of the most attractive women I know are active on online dating. People join online dating for various reasons. One is to expand your dating pool. If you've burned through a lot of your social network (or you don't want to poison it) then online dating is a great way to expand your horizon. From what I gather, it really only amplifies what you experience in real life already. If a significant amount of people show interest in you from a very early stage - you will have no problems with online dating. If you require any kind of barrier to get interest, I wouldn't bother unless you have the incredible ability to not evaluate your self-worth from the app regardless of what happens.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

swat535 6y ago

The incentives are not aligned, they want to keep the users paying and they will stop if they succeed. Therefore it's in their best interest to give you illusion of success in bite size chunks. These services only amplifies the already attractive people who don't need matches anyway.

ehmmmmmmmm 6y ago

Yes. A while ago when I was single I tried using online dating apps for a while but ultimately I met someone in real life and it's going well. Previous relationships were also people I met in real life. Don't get discouraged if online dating doesn't work for you either. It didn't work for me. I know it's hard during COVID, but work on yourself in the meantime, and COVID will be over sooner or later. Online dating just never worked for me, for the same reasons you describe. I think part of it is a combination of paradox of choice and part of it is people just not having faith in technology finding them something human. I went on dates where the other person sooner or later doubted the possibility of marrying someone they met online, and it usually degenerated from there into either friendship or nothing. There's also the weird social expectation on many apps that males should message first, which results in females getting spammed, which then further results in females not messaging first, and the cycle perpetuates. As a technology lover I really want online dating to work in bringing more compatible people together and increase overall societal happiness by increasing the average quality of marriage, but time and time again it seems to me that the best way to bring compatible people together is with offline events. Compatible people tend to want to go to similar places and do similar things, and any successful online dating app really should exploit that fact. In fact, the most successful organizations I have seen at bringing together singles into stable marriages were not even explicitly about dating. I've seen far more stable couples form at mixed-gender sports teams, hiking groups, volunteer organizations, conference organizing teams, and other professional organizations where participants largely cared about the same causes.

deedub 6y ago

I met my wife on a dating app. I had met several women through dating apps and was pretty burnt out on all the dates and messaging. People are pretty fake via msg and you can figure it out quickly in person. After awhile I decided I'd just go back to the normal way of meeting people and it would be more sincere. I figured I'd meet someone when out with my friends or co workers, at a wedding, whatever. I was about to delete my OK Cupid account and she msg'd first, sending me something kind of clever and we met up for a beer. Before the date I decided it would be my last dating app date. Friday is our 2nd anniversary.

lalwanivikas 6y ago
I am happy for you man! Sometimes success is just one step away as proven by your example :-)
- deedub 6y ago
  Thanks! I feel like sometimes, just like you say, things in life are one step away. One last attempt. It's a pretty great reflection actually...looking back and seeing how many last attempts actually worked out.

closeparen 6y ago

I find it emotionally a lot easier to be evaluated and rejected for romance by a stranger over the course of a few days, than to have a friendship that grows for months/years but ultimately stops short of romantic territory. The latter is usually what happens with people I meet organically.

User23 6y ago
The people you met organically did evaluate and reject you for romance over the course of a few days, you just didn't notice. Now that you know what to look for you'll see it. Feynman's method[1] has always worked exceptionally well for me. If the person is into me they like it, and if they're not they say so and time to move on. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surely_You%27re_Joking,_Mr._Feynman!#The_%22You_Just_Ask_Them?%22_chapter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surely_You%27re_Joking,_Mr._Fe...
- ComputerGuru 6y ago
  Someone may be into you but have different norms and values. It’s an incredibly uncompromising and disrespectful approach (not from the PC or objectification perspective but from the perspective that you’ll “open negotiations” on your terms rather than signaling a willingness to compromise).
- rblatz 6y ago
  I’m married now, but I had a realization a while ago that all the women I’ve dated or hooked up with were because I made it extremely clear what I was interested in, and not accepting being put in a friend-zone. It’s not quite as bold as Feynman’s approach, but clear intentions and not trying to hedge a situation or avoiding being shot down was the key to success for me. On multiple occasions I met a girl and just said out loud to my friends or hers that I am going to date her/go home with her and in the case of my wife I told some of her friends that I was going to marry that girl. My wife and I took another 5 years after that to get the timing right, but when either of us were single we’d start chatting again.
  - 6y ago

john-tells-all 6y ago

OkCupid got me a number of dates, with lots of weirdness, rejections, and of course tons of ghosting. So I got bored, and posted haiku to entertain myself. I realized that it was actually more fun than dating :) Then I got a long rant by a crazed creative woman, she actually was perfect so I said whatever, let's meet and see what happens! Today is our 3rd wedding anniversary :)

deedub 6y ago
Dude, fuck yea! Friday is #2 for me, OKC FTW!
- deedub 6y ago
  Downvoted for being stoked about someone's 3rd anniversary? HN is so weird sometimes.
worker767424 6y ago
Okcupid got me dates with girl who did reality tv, a girl who did porn, and girl who would go on to do porn.

the_only_law 6y ago

Not really bitter per say, but the whole idea seems foreign to me. Don't know how to explain it well, but I don't feel my persona is very fit for the way online dating works. It all feels very artificial. On the other hand, though I just don't meet people organically.

trynewideas 6y ago

When I stopped looking for dates and started looking for friends, it worked and felt at lot better. I met and became friends with one of my still best friends by contacting them on a dating site and having zero expectations of ever meeting them, just because I thought they'd be cool to hang out with online (and they were). My partner of the last 10 years was a friend of theirs. Never would have met my partner if not for the dating site, and never would have met them on a dating site.

CapricornNoble 6y ago

The same way men deal with it every day of their lives dating in the real-world? It sucks. We power through it, pick ourselves up, and keep fighting. Some of my buddies have triple-digit notch counts....and they still get rejected (although it's rare enough that it becomes a subject of conversation). It's just a part of The Game for men. Lesbian Norah Vincent spent a year living as a man and practically had a mental breakdown (timestamp is where they discuss cold-approach dating and rejection): https://youtu.be/Ip7kP_dd6LU?t=563 https://youtu.be/Ip7kP_dd6LU?t=563 A lot of it boils down to mental framing. In other words, think of yourself as providing an opportunity for someone to participate in something great. If they don't take advantage of that opportunity, that's their loss not yours. One of the best quotes is from Patrice O'Neal: "You MUST believe in your own righteousness."

indigo945 6y ago
> Lesbian Norah Vincent spent a year living as a man and practically had a mental breakdown (timestamp is where they discuss cold-approach dating and rejection): To be clear, she had a mental breakdown when at a therapy session with a bunch of men who were talking about chopping up their wives. The context in your post frames it as if it had been because of her lack of success in dating, but that's not what it was. (Also, she talks about how she actually had dating success to the point that straight women she was dating would agree to sleep with her even after finding out that she has female parts. I wish I was that hot.)
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  Wow that's pretty disingenuous of the guy you're quoting, it's almost as if he's holding a grudge or has an Agenda.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 6y ago
  In multiple interviews she explains that the building anxiety from the whole experiment led to her breakdown. The group session might have been particularly traumatic but it's not an isolated incident where her mental state went from 100 to 0, so the GP isn't inaccurate to state that living as a man for a year gave her a nervous breakdown, to be clear.

raducu 6y ago

In person dating is hard, online dating is harder. Dealing with anonymous people who get no penalty for being assholes is hard. Relationships are hard, even with people you have a lot in common. The last part -- matching with people you like is where I see a real need for a specialist that I'm an unaware to exist -- there could be soooo much at play there. The demographics of that group, what that group REALLY wants in a partner, honest feedback for yourself, what to improve in yourself etc etc.

xenihn 6y ago
Dating coaches? Or matchmakers. I don't know, I've never used either.
corpMaverick 6y ago
We just matched a friend of mine from New England with a friend of my wife from Mexico. He is a great guy but he had already given up on dating. And it was actually the girl who asked if we knew someone. But most people will not ask their friends. My wife and I are wondering how the Indian Matchmaker business model work. How do you align the incentives so you can help people and get some extra income?
eckza 6y ago
You ever ask a date why they swiped on your profile? It's a good question for 10-15 minutes in to the first conversation. It's always revealing - about you, about how you're perceived, and about how the other person perceives you and what matters to them. Also - bug your desired-sex friends and family. Show them your profile. Focus-group it. This has been massively helpful for me. At the end of the day: change stuff and see what happens.
closeparen 6y ago
The social penalties that constrain people in your circle from being jerks also constrain you from expressing potentially unwanted interest, though. People will stop introducing you to their friends if you’re constantly asking them out. I feel a lot more confident expressing what I want to strangers. Have you not found the same?

worker767424 6y ago

Depends on the dating app, but my only real problem is that I find doing nothing at home more entertaining than first dates, and second dates bring fear of commitment. Actually getting dates? That's easy enough. Being white, attractive enough, 6' tall, between 150 and 180lbs, no kids, and make a tech salary seems to tick off a lot of boxes for girls.

toyg 6y ago
That’s like saying “buying anything I want is easy enough, being rich seems to help”.
- worker767424 6y ago
  I'm engineer-awkward, though.
barnacled 6y ago
The height is by far the most important factor. Surprised me but as a 5'5" guy, shedding excess weight, new wardrobe, good job, approached women IRL and online, none of it mattered compared to height. Goes down exponentially proportionate to how many SDs from the mean you are... I have had relationships and am engaged to a beautiful woman now so I found a way to work around it but it is near impossible. My short male friends are either single or have made considerable compromises. It's a factor that is weirdly denied in society too. Nobody wants to hear that an immutable characteristic plays such a role on the male side...
- toyg 6y ago
  I think it's due to society still fundamentally adjusting to female parity of power and the reduced value of marriage. Until recently, single women suffered huge economic insecurity; they had a massive incentive to compromise on their attractiveness standards. This said, you can still somewhat compensate for height with status and other looks. Tom Cruise is 172cm but I don't think he ever struggled for dates.
  - 6y ago

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jariel 6y ago

That's just 'life' not 'online dating'. If in 'real life' you could communicate with that many people outside of your social circles, it'd be the same.

marvin 6y ago

I've never felt as disposable and low-value in my entire life as when I tried online dating for a year or two. Ended up ditching the entire thing and only went for real-life interactions instead. Happily had much more success there, in spite of being a big-time introvert.

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