Has anyone else had the absolute worst luck with Tinder or online dating?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Straight male btw just for reference

I’ve been using Tinder continuously since 2013 (outside of times I was actually in a committed relationship)

My stats are

5 Conversations that actually got to the planning to meet-up in real life stage

2 ghosted after this part

2 people I had to cancel the meeting after things started getting too weird

1 actual in-person date that went well but never progressed to second date.

Feels like the only real way to date is meeting other people via friends which I’ve had success with.

Curious if anyone else has had absolutely no luck with it.

2

Single male. Age 66 FTR.

I had reasonable success with Match. Conversed with many, met some once, had a few subsequent dates and some good times. My area seems quite heavy with plausible (on paper / bits) women. Had I plowed through more of the hundreds I might have hit a real winner.

I have exactly zero experience with any other platform. I have heard nice things about Hinge. Admittedly mostly from folks much younger than I.

It’s my semi-informed opinion that different services are better at different age groups. A service that might be awesome for a 60-something would suck for a 20-something. And vice versa. So pick carefully.

I’m presently hanging with a serious GF I met the old fashioned way: completely at random in a crowd of strangers. So my Match profile and activities is/are on pause now.

YMMV. Good luck.

3

I started using OkCupid about a year after my wife died about 10 years ago. I had much better luck than the OP. I didn’t keep an exact score, but over a span of about 5 years I probably had about 20 in-person meetings, about 4 or 5 of which led to longish-term dating (more than 5 dates), and one that led to my current marriage.

4

My experience is 13 years old, but I’m married to a woman I met on Match. I had many decent dates before that and one relationship that lasted a few months. A few oddballs, but nothing bad.

I was in my 40’s back then.

5

I had terrible luck with all forms of online dating when I was single. Everything you said, it happened to me too.

I met my wife in real life, at a fundraiser for the local public library.

6

Looking carefully at the OP’s stats, that sounds like about 1 weeks’ effort when I was pushing Match. If that is the work of months, something is wrong with your fit for that service, your profile, or you are in a far less populated area than I am.

7

Just idly curious as to what “weird” entailed…

8

One sprung the whole “Well I’m actually in a committed relationship but my husband lets me date as long as I’m outside the house” which wasn’t state in her profile at all, and the other wanted me to meet her in a seedy hotel parking lot with no prior explanation as she gave me the location info and I googled it.

9

Dating websites are very feast-or-famine. Some sites will give you lots of legit, real, useful matches and lead to many conversations with real folks. Others are like playing the lottery, you could be on them for years and get only 1 or no replies at all if you’re a man.

10

Currently 65. I met all three of my 2010-era poly partners on OKCupid in its heyday, back before it was acquired and utterly ruined by Match.com.

We all answered hundreds of questions.

We all did searches for people who had answered certain questions in certain ways — something you could do back then!

The poly community distributed search tools that let you isolate people whose answers to questions strongly indicated you were poly. That helped.

You could also create your own tests that gave scores to participants, and we did a lot of that, plus there were trending tests like the Purity Test and the Kink Test and so forth that lots of OKCupid people participated in.

I’m still romantically involved with one of the three 14 years later, and close bestfriends with another, although we’re not romantically involved any more, and that’s a pretty impressive outcome overall.

11

I’m on Match, Tinder, and Bumble. I match with someone on Bumble about once a month, meet someone in person about once a year. Got a second date once, but that was it.

Hope springs eternal, though. I met someone on Match about ten years ago that I was completely crazy about. She ended it to look after her mother; now lives in a neighboring state, but we’re on friendly terms, and I see her every once in a while.

I seem to have repeated dates about once a decade, so I’m due.

12

I’ve had that too. Twice.

The first time was actually rather funny, and revealing. When she told me she was married I said it wasn’t mentioned in her profile. She rolled her eyes smugly and muttered something like “Men never read profiles”. So, I asked her to show me because I always read profiles from A to Z. The look on her face as she was scrolling down and failing to locate that important piece of information was priceless.

I was on Bumble for 2 years, and had perhaps 150+ matches, so that was not really the problem. Sure, half of these were… let’s be polite… disappointing (lots of sudden ghostings and "I’d love to meet you but I’m sick (again) / going on an extended holiday tomorrow / overworked / realizing that I’m not ready to date after all although I expected you to be 100% committed).

No, the real problem were the dates.

I met 28 women through Bumble in 2 years. 19 of them showed up late. Three actually arrived over 40 minutes after the agreed-on time, including one who texted me “COME BACK I’M HERE NOW” after I called her to say that I was going home. Another one angrily asked me whether I was “always on time like this” and that if it was the case, then it was “bad because it stresses me out”. And this is only the tip of the iceberg of stunning entitlement, transparent lies, and sickening double standards I was confronted with during those two years.

I did have three brief flings, so there’s that I guess.

I’ve stopped dating, and channelled my energy and ambition into more rewarding pursuits. I haven’t felt this carefree since I was a kid.

13

isnt the structural problem of all those sites the (roughly) 10:1 overhang of male users, which seems to feed womenfolk a permanent list/stream of available males, which leads to semi-permanent “oh look, there is the next new shiny thing in my inbox that’s better than all the ones before”.

doesn’t sound like an environment where you (OP) could win.

Just like I (55+, skinny) don’t walk into a gym with 75% of the population being athlethic 20something jocks, trying to chat up the 25% of girls.

IOW (lifelesson learned): I don’t enter games, I know I cannot win (or the chances are highly stacked against me).

Having said that, I had reasonable good dating-success IRL, with my charming personality partly compensating for my face.

50 year old me to 18 year old me: get into horseback-riding and social dances (even if you don’t care for the activity), b/c there seems to be a huge female overhang, and the odds are in your favor.

14

Are the most popular dating sites really 10 men to 1 woman? Thirty years ago the personal ads and early online sites were more like 5 to 1 if I’m remembering correctly. Still poor odds for us guys, but wow. Even that was enough to make me figure I didn’t have a prayer with that kind of odds. One of my kids did a little online dating and I think went on one or two, but both their current SO’s were women they were friends with first.

15

to be honest, i pretty much pulled the 10:1 ratio out of my rectum …

but as a friend of mine once put it so delicately

… you’ll find more dicks there than in a war movie

16

Yeah you guys are doing terribly.

I’m on bumble and frankly the difficulty that I have been having is not becoming a cheater. Because I will have several conversations going at a time, and I don’t consider arranging a first date to be a point at which I need to cut off all other women, but then when is a good time? When is it clear that one relationship is going somewhere?

Indeed this weekend I have two dates: a first date with a woman who has been messaging me pretty intensively over weeks, and I guess technically a second date, but it’s with a woman who basically vanished for months after the first date and then started messaging me again now out of the blue.
I don’t mind being open with them, but I don’t want it to come across like I’m simon cowell, deciding who gets through to the next round.

In case this all sounds too big-headed bear in mind I also get ghosted, or women who decide “no thanks” after the first date. I’ll never know why I struck out, but I would guess a big part of it is that they are also messaging multiple men.

17

Seperated for years, not fully divorced, and 63 straight white male.

To the OP, you’re doing something wrong to not get to the let’s have a very low key coffee and/or lunch. Different sites have different demographics, so if one isn’t working for you after 6 or 12 months, then I’d try another one. Tinder ain’t working for you, so switch. Bumble was pretty much a dud (couple of coffee’s in 6 months, no second meets). Silver Singles wasn’t much better. Match was better. Was on a Chinese mainly Mandarin speaking site for quite a while (whilst your basic white bread no crust American upbringing, I speak Mandarin fluently and lived in China for about 20 years). The Chinese site yielded a ton of first meets (1-2 a week), almost no second meet ups. One that started to turn romantic, and we are really good buddies 2 years later. The first on-line “date” I went out with, I really really really liked, but she was 15 years younger and a different stage. And one that I’ve known for 3 years with very little in person time (all platonically I might add), but we’re meeting Monday in Cabo to share a king sized bed.

Also, stay in your swim lane targeting someone within a reasonable stage in life. As in, figure out a demographic that could work for both of you. Me, after maybe a year, have settled on a profile no younger than 5ish years from my age, a parent (but kids at least in high school), maybe thinking retirement, has minimum modest assets (as in, not living in a trailer down by the river as a walmart cashier), reasonably international. Bonus points for being a Mandarin speaker (I’m fluent) or Japanese speaker (I was ok 35 years ago). Deal breaker is not being able to eat comfortably with chopsticks (if at 55 you haven’t learned, that’s all I need to know).

And I’ve had a couple of replies along the lines of “I would never go out with someone that wants me to eat with sticks.” Dodged some crazy there.

So, been on dozens and dozens of coffee/lunch/brunch meet ups over the past 3 years. At best 10% of the first meetings turned into a second. Either I felt no spark, or I didn’t pass her test. Unless it was obviously a mismatch, usually I’d text something like “enjoyed meeting you, interested in getting lunch again?” Got ghosted maybe a quarter of the time? (WTF is up with that? How hard to text “thanks for meeting, but I don’t think we’re a good fit.” Just rude IMHO). Maybe because of a covid hangover, but quite a few meet ups were with someone a decade older and a kilogram heavier than their profile photos. (WTF is up with that? Like I won’t notice, you’ll overwhelm me with your personality and not raise any red flags?).

A couple that liked me but were offended. They missed the profile that said “full disclosure, I’m working on the divorce but not official.” Or missed that I had a special needs child. Or a year later missed that I was grieving the loss of that very special, special needs child in a tragic accident. Or missed that I have two wonderful LGBTQIA+ kids.

More than a few had some kind of first meet metric. As in, I’ll give this two hours, but then I’m out of here if not my thing. Literally. “Gotta go” jumped up and out the door then ghosted. But usually there would be a quick hug, thanks for meeting, let’s be in touch.

Dunno. I’m rambling. On line dating sucks, but beats sitting around wishing to find a soul mate the old fashioned way. What, I’m gonna go to church for the first time in at least 4 decades for a dating pool? The only people at work I know are within the division, and that’s a complete deal killer. Haven’t met any snowboarders or backpackers my age. Not gonna start something I don’t like such as social dance. So, either get lucky in real life or get on line. YMMV.