For example, I find that certain people on dating apps lose interest quickly even after talking/hanging out with them. This applies for meeting people offline as well.
I know that complaining about this makes me sound like a “nice guy” or a desperate weirdo, but after awhile, you start to wonder why people act the way that they do.
Now, I don’t mind making new friends, but when it comes to potentially dating someone, I know that it takes some sort of effort. However, instead of getting frustrated about it, I should stay positive & wait for good things to happen. You never know who’ll you’ll meet or run into.
Assuming that the OP is a man, the main reason is simply that there are 1) a lot more men than women on many dating apps/websites and also that 2) men are generally the initiators, not women.
Add 1# and 2# together, and the result is that many women are simply flooded with messages at all times. They are bombarded. Faced with this vast array of male suitors to choose from, it’s no wonder that most men will get no response the majority of the time. IIRC, it’s common for men to only be successful on 1-3% of messages that they send on online dating apps or websites, if even that.
Even if you manage to get talking with a woman, she still has numerous other men trying to get her. So you basically have to hit it off with her right away, or not at all. Either the sparks have to be there and she has to like you a lot quite soon, or else she can move on.
Is it insane? Yes. But that’s how the economics and math of it have worked out. Online dating heavily favors women.
What the OP is describing is essentially “short attention span”.
In the present day online world, and how media is presented, we have become conditioned to see something, hear something, and then move on quickly to the next thing. It is unfortunate that it seems this tendency is seeping into relationship interactions.
The economics and math aspects have always been present, but the “velocity” of people moving on has been amplified by the online and media world.
I’ve never done dating apps, but I’ve heard the same complaints from plenty of women.
I think (for both genders) it’s because interacting through an app is easy. You can post messages or pictures back and forth at your convenience (or not at all if you like). Meeting someone in person requires you to get dressed, shower, physically go meet them, hope they aren’t a psycho, and then deal with them for some period of time after which it is acceptable to leave.
I’m a female trying to find a guy on Tinder. I’m not flooded, partially because on Tinder you have to have a mutual match, and possibly because I’m overweight.
But I have had a few responses. My problem is that what few conversations I’ve had seem to fizzle on the guys end.
My first criteria is that the person live close to where I do, so that’s ended a few conversations. One conversation I asked if the guy played Pokemon Go - answer “Sometimes”, and when I asked what team he was on, he never replied.
Conversation two was this:
Me: Where do you live?
Him: Dallas.
Me: Sorry farther than I want to go, I live in [suburb of Ft. Worth]
Him: I live in [suburb of Ft. Worth nearer to me]
Me: But you said you live in Dallas?
Him: Dallas-Ft. Worth
No, follow-up from him beyond that, no questions, no starting a conversation? Do you think he’s actually uninterested, or is he waiting for me to … what?
I’ve got a third conversation going, but it’s devolved into
Me: ask a question
Him: respond
Me: ask a question
Him: respond
In general, he sounds like the kind of guy I would be interested in. Is he still interested in me, or is he just replying to questions because you answer questions when you’re asked?
BTW, sta3535 if you’re Rusty, and still interested, IM me.
My dating days ended long before the Internet, but the answer is as simple now as it was back in.
They’re just not that into you.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s in a bar, on Tinder, or a blind date set up by a co-worker. If the sparks aren’t there in the first impression, it’s no sale.
If anything, it’s even worse when you’re trying to meet people online. The other person doesn’t see how you carry yourself, whether your face is expressive, if you consistently make eye contact, speak confidently, etc. etc. All anyone can judge from is written words and what you hope are attractive photos.
Definitely agree with this. If you are attracted to each other on some level, there’s motivation to get to know the other person more. If there’s none then conversations will just die (esp online).
I think it has a lot to do with the Paradox of Choice.
We’re pretty bad at evaluating a wide range of choices. Apps present you with nearly limitless choices (or at least the illusion thereof) so we just flit from one to the other for a long time.
It’s the same reason why I spend like 20 minutes looking around my options on Netflix instead of watching any of the like 200 movies that I’d likely enjoy.
I was 42 when I got divorced and I’m now 55. I have had a few longish relationships in the middle and some stretches of singlehood. I was scared to death after reading some of these threads just prior to my divorce but I found online dating to be easy as hell. I have had more dates and hookups than I care to think about.
I think that the main thing is that I was older when I started playing the game. It’s much easier for middle aged men and it gets easier as we age. The dynamics switch. I am not a particularly great looking guy but I have managed to stay thin and I’m relatively wealthy which helps. Don’t get me wrong, it can be exhausting. You just have to be persistent and have a thin skin. I don’t mind at all getting turned down which happens all the time. It’s part of the game.
I got out of a relationship several months back and recently put myself back out there. I’m relying more on Tinder/Bumble now. OKCupid went to complete shit and, very sadly, Craigslist got rid of their dating section. That’s where I met my most recent ex.
As was pointed out in your previous thread on why people aren’t getting to know as many people as possible and network, for many people social interaction is often more of an effort than it is worth. That applies even more to dating.
Combine that with the “she’s just not that into you” mentioned above and it explain most of it.
There’s also the fact that some people really feel the need to be in a relationship and jump into one as soon as they can. I don’t know how they manage it, whether they are just more of a risk taker, or have low standards, or both. Other people are doing good by themselves and won’t go into a relationship unless it’s just right. The latter are not going to go through a bunch of dates to maybe develop a spark.
My personal experience is one of trying to “keep dating” when the other person was willing, and I wasn’t absolutely certain they weren’t my type. I’m not sure it was worth it. There were some good times, but it was also stressful and inevitably a dead end. When I eventually met my now wife it was an immediate match.
I think your experience is very common for online dating. I’m a guy and probably around 75% of conversations are like the ones you’ve described. One time I asked a woman what she did for work(just to try to make conversation) and she replied “None of your business”. That one at least made me laugh. This is sort of why the problem OP describes exists. My strategy is to get rid of the 75% terrible conversations as quickly as possible. If they don’t seem interested I just stop replying. There’s no reason to try to milk these people for conversation. I have a rule that if I ask 3 questions without them asking anything back or at least showing some reciprocated interested, I stop replying.
I think this is reasonable because in the beginning of online dating I would go on a date with anyone I didn’t immediately dislike and I found attractive. Strangely enough plenty of people that didn’t seem at all interested in me would agree to go on a date. But not once did those dates turn out well. So I think if the text conversation isn’t going well it’s pretty unlikely the real date will.
As for your two conversations I heard some rule that unless both people are very excited for a date, it probably isn’t worth your time. That has held pretty true for me.
Multifactorial matching with the option of rejection from either end is a hard problem even with all data public and available.
The data is not public and not available - people’s stated preferences often have little relationship to revealed preferences, and the things people say they’re looking for are often not the things that are important for a good match from either end.
You’d realistically need a god / Google-level view of people to match people well and realistically, because only that level of view will take into account revealed preferences and what actually matters.
Between those two options, I’m personally rooting for Google to step in and offer a dating platform one of these days.
This is the one that confuses me. If someone is that uninterested in me - why swipe right in the first place? It seems that they could just swipe left and save everyone some time.
Some people are like that IRL. In my case, I tend to be wary of seeming too “probing” when I’m interacting with people I don’t know well and who are neither Mediterranean nor Hispanic, so I may end up going “aha… aha…” a lot but not asking an actual question unless and until the other person has gotten enough steam on their own.
When I used to online date, I got the feeling that people like that (answering questions but never asking) were talking to several people at once, and I was not their first choice. They would respond enough to keep the conversation open, but were actually having more interesting conversations with their top 5 or 6 other choices. Only when their other conversations dried up would I get any attention and by then I had lost interest.
Speaking as an outsider to online dating, what people here describe actually sounds very much like “work”. Or at the very least, how one looks for work on LinkedIn or Indeed or whatever. Honestly, if I suddenly found myself unmarried tomorrow, I don’t know if I would even use online dating. Well…I would because it’s easy. But I think I would focus more of my time actually going to places where people meet each other and trying to meet people face to face.
One thing I do remember from a long time ago in my pre-online dating single days was that going out and trying to meet someone was actually fun. You didn’t have that awkward exchange, trying to decipher electronic half-sentences. You could tell almost immediately when you hit it off with someone you met in person.
Just yesterday I was chatting with members of another online group, and all the women were saying they’re sick of guys on OLD who want sex only and have no interest in dating. Most of these women are over 40-60 years old. Most men seem to prefer women 20-late 30s.
I had one really good relationship from my six months on OLD. It lasted a year. But I also met a lot of flakes, including one who was downright creepy.
George Takei posted some data from Pew Research:
• 31% of people on OLD are already in a relationship.
• 10% on OLD are scammers.
•52% on OLD are men; 48% women.
•The biggest fear women have about online dating: they’ll get killed.
The biggest fear men have: they’ll date a fat woman.
of people moving on has been amplified by the online and media world.