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I (35M) just got married to a woman I met on hinge. She’s awesome and I brag about her to anyone who’ll listen. Before that, though, I was an extremely active dater and hooker-upper. I probably went on dates with a couple hundred women and slept with about a hundred. Here are some thoughts:
Dating can be extremely fun!! You should be excited to get out and do this. Chasing girls is fun. Banter is fun. Flirting is fun. Leaning in for the first kiss or knee touch or any small escalation is fun. Slightly risky behavior is super fun. Try to have fun, don’t just obsess about the destination. I racked up quite a body count and have great memories about a lot of these girls and experiences still. So do they. I love my wife more than dating but I loved the process of dating and sleeping with hot women a lot too.
Location matters, a lot. I was dating mostly in the Bay Area (but would also go on lots of one-offs while traveling for work in other cities). There are just way more people to date in a city and even though there’s also more competition a deep market is good for everybody. If you are not in a big city and are really serious about dating, you should move to one. New York is the best in the US, by a lot, but most big cities are good.
Take 3 months and improve all the low hanging things you can about yourself. These are mostly physical. Lose weight if you’re even a little overweight. Go to the gym. Run, do cardio. Take care of your skin. Learn how to dress well. Get a good haircut. Switch to contacts if you have glasses. If you have bad teeth, get them fixed. Old me resented that I had to change something so shallow about myself, but I did it, and it vastly expanded my dating options and dating success. I personally wouldn’t go this far, but if you really have a big physical flaw on your face, consider cosmetic surgery. Also, these improvements will benefit you in your non-dating life as well.
Get over any ego/insecurity you feel. You just need to ask lots of people out and you’ll get rejected a lot at various stages. That’s fine. You’ll get much much better with practice, and also learning to persevere in the face of rejection is a good skill.
Most of my dates came from apps, with one-off random things materializing from in person encounters. Tinder sucks, bumble and hinge are good, and Raya is the best.
It’s important to not come across like a loser. Nobody wants to date a loser. You need to project confidence, happiness, and can’t seem desperate. That said, earnestness (not obsessiveness) is generally attractive, so don’t bother playing games like “only one text in a row” or “don’t text right away after the first date.” If you like the girl it’s fine to say so. That said, don’t write ridiculous walls of text if she’s not reciprocating.
You need to move from app convo to text to date planning to date quickly. Like 10 on app texts is plenty to ask for her number and suggest meeting up. It’s impossible to overstate how many matches a typical woman will have, and however witty or special you think you are over text you have no hope of standing out. You need to meet up in person, quickly. If you don’t meet up within a week of matching you probably won’t meet up.
Things get way easier with age. I was hooking up with way more hot 21 year olds when I was 30 than when I was 21.
Don’t get too invested in any one person, especially early on. As a man, you will typically be the one pushing for dates/sex initially, but the natural dynamics is that the woman will be pushing for the more serious things later on. Don’t bother getting invested until this point.
The advice for hooking up is exactly the same as the advice for a serious relationship. You need to get your foot in the door first and foremost. That’s the hardest part as a guy. In my experience the conversion rate from “she wants to have sex” to “she wants something serious” is nearly 100%.
Good luck; have fun.
Your experience is vastly different from my own.
It's hard to have fun on a date if nobody agrees to go on a date with me in the first place.
This may be a key problem for me. And unfortunately it wouldn't be easy for me to move.
Unfortunately, mental illness makes all of this more difficult than it would otherwise be. I tried getting contacts, for instance, but I found it psychologically impossible to actually stick the thing in my eye, even with a optometrist's assistant trying to help me.
I'm told that Raya has a 1% acceptance rate. https://elitedatingmanagers.com/raya-app/
If you're on Raya, maybe that's because you're among the top 1% hottest (or most popular) men in the world, which probably explains why you've had so many partners.
This does not match my experience.
The link about Raya also states it used to be easier to get accepted.
In general, this is a common theme with dating apps. Most of them work much better (for men) during their first growth phase before becoming too mainstream and flooded and monetized. So it is a good idea to be on the look for new popular apps.
Would the cycle of dating apps being better at the start be weak evidence that early-adoption correlates with attractiveness in some ways?
The obvious problem with the apps is that average female gets a shit ton of attention from low quality men, while average men gets very little attention unless he paid/put effort into good photos. Too many women who aren't looking for actual dates but just some ego boost or instagram followers.
And when I say low quality men, I mean typically absolutely horrible and rude. Nobody wants to deal with that shit. Just like nobody wants to deal with women who has no intention of meeting up. Especially Tinder was absolute garbage when I was still using it a couple years ago.
So desirable young women actually looking to date typically migrate to the new shiny app (typically with a feminist vibe as that gives women some confidence) every couple of years. The user count will be small but much higher quality and still sufficient in large cities. Until it gets discovered by common people as "the app". Then rinse and repeat.
So to answer your question, I think the early-adoption correlates with being a bit savvier and putting some more effort into getting good dates.
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I second all of this, except for maybe part 10.
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This is highly variable from person to person. In my experience its only been 10-20% but I think I'm on the low end. I have a really nice body and a rather spotty career history.
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