Meeting single women / online dating

A kinda whine/rant, and my experience with meeting women and online dating.

Let me start by saying that I find it hard to meet women in the real world, especially women who are single. I've only ever been out with a girl once and it didn't last long. about a month max when I was 19. Since then the opportunities have been pretty non-existent.

Due to not having many friends to hang out with, and rarely going out on the weekends. It has been made doubly hard for me since having been working full time since I was about 18 (now 24) and working in mainly men based environments, although I kinda doubt whether relationships in the workplace are an ideal scenario. Anyway I don't have the opportunities to find single women outside of work, with clubbing, bars etc and the few friends I do have, already have long-term girlfriends and so they hardly ever go out themselves and going clubbing/bars is just not something I would go and do alone either, so I have given online dating a shot.

My experience with online dating has been anything but good, I don't class myself as a bad looking guy, tried a couple of sites, namely Zoosk and POF. Not sure what's going on here but I could message 100+ girls in a day and not get a single reply. Girls that are average looking at best wont reply to my messages. I could send a simple, friendly 'hi, nice profile, I like [enter hobby here] too', providing compliments about the way they look, achievements, etc and Messages which ask questions about their profile perhaps and are not just cheap and meaningless for them not to reply to.

I have researched on getting the best out of my dating profile online, making sure I have my best photos (which include me abroad, travelling) Just what I consider to be my better shots, and also relevant things about me, my most interesting assets and hobbies, things which women would want to know about someone to find them an ideal match.

I question the expectations that these women seek on these sites and perhaps in general as the lack of replies leaves me wondering if the messages even get read, or if they want more than what they see in someone like myself. Whilst I'm not perfect by any means, I don't consider myself to be ugly, I take care of the way I look and believe I have good qualities, enough to at least, attract someone who is perhaps average looking, shares similar interests and not up themselves. Even if they could only ever view me as a potential friend, why not just leave it at that and reply anyway? Thoughts go through my mind like 'are they just after someone with money, power, tall etc' Or is it something more unbalanced, like there are significantly more men than women on these sites resulting in them getting 100s of emails from guys a day with a large portion of them being sexually directed, and so not bothering to read them all. In some ways I'm hoping that my second theory is right, but at the same time I'm not.

In hindsight I probably would have looked at going to Uni as I believe this gives men like myself the best chances of meeting women as well as giving them the best career prospects, but my circumstances were very different a few years back and it was at a time where I needed to get some income straight away, which I'm still reliant on now with some outgoings that I have.

Can any guys here share their experience (or lack of) with online dating, meeting women, give tips, relate in some way or share where or how they may have eventually met someone being in a similar situation to myself?

Many Thanks

I'll likely PM you some stuff.

Just so you know, that behavior isn't restricted to a particular gender.

I tried online dating for a while. Nothing ever really came from it, I'd get some replies to my messages but it never lead to anything. Although I never put much effort into it either. If you want to get replies, you need something to set you apart from the other hundreds of guys messaging these girls every week. My favourite opening message was 'hey, can I ask you a really random question?' This got a response at least 50% of the time.

But personally I think online dating is a waste of time for most guys. There are far more men than women on those sites so that gives women all the power. They can be as selective as they want. It's also very superficial. The quality of women is fairly low. Most women on there aren't that attractive, a lot have kids, a lot are just plain weird.

Your time would be much better spent looking for girls offline. Even if you don't want to go to bars/clubs there are plenty of other places to meet girls. Find ways to talk to as many girls as you can, whether it's at the shops, the beach, gym, shop assistants, wherever. This is what I've been doing for about the past 3 months and I've been documenting it in the miscellaneous section on here, maybe check that out.

Bender says it best. It's even worse on paid-membership sites. Simply put, unless you're of the top 10% of men, you won't get any attention. That's not a personal attack; that's life. You may have good qualities but that isn't my point. My point is that the qualities you have aren't what they're looking for. From my experience, even when you DO get attention or replies, they stop exchanging communications after one or two messages.

TL; DR: You really need to leave the computer alone when it comes to that and get out more. Stay clear of bars and try to meet women in more natural places. Parks, stores, and so-on. If you want to make sense of it all, search "Hypergamy". You're welcome.

bender22 said:

But personally I think online dating is a waste of time for most guys. There are far more men than women on those sites so that gives women all the power. They can be as selective as they want. It's also very superficial. The quality of women is fairly low. Most women on there aren't that attractive, a lot have kids, a lot are just plain weird.

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You do realize that there are members of this forum, male and female, who use dating sites. Kind of an inappropriate comment to make considering.

bender22 said:

But personally I think online dating is a waste of time for most guys. There are far more men than women on those sites so that gives women all the power. They can be as selective as they want. It's also very superficial. The quality of women is fairly low. Most women on there aren't that attractive, a lot have kids, a lot are just plain weird.

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As a "woman on those sites" that statement offends me to my very core.
It's lovely to know that some of the men (like you) who go there consider me (yes, me, as I am encompassed in your description as a woman on those sites) as unattractive, low quality, weird, with a lot of kids.
I am outraged at your statement right down to the fiber of my being.

EveWasFramed said:

As a "woman on those sites" that statement offends me to my very core.
It's lovely to know that some of the men (like you) who go there consider me (yes, me, as I am encompassed in your description as a woman on those sites) as unattractive, low quality, weird, with a lot of kids.
I am outraged at your statement right down to the fiber of my being.

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His comment is undeniably offensive in this case, I'll give you that! It's not something I would ever say in a public forum, nor in private, in fact.

However, to turn the tables a bit here, why is it the women on those sites (as another poster in this thread points out) only reply to the "top 10% of men" ?

This has also been my experience.. I am left out because I don't fulfill some kind of fuzzy criteria based on the superficial ideals of Western society (well, without flat-out lying and selling myself as something far better than I am.. which is a bad idea, even if you're a clever guy!)

Batman55 said:

EveWasFramed said:

As a "woman on those sites" that statement offends me to my very core.
It's lovely to know that some of the men (like you) who go there consider me (yes, me, as I am encompassed in your description as a woman on those sites) as unattractive, low quality, weird, with a lot of kids.
I am outraged at your statement right down to the fiber of my being.

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His comment does go too far in this case, I'll give you that.

However, to turn the tables a bit here, why is it the women on those sites (as another poster in this thread points out) only reply to the "top 10% of men" ?

This has also been my experience.. I am left out because I don't fulfill some kind of fuzzy criteria based on the superficial ideals of Western society (well, without flat-out lying and selling myself as something far better than I am.. which is a bad idea, even if you're a clever guy!)

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DOn't you guys ******* GET IT?????
That's not a ******* FEMALE trait god dammit!!!!!!
The MEN on those ******* sites do it to!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah those are some pretty messed up things to say. Might be best to keep thoughts like that to yourself.

Batman55 said:

His comment is undeniably offensive in this case, I'll give you that! It's not something I would ever say in a public forum, nor in private, in fact.

However, to turn the tables a bit here, why is it the women on those sites (as another poster in this thread points out) only reply to the "top 10% of men" ?

This has also been my experience.. I am left out because I don't fulfill some kind of fuzzy criteria based on the superficial ideals of Western society (well, without flat-out lying and selling myself as something far better than I am.. which is a bad idea, even if you're a clever guy!

Click to expand...

It's something called "hypergamy". Try Googling it. It'll explain far better than I ever could.

Forever Misanthrope said:

Batman55 said:

His comment is undeniably offensive in this case, I'll give you that! It's not something I would ever say in a public forum, nor in private, in fact.

However, to turn the tables a bit here, why is it the women on those sites (as another poster in this thread points out) only reply to the "top 10% of men" ?

This has also been my experience.. I am left out because I don't fulfill some kind of fuzzy criteria based on the superficial ideals of Western society (well, without flat-out lying and selling myself as something far better than I am.. which is a bad idea, even if you're a clever guy!

Click to expand...

It's something called "hypergamy". Try Googling it. It'll explain far better than I ever could.

Click to expand...

Oh sure...yet another stab a women. While the term isn't gendered, it's *generally* used to refer to WOMEN. Why am I not surprised it's being used in this thread?

I don't think it is safe for any man to post in this thread anymore.

Remarks like that is what causes threads like this to be closed. As a male member of this forum I urge you all to grow up and learn some manors. Treat the opposite sex as you would want to be treated, you sure as hell wouldn't want them making the same comments.