I’m a 54-year-old man, recently separated from my wife of 31 years - just earlier this month. Honestly, I’m already feeling bored and lonely, so I’ve been considering trying out dating apps (I’ve never used one before). However, my sons (30 and 28) tell me it’s a waste of time and possibly even a scam, and I’ve seen similar opinions online. So I’m not sure what to think.
I met some nice people, but had better luck just meeting people naturally in my 20s. I think the reason why dating apps didn’t work is that it’s kinda like job apps online, where there’s just waves of people, and everyone is just kinda putting their resume on their profile. Hard to stand out and meet “real” people among bots/hidden likes/ app design/bad matches.
Usually these companies make money by having users churn through loads of bad matches and then continually pay for premium.
I’d recommend joining a club IRL or volunteering, it might be a more organic fit. Friends -> dating can come naturally out of that.
It can be rough on your head (emotions, ego, attitude). I went to Match at 67, felt a little like back at Jr. High. Announced I’d give up twice, but arter a bit looked back again. My last “what the hell, one more” connection was with my now partner and I’m glad I stayed with it. I don’t know how much was luck. We’ve been together 4 years, sold our houses, bought one together.
Your sons are speaking from their experience, which may not be the same as yours.
I met my wife on a dating app in 2019 on Bumble (28 at the time). It can work, but you have to be willing to sift through a lot of bullshit and be patient. You also need to be able to handle rejection and mistreatment (like getting stood up/ghosted). It’s ultimately a numbers game and it takes time to find someone that is actually right for you.
I expect it’s probably also not nearly as bad for older age groups. At your age, I think people are going to be a lot more likely to be direct and know what they want.
My advice is to try it out. Worst case, you decide it’s not for you and try something else.
You may be better off joining a club/group activity around a common interest. That way, even if you don’t meet anyone, you have something to do that isn’t soul-destroying.
Many people go to clubs and meetups to do the thing the club is about. If you go to the bike riding club or bird watching club looking for dates, people are going to pick up on that and probably react unfavorably.
If you go just to do the thing, that’s fine, but you could do that for years without ever finding a date.
I wouldn’t recommend this as a primary means of finding a partner.
I’ve already got my hobbies and activities. It’s not new friends that I’m missing.
I believe the point was to meet someone through those hobbies / activities vs using the dating apps.
I know. I just prefer not to involve romantic or sexual dynamics in those circles.
The other option in the other direction is to join a swingers’ club or similar and keep it purely sexual, though leave open the possibility that something more may come of it.
Then, what? You want a GF to lock her emotionally away from the rest of your life? Wouldn’t it be nice to share a hobby or personal interest with someone you are romantically and sexually involved in, too?
You want a GF to lock her emotionally away from the rest of your life?
Wow, that was a huge leap there. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with not wanting to seek an intimate relationship with someone in your established circles. Like dating someone at work, this can come with significant social risk.
Not a leap. I’m basing my comment on the replies from OP that said that he is probably gonna divorce his wife — gigantic red flag, looking for dating advice not having being done with the previous relationship, but maybe that’s just me — because they were highly independent, drifted apart and wife leaving wasn’t even a lifestyle changing event. Maybe OP wouldn’t be divorcing if he considered women as something other than a source of romantic and sexual exchange separate from company, friendship and sharing a lifestyle. I’m just saying, OP sounds very sus.
So confident and so wrong is such a funny combo. Thanks for the laugh dumbass
Uhh… I think we might be reading different posts? OP has stated he’s already separated from his wife, not that he’s considering doing so. Also the thing about romantic/sexual exchange thing seems unlikely to me from what’s been said; men who think like that tend to not stay in one relationship for 3 decades.
Wouldn’t it be nice to share a hobby or personal interest with someone you are romantically and sexually involved in, too?
I’ve had a lot of different hobbies over the past ~ 10 years, some for a shorter and some for a longer time. Not once has that resulted in a genuine romantic connection. Not even a date.
On the other hand, I have had a lot of success finding romantic partners both on dating apps and in bars. All of the partners I’ve found that way have been at least somewhat likeminded and I’ve shared interests and hobbies with them. On an app, you see the person’s interests in the profile, in a bar you can talk to them and find out whether you have something in common.
Maybe it’s against the etiquette to seek out romantic partners at hobby events around here (a nordic country). Maybe I just personally don’t like doing that. Either way, I totally understand if somebody wants to date in spaces that specifically cater to that.
Not the issue here. It seems like OP wants a sexual toy for intimacy. Definitely don’t go looking for that type of relationship in friend and hobby spaces. But most of my friend’s relationships came out of friendships built on said social circles. My longest relationship ever (now ended for other reasons) came from a videogaming club, a friend of a friend.
I have no interest discussing in your extrapolations of OP’s motivations and behavior
Honestly, I think they’re worse than people say. There might be the odd good news story to come out of them, but they are designed to get you to fork out cash, and stay around and keep forking out cash, so their whole goal is to feed you hope, without ever causing you to be successful enough to leave.
They absolutely do work, and I can’t recommend them enough - this is coming from a male mid-40s divorcee. I was on and off Tinder for 4 years looking for a relationship and met several women, before finally meeting my soul mate. For somebody like me who isn’t the most outgoing person, they were a godsend in terms of meeting people. Some of the negativity in these responses is wild.
They’re a relaxed, accessible mechanism for starting conversations. Yes, there’s incentive for the companies to keep you on the apps but it’s certainly not forced, because if they didn’t ever work, their incentive for use evaporates.
I am 100% of the opinion that people who have limited luck on dating apps are likely to have the same limited luck in real life. It’s just that the apps present you with multiple “opportunities” in succession that you don’t get in real life, so it could feel like constant rejection for some. If you match with a real person and start a conversation that goes nowhere, that’s down to yours or their communication, or a simple incompatibility. Both parties have already shown an interest at the point of matching. Where it goes from there is down to you.
It’s entirely a numbers game. You can’t expect to hit it off with every person you match with online, any more than you could in real life. But you will find someone that you otherwise wouldn’t get the chance to meet through other circumstances.
A lot of young people don’t realize just how difficult post-school dating was before online dating. Once we exhausted the pool of 5-10 single people who were friends of friends, that was basically it. We’d have to go find strangers at the bar.
That conditioned everyone to be slightly more willing to settle for less perfect matches, knowing that there wasn’t necessarily a replacement available. That could be a good thing (people more likely to have the patience to let a spark develop) or a bad thing (a higher percentage of couples who just resented each other).
I can see an argument that things were better before online dating for some subset of people. But having lived that period, I can say from experience that it wasn’t easy then, either. And for someone like me, who is a better writer than I am a speaker, especially over the phone, the rise of text-based communication was helpful for navigating the early stages of relationships when that became the norm.
I used bumble and found my now wife. My advice is to do it like a background task while you are also doing other things, so you’re not desperate you can evaluate people there better.
The free tier will let you swipe x times per day.
Of the 10,000 matches in your area, 1000 might be real humans.
So, it ends up feeling like a waste of time for any guy that doesn’t get their profile pics taken by a professional. The odds of your iPhone pics standing out are slim unless you’re rocking a speedo packing a hog, ridiculously muscular, or apparently holding a fish? That can’t be working…
It ends up feeling like a waste of time.
The main problem is that some younger people don’t even know that dating apps weren’t always that ass. When tinder was new-ish you got unlimited likes and like 5 super likes a week or something. There were hardly any bots. Even with my lazily taken photos i would get a bunch of matches, meet someone, delete it, rinse and repeat.
When i use tinder now i get maybe 3 matches a month and at least two of them are bots.
I’m certain that tinder straight up doesn’t show your profile around if you are male presenting and don’t pay.
I have a female friend who also had tinder and we did a test. I set mine in men looking for women, free account both of us. I got her profile pretty soon, she never got my profile as an option.
E expected something like that too. There are also so many many many more men on tinder than women, so the odds are higher as well. I assume that’s also the reason why i (small town-ish) keep seeing the same people. Because they just run out. Sure some make new accounts, but i don’t think at that rate with exactly the same photos and bio.
Keep in mind that these apps are run for profit, by corporations. You meeting someone suitable and leaving the app, means less revenue for them.
So they can be fun to mess around for a while, but unless you’re extremely lucky, don’t expect long lasting relationships from them.To be honest, learn who you are before going on an app or trying to engage for a partner.
You’ve been together (in perception, at least) a long time and you’re still that married person and it will take time to remember who you are without that other person, regardless of whether you were a functioning couple or two people in the same house.
The loneliness is just the transition sinking in.
I’m a couple years older than you.
Have you ever done Speed Dating? Where you have 5 minute dates and if it goes well you arrange another?
It’s kinda like that, except it’s presented in the most shallow way possible and wrapped into a skinner box. The apps are so full of bots (usually scammers/phishers) that most of the matches you recieve will be fake. That’s means there’s a little dangerous with every new person you match with while you both figure out if you’re talking to a human or not. Beyond this, the apps are somewhat anonymous in a dangerous way. You don’t know if you’re meeting the person you say you are until they show up in front of you. Sometimes you match with someone and their personality isn’t what they say it is.
They’re fine, probably just about the worst way to meet someone as a long term partner. I’ve had good luck with hookups on dating apps, but I’ve had the WORST luck actually dating on them.
Incentives: you find a girlfriend the app lose a customer. They are not optimized for you finding a girlfriend.
Gender imbalance: there are about 3* guys for every girl. There is very little leftovers for you as an average guy. *Very crude counting from me 5 years ago.
Sure you may find one and it’s relatively low effort. Don’t get your hopes up.
Funny anecdote: I’ve had more luck getting dates from World of Warcraft.
Funny anecdote: I’ve had more luck getting dates from World of Warcraft.
Because common interest, and engagement without an agenda.
Funny anecdote: I’ve had more luck getting dates from World of Warcraft.
Same here lmao
That said I’ve never used other dating apps than wow.exe
I met my fiance on Team Fortress 2, so I can back up your anecdote that video games are better for dating than dating apps lol
It depends.
Those apps rely a lot on your physical appearance, and how good you look in a photograph.
And if you are interested in dating women you’ll have a harder time than if you try to date men.
As a bisexual person every time I open a dating app I have hundreds of likes from men, and barely one or two from women.
Also be aware that experiences for people 10 years ago are not valid now. Enshitificacion have also take it’s tool from dating apps, and experience is way worse than it used to. Last time I opened one I didn’t even got a match in months (until I deleted it). So you would have to mentally prepare for that possibility and keep your self esteem up despite of that.
Grindr is great. No complaints.
But, P.S.: for the love of god don’t pay the app any money though. I meant it’s great to find people. But the app interface is predatory from a UI/UX perspective.
