5 Things I Don't Miss About Dating Apps
It’s been over three years since my last traditional “date”.
Not three years since the last time I enjoyed a woman’s company for the evening,
and certainly not three years since the last time I shared a night of sweaty, steamy, marathon sex with a pretty girl, fell asleep with her, in a panting tangle, then woke up the next morning to go at it again.
Just three years since I dedicated hours to swiping through online profiles and planned an evening of activities like a cruise director.
Three years since I compulsively checked for updated matches and replies, got emotionally invested in (the internet persona of) a woman I hadn’t even met.
Three years since I slipped into a nice shirt and Chelsea boots to drop $50- 80 on a traditional “date”.
My last swing at traditional dating was a one year relationship, which ended in 2021.
I’ve written about it extensively on this blog. See my posts “Men and Women Shouldn’t Live Together” and “Girlfriends Are Better Than Wives”, among others.
After surviving that ordeal, I had no desire to go back to the struggle.
I’ve also finally figured out that the act of inviting a woman on a traditional date at all, in 2023, is weak, “boyfriend” behavior.
Asking for a date backfires with modern women, especially when they are attractive and young, because women that age prioritize their jobs, travel, and “having fun” more than they care about wanting a boyfriend. (See my post, “Stop Taking Women On Dates”).
Since my revelation that traditional “Let’s grab drinks” evenings are the playground of misguided simps, I have skipped the coffee, the cocktails, the cat and mouse game, and gotten straight to the point.
When I spend time with women, it’s only under the condition that we have already pre-determined that we will be sleeping together.
This isn’t negotiated like a labor deal between a trade union and the local mafia boss.
Where interactions with women are concerned, subtlety and covert communication work better than being demanding and direct.
In vanilla (non-pay for play) interactions, simply only hang out with women at my house, or theirs.
Women aren’t stupid.
A woman who accepts the invitation of a grown man, into his home, knows what she’s agreeing to.
Women know guys want sex, and won’t let themselves be alone with a man they’re not open to being intimate with.
Of course, a fun vibe and consent are important.
I’m not entitled to sex just because a woman came over for a glass of wine, but doing so sets the tone of what our relationship is about.
I’m not the guy that’s going to pay for a woman I’ve never met to eat sushi at a rooftop bar, to get a quick hug at the end of the night.
As I explained in “Stop Taking Women On Dates”, spending money, and even being out in public together, is something she has to earn, at least from me.
There are guys that insist on acting like “nice guys” from Boyz 2 Men ballads of the 1990s.
To those men, I advise: it’s working for you (you wouldn’t be reading this if it was), keep going.
However, as we say in Neuro-Linguistic Programming,
“If what you’re doing isn’t working, try anything else”
Try Anything Else
Since I stopped dating, I approached a cute woman in a hardware store.
She was open and friendly, we exchanged texts over the next few weeks.
One weekend, she was feeling frisky, and invited herself straight over to my house.
Another time, I was out dancing one evening, and hit it off with a sultry Mexicana (Read my post “One Night Stand With A Sexy Latina”).
She also initiated us hanging out, asking “…where do you live?”.
My Mexicana came home with me and we spent the night in bed together.
And of course, I have dated and slept with beautiful younger women through sugar dating sites like SugarDaddyMeet.com, which I’ve written about extensively on this blog, and my Youtube channel.
Spoiled By Sugar Dating
My experiences dating 25 year old models, exotic dancers, and nursing students on sugar sites, completely spoiled me from ever being able to take a vanilla dating app seriously.
Although the landscape there has changed a lot in the last few years, on sugar apps, the women are younger, more fit, more attractive, AND they message me first.
On sugar sites, my inbox is full of sexy young women with perfect bodies, glowing skin, and inviting smiles.
All I had to do is take my pick (and have their allowance on hand).
I got so accustomed to messaging and meeting up with bubbly, fun, gorgeous younger women, that when I briefly tried Hinge this year, it felt like a dystopian nightmare by comparison.
On Hinge, I loaded up 6 of my best photos, paid for a 30 day premium membership, and started swiping… only to cancel, in frustration and disgust, before the month was over.
There’s more to attraction than looks, and there’s more to a relationship than judging someone from a tiny photo on your cell phone, but to go from flirting with lithe yoga instructors and cute baristas, in their mid-20s, to being interrogated, or “vetted” by bitter 39 year olds, with children and the mommy bodies to prove it, was more than I could endure.
I’m certainly not perfect either, but the options available on traditional dating apps (to me, at least) simply weren’t appealing.
The experience on dating apps was like being hungry in an airport, on a long layover.
A hungry traveler trapped in an airport starts off hopeful.
He wanders through the terminals, evaluating his options.
The paradox of such a situation is, while there are a lot of options, none of them are very desirable.
If you’ve ever been in such a predicament, you know that a few hours of searching through over-priced and unappetizing choices will either force a man to lower his expectations, or decide he wasn’t really that hungry after all.
Dating Apps
I was able to get matches and start conversations with women, however, I wasn’t excited, or even interested, in any of the potential sweethearts.
Like the traveler in the airport, I decided that I’d rather not eat, than pay $47 for a decomposing tuna sandwich, on stale bread, and wilted brown lettuce.
Profile deleted, I removed the app from my device, never to return.
The Juice and The Squeeze
With vanilla dating off the table, and sugar dating out of my price range, now that I started a 9 to 5 job (more on that in another post), I’m currently not dating at all.
It’s not worth the time and energy.
Occasionally, I’ve wondered what it would be like to meet a nice woman: someone fun, feminine, and attractive.
My ideal girl would be active and fit.
She’d love dancing, camping, road trips, and cooking together.
She’d be bubbly and easy to talk to.
And love sex (of course).
While that’s nice to fantasize about, I had to face a cold reality:
I have a better chance at being:
struck by lighting,
drafted by the Golden State Warriors,
and discovering a previously unknown oilfield in my backyard
-all in the same day-
than meeting a pretty woman,
of a healthy weight,
who is fun to be around,
and also wants to date me.
At the moment, and for the foreseeable future, I’m not dating, or even thinking much about it.
As prescribed by two authors I immensely admire and respect, Coach Greg Adams in “Free Agent Lifestyle” (See my review of the book in “High Value Male or Free Agent Lifestyle: Which Option Is Best For Men?”), and Aaron Clarey in “The Menu”, I took the alternate path of devoting my time to exploring hobbies and passions that excite me.
I invest in hobbies, a better use of my time than the cycle of swiping/ messaging/ meeting/ pretending to be interested in astrology/ over and over, until the woman either sleeps with me or stops returning my texts.
5 Things I Don’t Miss About Dating
Emotional Highs and Lows
It’s human nature to want to ensure a return on your investment of any resource, be it time, money, attention, or energy.
When I was actively dating, I invested hours creating my profile, then tweaking and optimizing my digital image for the best results. Running a successful dating profile is a full time job in marketing, sales, fulfillment, and customer retention.
I would A/B test photos, cycle through different profile texts, and experiment with conversation openers.
When I was successful, netting a match, or reply, I would feel a rush of excitement, like hitting the jackpot at a slot machine.
If momentum grew in a conversation: texts back, the woman “investing” in the conversation, by asking me questions, and responding quickly, I felt amazing.
By contrast, when a lead went cold, ignoring my messages for days, not responding at all, or un-matching me, the sting of rejection hit me like a 5 ton truck.
Basing my emotional stability on the whims of something as unpredictable and capricious as a woman proved to be a poor use of my time and energy.
Wasted time
Research from a 2018 article in Bloomberg suggested that the average Millennial was squandering an average of 10 hours per week on dating apps.
Like video games and Las Vegas casinos, apps are designed to trap your attention in a dopamine loop of likes, matches, and messages.
The ratio of 70% (or more) men on dating apps is enough to dissuade me from wasting my energy on Bumble and Hinge.
I wouldn’t go to a party or a bar with 7 men for every 3 women, where 2 of the women were fat and the third was a bot from a developing country.
When I did try apps, my ratio was roughly 12- 15 matches for every 100 swipes.
Half of those matches (6- 7) would message me back.
Of those, about 50% (3- 4) would lead to a conversation with enough momentum to propose a meeting.
Rarely would the women in that last category be someone I would really be interested in spending time with.
Artificial Thirst
As I mentioned in my first two points, dating is a massive investment of time and emotional energy.
Once I invested that many hours, I wanted to realize a return on that expenditure.
I didn’t spend time engineering a profile that could collect 12- 15 likes, messaging them all, being an engaging, interesting, attractive man, to sit around with my dry dick in my hand.
The more I swiped, the more I started to feel desperate for an ROI.
As weeks passed, and the hours added up, I wanted to get a “success” to make the venture worth my time.
I expanded my age range from 24- 32 up to 36, then 38, then 42. 😬😬
I swiped on women I would never speak to in real life.
Swiping on apps put me in a thirsty, desperate state, where I just wanted ANY woman to validate my efforts.
This is why cold approach practitioners and wannabe PUAs date less attractive and older women, then try to make themselves feel good about taking whatever they can get.
After wandering through the desert, even a mud puddle looks like an oasis.
Additionally, focusing on something you don’t have just makes you feel worse about not having it.
A better plan of action is working on finding fulfillment in another area of your life, preferably an area that you can directly control.
Since I started following the advice of Coach Greg Adams’ Free Agent Lifestyle, and Aaron Clarey’s The Menu, I’m frankly just happier, enjoying more peace, and more fun, than when I was fighting and clawing for a response back on Hinge.
For men under about 35, this sounds inconceivable (I get it), but there’s activities that are as exciting and enjoyable to me as sex, if not more: riding my motorcycle, working on projects, playing pickup soccer.
Without the navigating mind games, drama, and clinging of another human being.
Wasted money
When I was on dating apps, I proposed meeting up for cocktails at a trendy lounge in my city.
At $12- 15 a drink, times 2 each, then maybe an appetizer or dessert, (if things were going well), plus tip, I could easily drop $70- 100+ per evening.
Eight to 10 dates a month is approaching $1,000, half of the time I wouldn’t be interested in seeing the woman again.
Add to that the price of hair cuts, cologne, shoes, outfits, watches, washing the car, and all of the other ancillary expenses that come with traditional dates with women.
5. Opportunity Cost