Very low confidence as a result of online dating

[LittleMissUnreasonable]

Hello everyone, my LTR ended about 6 months ago (his choice we just weren't connecting but we remain great friends) since then I've joined a popular dating app (think Tinder) and have made it very clear I my bio that I'm not up for casual dating but more long term. I've spoken to 4 guys on there but never got as far as meeting for the following reasons
Guy 1: great conversation, decided to tell me he was a regular cannabis user and I wouldn't like it....
Guy 2: wasn't putting effort into messaging me and apologised but said he wast into it
Guy 3: same as above but blamed not being good on phone
Guy 4: 2 days before scheduled date he came to the realisation he is not looking for a relationship...

What on earth am I doing wrong mumsnetters. I'm mid 20's, described as attractive by people as have a good job and pride myself on being nice to people. I just want to meet the right person and build a future :(

Any advice for a desperately low and self conscious person?

You’re doing anything wrong. You just have to talk to more than 4 guys.

It’s a meat market and I was in my late 30s when I was trying to find someone (POF and Match mainly) so probably worse.

Honestly, it’s just as bad for us men, particularly at an age where both parties are likely to have kids, and it’s just about persisting through the time wasters, catfish and people on the rebound to find the genuine contenders.

If it reassures you, I had one relationship which didn’t work (8 months or so) and have now been with DP for over five years.

Try other sites and try things like dragonboat racing, or a hobby class that interests you - something where you can get to know people without the immediate pressure of only meeting to see if you fancy each other.

You need to chat to more than 4. Remember any one guy could be chatting to up to 10 or more women... so don’t feel bad if you decide to do the same.
Grow a very thick skin
Don’t reply to everyone ... especially the ones who just say “hi”
Be prepared for them to suddenly disappear
Don’t go into it with high expectations

Unfortunately that’s the way of OLD
I did it for a few months and decided it’s not for me.

Great advice there @Changedname, I might look into societies and hobby groups for more like minded people :)
@tatiana yeah I understand its only been 4 people I've spoken to but 4 out of the 4 have called it off so although my sample size isn't large it's a 100% lack of success rate

Blimey 4 is nothing. I must have spoken to about 100 men in the last year online. Of these, I only actually met 11. So that's approximately 1 in 10 conversion rate.

Of those 11, I liked about half in person, but not all those liked me, so only 2 made it to second date.

Is a numbers game. The main point in your favour is as a mid 20s woman you will get lots of interest. Be ruthless about weeding out anyone who is rude, not attractive to you or doesn't reply promptly. You will still have a lot of options.

@egg and @missillusioned maybe you're right and I've not been chatting to enough. These 4 were the ones I thought I would be happy to date which is why I guess I've taken them a little hard

I'm pretty sure it's just the same as non online dating in that it's just a numbers game. Just keep going and I'm sure it'll happen

What you've posted there could happen in half an hour on any dating site.

If you want to do it, just keep trying til you find someone you click with, but have high standards and don't lower them.

Met my husband on POF. Speak to more men. I went on 6 dates with other men and was on there for 18 months before I met him.

If you went into any situation you will come across thousands of people, not all of them will be right for you. Old is the same. It really is a numbers game.
At least they have all been honest with you.
Keep on it and don't lower your standards.

Maybe try Meetup.co.uk ?

You need to grow a really thick skin for OLD and expect to kiss a lot of frogs! I felt exactly the same as you when I first started doing it but it will work out in the end so stick with it! I met my DH on POF and view all my unsuccessful dates as practice for when I met Mr Right. Good luck x

Please don't kiss frogs, only kiss princes and then decide which prince YOU like the best.

Definitely speak to lots more. If they keep chatting but no date then move on, lots of time wasters. I've found the paid for sites can have a better conversion rate for dates although still not perfect. Match is pretty good. The free sites are good too but so many time wasters, married men etc. You have to go through a lot of frogs to find your prince....im still looking but have been on some good dates and met some decent guys amongst all the crap.

@Tryingagain1 is right, you will have much better luck on paid sites - the men have shown that they are serious about looking for a meaningful relationship by paying upfront. Or try speed dating, that's how I met my DH

Thanks for all the kind words and advice. Definitely need to develop a thick skin in the world of OLD :) it's interesting hearing other peoples responses and experiences as well

Don't be put off think of it more as a positive outcome , it's better not to have met them , liked them then been let Down , I would much rather eliminate them before hand if they are not suitable , as pp 4 is very low sample , I would expect to chat to much greater number say 50-100 ? and be pretty damn fussy , discard politely any that do not suit , don't lower your expectations or standards just to get a date , be adamant you don't want a casual fling , be positive about what you do want , if you do meet , message well before then a daytime coffee meet up for a short meet , public place , make your own way there & back , don't swap too much info before your more sure
Give it time , your young , mr right will pop along when you least expect him

@Tryingagain1 is right, you will have much better luck on paid sites - the men have shown that they are serious about looking for a meaningful relationship by paying upfront.

This gets trotted on out most threads by a few people but the majority disagree with this quite strongly in my experience and say it is no better at all, and if it is no better, you may as well not bother wasting your money. Many, many people have found that they sign up, get no interest and then suddenly get messages as their subscription runs out, they renew to get their messages and - oh look, they've stopped replying and/or the profiles have gone. It's very well known that the paid sites have had a huge issue with this from a bit of reading online.

My advice is to head over to the dating thread and get support and advice from others in the same boat.

I have to say my experience with OLD was pretty rubbish and I would never go back to it. I know dozens and dozens of friends who have used it and I only know of one marriage and one LTR. The vast majority get a few dates and nothing that goes beyond three months. I did OLD on a couple of sites years ago and stopped after six months, then went back a year later to the same sites and I recognised most of the profiles - this in itself suggests several options: everyone is too fussy, there's a lot of fake profiles, or OLD doesn't have anything like the success rate it claims.

I have had dates with 6 men through OLD, resulting in one bf of 1.5 years and another now also 1.5 years so far. But apart from the ones I actually met, I also talked to loads of others, some of whom turned out to be complete idiots/weirdos, others just not my type, and others evidently discovered I wasn't their type. OLD is like walking into any random pub and going up to every man in it and starting a conversation. You wouldn't expect to find that any of the men in the pub was a potential boyfriend, would you?

@ShatnersWig Yes unfortunately a lot of what you've said is true, although I do think OLD works better if you live in a large city, with more men available.

The main problem with highly visual apps (eg. Tinder) is that they disadvantage women. Men have evolved to find young heathy symmetrical women attractive (sex with these women is more likely to produce healthy offspring), whereas women have evolved to find a range of other characteristics attractive too, ones which suggest that he will stick around after birth and protect the family; height, strength, power, resources, faithfulness, trustworthiness, kindness, etc. Women also have the ability to identify men who have have compatible immune systems by smell and this is a huge factor in whether we experience attraction and "chemistry".

In evolutionary theories, women are far more selective about who we find attractive (& therefore who we sleep with) because of the huge commitment that potentially comes from sex (9 months pregnancy followed by caring for a child), whereas men can have unprotected sex and then potentially walk away without giving up and any time or resources to his child, so it makes sense that he would want to sleep with as many young healthy women as possible and "spread his seed"

Visual dating apps tell women very little about whether they will find a man attractive in real life. Whereas alternatives like speed dating or singles events allow you to quickly assess whether you have chemistry and attraction to a range of men in real life. I really wish I'd tried it sooner, I wasted spent years of my life on OLD before I meant my DH at speed dating. He is not my usual type physically and I don't think I would have chosen him on OLD, but our chemistry and compatibility is unbelievable and we have a near perfect relationship.

I totally agree it works much better if you live in a city because of it being a numbers game but not because there are more men available. There are, according to statistics, more men OLD than women regardless of where you live - which is why us men (yes, I'm one of them) could send out 100 messages and only get one reply. This is probably why many men (not this one) started just doing "copy and paste" opening messages that women complained about.

OLD is a sweetshop conveyor belt mentality where huge swathes of people - men and woman - will write off someone they would probably like if they encountered them in real life purely because of one photo. Because they've got so many others to choose from. This is also why most online articles actually say women have the upper hand in OLD because they can really do the pick and choosing (the problem is who they then choose....)

@ShatnersWig Yes you're right, women do the choosing, but unfortunately these apps (which are usually created by men) encourage women to choose based on physical appearance, which is not really how female attraction works psychologically or biologically! It's a real shame that more women don't realise this

@LittleKitty Tinder and Bumble are mostly swipe and photo based but POF and Match can have lots of and lots of text to "sell" yourself and include your interests. So it doesn't HAVE to be so photo based if you don't want, but women have bought into it so it's here to stay for a while at least. The rise of selfies and instagram and the constant posting on Facebook of your latest picture to get likes... is primarily led by young women.

Two observations, purely from my own experience and clearly other people will have different experiences.

When I was OLD I found that Match and EHarmony were hopeless. I got no dates at all out of Match (having paid my money which of course makes me more genuine ). I did get dates from OKCupid but mostly from POF. So, the free ones. And I only had two photos on each.

And among my group of friends of both sexes, the women do far, far more ogling and commenting on men's physicality than the men do about women. Things have flipped, in some ways, it seems to me.

@ShatnersWig Women are judged on their appearance, so it makes sense that young women are the ones obsessing over how many likes they get for a selfie.
This is "sexist" of course, but also has an evolutionary basis as I've already explained. Plus it can also be also explained by socialisation; the rewards for participating in instagram are both intrinsic (self esteem) and also extrinsic (approval from peers, which would be typically be less true among males).

Your comment about women commenting more on men's appearance is interesting. If this really is your experience then I suspect that this is socialisation again - we live in a society that is striving for gender equality, so women get social approval by making these comments which were previously more common in men. However it is well established in psychological research that men do pay more attention to a woman's appearance than women do about men, so what you describe is merely occurring at the social level, rather than on a deeper cognitive or biological level.

I met dh on match.com 10 years ago, we were both mid 20s. He was the 7th person i met, I had 6 first dates before him that went nowhere. He had 3 before me, one got as far as a 2nd date but mostly out of politeness. It is a numbers game!

I also think its important not to put too much pressure on it. I was happy with the idea of trying something new, meeting more people, who knows what it might lead to. Never honestly thought I'd meet my husband through it! Too much pressure on anything will take all the fun out of it.