I matched with someone on Bumble about a week ago. I found the photos on their profile quite attractive and from some of the write-up it sounded like we had some common interests.
Although they are very responsive (typically only takes a few minutes to get a message back) the entire conversation has felt largely one-sided with me asking lots of questions about them, follow-up questions to topics I have raised etc. They write quite long responses that often end up being them ranting or moaning about something e.g. asking about their job lead to a long rant about being overworked, people leaving the team, manager not being helpful in putting more tasks on them etc.
They have only asked 2 questions about me. One relating to my child and relationship/contact with my ex and when talking about work they asked what I do, but probed no further (my job title isn't impossibly vague, but I feel like unless you are in my field you probably have no clue what it truly involves) whereas I had asked quite a bit about their work.
I held back over the weekend from messaging, to see if they actually wanted to chat further - I had sent the last message. I heard nothing from them. So I then asked how their weekend was, got a rambling reply about it being frantic, asked what made it frantic to which I got "Just been busy doing a lot of things xxx". They never asked about my weekend in return or made any further attempt at conversation.
I figured I would call them out on their lack of effort in getting to know me and it very quickly turned sour. I asked if they were interested in continuing to get to know me as they don't really ask me anything about myself or even return questions I've asked back at me.
I got the following response:
^"I have just been busy doing a lot of things so I can't give people my full attention when I have things to do.
As you've asked a question about my weekend that opens a conversation about talking about each other's weekend so questions don't need to be asked in return. A question is asked by anyone and that opens a conversation about that topic so I don't have to physically ask it back
I just feel like you're being fussy and nit picking now to find excuses to unmatch with me when I will NOT be taking any crap so don't bother wasting your time coming up with excuses and saying crap about me when you don't know me and you don't know whether I'm interested or not. You don't know what's going on in my life to understand why responses are the way they are. Fact"^
There was some further messages each way. I acknowledged I don't know everything about them (and that I don't need to at this point), but said if this was their approach to messaging they are likely to find most people view them as disinterested. A bit preachy from me I guess so maybe I shouldn't have said anything. I received another long message that ended "But hey I don't need to justify this to you but if you don't want to proceed any further then do me a favour and stop trying to dispute the way I am and the way I have conversations with people as I'm not going to change for anyone. Likewise I don't expect other to change. Many people have tried to change me into a worse person so I'm not changing my conversations for anyone"
I have low self-esteem and get few matches or successful chats on dating apps so I said clearly we have different styles to conversation and maybe we would get on better in person. Anyway more to and thro where they wouldn't clearly state whether they wanted to still keep getting to know each other or not. Ultimately they said "I don't care" so I unmatched.
But I'm left quite confused and almost gaslit to a degree. Am I being unreasonable to expect 2-way effort in a conversation on dating apps? Is there anyone here who knowingly has similar views and operates their communication to this level? Basically they said as I brought up the topic of weekends, I should then be able to tell them about my weekend without them explicitly asking. It's really made me question if I'm the one who is not 'normal' in how I communicate or my expectations of others.