Has anyone had any success on OLD or dating apps?

[username0202]

Hi In success I mean a relationship or a long term fling if that 🤣
I'm recently single I've had had two long term relationships from POF back in the day and tinder! Both over 3 years...
everywhere I've seen on Mumsnets it's all it's jus for causal s*x etc
If you have had any success what apps were they ? Thanks xx

Yes, we've been together 5 years and counting - met on Badoo which is the worst of the lot by all accounts 😂

Been with my match.com husband for 16 years. Never expected a husband.

@Hoosemover yes definitely niche, I got given a disc for Compuserve and got a free trial then it was £20 for 20 hours internet time per month plus phone charges!!

When I told people I'd met a man off the internet they were either fascinated or horrified!

yup met my lovely DP over 18 months ago on hinge but we were both on bumble too.
We were friends for ages then somehow started dating (each other) about 6 months ago.
We both dated a few others - I met a few nice guys tbh and I am pretty fussy my friends say??

I found that too... same men on other sites. I know people who met online, but that was years ago. Times have changed and i think most men(whom i come across anyway) expect too much for doing nothing..or expect models to message them even if theyre not that hot themselves. I lost heart in DOL...im not an ugly lass either nor unapproachable. Id rather meet in person, harder these days though

My daughter met her fiancé on Tinder a couple of years ago. My cousin, who is in his sixties met his partner on match about the same time and they are living together.

Yep, met some wonderful people. Over the last three years I've had two short relationships, three flings/FWB situations and my current one year relationship, from a combination of Hinge and Bumble. Bumble I dated more people, but Hinge folk fitted me better.

I went on Facebook dating at 54. Yup it was grim, same old sleaze. I said if the last date I'd lined up didn't work out, I wasn't going to bother again, as I just wasn't that bothered. We are getting married next year, when I'll be 57. He's bloody lovely. So worth wading through all the crap fore! Interestingly there was one part of his profile which I'd always insisted was a big no for me (smoker) but for some reason didn't spit that till night before we met. Once I met him I really didn't give a stuff about it. Makes me realise my list of what I wanted wasn't all it cracked up to be. So glad I went on that date.

Yep after 5 years of flings on OLD with a healthy 2 year pandemic instigated single period where I rebooted a lot of my life (where I lived, job, fitness, education etc) then met my one true most fabulous other half on Tinder 9 months ago. All offspring delighted at the prospect we are going to combine households into a new big home next year. I'm so grateful for OLD we wouldn't have met without it. Wish we'd bumped into each other decades before but at least we have now.

I got really good at screening out people who weren't suitable after my reboot and had a very clinical list of Must-Haves and No-Nos which worked beautifully. He has ticks and crosses against all and thinks I'm the best thing ever too!

I’m glad it’s not just me finding these men also. I’m very Particular on who I go on a date with also but there’s always a complication that arises after date 2 😂 unfortunately hinge doesn’t work for me due to my location

Funnily enough, I was one of the ones using OLD (Tinder and Bumble) as a way to meet someone for something casual, and this year, wholly unexpectedly, I ended up meeting the love of my life (after having been single for almost 10 years and having gone through a messy divorce).

From mumsnet, I learned:

• not to get overly invested early on (and certainly not before meeting in person),
• meeting within a couple of days of matching,
• to multidate (although I paused dating everyone else as soon as I met my DP — wouldn’t call it love at first sight, but he was someone I wanted to get to know better & I simply was no longer interested in anyone else),
• to be brutal about weeding out anyone who had shirtless photos or who contacted me with generic ‘hello beautiful’ messages (cringe!) or got sexual or creepy (even though I was only looking for FWBs, I wanted someone decent)

My friends who are on these and other platforms cared more than I did about meeting life partners. Maybe as a result of putting all their eggs in the OLD basket and filtering less than I did, they have found OLD soul destroying and have had to take breaks every few months.

I also think there’s a huge element of luck and timing. I’m the first and only match my now DP met. He was on multiple platforms for only a few weeks, and he was only looking for something casual but was equally picky. From our first date we both knew something was different, and from our third date we both decided to be exclusive (but didn’t tell the other until our sixth date so as not to scare the other one off 🙂). But if we hadn’t matched when we did, we would have missed each other and probably would never have met IRL. He was about to cancel all his subscriptions, and I on a whim decided to close out Tinder (too many messages and lower quality stock) and try Bumble (because my friends who finding more interesting profiles on there).

My friend's son is happily married to a woman he met on Tinder.

The only one I'd disagree with from @Amplituhedron's list is meeting early. DS is very shy and he's also physically disabled. But he's had a lot of success on Tinder because he chats first for a couple of weeks, gets to really know the person, their tastes and sense of humour. Then if he feels it's a good match and they do too, they meet. He met his first serious girlfriend that way, has had a lovely summer romance with a woman who was only in UK for a couple of weeks, and has a good, close FWB, all of which for someone who statistically is likely to find it hard to connect, is partly due to them becoming close online first.

I’ve met people
had a short fling
an online fling !
and 20 months on off FWB
and a few dates that didn’t go anywhere

im not in anything serious and nor do I want to be
bit Ive def met people
and I’m old (ish !)

I am 57 and DH Us 60. We met April 2022 and married 2 years later. He's bloody lovely but OLD was horrible place to be. We met on Facebook dating.