OLD - are most men after one thing?

[onlinedating]

I'm 40 and dating men around my age. Is that the problem? Do I need to be going older? It seems men are dating aimlessly, looking for that fake and meaningless 'spark', and casual shagging?

I've been dating for 10 months and it's absolutely horrendous.

I split with my wife and after living alone for several months I wanted to meet a lady who I could talk to, go out for a meal with and be friends with. I was not at all confident and tried OLD. I was 55 at the time.
I met a few ladies.
I met a lady of my age and we went out a couple of times and then she stayed a night with me. Next week we will celebrate our 20th Wedding Anniversary.
Was I only looking for sex? I was not.
Were all the ladies looking for sex? No, some were but not all.
I used OLD as I could not think how else to meet anyone. It worked for me.

Why don't you meet any men in real life?

Perhaps join a group or activity that you're interested in, that might widen your social circle and get you meeting more men.

These men do exist in this universe, they're everywhere. Maybe you and your friends are just going after men who have many better options.

@Telemakus - so I should preface this by saying that the dating pool for highly educated and high earning single women is a shallow puddle outside of university and work in my and my friends’ experience. So my experience is skewed in this respect.

I mean most of the men we have met/dated are still on dating apps so if they had better options for a relationship they haven’t panned out or they are simply lying about their intentions. I dated a few people for a few months who still have their profile photos from when we met on OLD (now quite a few years old).

My 40s friends who never tried OLD actually met their husbands at work, through a hobby or at festival.

Well if they're still on the apps then it's probably because they're having a great old time with all the women who are swiping on them to the exclusion of the majority of options.

And your dating pool is as large as anyone else's. It's only you placing limitations on it.

Always love on these threads a bit of mansplaining telling women why it’s actually all our fault and invalidating our lived experience.

Mansplaining = Opining.
Lived experience = Experience.

I mean most of the men we have met/dated are still on dating apps so if they had better options for a relationship they haven’t panned out or they are simply lying about their intentions. This is my experience too.

Indeed.

@Telemakus -widening the pool for an educated high earning woman achieves absolutely nothing.
Most of us have been there.
As a woman you end up being dumped anyway when the guy's ego can't take it. After he's had a few shags from you natch.
Men can't cope with a long term relationship with a bright wealthy woman unless they too are of a similar educational level and earning potential.
Unless they met their wife at university or work when younger, they will subsequently seek out a woman who earns less than them, is not as bright as them, and who is preferably younger.

I think there will eventually be a lot of single well put together wealthy women in their 40s and 50s. They are choosing to stay that way rather than widen their pool of men. Some have kids. Some never have. Friends, hobbies travel and family tend to fill their lives.
That, along with a lot of puzzled frustrated men in their 50s, 60s and beyond who still don't have much luck with OLD

@Lookingforunicorns - couldn’t have said it more eloquently!

Agree 100% with your second paragraph.

On your first paragraph, well I'm an educated but not high-earning man and I can assure you (unless the woman made it an issue) I wouldn't have the slightest problem being in a relationship with a woman who earned considerably more than I do. But I don't have much of an ego.

So men Dating younger women are yuck but you are recommending women should date younger men

@tridento
Yes.

Double standards are good, in a way.

Unfortunately, I think the landscape of OLD has changed since covid - I know so many couples who met this way beforehand but not so many recently.

It has become a platform for men looking for casual/short-term relationships- many of whom purport to be looking for a relationship & are married etc.

The behaviour in general is awful - ghosting, sleazy messages, etc.

I'm going to try social events eg wine tasting. Have also tried speed dating.

Online dating seems to have got very "weird" recently and you either need to be incredibly, incredibly thick-skinned or super-extroverted.

(I'm quite thick-skinned and have had good results before - honestly I simply can't stand to be on them now!).

Or you're someone who isn't genuine yourself and wants to mislead people.

Or someone addicted to textual relationships who doesn't want to meet in person as they're married or catfishing or have very flattering photos.

Definitely was a period when there were some creeps, but also some genuine contacts to be had without too much pain!

Massive influx of new people over lockdown, which may have skewed the users and the market.

Plus I think the whole "using apps" mindset makes both men and women jaded, so people who may have had more of a normal "lets see where it goes" relationshippy attitude now think they're in an episode of Sex and the City and do the whole "multi-dating" thing and fall in love with different profiles.

The apps are designed to be addictive.

They're also just creepy - dipped into Bumble for a few days, and within a couple of messages two (normal looking) guys were bringing up aubergine emojis or suggesting I come to their hotel....

I'm reasonably open to meeting someone, so just building up my social networks in real life without being too hasty.

However, this is probably a longer term holistic thing than immediate results.

(you still have similar issues in social groups....lot of trial and error and nutters to sift through. So patience is needed.

I've been to a couple of "30/40 something" meetups and half the people there are pushy 60 year old guys dominating the space and scaring younger women off!

Completely shamelessly as well.

One even had the nerve to wonder why women never came back to these events again!).

Personally, I don't think men look for love / commitment / companionship in the same way women do.

I don't think men tend to proactively go out to find someone to spend the rest of their lives with. I've never done Tinder etc. (didn't exist when I was last single!), but when I was single and met women and asked them out, it wasn't because I was looking for a partner. It was because I was looking for a way to spend next Tuesday night. And I'm not talking about sex, but just someone to go out and have fun with (and yes, if that went well then maybe sex).

I think most women go into every date trying to judge whether this person is someone they can see themselves with long term, whereas they only thing men are looking for out of a date, is for that date to be fun.

As a result, I think women are more likely to end a first date thinking "Nope, not seeing him again", or "I really like him, I can see a future there". Whereas men will go, "That was fun, I should see her again sometime", and then get busy or meet someone else and forget all about her.

I'm not suggesting that there aren't some men who actively try to sleep with someone and then ghost them. But I think in a lot of cases its just a difference in expectations. Women are on "Well, its been 5 dates and we've had sex, this is definately heading somewhere", whereas men are still on "That was fun, I should see her again sometime"

I overheard a conversation in work a few months ago between a couple of team mates, one a gay man and one a lesbian, where they were joking that for lesbians, dating is "squared", so 1st date is 1st date, 2nd really the 4th, 3rd is really the 9th, and by the 4th date your married. Whereas gay dating barely gets past the 1st date, let alone the 3rd

I don't think its a gay and lesbian thing, I think its a male and female thing, we're looking for different things, on different timescales, and thats why heterosexual dating is such a nightmare.

I'll make one observation that you can take with a pinch of salt if you like but of the 50 or so women I know in real life who I've actually seen on dating apps, all of them, bar none, look much much better on the photos they use on their profile than they do in real life.

If you’re 40 I agree with pp be open to dating men in their 30s. I do know some decent single men in their 40s but I feel by that age a lot of the Single ones have emotional / commitment issues and are forever looking for a perfect unicorn which is why they’ve not settled down yet. And then yeah of course you get the sleazy ones who are just in it for sex and have nothing to offer you . I was talking to one guy close to 11pm and he lived in another city. He asked if I wanted to meet that evening. I know what he was suggesting. Disgusting.

When I used apps, I had a list of things I don’t accept on my profile - some pathetic rat of a guy was so bothered by it he messaged me to say I shouldn’t be on dating apps and should go marry God 😵‍💫
Some men get really angry when you have standards. I wasn’t even asking for perfection. It was just a case of insisting on the basics - they must be working full-time, properly single ie. not in a relationship or “separated” or living with an ex etc . This particular man I noticed at the time was using a nickname - clear sign of a man who isn’t single and is using the apps incognito ! He obviously felt triggered that my profile had called him out lol

I did meet a few nice guys on it though, they are there but it’s just slim pickings. I
got really good at figuring the men out quickly and unmatching when necessary.

@Telemakus - the same is 100% true for men over 40/50 on OLD but for a different reason. The few people I dated for a couple of months have photos that are way outdated (in some cases 5+ years) and no longer represent what they look like. I haven’t met a single man who was actually better looking in real life - quite the opposite! There is also a lot of deception with clever photography about height, too.

Suspect at the moment there's so much "profile photo inflation" or just deception, that matches are often holding out for meeting potential "dates " who don't actually exist, or are very different to how they are depicted.

Its not even that obvious - I mean OK I think we can all spot if someone is clearly a scammer or clearly too good to be true.

But just things like age or location or children....small but significant lies.

So unless you're super persistent or genuinely have no other social avenues, another reason not to app.

I last had app meets 2-3 years ago, and to be fair the guys looked fine (and also I normally get first dates extended and good follow up so hopefully close enough).

The worst thing is the exaggeration means that the whole system becomes flawed.

And you can either try to "game" it or if you try to be honest then you'll get zero interest or less matches, as everyone thinks they have a better prospect they're "chatting" to than you.

(who really doesn't look like that or is actually 10-20 years older or might be a completely fictional persona!

I used to know a - somewhat unpleasant - bisexual guy who admitted he pretended to be a sexy woman online for the thrill of the chat...).

Well that's put me off my cocoa 🤮

It’s interesting men’s biggest worry on apps seems to be “has this woman used filters in her profile pics ”

whereas women’s biggest fear is, is more around “is this man going to physically harm me or try and coerce me into sex and get aggressive when I say no?