Is OLD as hard for men as it is for women

[Beanfry]

I keep reading about how OLD is a cess pit for women, that there are no good men out there. But are men finding it the same in reverse, or are there really 100 women to every good man?

starting to think about dipping my toe back into the dating world, but the stories of how bad OLD is is putting me off. For context i turned 40 last week, so my dating age range would be 37 - 45

My XW's misdemeanours are not relevant to this thread.

My profile currently has no words, just 3 photos. It appears to be making no difference to the amount of likes and pings I get. Obviously I won't know if some men are skipping past be a I have nothing written,but currently, I'm not bothered, so I'm just seeing how many fo respond to an empty profile.

One guy did ping me last week to say I look like just what he needs. I did ask why he thinks that, as he knows nothing about me...

I'm curious - why are you on OLD, and how do you ideally want men to respond to your profile?

Utter rubbish,
there’s about 15 men to every woman on old
mist ladies still have children and grandchildren in their lives
‘a lot of men are separated from that life

Initially to prove a friend wrong (turns out he was right.) Lots has happened twixt then and now. I meet guys every now and then. The last one ticked almost every box I have, but there was just no chemistry.

I don't know what I want currently so I don't have any particular way that men should ideally respond. Although an ability to spell and not just Wang on about how horny they are is a start.

I wouldnt like or match with a man who had very little text on his profile as that would give me the impression he wasnt particularly serious and therefore potentially just looking for casual even if he hadn't said that.

The 1st time I did OLD I was in my 40s and I did okay, a few messages etc ,
I tried again in my 50’s and no one was interested, even women in their 50’s were looking for under 50 - that was pretty disheartening

You may well be right, but I'm not aware of men specifying height requirements on their dating profiles or using them as search criteria.

Sure, women often care about height. I'm just saying men do too.

Tbh I find it very hypocritical when manosphere types criticise women for focusing on height. I'd bet anything that those types of men wouldn't date a woman taller than them. They also focus heavily on women's looks, rating them 1-10, so clearly very appearance driven.

As a woman in my 50’s, I’m only interested in someone around my own age- no more than about 5 years either side. My friends are the same - we’re not interested in men a decade or more younger

I also sense there is a bit of negativity from some men on here about how they are nice decent men who feel they lose out. I'm sure over the years I've lost out to women who were more confident or bubblier or had bigger personalities or indeed just better looking women. But being nice and decent isnt enough on its own to make someone want to be with you, it's just a building block, there needs to be more to it also. So I'm not bitter if other women have more to offer than me a lot of the time. Just have to be realistic!

I went back on it recently after a long, long time. I got chatting to a guy who lives not far from me, then he spoiled it all by telling me he could help me lose weight because sex was the best exercise 🙄 I blocked him and deleted my profile. I think I will stay single.

OLD has been challenging for me as a man.

If I message someone there is about 30% chance of getting a response and 50% of those who response are unable to have any sort of intelligent conversation.

So down to 15% who I would ask for a date and I reckon perhaps 40% of those would respond affirmatively. The others are more likely to ghost me or agree and then stand me up than simply say no.

So 6% of those whom I find atttractive enough to message end up in a date and perhaps half of those I would want to see again.

Tbf they don’t sound bad odds at all!

It’s not necessarily negativity - just reality, the reality for most men is the OLD is a pretty dismal experience, albeit we don’t ( generally) get tit-pics or “show us your cock” messages, but most men don’t (generally) get any messages at all

He must be over 6 foot for a start.

I say its negativity when we get told we are ignoring red flags and leaving the decent ones. Of course some women might ignore red flags and others might not have noticed them but plenty of women do not choose men who are walking red flags, so that's not the reason these decent men are left out.

As a man, widowed 2 years ago, dipping my toe back into the water, can confirm it is a total nightmare. Very few, if any 'likes', conversations terminated with no reason given, sites with the sole intention of extracting the maximum amount of money from you, endless women with profiles bemoaning the lack of ' good men', the word 'curvy doing some extremely heavy lifting, profiles with blurry women kissing dogs and complaining about male profiles with, fish, sunglasses, cars, sportswear etc etc - no beer bellies ( fair enough, better if you didn't describe yourself as ' big and beautiful, though),women who clearly just want someone for holiday +1s ( let's avoid those single person supplements, eh). The only one which seems remotely honest is Facebook dating. Where are all the good men? Here. Right here. Sane, home owner, married 25 years, never cheated. Emotionally available, good cook, on top of my household. But don't get a second look. It's all very dispiriting. I refuse to believe it can possibly be any worse for women!

😳. How do you even respond to that?

If you're looking for a long term relationship then those odds sound pretty good. You don't need lots of people to find you attractive, you just need 1 person you like to like you back.

Yeah. A PP on this thread pointed to a scientific paper, claiming that it showed that 80% of women are only interested in 20% of men. Well, I read that paper, and it shows nothing of the sort. In fact, it shows that "although women receive more messages than men overall, the distributions for both display a classic “long-tailed”form—most people receive a handful of messages at most, but a small fraction of the population receive far more."

In addition, the paper shows that men on online apps are also VERY selective - they hit on young women and Asian women, and ignore older women, black women, and highly educated women. In fact, the conclusion of the study is: "both men and women pursue partners who are on average about 25% more desirable than themselves"

So men are just as looks-obsessed as women. Or even more looks-obsessed than women.

www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/sciadv.aap9815

Hope you don’t mind me jumping on this thread. Both myself and my brother have found ourselves single at the same time and both OLD. I can say he has found it a lot easier than I have!! I’m 40, in pretty good shape, successful career, own home, financially sound and independent. He’s 36, lives with me while he gets back on his feet, works out a lot, oh and is 6”4……..needless to say he’s had no end of dates and has met some lovely women!! He also knows how to hold a conversation so has had no end of interest whereas I have really struggled 🤷‍♀️ as for height, I am 5”10, so I’m not even searching for the elusive over 6” mark but someone my height would be nice, oh and can hold a conversation and share my interests! I’ve pretty much given up now, and maybe one day I’ll meet someone in real life and for now I’ll live the OLD experience through him 😂

I dated a man who was divorced after being cheated on by his ex- wife.

by the end of our brief time of dating, I ended up feeling sorry for the ex wife and wasn’t surprised she did it…he was awful

Well we always hear that no matter how bad a relationship is you should just end things not cheat.

A different kind of bat shit.
Lots of women don't want bald men, fat men, ones that are still married, going through a break up, young children, small men, so that leaves very few indeed.
They, too, have a shopping list and won't deviate from it. They often want more information on wealth pensions and much more information regarding careers.
I think we are all consumers now, and unfortunately, that's how it's become. I myself was guilty of having a shopping list and realised that I was looking for a human being and not a thing in the Argos catalogue.