Online dating

[SummerFruitss]

I haven’t dated in a decade and haven’t done online dating before. I’m looking for a relationship (long term) not sex or casual dating. Any tip? Any apps to avoid? Thanks.

Breeze is a good app to try. You go straight to meeting for a drink so can't get strung along by people looking for sexting.

Online dating is not for the faint hearted so just have your wits about you. Grow a thick skin, be cautious and don't take things people say at face value. I did the online sites about 11 years ago and it was great, dipped back into it earlier this year and it was horrendous. I have decided I will see if I meet someone when I'm out and about, but will not go on the sites again.

I would avoid the free ones and maybe think about the paid ones, not Match though as I don't think that's much better. You should be able to guage pretty quickly what their intentions are once you are chatting to them. When I was on them I never gave my phone number out freely and any sign of the conversation getting inappropriate I would just get rid. Make your intentions pretty clear, make what you will not tolerate pretty clear and just be cautious. There are an awful lot of time wasters, married men etc etc on these sites so yeah, just go into it with a sensible head on.

Grow a very thick skin, be prepared to have your boundaries constant pushed and be very aware the apps are full of men pretending they want a relationship to get sex.

Try Bumble as that puts the woman in control as to who she chooses to message. Men can’t message
you on there unless you match.

Be aware depending on your age the pool of genuinely single men who want a relationship is very very shallow

Are paid apps really any better? I remember my sister paying for eharmony but said there was hardly any men on there.

I paid for Ourtime (part of Match) I paid for a months subscription and deleted my account after about a week - it was hideous

I met my current partner on Tinder 10 months ago. We're both mid 50s. So there are decent men on there. Think they may be few and far between however.

I wanted fun and dates really tbh, but when we met I realised we aligned really well so that was that.

I’ve found hinge ok.

I've been using Badoo (shit name for an app tbh) they give a 3 day premium trial. I've met a couple of guys that I've gotten on with.
I tried a few others but they all want payments straight away, which kinda put me off tbh.

I met my partner on bumble! I really recommend it as the girl has to message the guy first so you get to choose who you speak to so hopefully no weirdos.
We have been together now nearly 4 years and have a son together. It was the best thing meeting him. We lived 40 minutes away so would never of met if it wasn’t for bumble 🥰

I don’t think paid ones are any better, the amount of dateable, decent single men is tiny. I think finding one is luck and that can happen on any app.

I have used them in the past, but won’t again. The majority of what you get is men objectifying women and treating us like free sex workers. It just gets gross very quickly.

There are very few available men now and the decent ones who become available are snapped up rapidly in the wild before they get online. Why would a lovely man who wants a relationship not be in a relationship?
So real life is realistically the only way v to meet good people.
A friend who moved to the country moaned about the lack of available men, (she is late sixties😀) but found someone when her Pilates teacher introduced her to her dad. Dad is a lovely guy, recently widowed, who would never go anywhere near a dating site, and if he had not met my friend, would have soon met someone else (set up by his daughter who wants him to be happy)
I am in also in s relationship with a lovely widower -best man I’ve ever known and best sex (we are in our 60s so that was a surprise😂) who had a long and happy marriage and again is someone who would never go on a dating site -I met him through mutual friends.

Best advice I can give is to join the Burn the Haystack group on Facebook run by Jennie Young.
I have learnt so much about the early red flags to look out for that signify toxic trouble later down the line…

(Another friend met a lovely man when he let her go first at a car wash 😂)

If you want to be disappointed and make your life more stressful, by all means give online dating a try.

Completely disagree.
They analyze ‘rhetorical patterns’ devised by a woman who is cynically selling her ‘methodology’ and the group is very bitter and anti/men /making fun of them publicly.
(Ironically her followers don’t seem able to see that manipulative men will learn from it how to write using the ‘correct ’ rhetorical patterns (and AI will massively enable this) and use the reverse to dupe these naive women…)

The group is full of well-educated, liberally-minded women who have had enough of accepting and settling for the bare minimum from guys.

It’s not at all anti-men, it’s about cutting through the chaff quicker.

It’s fine if that’s not for you - each to their own.

If the problematic men are watching and learning, then great, but I suspect most couldn’t muster the effort, based on how much they put into their profiles in the first place.

And if they are using the tips to try and pull the wool over our eyes, I suspect they won’t be able to keep it up for long before falling back into their telling traits.

Remember you are looking to date a human not a profile. Burned Haystack is about seeking the perfect online dating profile.

You can detect red flags from a profile, but if you think a profile will be a true reflection of someone then you'll think everyone has more holidays than Simon Calder, loves a Sunday roast, lives in Palestine and goes hiking whenever they're not on holiday.

This!
Screening people on superficial basis means excluding on a very narrow criteria.
If I and my bf has actually gone on a website he would have missed out on mebecause he is very stilted in written communication but just wonderful in so many ways that wouldn’t have been apparent, but were eminently apparent when we met and chatted at a barbecue. Neither of us normally meet up with those particular friends so had no knowledge of of each other before meeting (and no intention or exoectstion of finding a partner)
OP please just do go out to social and hobby events, chat to lots of people of all ages snd types and really try to enjoy your life /rather than going on OLD which is likely to be fruitless and depressing (and make you cynical like the BH followers)

Another friend so has been on the hunt on OLD for at least 5 years bemoans the fact that 15 years ago it was s much better arena , - she did meet a man online and they had a 10 year relationship. Nowadays ) and of course she is 10 years older) it is an entirely different place. Men are much more likely to be on it in the hope of casual sex -fine if that is what you want, but not got as committed relationship.
However she is quite rigid in her requirements re jobs -e.g. sneered at a site that was ‘full of lorry drivers’.
My bf is not lorry driver, but does a job that similarly requires skill and experience but no academic qualifications, while I have b postgrad qualifications and also just over 5 years older than him, so he would have been wary of me if he’d know only those details about me before we met.

It’s actually nothing to do with finding the perfect profile.

Boring, mediocre, lacklustre is perfectly ok, as long as it is not sounding a klaxon for a barrage of toxic unacceptable behaviour that awaits you down the line.

It’s about giving women the tools and the confidence to be selective and protect themselves.

As I said, each to their own …

Burned haystack isn’t about finding a perfect partner based on their profile alone, in fact the key premise is it’s about ruling men out, not in. So a ‘good’ profile is simply one which isn’t riddled with red flags and rhetorical patterns. Ofc, lots of these awful profiles are blindingly obvious, but some are more subtle.

And unfortunately too many really good profiles turn out to be a veneer to hide a parade of red flags which usually show themselves pretty quickly.

Thanks all that’s given me some things to think about. Online dating would be the only option I simply don’t meet men irl they don’t approach me at all and there is no opportunity.

Well yes, that is also true 😂

I think the best thing is for women to not use dating apps at all tbh, they’re awful.