Best Sites for Dating - Update: and Question About Women and Casual Dating

[Esteban]

Thanks for helping me in July when I was looking for best dating sites. I am not sure if anyone will remember the thread now (see link at bottom) but I like it when people bother to come back and put an update rather than just asking for help and then never being seen again.

It was helpful to learn about dating sites/apps as I was a complete novice with them.

I mentioned I was interested in vegetarian/vegan women, eco women, and finding someone sexually submissive. I never figured out how to do the last of these three (at least not discretely) so I gave up on that, probably not the most important thing anyway. I couldn't find eco site either.

After arriving to the UK in November I used Veggly app only at first for vegetarian dating. I pretty quickly in days got a date with an attractive women and it went very well and there was a second date. After that, she decided not to see me any more because I was only going to be in the UK for 6 months, making a long-term relationship difficult. I had explained this in the phone chat prior to meeting but she accepted it at first then changed her mind after the dates. After her, because it was a vegetarians/vegans specific site, there weren't that many people on it and it was hard to meet someone unless you are prepared to travel 40 miles for a date.

After that I decided to put on my bio that I would be leaving the country in a few months, including on Tinder and Bumble which I signed up to later. Then for some weeks I got ZERO interest in me apart from some women I didn't find attractive. (Not a huge fan of either site, but there are a lot of people on there so that's a plus.)

I can say that being on the apps was a slight negative for my self esteem and happiness overall and had a few days where I felt lonely, which is unusual for me. Just swiping yes on 30 attractive women and having none of them swipe yes to you. It's not exactly uplifting.

After a while I changed the bios to delete the part where I said I was leaving the country and just put that I was looking for a relationship or that I was undecided. Honestly, at this point, I was like 'are my photos bad? Or am I unattractive now? Or it Tinder broken?' so I just wanted to know. Once I deleted that I was moving abroad,  I did managed to match with several attractive women (not the eco vegetarians I was ideally dreaming of sadly) and start chatting with them in the apps (match is when you have both swiped yes on each other and a chat window opens for you to talk). Several women gave me their phone number prior to even agreeing to meet, so they weren't too protective of their number. However, once I mentioned in the chats that I was moving abroad, they would either stop replying to me and ghost me or their interest would wane and the conversation would trail off as their replies got shorter and slower.

I did match with one woman who said she was visiting the UK for a couple of months, which seemed an ideal fit, but when I asked her out she said she was busy that day but maybe another time and then she got evasive when I suggested a call and then stopped replying to me.

I matched with two women at one point who were stereotypically glamorous like their photos had been lifted off a modelling agency site and it was just a scam. I was half expecting them to ask me to send them money or something. But then one of them stopped chatting to me and another one unmatched from me on Tinder (when blocks me from conversation with her and deletes the chat window). The funny thing was the last thing she said to me 'sorry I am looking for something more casual, while you are looking for a relationship'. Don't know where she got that idea. Very unusually, I was in the app just the minute she sent that message (I usually look about 2 times a day with notifications turned off) but just while I was about to type out that I would be up for that, she blocked me. Hah! So maybe they weren't scammers after all. No-one ever tried to scam me, actually. I think some of the very attractive women might be chatting with lots of men at once so you've got to impress them with the chat, whereas I was only chatting with 2 women simultaneously at most.

I did see a few women (10 or so out of a couple of hundred profiles) that said that they were 'down to f***' or interested in casual, or in an open relationship, or up for kink. But I didn't fancy a single one of them. They seemed to mostly be gothy/fat/piercing/tattoo type people whereas I am more into feminine women (at least in appearance) and I am disappointingly picky.

I ended up only getting dates with the one woman I already mentioned in November/December. There was one more date that got arranged with someone else a few weeks ago but she cancelled it saying one of her kids was sick and then didn't reply to my next message after that. She seemed really interested at first, but her interest seemed to trail off when I explained that I was not here permanently.

Anyway, in the end I got bored of having conversations that died when I mentioned I was leaving the county and I went back to writing on my bio that I am leaving the country again. As soon as I did that, no interest at all again. Haven't matched with a single person for a couple of weeks now.

I honestly have my doubts about whether it was all worth it. However, when I try these apps again after settling abroad at least I will have a better understanding of them and be able to use them more effectively.

So based on my experience it seems that women may be even less interested in casual relationships than I thought. Then again, when I thought back to the women I slept with years ago before I got married, it was different. I slept with two women in foreign countries while travelling there and just passing through for a week. And after I broke it off with my girlfriend at Uni and told her I wasn't interested in a serious relationship with her I managed to get a friends with benefits situation with her for a while.

So maybe it's just bad luck this time. Or maybe it's the age. All the women years ago were in their 20s whereas now I was interacting with (and swiping yes to) women in their 40s. So maybe women in their 20s are more open for casual than 40s?

I'll be leaving the UK in April, May or June and am hoping for better luck abroad when I'll be able to have a serious relationship.

Previous thread from July:

https://www.loveshack.org/forums/topic/617264-best-sites-for-dating/?tab=comments#comment-8152320

Edited March 24, 2024 by Esteban

[Wiseman2]

It's hard to imagine many women would be interested in someone who's just passing through town. Perhaps you'll have better luck when you settle in your new area. 

[Esteban]

On this comment I made:

"They seemed to mostly be gothy/fat/piercing/tattoo type people whereas I am more into feminine women (at least in appearance) and I am disappointingly picky"

That was slightly insensitive sorry, probably shouldn't have used the word 'fat' for starters. I think a lot of the types of people that I mentioned there looked attractive and very nice, but I suspect some of them aren't the personality type for me in particular, and just as it happened I didn't find them attractive, there are some women with any of the above characteristics that I could find attractive, I just didn't see any of them yet....

[Weezy1973]

16 hours ago, Esteban said:

So maybe women in their 20s are more open for casual than 40s?

Bingo.

[Sony12]

If you say on your profile that you are looking for casual you definitely aren't going to get a great deal of attention from most women.

What you do is say you are looking for a relationship but don't specify how serious of a relationship that would be. You don't know exactly what might come around as you might match with someone who you really hit if off with and want to escalate things. So don't rule a relationship out even if it may not be what you are primarily looking for. If asked to specify just say you like to take time getting to know each other and if you both mutually decide you want to become more serious than you can do that.

 

Also take out the the idea you are looking for someone sexually submissive as that just sounds creepy.

Edited March 28, 2024 by Sony12

[Esteban]

I never put anything about sexual preferences on any dating profile and I don't think I've ever told any woman what I like in bed until after I've already slept with her. What I had been thinking of was matching with someone with similar preferences in a community geared specifically to that sort of thing, but I gave up on that idea as it's more important to make a real connection with someone closer in personality etc than having similar sexual preferences, and I felt like chasing the latter specifically could mean you miss out on a better relationship overall.

So if you were me you would date women but without disclosing you are leaving the country in a few months? I mean, to me, the only real question was whether to disclose it on the profile, or to so before meeting, or to do so at the first meeting. I don't think I would feel comfortable sleeping with someone or going on multiple dates with them without saying.

I do suspect some women might be more open to casual if it isn't explicitly stated, but turned off once you explicitly say it. But that's all very well if you are not hiding something specific, like that you're married, or in my case soon to leave the country.

[Wiseman2]

Escorts might be a short term solution until you relocate, especially with your preferences. 

[Sony12]

2 hours ago, Esteban said:

I never put anything about sexual preferences on any dating profile and I don't think I've ever told any woman what I like in bed until after I've already slept with her. What I had been thinking of was matching with someone with similar preferences in a community geared specifically to that sort of thing, but I gave up on that idea as it's more important to make a real connection with someone closer in personality etc than having similar sexual preferences, and I felt like chasing the latter specifically could mean you miss out on a better relationship overall.

So if you were me you would date women but without disclosing you are leaving the country in a few months? I mean, to me, the only real question was whether to disclose it on the profile, or to so before meeting, or to do so at the first meeting. I don't think I would feel comfortable sleeping with someone or going on multiple dates with them without saying.

I do suspect some women might be more open to casual if it isn't explicitly stated, but turned off once you explicitly say it. But that's all very well if you are not hiding something specific, like that you're married, or in my case soon to leave the country.

It's probably better that you just wait to use these sites until after you have relocated.

[Esteban]

6 hours ago, Sony12 said:

It's probably better that you just wait to use these sites until after you have relocated.

I've sort of half given up. I have already gotten rid of my car and I've set the maximum distance to 4 miles in Tinder and Bumble.