I was about to delete my OK Cupid account and she msg'd first, sending me something kind of clever and we met up for a beer. Before the date I decided it would be my last dating app date. Friday is our 2nd anniversary.
It's a pretty great reflection actually...looking back and seeing how many last attempts actually worked out.
So I got bored, and posted haiku to entertain myself. I realized that it was actually more fun than dating :)
Then I got a long rant by a crazed creative woman, she actually was perfect so I said whatever, let's meet and see what happens!
Today is our 3rd wedding anniversary :)
A lot of it boils down to mental framing. In other words, think of yourself as providing an opportunity for someone to participate in something great. If they don't take advantage of that opportunity, that's their loss not yours. One of the best quotes is from Patrice O'Neal: "You MUST believe in your own righteousness."
To be clear, she had a mental breakdown when at a therapy session with a bunch of men who were talking about chopping up their wives. The context in your post frames it as if it had been because of her lack of success in dating, but that's not what it was. (Also, she talks about how she actually had dating success to the point that straight women she was dating would agree to sleep with her even after finding out that she has female parts. I wish I was that hot.)
Calling them "stone-cold losers" for remembering a number doesn't make any sense to me.
Doctor: "Then stop doing that."
I gave up online dating 10 years ago. A few months ago I tried again after a relationship ended. I'd quit again within a week. Honestly it was even worse than I remembered.
Patient: decides to ignore the advice and seeks medical advice on the internet
Actually getting dates? That's easy enough. Being white, attractive enough, 6' tall, between 150 and 180lbs, no kids, and make a tech salary seems to tick off a lot of boxes for girls.
I have had relationships and am engaged to a beautiful woman now so I found a way to work around it but it is near impossible. My short male friends are either single or have made considerable compromises.
It's a factor that is weirdly denied in society too. Nobody wants to hear that an immutable characteristic plays such a role on the male side...
But I agree that women are obviously filtering on that.
As an anecdote - one site I was on took a while to publish my height and I started having conversations with women. As soon as it showed one dropped contact and the other said she felt 'no chemistry' after we had basically said hello to each other :)
What barnacled is saying is absolutely true, and unless you've spent time as a single man of below average height, you really just won't understand.
The difference in attention and respect that a few inches make is pretty astounding. I'd imagine it's pretty similar to the stories I hear of people shedding hundreds of pounds and being treated as a completely different person. Once again, unless you've been on both sides of the equation, it's unlikely you'll be able to grasp how much physical traits like height and weight affect how people treat you.
As you say, unless you've experienced it for yourself it's hard (but not impossible) to get quite how extreme it is.
I've heard plenty enough from women talking directly about it, from basically all fiction ('tall, dark, handsome' in that order, no romance novel has a short guy, etc.), the fact that height rockets up when nutrition improves - sexual selection likely to be a big factor on that too.
It's nuanced and it's all relative to the average height of the dating population you're in but a few inches can be the difference between some attention and absolutely none.
This said, you can still somewhat compensate for height with status and other looks. Tom Cruise is 172cm but I don't think he ever struggled for dates.
We men of course have our own biological preferences perhaps equally irrelevant in the modern era, so this isn't a blame thing just an oft denied fact.
Oh and as to Tom Cruise - it is a hilarious kind of example I have heard so many times. The fact that people have to reference those who are monumentally successful in the top .000001% kind of proves the point.
I find that quite hard to believe. Otherwise, the range of heights would be much narrower, and humans would probably be much taller (we're barely taller than gorillas), with much less variation between cultures. I'd say either it's unlikely that there was that much genetic pressure on height, or that most of evolution height wasn't genetic (but limiting factor was something else, e.g. food - so only well-fed people could grow as tall as their genetic potential).
Also all of literature would suggest otherwise. Look at any documentary talking about a man who is considered attractive and see what word they use first. "Tall, dark and handsome" - notice the order. The list goes on and once you start looking for it you'll be surprised. Look at romance - novels - see how many of the men are short.
You could also speak to some women and ask them about it. If you ask enough you'll get at least some honest responses (not disparaging women, equally men may often be deceptive on this kind of question).
I'm also not sure I understand your argument - both men + women contribute to height, male height is only part of the equation (my dad is normal height my mum is very short and I am short for example). Also nutrition has been HUGE in stunting growth, societies with better nutrition have a very big increase in height (which also suggests sexual selection plays a role I'd say).
Height is also in a pretty narrow range anyway, +-2SD.
Finally I'd say that if you were significantly shorter than average and male + had tried your hand with dating you'd have a very raw and immediate series of data points that would be pretty compelling.
This isn't really a controversial point, in the same way men have a preference for a certain hip/waist ratio in women ("why don't all women then have that hip/waist ratio" you might ask following your existing argument...!)
Yes there other factors but height tends to be a prerequisite before they apply. Odds goes exponentially down based on how far from the mean you are. 5'9" vs. 5'5" is a world of difference.
'Success' is also not Boolean. I know very successful short guys who have had zero success with women.
Talking in blasé terms 'oh it is just one of many factors' is like saying possessing functioning legs is just one of many factors a footballer requires. Or having enough petrol is one of many factors in a car functioning properly. It's true but kind of missing the point.
The really interesting point is why people are so in denial about this fact that is so blatantly obvious.
I suspect it is a mix of those without this issue wanting to think their success was all attributable to their own skills, people not liking the idea that something uncontrollable could screw you so bad, women feeling it is an attack (it isn't at all), those who are shorter but not significantly below the mean having success (though reduced) and thinking it must apply to those shorter than them, etc.
Another interesting thing I have noticed is that short men is one of the few remaining immutable characteristics society allows people to mock openly. "What is she doing with that little squirt" is something I heard from a friend recently without a hint of self-awareness.
On the mocking, I agree but hopefully that’s slowly going away. It’s one of those things, like casual racism and casual sexism, that will take a while to fully disappear from everyday conversations. Some animal instincts are just what they are.
Most of the examples of guys who do well at very short height are either - some MASSIVE compensation in some other way (hugely confident, etc.) with a MASSIVE failure rate, or they are actually in a dating pool with a lower male height.
Obviously exceptions happen (I'm engaged for one!) but the impact it has is massive and I didn't know until my mid 20's, nobody wanted to admit it or talk about it and it would have saved me a lot of pain to know.
Therefore it's in their best interest to give you illusion of success in bite size chunks.
These services only amplifies the already attractive people who don't need matches anyway.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surely_You%27re_Joking,_Mr._Fe...
It’s not quite as bold as Feynman’s approach, but clear intentions and not trying to hedge a situation or avoiding being shot down was the key to success for me.
On multiple occasions I met a girl and just said out loud to my friends or hers that I am going to date her/go home with her and in the case of my wife I told some of her friends that I was going to marry that girl. My wife and I took another 5 years after that to get the timing right, but when either of us were single we’d start chatting again.
Also, it was 1946 - when women saw men as a necessary meal ticket. It's waaay less likely to work today, particularly for people living comfortably above the poverty line.
Even if people get many matches in the first place, the rate of any meaningful interactions is low.
Online dating just never worked for me, for the same reasons you describe. I think part of it is a combination of paradox of choice and part of it is people just not having faith in technology finding them something human. I went on dates where the other person sooner or later doubted the possibility of marrying someone they met online, and it usually degenerated from there into either friendship or nothing.
There's also the weird social expectation on many apps that males should message first, which results in females getting spammed, which then further results in females not messaging first, and the cycle perpetuates.
As a technology lover I really want online dating to work in bringing more compatible people together and increase overall societal happiness by increasing the average quality of marriage, but time and time again it seems to me that the best way to bring compatible people together is with offline events. Compatible people tend to want to go to similar places and do similar things, and any successful online dating app really should exploit that fact.
In fact, the most successful organizations I have seen at bringing together singles into stable marriages were not even explicitly about dating. I've seen far more stable couples form at mixed-gender sports teams, hiking groups, volunteer organizations, conference organizing teams, and other professional organizations where participants largely cared about the same causes.
When I was a user, I met a lot of people outside of my town and social circle. I dated a few here and there for quite a while. It isn't magic but it can be a controlled way to meet other people.
We’re also evolutionarily optimized to recalculate and reconsider almost constantly, so even if that works for you at the start, as soon as you have just one conversation that goes on a week, you’ll forget that little lie and pine for what you got a taste of. Or most people would, anyway.
The last part -- matching with people you like is where I see a real need for a specialist that I'm an unaware to exist -- there could be soooo much at play there. The demographics of that group, what that group REALLY wants in a partner, honest feedback for yourself, what to improve in yourself etc etc.
Also - bug your desired-sex friends and family. Show them your profile. Focus-group it. This has been massively helpful for me.
At the end of the day: change stuff and see what happens.
My wife and I are wondering how the Indian Matchmaker business model work. How do you align the incentives so you can help people and get some extra income?
I met and became friends with one of my still best friends by contacting them on a dating site and having zero expectations of ever meeting them, just because I thought they'd be cool to hang out with online (and they were).
My partner of the last 10 years was a friend of theirs. Never would have met my partner if not for the dating site, and never would have met them on a dating site.
Is this still true? When was the last time you tried Tinder/Bumble/OKC? There are tons of attractive people there.
Definitely not true and likely has never been true. Many of the most attractive women I know are active on online dating. People join online dating for various reasons. One is to expand your dating pool. If you've burned through a lot of your social network (or you don't want to poison it) then online dating is a great way to expand your horizon.
From what I gather, it really only amplifies what you experience in real life already. If a significant amount of people show interest in you from a very early stage - you will have no problems with online dating. If you require any kind of barrier to get interest, I wouldn't bother unless you have the incredible ability to not evaluate your self-worth from the app regardless of what happens.
If in 'real life' you could communicate with that many people outside of your social circles, it'd be the same.