Meeting women online is something almost every man has tried. Let’s face it, if you’re beyond college years and are not in a profession that is naturally conducive to many social connections, online and bars are practically your only options. And by the time a guy gets beyond his twenties, and definitely beyond his thirties, bars become less and less appealing.
I’m going to just assume that you know that Match.com, Plenty of Fish, and eHarmony are the big dating sites. The first two work similarly… people post profiles, search for others, write to others. eHarmony is a little different in that it claims a “scientific matching algorithm” to match you with compatible partners rather than let you just randomly shop.
I know that there are success stories from each of these big sites, but here’s the dark, dirtly little secret of the online dating world…
Meeting women online is a rigged game!
Dating online for guys typically goes something like this… after spending between a few weeks and a few months in the world of online dating (no matter the site) you’re going to make at least two very consistent observations about online dating:
- The women who initiate contact with you do not appeal to you in any conceivable way (and that’s the nice way of saying it), and…
- The women who do appeal to you do not respond when you write them.
If you have not yet made these observations, just bookmark this page and come back in another month or two and pick up where you left off.
Why is meeting women online so hard?
Meeting women online is so hard because the vast majority of even remotely attractive women who post profiles on major dating sites receive a LOT of attention. It’s not that unusual for an attractive woman on Match.com/POF.com to receive thousands of messages in a week. Even a “6” on the 10-scale can receive hundreds of messages in a week.
This fact alone explains why meeting women online is like this… The women who do initiate contact with you are not the ones who appeal to you because women better than a “6” on the 10-scale receive so many messages they don’t have time to go searching.
They just look for good options in their inbox. If you’re lucky enough to be one of the 20 out of 1000 they choose to read, consider yourself lucky. If you’re one of the two she answers out of the 20 she read, that’s like winning the lottery.
It is a healthy thing to examine yourself and explore the possibility that there may be some flaw in how you’re approaching this, but when you can see through the system that women to whom you’ve written haven’t even READ your message or viewed your profile, it’s hard to imagine how anything you said in your message or profile could be the problem.
Stop and think about this for a moment… In the span of a week an “8” could easily have 4000 messages in her Match.com inbox. You could be the coolest, richest, hottest professional stud athlete or movie star with world-class “pickup skills”, but if you write to an “8” at Match.com, even you would just be one of those 4000 messages and would probably be overlooked.
Meeting women online is 10 TIMES HARDER if you’re over 40!
That’s right… all that bad news above is much worse for older single men! I could put you into a coma offering my detailed speculation as to why this may be the case, but suffice it to say that based on the phenomenon mentioned above – how the women seem to be the ones buried in messages – is multipled when the women have one more objective criteria on which they can reject you.
So if you’re 50, few 40 year old women will be interested. And attractive 50 year old women are pretty rare (and in HIGH DEMAND).
The solution to meeting women online?
So by now you should see the problem you face. Meeting women online is usually a NIGHTMARE, so what exactly is the solution?
Maybe the solution to dating online for guys is to start drinking, lower your standards, get together with the first woman willing to be with you, see only her great heart, and try to convince yourself that you’re physically attracted to her. From watching many couples walking around together in public I would actually suspect that this may already be the most popular approach. Maybe there’s something to be said for that.
Or maybe you can join Facebook and social-network yourself into connections with enough attractive “friends” to make yourself feel more popular and less alone (all while never leaving your computer).
If you don’t like these solutions, then what else is there? I’m glad you asked…
Online Dating Recommendations
A few online dating recommendations will probably be of help if your trip into online dating has yielded only disappointment and frustration. I don’t know everything, but I have tried a lot of things and know a few things that work.
Get help!
No online dating recommendations will ever be of any use if you are very lacking in a basic understanding of the fundamentals of how dating and attraction works.
Let’s face it, some men are “naturals” when it comes to meeting women. When these men are single and looking for a date, a girlfriend, or a wife, it comes pretty naturally to them. They have some combination of social skill, confidence, instinct, and knowledge of how to attract women.
Others “Gump It” (as in “Forrest Gump”) by just being at the right place at the right time.
But many single men – dare I say MOST single men – could use a little guidance on how these things work. There are actually natural principles that govern attraction such that one does not need to have wealth or looks to attract a quality woman and close the deal.
If you have found this page and read even this far, you’re (1) almost surely not a natural, and (2) you haven’t already “Gumped it” into a relationship, so that probably means you’re in that category of guys who need to learn.
Fortunately helpful information on this subject is readily available.
David DeAngelo is probably the most popular “dating guru” out there. The backbone of his approach is his assertion that “Attraction isn’t a choice”. He convincingly reasons that there are things a man can do to create attraction, and there are things he can do to kill attraction. DeAngelo maintains that these things override any reasoning. So a woman may have in mind that she wants a man of a certain status, look, height, etc., but a guy who meets none of those criteria who does the things that create attraction will still win her over.
Further, if a woman does not feel attraction, then no amount of reasoning, gifts, kindness, favors, or compliments will ever change that (and ironically all that stuff typically does more to kill attraction than to build it).
In Attraction Isn’t A Choice David DeAngelo explains how to create attraction in women and explains how to avoid killing attraction.
Double Your Dating is another excellent eBook by David DeAngelo. This eBook is probably a best intro to DeAngelo’s concepts.
If David DeAngelo doesn’t scratch your itch, DatingAdvice.com is like a central hub for dating advice in nearly any niche you can think of. They even review my site!
The most important online dating recommendations
I could summarize David DeAngelo’s online dating recommendations from his premium program for you, or recite what almost every online dating site already advises — post good pictures, present yourself positively, use humor, etc. — but it’s still going to mostly be a losing battle. You could do EVERYTHING right and apply all the online dating recommendations you could find and still come away empty handed.
I describe this in greater detail at Meeting Women Online, but just to summarize here, the problem is simple supply and demand. Without getting into too much “theory” about it, the fact is that most remotely attractive women on dating sites get much more attention than they can handle, and the most attractive women don’t even have time to carefully read all the messages they receive, let alone reply. So even if a man has a perfect profile and writes the perfect intro message, his chances don’t really improve that much.
So if you shop online for local women, your chances of finding a woman who is attractive to you, nice, feminine, etc. who reciprocates your interest are probably somewhere south of your chances of winning the lottery. If you’re feeling THAT lucky, then read no further because my online dating recommendations may seem kinda “out there”.
So what’s the REAL answer to this problem?
Imagine if you will…
Let’s do a quick thought exercise. Imagine a world where there is a 20-to-1 ratio of single men to single women. I lived it, so let me give your imagination a little boost. I went to a specialty graduate school where there were the resident campus community was composed of approximately 25 single female students and approximately 500 single male students.
The results were that women who never stood out before were all of a sudden in high demand. On their larger more balanced undergraduate campuses they were just faces in the crowd unable to attract much attention. And the opposite happened for the men. Men who were extremely popular with the women on their larger, more balanced university campuses were all of a sudden light on prospects.
Well, the women quickly adjusted to their new “power status”, and it went to their heads. They quickly became much more picky. The men went the opposite direction. They adjusted their standards to what was available.
Until, that is, the guys discovered the nearby university hospital with an in-house NURSING SCHOOL with the balance going the other way, except even worse. It had around 300 women and 2-3 men.
Well, when my school’s guys discovered the nursing school, balance was restored to our world! Not terribly surprisingly our school’s women liked it none too much. In fact, any man known to have fraternized with the nursing school students was BLACKLISTED.
Pack your warm clothes
UKRAINE and RUSSIA are the equivalents of the nursing school in my story! So shopping there tops my online dating recommendations.
Although the reason for the apparent imbalance in America isn’t purely statistical as it was in my grad school, it is practical. And the same is true in Ukraine, Russia, and other countries of the former Soviet Union (“fSU”).
The main reason for the “friendlier market” in Ukraine is primarily the cultural dynamic there: (1) The women are more family-minded and (2) the men are alcoholics and shamelessly unfaithful in their relationships.
Seriously, if you took a random survey of men on the street in Ukraine you would find that MOST married men drink (a LOT, EVERY DAY) and cheat on their spouses. Single, faithful Ukrainian men without serious drinking problems are far outnumbered by attractive single Ukrainian women seeking a husband.
THAT FACT explains why even a very attractive Ukrainian woman would be much more receptive to a Western man who might have a chance of being faithful.
In these foreign venues dating online just doesn’t suck like it does locally. Sure, not every “10” will write you back, but some will. And if they sense you are serious about your pursuit, they’ll take you seriously. And even if you don’t reel in a “10”, you will almost surely do far better than you could locally.
Whatever arguments one would put forward against seeking a Ukrainian woman – cost, inconvenience, language, complexity, uncertainty, etc. – one simple fact is indisputable in my opinion: You can get a better deal there than you can get here.
Does this REALLY work?
OK, if you have previously heard anything about this Ukrainian dating idea, maybe under the heading “Mail Order Brides” (see Ukrainian Women Myths for what that REALLY means), you have probably gotten the idea that it’s all very dirty, sleazy, and scammy.
Well, if you don’t know what you’re doing, some of that can be true, but it’s far from the reality. As I say on the home page of this site, with a little common sense combined with a little education (available here, FREE) the scams are easy to spot and avoid (but make sure to read my site before you go web searching something like “russian women” or you WILL be scammed).
And with that common sense plus a little education, when you contact women on Ukrainian dating sites, attractive women DO write back, and they do take an interest. Not ALL of them, but a LOT more of them will reply than will locally.
And, if you’re actually serious enough to make a trip, attractive women WILL meet and date you.
Have a quick look at supermodel Gisele Bundchen.
During a tour in Kyiv I met a girl through an agency (basically like the ground office for a site) who looked a lot like Gisele Bundchen. Unfortunately I was visiting at a bad time – right over their holiday season when many are not in town – so we only got the chance to meet once for dinner. In conversation over dinner I asked about her experiences with meeting guys through the agency. She said that she had been on the site for TWO YEARS and I was only the second man she had met in person! NOT that I was the only one who’s invitation she accepted, but that I was the only one of two who actually made it there (I’m sure she received a lot of attention online from men seeking “virtual relationships”).
If you’re the skeptical type you might say, “Yeah, but why didn’t anything more happen?” Fair enough. Call it bad timing, bad luck, or whatever. But have you ever had a date with someone who looked like Gisele Bundchen? Seriously?
But there was another case where something more did happen. Although we’re divorced now, I did meet a Ukrainian lady online who I eventually traveled to meet, and then later married (a Ukrainian lady who, I might add, I’ve personally witnessed being mistaken in public for Angelina Jolie).
I know, “Ya, but you’re divorced, so it doesn’t really work”. Well, I was previously married to an American woman and that ended in divorce. Does that mean local dating/marriage doesn’t work either?
And have you ever married a woman who people mistook for Angelina Jolie?
Summary
So the very best of online dating recommendations I can offer is simply to shop a friendlier MARKET. Read Why Ukrainian Women? to see the results of that friendlier market described in more detail.
You probably found this page by searching for online dating recommendations, and this is by far the best thing I can offer along those lines.
If you want to know more, just go to the home page of this site and browse through all the pages. Maybe you’ll be hooked like I am!