Maybe he’s busy. Maybe he’s tired. Maybe he’s had a terrible week and the last thing he wants to think about is dating apps. Maybe he just doesn’t fancy me.
Maybe he’s ill.
Maybe he’s had a family crisis that has suddenly turned his mind away from dating and towards more serious matters.
Maybe he isn’t checking the app because he found a different one that was more his vibe.
Maybe he met somebody.
Maybe he’s one of those guys who swipes right on almost everyone, but after I messaged he took a longer look at my profile and realised I’m not right for him.
Maybe he initially fancied me, but something in my first message put him off.
Maybe he realised that he’s not in a great headspace for dating right now.
Maybe he swiped while drunk, then thought on it when sober and realised he didn’t fancy me after all.
“I did everything right though!”
When I write about online dating, often men drop by to let me know that they did everything ‘right’ (i.e. everything I recommend in my red-hot dating advice posts) and still they didn’t get a date. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, my dudes, but it’s possible for you to do everything ‘right’ and still not actually end up with a date/a shag/a partner or whatever it might be. Same is true of me, and that’s OK.
I put ‘right’ in scare quotes because what’s ‘right’ by me won’t always be what’s ‘right’ for every other person you might chat to on an app. But broadly the core rules are worth following: make sure you have a full, informative dating profile which gives enough information to help someone assess whether you’re a good potential match. When you message, be polite and respectful: complimentary, positive, and not aggressively sexual. Ask questions, show interest in them as a person rather than saying things that could have been copy/pasted to anyone. These things are, to my mind, necessary conditions if you want to get a date. They aren’t sufficient though. They are not, in and of themselves, enough to guarantee that you’ll get a response. And even if you do get a response, that person can walk away from the interaction for any reason they like. Even if you’ve been chatting for a while, and even if you were excited.
I understand it must be hard for straight men to hear this from a straight woman. I acknowledge (as I do in pretty much all the dating advice pieces I write) that there’s a huge gender imbalance when it comes to online dating, and that this imbalance affects you differently to me. However, because of the way I approach dating (I’m very proactive in contacting people), often the assumptions that commenters make about the experience I have on those sites are wildly inaccurate. On here, sometimes people you see me as this powerful sex blogger who must be inundated with charming suitors, and assume that I simply sit back and wait for the messages to roll in so I can take my pick. Thus I couldn’t possibly empathise with anyone about sending carefully-crafted messages into the ether and receiving no response. And… that’s not true.
This is not personal
Even if you are the world’s best dater, there is no point in the process where you can guarantee you’re definitely going to get exactly what you want because… well… humans don’t work like that. They have complex lives, and needs, and desires, and those things are in a constant state of flux. I know this is hard news to swallow, and I know it because it’s almost impossible for me to write about dating without somebody popping up to let me know that my advice isn’t worth shit because they did it and still didn’t get laid.
Well, join the club my dude. The vast majority of people on dating sites aren’t getting exactly what we want. What I want, personally, is a friendly/kind/horny/funny boyfriend with a moral compass and EU citizenship that’s transferable by marriage. Ideally he’d also have a powerful desire to kiss me on a picnic blanket in a sunny park, over cans of cider and badly-rolled spliffs and a selection of snack food from the M&S deli section. I’ve not found this guy yet, despite being solidly brilliant at writing dating profiles, sending messages, and filtering out men who don’t see me as a person. I haven’t found what I’m looking for, despite being pretty damn great and… that’s OK.
Maybe the guy I want to meet just isn’t on the app at this exact moment. Maybe he’s hanging out elsewhere and I need to broaden my horizons to find him. Maybe he’s not in the headspace for dating, having just left a long term relationship. Maybe he’s busy. Maybe he’s tired. Maybe he’s waiting till he’s in a better headspace before he messages back.
As I say, men sometimes seem annoyed with me for giving dating advice which – while good – doesn’t guarantee results. But no one’s advice can guarantee results, because humans aren’t video games with predictable outcomes if you press the right buttons.
I know it can be frustrating and sad when you put in all this effort and still don’t get anywhere, so I wondered if it might be helpful to share some of the things I tell myself when men don’t reply to my messages. Because I send quite a few, and they don’t always reply. And that’s fine. Far far better for them to ignore me than to chat to me and waste my time when they aren’t suitable, in the right headspace, enthusiastic about me or whatever it is.
If I’m truly honest with you, I don’t even find myself thinking about the guys I have messaged but never heard from… until men on the internet tell me I couldn’t possibly understand what it feels like to be ignored. I think I do, my friends. To me it feels the same as if I message a bunch of people on My Builder to get quotes for having my gas fire ripped out. Some of the builders will get back to me, others won’t.
Maybe they were busy. Maybe they had too many jobs on. Maybe I live too far away.
I’m grateful to the men who don’t reply to my dating site messages, to be honest. They’re far more helpful than the ones who simply message ‘hey!’ with no context or detail, or who’ll send me a half-hearted reply without asking a question – the men who are clearly disinterested but choose to chat to me because I just happened to show up. The ones who don’t darken my inbox at all have saved me a lot of time. And what does it matter to me? Dating is incredibly personal and because of that, perhaps counterintuitively, I don’t think any individual rejection is personal at all. I’m a stranger to these men, after all, and I’ve no idea by what criteria they’re assessing whether someone’s worth replying to.
Maybe they were busy. Maybe they were tired. Maybe they met somebody. Maybe they just aren’t for me. When it comes to strangers on dating apps, there’s only one thing I know with cast-iron certainty:
They don’t owe me shit.
5 Comments
And for God’s sake don’t start your conversation by just saying “hi”. Apparently that is the number one opening line by men and it is terrible. You might as well not bother. Your opening line should include a question (something for them to respond to) and should reference something in their profile (to prove that you have read it). As a man who is on the dating apps I have heard repeatedly from women that most men do not read their profiles (so they are swiping right purely based on photos – yuck) and most men put zero effort into that first message.
Your first message should show some effort and should show that you have read their profile and like them based on what you read, not just their photos.
Nothing is guaranteed but I have had good success with this method, which is really just “be a decent person.”
100% this. Thank you!
Every word of yours in this post is gold. I might add “maybe they doesn’t exist”, it’s just a profile created by the site to lure in more (paying) customers.
Ooh cynicism I like it. And yeah I know there are often bots on these sites too though from what I’ve heard from dudes I’ve dated they’re mainly there to scam rather than produced by the site. But yeah ‘maybe they don’t exist’ is a possibility worth adding to the list.
I love this “you did everything right” theory. I’ve got a wider theory that I’d like to share to get views on, and maybe this is something economists could study.
This applies mainly to online dating in a big busy market (like London) with lots of singles actively dating.
Imagine at the start of every week everybody’s goal is to have one date the next Saturday. On Monday you start liking, matching, messaging etc. By Wednesday you’ve got several people engaging with you. You decide to only focus on the best three options. You’ve already ranked these 1,2 and 3. 1 you really fancy and are excited whenever you get a message from them. You’re likely to respond straight away and feel a little emotionally involved in the chat. 2 you’d be happy to go on a date with too, but 1 has your focus. 3 is your fallback. You tell yourself you’d go on a date with 3 if you can’t get a date with the other two, but in reality you might just not bother in the end. You’re a bit indifferent to 3.
Nearly every week the following happens to nearly every person. This happens regardless of how attractive you are! You ask the 1 on a date early and you get no or no clear response. 3 asks you on a date and you dither, reserving your date for 1 or 2. By Friday 1 has ghosted you. You ask out 2 but that’s lost momentum, or maybe 2 asked you but you didn’t answer hoping for 1 to answer. You end up ghosting 3.
You’re dateless again that weekend. You might pine a little after 1, and think that 1 must have got a better offer. Now they’re on a date with somebody more attractive than you having a great time.
But they’re not, because to your 1 (to whom you were the 3), they were also the 3 to somebody even more attractive, so they ended up dateless as well. It was nothing you or they did wrong (unless you count being aspirational as wrong).
Also, you’ve probably lost all opportunity to date 1,2 or 3 again. Unless two people match and agree to date quickly, they rarely ever will. You don’t want to admit that 1 was a bit outside your league or had better options, and it’s awkward for 1 to admit that too. Worst of all, you lose 2 and you were the most compatible with them. That’s one of the very very few who are who is now lost to you forever (just look at how many archived dead chats with 2s are in your app – those are where your best options are).
I think this theory tells us a few other things. Think of all the actual dates you’ve had where there was no spark / chemistry or you weren’t attracted. Those people were already highly compatible with you and of very similar attractiveness levels to you. It’s not “the algorithm” that made them so (although that may be material), it’s the millions and millions of voting decisions cast every week by singles, that meant that you / they didn’t have any better options than them / you. That’s what accurately puts you very close together in terms of attractiveness (or at least attractiveness of your profiles – have you ever dated somebody far more attractive than their profile and thought “I got a bargain here”)
Also it makes me think that whether I get a hot date next weekend is dependent on whether two way outside of my league unknown and unconnected-to-me way people decide to date each other or not, which is kind of crazy.
Going back to GOTN’s real point, I think a lot of people (men especially) complain when they have great chat with a match, the chat reveals that they have far more in common then their profiles suggested etc, and it still doesn’t go anywhere. We still mostly rank people on the main attributes in their profile than the quality of the chat. It’s very rare for the 2 to jump into the 1 position just on chat alone, and the 3 never jumps into the 1 position.
Sorry if this sounds depressing! I actually take the opposite from it. I don’t feel upset, ugly or rejected when I end up without a date, and I’ve been doing online dating on and off for 15 years. I almost certainly reject somebody else (my 3) every week without even thinking twice about it. It’s all just economic forces and to succeed you need perseverance (and some luck!)