I tried to meet someone on OKCupid

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Jono
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23 Mar 2017, 7:51 am

GiantHockeyFan wrote:
:wall:
Did you even read what I wrote?

I was trying to help you avoid the same time wasting mistakes I did and benefit from my experience. There is no need to be so rude about what is very helpful advice coming from someone who is battle tested and knows many others who are all with similar tales. Don't you get it? You were likely NEVER going to get a date from her and I am trying to tell you this behavior is common there so don't take it personally and think there was anything you could have done differently. If you want to believe you 'failed' that's your business.

As for the Reddit, am I missing something here? They said almost exactly what was said here!

I'm done with this thread.


No they didn't say the same thing, there were two people who said that my statement "I see you're online" might be seen as threatening. To explain why I found those reddit replies more helpful, I was actually looking for advice from people who have had some success with online dating, your posts read like you haven't and were frustrated by your lack of success.



RayCarlsen
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23 Mar 2017, 11:05 am

You have two problems.

1. You're sure there is a specific deterministic reason why a particular woman lost interest.
2. You're trying to find that reason.

#1 is your real problem. It's usually not a correct assumption. Dating sites are swamped with males and women get overwhelmed with messages, especially if you're messaging women who are in the norm of what socially adept men like. The normal expectation for a man is to get a reply 5% of the time or so when you've composed a thoughtful message, and about 20% of the time that can lead to a date. This isn't to be taken personally, it's just behavioral economics.

Analysis turned into over-analysis becomes maladaptive in a hurry. (Source: I spent many years thinking like this.) In dating, we are primates with a conscious brain crudely attached. It's the former brain that makes the decisions on dating sites, the latter brain rationalizes reasons for it afterwards.

Trust the rejection, don't trust the reason.



Jono
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23 Mar 2017, 1:32 pm

RayCarlsen wrote:
You have two problems.

1. You're sure there is a specific deterministic reason why a particular woman lost interest.
2. You're trying to find that reason.

#1 is your real problem. It's usually not a correct assumption. Dating sites are swamped with males and women get overwhelmed with messages, especially if you're messaging women who are in the norm of what socially adept men like. The normal expectation for a man is to get a reply 5% of the time or so when you've composed a thoughtful message, and about 20% of the time that can lead to a date. This isn't to be taken personally, it's just behavioral economics.

Analysis turned into over-analysis becomes maladaptive in a hurry. (Source: I spent many years thinking like this.) In dating, we are primates with a conscious brain crudely attached. It's the former brain that makes the decisions on dating sites, the latter brain rationalizes reasons for it afterwards.

Trust the rejection, don't trust the reason.


Except that the problem with your argument is that if there is a specific reason, I can't improve on it if I don't know.



Last edited by Jono on 23 Mar 2017, 2:26 pm, edited 4 times in total.

RayCarlsen
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23 Mar 2017, 1:47 pm

Jono wrote:
Except that the problem with your argument is that if there is a specific reason, I can't improve on it if I don't know.


Indeed, it's worth thinking about and doing reflection and looking for input. You've spent a reasonable time on this already though, and with a million unknown and unknowable variables, even if you think about it for days on end and think you've figured it out, you're probably wrong anyway. So it goes, with human being problems. You need more data and then you maybe have something to work from.

Overreacting to one lost case can really hold you back.



Jono
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23 Mar 2017, 2:02 pm

RayCarlsen wrote:
Jono wrote:
Except that the problem with your argument is that if there is a specific reason, I can't improve on it if I don't know.


Indeed, it's worth thinking about and doing reflection and looking for input. You've spent a reasonable time on this already though, and with a million unknown and unknowable variables, even if you think about it for days on end and think you've figured it out, you're probably wrong anyway. So it goes, with human being problems. You need more data and then you maybe have something to work from.

Overreacting to one lost case can really hold you back.


Except that it's not just one lost case. The context of it is that I haven't actively messaged people on there since 2015 because of some trauma happening to me in my personal life. We were chatting for two weeks and the only reason why I was messaging this one person instead of sending first messages to lot's of people like I normally do is because she messaged me first. So if it wasn't for her, I wouldn't of been busy on OKCupid at all at the moment, it's not like I actively tried to start again. That's why I'm focusing on this one case, because it's the only one I've currently been involved with and wasn't actually planning to continue with online dating at this time.



RayCarlsen
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23 Mar 2017, 2:24 pm

Jono wrote:
We were chatting for two weeks and the only reason why I was messaging this one person instead of sending first messages to lot's of people like I normally do is because she messaged me first.


That sucks a lot. I've had weeks long email sessions with a girl, getting pretty intense, generally to get rejected romantically at various points before or after we have meet. I usually get depressed for a few weeks after each rejection even if I tell myself I won't. I used to message girls sometimes saying something like "listen, I've given up here, but I'm wondering if you have any feedback that would allow me to do better with the next girl?". I never got much I could work with out of this approach.

I think managing the rejection in ourselves is the important point. It's what I think I need to work on next. Men who able to brush it off and move on to the next one repeatedly are almost never single, even with some severe social quirks. You just can't treat each rejection like a software debugging problem and stay sane, imo.



Jono
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23 Mar 2017, 2:32 pm

RayCarlsen wrote:
Jono wrote:
We were chatting for two weeks and the only reason why I was messaging this one person instead of sending first messages to lot's of people like I normally do is because she messaged me first.


That sucks a lot. I've had weeks long email sessions with a girl, getting pretty intense, generally to get rejected romantically at various points before or after we have meet. I usually get depressed for a few weeks after each rejection even if I tell myself I won't. I used to message girls sometimes saying something like "listen, I've given up here, but I'm wondering if you have any feedback that would allow me to do better with the next girl?". I never got much I could work with out of this approach.

I think managing the rejection in ourselves is the important point. It's what I think I need to work on next. Men who able to brush it off and move on to the next one repeatedly are almost never single, even with some severe social quirks. You just can't treat each rejection like a software debugging problem and stay sane, imo.


You can't ask them directly, that's I've tried to post here and the OKCupid Reddit and ask for feedback from other people about what I might of done wrong. The problem in this case is that I don't think that I was rejected, rather I think that I did something that caused her to block me and I would of gotten a date with her if I didn't (in fact a date was even agreed to before I was stupid).



RayCarlsen
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23 Mar 2017, 2:36 pm

Jono wrote:
You can't ask them directly,


Why not? I've done it several times, usually I get something back.

I don't ever send more than one message unreplied though. If I haven't heard from her for about 2 days, my chances are realistically zero and there's nothing to gain from more attempts.

If you've already sent her messages in a row, yes, you're probably just raising her creep meter trying for any further communication. So it goes.



MagicKnight
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23 Mar 2017, 2:45 pm

GiantHockeyFan wrote:
women would flake over and over and over again to the point it completely destroyed my self-confidence and self-esteem.


For those exact reasons I don't go to OKC and Tinder any more.



Jono
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23 Mar 2017, 3:00 pm

RayCarlsen wrote:
Jono wrote:
You can't ask them directly,


Why not? I've done it several times, usually I get something back.

I don't ever send more than one message unreplied though. If I haven't heard from her for about 2 days, my chances are realistically zero and there's nothing to gain from more attempts.

If you've already sent her messages in a row, yes, you're probably just raising her creep meter trying for any further communication. So it goes.


I've gotten replies before after more than 2 days. The thing is, I wasn't trying to make her uncomfortable, I was just anxious and saw her online, so I thought we could chat then. I did send a second message in row on a previous occasion asking for feedback, where she replied that it was all good and that she was just a little busy. I was just really anxious and didn't mean to send off creepy vibes that mostly I tried to avoid (in fact, this time I deliberately chose to do everything through the OKCupid messaging service rather than move to e-mails like I normally do).



ltcvnzl
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23 Mar 2017, 3:28 pm

Maybe she felt you pressuring her. Some people can take very small things as offensive or traits of a bigger personality issue, then cut contact before get some attachment to someone who can be problematic.



The_Face_of_Boo
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25 Mar 2017, 10:45 am

Jono, if you create a fake female on okcupid and check it for few days, you will understand why you are so easily ditched and ignored there.



Peacesells
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25 Mar 2017, 5:16 pm

Jono wrote:
GiantHockeyFan wrote:
Jono wrote:
Not quite the answer I was looking for. In other words, it means that you don't know.

What do you want me to say? NOBODY knows for sure: all we can do is speculate. I'm just telling you you likely did nothing "wrong". I would suggest it is likely a combination of many factors, mostly because they (online daters) generally are emotionally unavailable. As well, Boo is correct that online dating is almost like a job board, where women are the employers. Like a job search, it's best to get offline and work on just talking to women in general. Believe me, there are no shortage of women with negative stories to tell, like my sister-in-law (she found her husband at the bus stop).

Maybe she is turned off my someone living with their parents, maybe they are turned off because you have XYZ hair color, maybe it's because you aren't an alcoholic like her father, who knows? All you can do is work with the information you have. It could also be a fake profile: there are no shortage of those, but given how even on eHarmony most women spent 3 seconds answering questions it's irrelevant.

You seem to be obsessing (like I once did) over why she ended it with you when in reality, there wasn't anything meaningful there to start with. I repeat that this behavior is very common on that site and God himself couldn't get a date with 80% of the women there.


Answers like, "you shouldn't use OKCupid" and telling me about your problems there means that you were probably doing something wrong too and it doesn't help me with my chances.

I've gotten better replies from the Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/OkCupid/comments/60of1t/advice_please/

You act like you must have done something wrong and it's your fault. Oh no, I sent her a message after the weekend and now she will obviously think that I am a stalker! How stupid of me! <- You sound like this to me.

Just accept that a lot of women on there are s*itheads and will flake for no particular reason. You sound like they are perfect beings and if someone doesn't work out it means that you must have done something bad.

And anyway would you really want a relationship with someone like that? It'd be like walking on thin ice all the time.