If you do, maybe it will give you a better appreciation of my situation and why it is so tough to take the risk of moving away to a new city, and leaving your whole network behind, esp. after you have been beat down emotionally for a few years already by online dating. I wish you well, but your experience is likely to be much like mine, except you do have the much better dating pool of Chicago, compared to Des Moines, like me. I bet what you will find is that, while there are many more women in your area, and probably also a higher % of them being without kids, not wanting only men with kids, not wanting men who are religious, at the same time, you are going to have even more competition for those women on the dating site, from other men who are non-believers, than I do here, so in a way, it may be a wash or even out between your dating pool and mine as far as finding success.

Another member here, EyesThatSmile (Marianne) told me a while ago that one of the problems with dating sites is that even if you are compatible with some of the few women out there in your local dating pool that are a match for you and are on a paid site, to actually find a partner and start dating them, you still have to win the "competition" at that time between you and any other compatible men, for her, that are active on the site the same time you and the woman are there as members, and I now realize quite well what she meant. She told me that "you don't want to deal with all of that competition, Tom", because she knew that with my lack of confidence, or "game" for selling myself as a dating partner to women, combined with my only average looks, that I would usually lose out to some other guy on the dating site that had somewhat better looks and more game than me with a woman, even if both of us were compatible with her.

So few people in online dating seem to realize, much less admit, that competitive aspect of the format, compared to organic dating, where the woman usually isn't connecting with or seeing other men the same time you meet her, so that, in that format, compatibility is much simpler. You either meet the woman's general, established preferences or standards, and if you pass those tests and she seems to enjoy seeing you, then you are off to the races for dating steady, assuming she is generally interested in doing that in the first place, rather than just parallel or casual dating, where she is seeing multiple men, playing the field, or maybe just wanting FWB arrangements with more than one man. Of course all of this may be equally true with men as well for how they screen and select women, but I kind of doubt it.

@TomMcGiverin It's a Meet Market ?

@twill In a nutshell, yes, it seems to be. Or, as Deb put it, it's a jungle. Either way, it is brutal, competitive, and most people in it seem to have very calloused hearts, whether their skin is similarly thick or not.

Gosh , that seems depressing. Do you have a female friend that is a trusted advisor? Maybe youbshould get a friends advice.

@Bigwavedave It is depressing, but it is reality. I have both a trusted female friend that advises me on this and other matters, as well as a female therapist who is in her 30s. They both concur and agree with my assessment on the local dating pool and my predicament. It is what it is, Dave...

I have several good local friends, who are my support system. I have three siblings, whom I am estranged from, that all live out of state anyway. I have no other living family, except a cousin who lives far away in Indiana. So yes, finding a partner is a big focus in my life, and appropriately so, according to me, my friends, and my therapist. And the success of that search is mostly out of my hands...Count yourself lucky Dave, if, like I used to be before becoming widowed, you are part of the smugly married.

@TomMcGiverin So why can't you move?

@twill Did you just skip over reading the part about my family and that my friends here are my whole support system, twill? I am going to guess that your reading skills are fine and that you are simply mentally obtuse, like the warden in The Shawshank Redemption. You most likely lack any basic empathy and that's why you made such an ignorant and stupid judgement and suggestion. Why should I move and leave my whole support system behind on the blind hope that moving to a better dating pool, without even knowing anyone in my new city, will turn out to be successful in finding a partner, while meanwhile I get to be lonely and isolated from my support system as far as in person contact? You clearly have no appreciation of my present emotional reality or what it is like to risk jumping from the frying pan in to the fire, so to speak, emotionally, by leaving behind one's emotional support system for a new location and starting over socially from scratch. It is also not that easy at my age, already retired, and seldom attending even a UU church, to make new friends, esp. not knowing anyone to start with in a new town.

Or, more likely, you are just a troll that likes to drop a stupid, judgemental quip, with no real intent to help, just so you can start an argument......

@TomMcGiverin I apologize for that. Evidently my reading skills are poor. I thought you wrote something different, like this:

"I have several good local friends, who are my support system. I have three siblings, whom I am estranged from, that all live out of state anyway. I have no other living family, except a cousin who lives far away in Indiana. So yes, finding a partner is a big focus in my life, and appropriately so, according to me, my friends, and my therapist"

@twill That is what I wrote. What you didn't seem to appreciate is that all I have, as far as a support system, is here in the Des Moines area. If I moved away, I would have nothing for a support system locally, just friends back in Des Moines available only by phone or e-mail, which would be very inadequate for me, emotionally. If I did move away for a better dating pool, it would probably be Minneapolis or Chicago.

@TomMcGiverin IDK, at some point you gotta do what you gotta do.
When you get between a hard place and a rock, you gotta choose one
Friends and therapists are listeners. You are the actor.

@twill I choose staying put, tough as it is, because moving away with no safety net of local listeners, like the friends and therapist, are what helps me cope with the emotional rollercoaster of online dating. I feel very certain that if I removed myself from them by moving hundreds of miles away, not knowing anyone where I moved to, at least for most of a year, let's say, would be emotionally devastating and pretty likely to make me depressed enough to become suicidal within less than a year, so it really would be jumping from the frying pan into the fire. I am not willing to gamble like that with my life and my mental health, much as I may be already suffering now. And remember, there are no garauntees that dating would work out and succeed in a better city soon enough to get me a new, compatible partner there, and make up for what support I left behind here. It is a much easier gamble to make when you are someone else making armchair quarterback judgements on another person's life. You are risking nothing yourself in urging me to move away.

You are basing your advice more on theory, while I know myself better than anyone else and I am basing my decision on personal history, facts, and my unique knowledge of how I am wired, compared to other people who might do better in making that move rather than staying put.

@TomMcGiverin alright man. Take care. I enjoy your "company" and comments here at agnostic

@twill Well, I have to say, I appreciate hearing that. Esp. after Deb, below, keeps taking me to task for everything I say here. I have had enough bashing here from her.

You are so right about all of that. Your comment speaks volumes. Finally meeting someone and dating them steadily, even if it isn't permanent, feels so good to no longer be alone and feeling hopeless and discouraged. Which is probably also why some online dating veterans end up settling for someone that they never would have settled for when they first set out on the search, but that is natural human nature, to simply want to be done with it for a long while, if not for good. as the dating game just exhausts and sucks the life out of you if it goes on for years fruitlessly.

And you are also right, that so many bring it on themselves, either thru clinging to impossible standards for a partner, at least impossible for them with what they bring to the table, and sometimes impossible for anybody to measure up to. Another way people doom themselves to loneliness, is thru continued toxic behavior in the dating game, by sabotaging themselves or constantly mistreating others in the process, thru lying, game-playing, or not showing appreciation or kindness to others, instead just being selfish about the whole process.

@TomMcGiverin And then there are the scammers. I got stung badly once. I even mailed a package to the FBI to get them to pursue the perpetrator, but got crickets for a response. I also feel badly because I often excluded Black women. Then I met a lady in the supermarket and had a fair relationship for a few years, ended by her alcoholism and other values. I got hugely lucky somehow on Silver Singles with another Black lady, and we are very happy. But I especially remember going through numerous profiles and wondering what sort of society would produce women who were lonely, but unwilling to do more than post their profile. My invitations were ghosted more than 95% of the time. Sucks to be them.

@racocn8 I have never been burned by a scammer, either just lucky I guess, or too smart for them. I also never considered messaging a black woman on a dating site, as I figured, "Why bother? It's hard enough to find a white woman with mutual compatibility for me?" But then, I started to realize that maybe some black women are ok with and interested in possibly dating white men, not just within their race, and that also, some of them might actually be more realistic and open-minded about who they will date than most of the white women who kept rejecting me out of my local dating pool on Match. So I finally did meet up with a younger black woman from Match that seemed to click with me, but she ended up rejecting me after we met in person, probably due to a combination of my being twelve years older, and also, tho I know it may sound shallow on her part, because I refuse to get a smartphone. She probably felt or assumed I was too rigid or outdated for her.

My experience has been just like you tho, most of my time on Match, 90-95% of my first messages to new women have been ignored or not replied to. Since Covid tho, my response rate has been significantly higher than before Covid. Why that is, I can't really know, but I can guess a few factors have helped. Since last spring, Match returned to its old profile format in an important way, in that members can once again view what trait preferences the other member is looking for in a partner, on things like race, education level, kids situation, religious affiliation, drinking/smoking habits, etc. Before that, for over a year, you had to just fly blind in choosing who to message that might be compatible and try to guess those things from the profile essay and what traits they identified for themselves on those issues. So, during that time, I was probably messaging way more women who, on paper at least, were not very compatible for me, at least in their minds.

Secondly, since Covid, and all the isolated alone time it brought for singles, I think many of these women have rethought their previous attitudes on going it alone the rest of their lives and are giving online dating more of a serious and honest effort to find someone for a life partner. They seem to have less apathy, ambivalence, and impossibly high standards, compared to before Covid. Ah, the blessings of a pandemic!...

Compared to women, men have little choice at our age but to use dating apps, unless they are part of some social network like a church or still working in a job where they can meet singles. And, esp. in more conservative and traditional parts of the country, like the Midwest, women are not going to approach men in public or at private events for men to meet them that way. But, as some women here on Agnostic have said, if a woman is good looking enough, she will get approached by single men on a regular basis at events, even at our age. So, provided they have the elite looks, women, at least in some parts of the country, will get all the opportunities to date single men as they desire, just from being approached when they are out and about. That is not going to happen for single men in this society, even if they are above average looking.

Of course there are always exceptions, but the rules I've mentioned here seem very true. So I have no doubt, Deb,. with your looks, you could get about all the dating opportunities you wanted, same as from a dating app., but quality of opportunities and of dating partners, is a whole other matter and a separate discussion entirely.... Maybe these things explain why you have never used a dating app, or even needed to, besides just your general ambivalence about dating....

@deb57, many women choose that and a few men. I live in an active adult community of 375 homes. The singles club is 2 men and 63 women. I'm not sure exactly what you can deduct from that, but it is one piece of data.

@Bigwavedave Part of the reasons for the singles group where you live could be that your neighbors there are much older than me or Deb, and thus, there is a greater % of women who are widowed, rather than still married, while the married men there have wives that are still kicking, so they aren't widowed yet and thus, are not again looking for partners. It's my curse that I am still young enough that most women my age have not become widowed yet, and if they are single at this time, it is due to divorce. The numbers, and my prospects for dating, may well improve a lot in another five or ten years with more women in my dating pool becoming widowed, but why would I want to just sit on my hands, still alone, and wait for that?

@Bigwavedave I live in a rural town of fewer than 18,000 people. Of those people, I'd guess at least 85% of them carry very strong religious and political affiliations that differ from mine. The other factor is longevity. In my age group, 64, women just outnumber the hell out of men. Often if a man is single at my age, there is a very good reason for it.

@TomMcGiverin thank you for the nice compliment. I consider myself just average looking to invisible at this stage of my life. When I was younger, though, I was really beautiful, and I can attest that "getting approached by single men on a regular basis" was a very mixed bag. The creeps and users will literally elbow the decent guys out of the way much of the time.

@Deb57 I have no doubt that was the case, and it is also partly why at this age, I am very reluctant to approach a woman at a concert or public event, even if she looks attractive and might have some things in common with me. Too tired of being shot down or striking out, and no doubt a lot of it is due to conditioning that women in our region experience from the creeps and users, since they tend to lump all men who are strangers that approach them into one negative group. I am too fed up with it to risk my feelings or spend my time approaching strange women who are unlikely to give me a chance, no matter how well I talk to them. Esp. since I have never had great confidence approaching strange women at bars or concerts, even when I was younger and more attractive looking. Trying that now seems silly and useless. I would rather use a dating site, where I at least know that most of the time they are truly single and looking to date, plus it plays to my strengths, which are writing and expressing myself well in describing who I am thru the profile format. Not much I can do about my looks. My pics either pass their test for looks or they don't.

@Deb57 I wish I had that kind of gender ratio in my local dating pool on Match, but, like you say, it wouldn't really make much or any difference, as they would not accept someone with my culture and lifestyle traits differing from them, and I would not accept women who were strongly religious, country music lovers, or political conservatives, as well as heavy drinkers or daily smokers. Or someone really family-oriented. And those differences set me as incompatible, either from my end or theirs, with about 97% of the women in my local dating pool. So I have no choice but to keep plugging away and hope I can win somewhere down the line, by playing the long game, as they say in sports...

I also agree with you Deb, about how in a dating pool that lopsided with women, men who are still single at our age are either misfits for the local dating pool, like me, or else they do have something personally wrong with them. I am firmly in the first group and my long and happy marriage before my late wife got ill and died, is my proof of that, my "human credential", as Fox Mulder used to say on The X-Files TV show. And, as that was my only LTR so far in my life, I will put my relationship track record up against anybody and in most cases, mine will be better and more successful than all these divorcees that reject me so often on Match. Why the hell do they think they are so superior to me, with their comparatively failed record at relationships? That is the ? I would love to hear answered by some of them, but never will...

@TomMcGiverin in your case, I would guess that it's just a matter of chemistry. Women in general are not nearly as critical about looks as men tend to be. We tend to be more emotional than visual, but many of us can sure pick up on vibes pretty quickly, even online. A man who comes off as desperate or impatient is carrying a huge red flag. This is sad for men who radiate the vibe because they are just that lonely, but it comes off as predatory to a woman who doesn't know him. I recommend striking up un-forced, non-threatening conversations as though a woman was not a potential partner, but the guy next door. No expectations means no disappointments.

@Deb57 So you are saying Deb, in as polite a way as possible, that you think I come off as desperate? Maybe so, maybe not, but you have never been there with me in person for a first in person meeting from a dating site, so how can you honestly know? I really think it is more of simply not fitting the compatibility requirements of my dating pool, on drinking, kids, religion, etc., because I very seldom even get to a first in person meeting in the last six months, as the messaging usually brings up dealbreakers, mainly on their end, sometimes on my end, so the meeting part doesn't even happen.

I respect your mind and you have the right to your opinion, Deb, but I think you are wrong here and maybe even projecting a bit onto me from other men you have encountered. Sorry, I will not try to approach women in the asexual manner you are recommending, because, if anything, I already come off too asexual or androganous to most women, from what I have been told. As for being impatient online, I have always been pretty patient about meeting women in person after about always trading some messages, but I have also made it clear to them that I don't want to end up a texting or phone buddy, nor do I want to waste their time or mine by not meeting up in person or video chatting within a couple weeks or less from first connection. And I can tell you that most women in online dating respect and understand that, as their time is valuable too and they don't want to delay it too long and waste time on someone who will never be more than friendzone material. I also, in that messaging, make it clear that I am flexible about waiting on someone who is still employed, and or exceptionally busy.

So I must respectfully disagree. The problem is much more about my dating pool than my behavior or approach. The last woman I met in person, twice in three days time, gave me lots of compliments on my interesting personality, gentlemanly behavior, etc, and said she would really like to keep seeing me as a friend, but I told her I felt too much attraction for her, and was open about that even after the first time I met her, to settle for that and subject myself to the frustration of being permanently friendzoned and or disappointed later when she never ended up feeling any chemistry or physical attraction for me. I just think you don't know enough about me, having never even met me Deb, to make those kind of judgments about me. Same with the other women on here that love to blame the man every time for his dating woes. Do you really see much of men on here blaming the woman for her dating woes, cuz' I sure don't....

And if a woman is so insecure, that a man radiating an honest vibe, or even admitting that he is lonely, after several years of being widowed, if that seems like such a turn off to her that she rejects me just on that, I am better off without someone like her, who is probably in denial about her own loneliness or flaws, since seeing that man as predatory is a hell of a leap, in my opinion. She would seem to really be lacking in empathy, with that kind of projection and judgement, so no loss there. I want someone emotionally healthy and with good empathy, not someone prone to knee jerk assumptions and projecting all of her baggage from past men onto me. Women don't deserve that kind of shit from me because of other women, and I don't deserve it from them.

I would love to have the luxury of being a female, with above average looks, living in a dating pool where the social norms allowed me to simply sit back and let men do all the pursuing of me in the dating game, because in that position it is so easy to judge and assume things about the man, which may be totally wrong if they gave him the chance to prove himself and get to know him over time, instead of maybe making some allowances for being lonely, awkward, etc. in his approach. Can you honestly say that women would always or even usually do any better if they had to do the pursuing? Maybe some greater empathy and more realistic expectations, by the woman, would be a better solution to the situation. Because too many women want a man with lots of smooth confidence, or "game" with women, as the kids call it, and yet they also want a man with sensitivity, empathy, a kind heart, honesty, etc. and the fact is, you are seldom going to get all that in one person. So they instead choose the asshole who is self assured, but proves later to have few other positive qualities.

@TomMcGiverin I wasn't implying anything, but you seem to have locked onto that pretty quickly. Perhaps you might want to examine why your immediate impulse was to take that so personally. One thing I have noticed that you do very often is fixate on looks. While looks can be a factor when people don't know one another, people should be able to get past that once they are acquainted. Being female, even if one is lucky enough to be somewhat attractive, is hardly ever a luxury. We don't sit back while men flock around pursuing us, and at my age, a man who pursues too eagerly is all the more suspect. As we mature, what we want from a relationship needs to mature and mellow accordingly. A man who comes off as too focused on superficial matters, or in too much of a hurry to push a relationship along, is a major turn-off to many women who have been through some shit.

@Deb57 I may well be wrong Deb, but rest assured, the women who are above average looking, at least in the online dating game here in the Midwest, are able to do exactly that, sit back and never have to pursue the men on the dating site. And if they had to live in my shoes, they might have a whole different perspective about the dating game and how easy or hard it is to do the pursuing and not come off, as you say, impatient or desperate, etc. Much easier to say and judge when you don't have to pursue much, if any, of the time.

And I have had this confirmed many times that women who are above average looking get tons of messages from men, some high quality, some low quality, but my point is that it gives them the opportunity to meet several new men each week, keep their dating skills sharp, feel like they have the pick of the litter, as the men keep chasing them, one man after another, and thus they can sit back much more comfortably in the first in person meeting feeling like they hold all the cards, the same way an employer does in the dreaded traditional job interviews that I so hated before I was retired and they sat behind the desk holding all the cards, keeping all their agenda and judgements to themselves, until I got the final verdict, if ever, of being hired or not. I hate that kind of powerlessness and inequality, and I don't miss it a damned bit being retired. Too bad I still have to suffer that in in the dating game.

@TomMcGiverin it's pretty evident that the grass here looks a whole lot greener from your vantage point than it actually is.

@Deb57 We'll have to disagree on that, Deb. It would be nice tho, at least in my eyes, to get to change places for a little while, at least, as I think many women lack empathy for what men have to deal with in the dating game. And I have heard plenty from women, including you, about their side of it. And I think I can honestly say that I probably have more empathy for their situation than they have for my side, tho I know you are not going to agree with that.

@TomMcGiverin no, I get it. You feel singled out. What you're experiencing is actually what everyone is experiencing, male or female. Dating isn't a "game." It's a jungle full of pitfalls, and the older you are and the more limitations you have, the harder it is to navigate that jungle. Have you even considered the possibility that, rather than this is you being picked on, you were just lucky as heck in your previous relationship and now, as unfair as it may feel to you, you're simply being subjected to the same struggle everyone else is also undergoing?

@Deb57 Maybe, maybe not. I do know that I was very lucky to have met my late wife, and that she was, tho not perfect, nobody is, an exceptional woman. But I also have to believe that she is not the only compatible woman for me, and that there is someone still out there that is single, in my local dating pool. But, yes, I do despair that I may well either never meet her, thru online dating, since it appears that most women like that have given up on dating or at the very least, like you, Deb, won't use online dating. If that is the case, I will likely never meet her. The other reason I may never meet someone like that again, is that online dating is, whether people recognize it or not, also a competitive process, where even if someone is compatible for you, you are competing with hundreds of other men they are seeing profiles of at the same time. So it is not like organic dating, where you are usually meeting a woman offline, who is probably not seeing anyone else, and you are only needing to measure up to her general standards for her to begin dating you. In online dating, you not only need to be compatible with her and your standards, but you have to stand out enough against the competition at that given point in time, for her to choose you among the men she is connecting with at that time.

So being compatible with her at that time that you meet, is not enough, at least in the online dating scenario, you also have to be the winner among the competition at that time. This, of course, applies to both sexes in online dating, and only to those who choose to seek exclusive, commited relationships as their goal in online dating, rather than just a number of compatible people to date at the same time casually. At least in my local dating pool on Match, it appears that the vast majority of women are seeking the former goal, rather than the latter, in their search for people to date.

@Deb57 One bitter truth, I must admit, Deb, is that when I first began online dating, I still had this fantasy, belief, or delusion, that having been in only one LTR, a marriage that was long, happy and successful, ending in widowhood, would somehow be impressive enough to most women in the dating pool on Match, that they would be fairly interested in me and that I would not have anything like the struggles I have had to find even a few women who were compatible enough and mutually interested enough to end up meeting up or dating more than a couple times.

Boy, did I quickly discover, not only how mismatched I was for the vast majority of the women in my dating pool, esp. in their eyes, but I also found that, even tho my relationship history and track record were seemingly superior, as a widower who was one for one with successful LTRs, that it cut no ice with or impressed most of the women on Match, even the divorced women and probably esp. them, because they have always seemed to mainly prefer men who were divorced like them, illogical as that seems. My guess is probably that they prefer fellow divorced folks as potential partners, because they assume widowed men either don't understand their divorce experience enough, can't empathize adequately, etc. or that widowed men are all still hung up on their dead wives or will never accept another woman, etc. Either way, to me, those attitudes and assumptions, wrong tho they may be about widowed men by divorced women, prove my point that probably way too few divorced women seek and receive competent therapy after their divorce, so they prefer men who are divorced so they can get some of that sympathy and understanding they failed to get from a therapist after their divorce. Such is life and nothing I can do about their bad, wrong choices on any of that, not seeking therapy, and choosing to try again only with men that also share their history of failed relationships and probably bad relationship skills and qualities..

@TomMcGiverin for ages now, every time anyone mentions online dating, you post the same verbose complaint almost verbatim. It's like a broken record. You could save a lot of time by simply copying and pasting, because the complaint never changes. And you are always the poor victim not being given a chance to show how awesome you are by myriads of heartless, shallow women, who apparently just sign onto dating sites purely to torture poor men like yourself. After watching you post that same song and dance over and over and over, your story has lost some of its credibility, I must say.

@Deb57 I feel sad to hear you say that Deb, because the story is 100% true, whether you believe it or not. And, to be honest, since we will never meet in person or date, it really doesn't matter much to me in the long run if it seems credible to you or not. My friends here where I live all know way better than you that it's the truth, as they knew me before I was widowed and still do after. What do you really know about me, Deb? Hell, according to your own past words, if I remember correctly, you have been married and divorced four times, and wouldn't, according to your own words, know if a man was good or healthy emotionally or not, because you have been wrong so many times. So, while I wish you felt more positively about me, I consider the source, and don't put much stock in your judgement, since even you have invalidated it in the past. Please keep your future judgements about me to yourself, Deb, or I will block you. I am tired of your constant criticism and negative judgement of me on this forum, and I doubt most other people here see it as fair and valid either, or they would be weighing in on your side.

Ever think about that aspect, Deb? You really do seem somewhat callous and lacking in empathy, Deb, which is funny for someone who in the past has, herself, repeated the same tales of cruelty by your former husbands. I am one for one on successful LTRs with my one good marriage, How about your record, if you feel you have so much qualification to judge me, Deb? Ever notice how nobody has jumped in to record an emoji of agreement with you or me about this dispute, Deb? Nor have they posted any comments of agreement or disagreement. Why do you feel the need to publicly humiliate me here? Just because an unpopular story, at least to some, is repeated, does not make it automatically untrue. Check your logic on that, Deb.

Like all of us on this forum, Deb, I have the right to speak my truth, to my opinions, and to my feelings. And you, on this thread, have continually shown little respect or compassion for any of those... Who died and made you moderator or judge for this forum?