Alright, so I am recently divorced after about 20 years. I am 57 years old, and looking to start dating again. What is the best dating app out there?????

Thanks

I’ve been thinking about all those young widows in Ukraine. Seems like they might not mind living with an old goat in a podunk town where there’s no Starbucks or Target, just to be farther away from the Russians.

If I were to start over again I’d go to church.

I think Mike is onto something there, unless you’re just looking for ass, in which case Tinder will sort you out with many girls who have daddy issues.

If I were ever single again, I do believe I would stay single, probably forever.

The pastor at church just shared today that he and his wife of five years met through E Harmony.

She was in Houston and he was in Lincoln NB.

After a few tries and 3 different sites, I am jaded. Cannot say I'd recommend any of them. Likely a different experience for those a decade or three younger, after the menopause years it's a full auto crap shoot at a shit show. We are all the sum of our experiences and by this age there is a lot of baggage, and very few who are sincere and not trying to continue "shopping up". If ladies have always been friendly with you, they'll be friendly in whatever social circles you may have. If you're a multi millionaire GQ, Brad Pit, and Clooney all rolled into one you'll do great ... anywhere.

Match.com (also known as Leftovers.com) likely has the greatest number to waste more of your time and money. EHarmony did seem the most sincere, yet far fewer members. Country living has it's disadvantages with even less close by to choose from. Despite there being hundreds of specific titles, about 3 companies own most every site and yet they all work differently with different filters.

You could try and spend your fortune at the casino slot machines and when you win big, see who follows you into the elevator. (sarcasm off) Yes, I think it's that bad.

Just go with the interests you now have and put yourself out there.

eHarmony is where my wife and I met. I was 58 at the time, she a few years younger and a widow.

Here are my experiences and observations:

1) The more you pay for the service the better quality of the average prospect.

2) The cheap or free sites especially, but even the more premium sites, have many weirdos, sickos, men pretending to be women (trans but not telling you), gold diggers, and very damaged goods. Even prostitutes and foreign brides.

3) Be discreet about your profession and wealth. Women are wired for hypergamy. If you are high income or otherwise wealthy, obscure it. If you are everyday middle class, be alert to probing questions about your income or net worth. If you are presenting as wanting serious relationships rather than casual dating, I would suggest putting on your profile as part of who would be your ideal match is a woman who is financially responsible. I did that, and I believe it attracted a few good candidates and probably scared off a few bad candidates.

4) You'll have divorcees mostly as your dating pool. Many will be looking for a financial rescue. Maybe their alimony is running out soon. Maybe they got legitimately financially screwed in divorce.

5) Do some sleuthing before connecting with anyone. Reverse image search their photos. Pay attention to what they put in their profile. Once you start chatting or meeting in person, use the info you learn to do more sleuthing.

6) Start slow with actual contacting. Browse lots of profiles on multiple dating sites (even the free ones). You will learn to read between the lines and get a feel for different personalities and agendas.

7) If you're looking for casual dating and some sex, it's fine to be upfront. Though I'd say it more like you're not looking for marriage yet. Plenty of women are looking for casual dating sex. I ran across several who were quite up front about it, some even were explicitly looking for a polyamorous situation or were in open marriages.

8) Online dating provides tons of quantity but no quality control. Other approaches such as Meetup, local interest groups, church, etc are a far better probability of meeting people with similar interests. You get the opportunity to meet and get to know them without the context of a date.

9) Widows may have much less baggage.

Yikes.
This is creepy. Per the Ukraine women and foreigners looking for a free ride, I know a guy that has had zero luck. I think he’s on his third foreign bride? Had a lovely American wife and daughter, don’t know what happened there, but suddenly he was dating a Russian online, married her, brought her here, then she left…then he was talking about the Philippines, and last I heard he had a Ukrainian that needed a home because of the situation over there. To my knowledge, none have worked out, matter of fact when last they went on vacation together, the Ukraine gal refused to come out of their room and join the hosting group for the entire weekend (and it was family, not strangers).

My experience is dating apps are a waste of time and money.

I got tired of lots of first-and-only bad dates so I signed up for eHarmony back in late 2011 and met my wife there, turns out she lived like 5 miles away the whole time, meanwhile I was going all over creation using other dating apps and methods. We got married in 2012 and now I'm a busy Dad of two boys and a girl.

eHarmony is not free or cheap, but it's worth it. It's also a bit of time and work to get it set up as they do an extensive personality profile on you which is how the system matches you up.

It used to be owned and operated by the founder who was more a conservative/Christian type and in fact eHarmony was THE most popular dating app for years amongst Christians IIRC but I think he sold it a while back and it changed a bit but I'm sure it's still far better than most dating apps or services.

Don’t do it. Buy a Dillon 1050 and live your life in peace.

I got divorced at the end of 2013, and signed up for Match.com in mid-2014. It was OK then, you could search and see anyone based on your preferences, decide who to approach and send an email. I used it off and on, but now it's turned into swiping similar to Tinder and I stopped using it a while back.

Since then I've used Zoosk, Tango/Fiesta, Tinder, Bumble, OKCupid, and Badoo. Tango turned into a shit live streaming app and Fiesta died - but before it did it seemed to use the same database of people as Badoo.

Zoosk sucked because it would present you dormant profiles of people that are not active recently and say they are interested in you. Perhaps that is sort of true because you match their "wants" stated in their profile, but it's shady at best.

Tinder has the most people but it's filled with fakes and scams and crazies.

Badoo is good in other places but here seems it's mostly obese black and hispanic women, with some obese white women here and there. It's popular in Asia so you will get a decent number of hits from Asian women that are still in Asia and looking for an American.

OKCupid is ok but I can't say I've actually met anyone in person through it.

Bumble is probably the best at having real people and not too many fakes. It used to be set up to give women more control - after a match the woman had to initiate the conversation within 24 hours or it expires. But guess what? Women don't initiate and if they do they just say "hi" or "how is your day" or something like that and expect you to do all the work after that. Now they can have a canned opening line that you have to answer.

Facebook dating seems to be all fakes. Mostly useless.

I have tried paid access to most of these at one point or another. Usually to see the accumulation of "likes" that don't seem to get resolved by swiping. I've also met people through social media apps like WeChat (Chinese), but that is more common with ones used outside the U.S. I do not hit up strangers on Facebook in the U.S.

But here's the rub:

The data shows that women consistently only "like" the top 10% or so of men on these apps. An average or even above average guy will get very few matches, and below average will get none. Men "like" women kind of 50/50 or so. The result is women have 100's or 1000's of likes and most any guy they "like" will be an instant match.

And the top 10% of guys have lots of options and play around a lot and women can't get them to commit and then they complain "there are no good men" or "all men are assholes".

Dating over 50 is like shopping at Goodwill, you're just looking for something that isn't broken and doesn't smell bad.

Seriously, I've had favorable experiences with Facebook Dating. It's free and quite a few times the profile shows friends that you have in common. Always good to have references.

I've had some good experiences with Match as well.

eHarmony and a couple of other sites can get expensive. There's the initial membership that lets you see profiles but then if you want to respond or text, it's an extra step up in cost of membership.

Tinder and some of the other hookup sites are more of a younger crowd,

The bigger thing is what to do after you match, text a few times and decide to meet. Dating over dinner gets expensive real quick. Spend $100-$150 on a one time date a few times and you start to re-examine. Had one date, didn't even make it through appetizers. I'm now all about meet for coffee, beers at a microbrewery, quick easy hike around town, breakfast or an informal lunch.

Then there's the red flags I've learned. Never been married; if over 50 there's a reason they haven't been. Looking for my Prince Charming, knight in shining armor or soulmate. No, they've got unrealistic expectations, relationships are work and they're expecting someone to fix everything for them.

Sorry if I sound jaded. I've actually had a couple of relationships that lasted for several months that started in on-line dating sites. There's hope out there. The lady I'm currently dating, she and I met on Match a few weeks ago and so far it's looking good.

quote:

Originally posted by tenmm:
Buy a Dillon 1050 and live your life in peace.

And get a dog.

^^^ Add to that that:

"I have x kids and they are my world!" - all their pictures have their kids in them.
"I'm living life to the fullest" - fullest stomach usually
"I'm a world traveler" - been to Cancun, a Carnival Cruise of the Caribbean, maybe a package tour to Europe.
"Swipe left if you voted for Trump or agree with Musk" - Leftist nutcases
Women who take every photos with friends and you have to look through all of them to figure out which one is her.
Women who hide obesity with only head shots from angles that make their face look thin.

The last few women I've dated seriously since COVID have come from Bumble (2), Badoo (1), Tinder (1), and WeChat (1).

I'm 53 now and mostly date women that are younger - late 30's early 40's, but I did date a 28 year old when I was 45.

But I will tell you, I was in Asia (China) in January and using Tinder, Bumble, and Badoo I got lots of matches with real, not crazy, not fake women. They were all in decent shape, decent looking, have more positive attitudes and are not so damn negative and disagreeable as American women. Didn't have much time to meet many but I did meet one, and also one I matched to on a prior trip. Yes I know all about photo filters and even video filters and how they can change appearances, but in general it's a lot better.

In the U.S. I see so many women with visible tattoos, oddly colored hair, piercings, and I have no interest in anyone like this.

As for Russians or Ukrainians - run away fast. I have no doubt whatsoever that most of the ones that are trying to meet Americans are associated with organized crime and are looking for a mark to clean out. They know which states have most woman friendly divorce laws and they will marry solely to reach the community property threshold and then divorce soon after.

I met my wife on Match but that was 10 years ago


There were a lot of desperate women on these sites looking for a baby daddy. A lot of women in their late 30's, early 40's looking to start a family. YIKES!

"Women who hide obesity with only head shots from angles that make their face look thin."

Yes, if they are only looking up at the camera, they are a fatty

Here are four things I didn't expect dating in my late 40/early 50s.

Meet someone online and decide to go out on a date. Either before the date or during the date get hit up for paying for her kids' baby sitter for the evening. At first, I thought it was an anomaly but last time I tried on-line dating 1/3 hit me up before date and 2/3 hit me up during date.

Meet someone online and decide to go out on a date. Confirm the date via text at noon on the day of the date, but then that evening getting stood up. Never been stood up on a date as a teenager, twenties, or early thirties. In my late 40/early 50s, it's happened 4 times. See 2 paragraphs below for 1 of the reasons.

I had also misjudged the millennial women asking me out phenomenon. I assumed they didn't respect millennial men for generally being beta males, but more likely higher priority was looking for older, more financially stable man to gold dig.

Meet someone online and decide to go out on a date. They actually show up on the date and their phone looks like it was on the front line in Ukraine. Of course, a phone with multiple screen breaks is unreliable so occasionally contacted from their kids' phone since theirs isn't working. About the 3rd date, get hit up with "will you buy me a new phone so we can reliably communicate?"

Now, I'm looking in person (ie not online) and for financially stable.

The church is the way to go. You're far less likely to find godless leftists.

^^^ Wow.

Never been asked to pay for childcare before. If they have kids usually they date when the kids are with the ex, or a family member watches them.

I had one no-show but she contacted me after and apologized and we met and dated a few months after that.

Some women are perpetually late, even if you book a place near them to make it easier. Like 30 minutes late and then if you have a reservation you have to sit at the table and wait or lose the table. Late to a reservation is really bad IMO.

One woman I went on three dates with ghosted me without a reason. Some others flake out after 1 or 3 dates.

Using the kid's phone is about the most irresponsible thing a woman can do. One woman I know did that when her phone went dead and then erased the conversation but when I replied later guess where it went? Yep. Luckily I didn't say anything a kid shouldn't see, but really.

quote:

Originally posted by BigSwede:
I met my wife on Match but that was 10 years ago


There were a lot of desperate women on these sites looking for a baby daddy. A lot of women in their late 30's, early 40's looking to start a family. YIKES!

"Women who hide obesity with only head shots from angles that make their face look thin."

Yes, if they are only looking up at the camera, they are a fatty

That happened to me once and was the push to sign up for a legit paid service like eHarmony. Went back and forth online and on the phone with this girl and when I finally met her, she was easily 10 years older and 75 lbs heavier than any of her profile pics. Meanwhile I was sending her stuff taken that day.

Sorry but that's a total deal breaker to be dishonest like that.