Creative Dating after N – moving on with Tinder, Bumble, a Meetup, and Volunteering

I had set myself a deadline with N – finding out where we were at. Since the communication with her was, as always, quite ambigious (e.g. no new year’s wishes from her side), I decided to send her a video asking her whether she wants to continue to be just friends or wants more.

She told me that she is in a different relationship already, and that we had tried to explore other options for us before and it didn’t work. She wants to stay friends.

I had to move on. This was mid-January.

After several weeks of pain, I was ready to move on. Emotional processing using the emotional processing tool helped me a lot during this time!

As I’m 38 already, and want to start a family, I now need to pull all the stops. (I’ve dedicated my “best” adult dating years to N – and had chased her for almost four and a half years).

I knew from experience that dating on online dating platforms is a real chore – you write to lots of girls and get little to no results, so I decided to create my own dating systems, and use money to drive faster results where possible. As you see, I’m very mechanistic in some ways, and transfer business process thinking to dating. I guess that’s not very romantic. But I know about sales funnels, and you have to realize that dating is a massive funnel. The more girls which enter the funnel at the top, the more conversions / the higher quality leads you can generate (for the role of a girlfriend …). And since this matters a lot to me, I’m throwing every bit of knowledge I have into this.

The Facebook page & campaign

As I’m running a successful campaign for finding employees on Facebook, my first idea was to “game the system” and run a campaign for myself.

I set up a Facebook page for myself (posting as a “dating service” – with just one person on offer for dates, myself) & recorded a couple of videos. I ran paid ads on Facebook and actually had three women contact me through these ads!

With one of the women – she was significantly younger (26), I actually set up a date. It was supposed to be the first date after the last phase of trying to reconnect to N (I had focused on N completely during it), and I was kind of looking forward to it. I even threw in references to kissing – e.g. saying that we both ought to get a Corona test if we would kiss, and was also toying with the phantasy of sleeping with this woman immediately on the first date.

Those were fantasies it turns out, pure fantasies – she blocked me on Messenger before the date happened. I figured, as I’m blocked the probability that she will show up will be very low. Maybe this was related to my message to her that “I’m already curious to what you’ll be wearing tonight” – maybe also a friend talked “some sense into her that you don’t date random strangers who had advertised on Facebook”. Or maybe she has attachment issues.

In retrospect I’m happy that the date didn’t happen – I was being unfair to this girl, and mostly interested in kissing her, etc., to get “back on track” and “back into the game”. I saw this as a “godsent” from the universe, and wanted this first date to happen to “go along with the plans of the universe”, not because I was genuinely into her. I hope she’ll find happiness with someone.

The other woman who I wrote with said that she has multiple personalities, and I would be dating one of them. An intriguing concept, and I found myself interested in getting to know such a person. I figured possibly a friendship could arise from this; I don’t think dating a person who is splitting their time with other personalities inside would be a sensible idea, as relationships need time from both partners.

I asked her to suggest a place to meet for coffee & cake and never heard back from her.

In the meantime I was getting into YouTube videos about dating. There’s a YouTube channel, “dating advice for men who love women” which shares some probably sensible advice, like checking for a woman’s interest level – e.g. if you suggest a date, and the woman declines but doesn’t make a countersuggestion to move on. This advice (and I KNEW it before restarting with N) would have saved me a lot of time with N if applied, and believed in. To anyone reading this: the interest level of the other person (man or woman) REALLY matters. If they’re not interested, move on!

The third woman seemed the most interesting one, she just asked that she “wanted more information”, but did not engage in further conversation with me.

After spending about 250 € on ads, I figured that this is not working as intended. I think the reason for this is the “hard sell” of trying to induce romantic contact with one completely random person on the Internet. This brought me to think that I could tune the approach.

The Singles Meetup

I had met my only girlfriend so far in Munich, at a Singles Meetup. (It was a very brief relationship by the way – we were incompatible, and also I was deactivating in that relationship, she was trying to make me jealous, etc. – I suspect that I was an FA leaning DA and she an FA leaning AA in this relationship).

I remembered this, and decided that creating my singles meetup, and driving Facebook traffic to the Singles meetup page would be an interesting idea – the girls could meet me in a non-threatening environment. There would be no hard sell. At the same time, I would be able to experience them as well, and engage with the ones I would find most interesting.

The meetup now has 42 members. Lately it started to get more male members. I have an approval system in place, but currently I allow nearly everyone into the meetup to boost the membership count.

I did a couple of meetups, and have met a total of four different women through it. Two of them are smokers, and I’m not interested in having a relationship with a smoker. One of them is outside of the age bracket I’m thinking of going for. According to my sister the fourth one is not very interested in me. Even so, there were interesting conversations, and I continue to learn about different people which I really love.

I believe this meetup idea has still potential in it. I get to choose the meetups I offer – so I can try different interesting activities around Leipzig, and get people to join me. Possibly even friendships will develop out of it.

the age selection in dating

OK, if you must know: I’m looking to date 27 to 32 year old women – the reason is the biological clock of the women. I want to have kids with a woman, and I also want to “vet” her and the relationship with her before marriage. Two years is what I’m being advised is a sensible time to really get to know a person. This would bring us to her being 34 years old, one year of engagement & marriage will bring us to a good child rearing age.

Again, not very romantic I guess, but very pragmatic. After being very unpractical with N (her being in the US, and me “trying to make it work from Germany”), I’ve decided it’s time to become very focused, otherwise the small time window I have will close.

27 by the way seems to me to be an age where a woman is already mature, and knows what she wants. I believe the age gap with younger women would be too high.

the beauty selection in dating: or what should really matter for happily ever after

I’ve read an important book called “The Science of happily ever after: What really matters in the search for true love ” by Ty Tashiro.

It says that men focus on beauty, while women focus on resources (wealth + status). This is due to our ancestors having procreational advantages with such partners – beauty, after all, is an indicator of high gene quality.

Ty claims that today overfocusing on these parameters is detrimental to relationship satisfaction and stability. If we have too high demands and too strict criteria about the looks of our partner, we will only have a smaller subset of partners to choose from. And there are very important other factors to consider – one of them being the attachment style. Non-surprisingly, Ty suggests to go for the secure attachment style. Both avoidant and anxious attachment styles are associated with lower relationship satisfaction, more distress, etc.

Another thing he suggests is to look for low neuroticism, high agreableness, and to avoid the combination high openness + low conscientiousness (which could lead to cheating). You might recognize the big five personality traits theory here. Introversion vs. extroversion were not mentioned specifically as having an impact on relationship satisfaction.

For women he says that the advantages of having a partner who earns more than 70.000 USD are diminishing (it might also have been for the couple having that household income together). A partnership in which the partners earn too little is less stable / less happy, but this effect vanishes after reaching a treshhold. I believe there was another slight improvement in relationship stability after 250.000 USD.

I will add to this (as a 1,74 m tall man) that height should matter less to women, similar to beauty for men – it’s the inner qualities which will make a relationship bliss or hell.

Face2Face and the three women

Face2Face is a nice dating concept which removes the pressure. You join a team (I always select female team members, because why not?) and then you and your team meet different other teams while barhopping. You get to talk to those people for an hour, and it’s actually a really nice system to meet people in a big group. I tried it once again, and had a good time flirting with two women. One of them has a kid already – which for me is a deal-breaker, I want to have my own kids with the woman & her being focused on building a traditional family with me. The other one, I found out, smoked.

We had a good flirting connection, but I didn’t ask her for her number. Face2Face allows you to match people and get their numbers. After debating the situation I decided to give it a go. She and two other women matched me. I didn’t match the one with the kid, but did the two others.

I set up a date with A (the woman who had smoked) & the date did not go very well – we didn’t seem in sync / did not go deep on topics together. I found myself being focused on her face, which wasn’t attractive “enough” for me. I have a thing about chins, and in her case the chin was too broad for my taste. After the date I wrote her that I didn’t feel a connection. In fact I was deactivating even on the evening of the Face2Face, when a man suggested that A and me really had a connection. I said “do you know the movie ‘lost in translation’? It’s about two people feeling disconnected”.

I was surprised by the match of the other woman, let’s call her A2. I believed that A2 had seemed to show interest in another gentleman, and I did not feel a connection with her. I suggested a date for her, (I’m going to the art gallery, care to join?) – she said that she’s busy that weekend. She did not offer a countersuggestion, and as per the YouTube video’s advice I did not continue to pursue her. She did not get back in touch. Fun fact: I then made the art gallery into the first meetup.

Tinder and T

Another dating hack I thought of was using Tinder to “teleport” myself into different cities and see where I liked the “vibe” of the women more. In the city I’m in, many women have tattoos or piercings in weird places (protruding from the nose for example). In Munich I found the women to be more “natural” looking. I associate tattoos with low intelligence (yes, this is a prejudice), and body modifications even more so. They destroy the beauty of the female body for me.

It kind of got out of hand, and I’m glad it did. I started to swipe, and actually got to meet a woman (T) through Tinder.

improving your Tinder profile to get more matches

But we’re getting ahead a little of ourselves. Here’s my advice for Tinder: the pictures matter.

Big surpise, right? But I’m going to tell you what you can do about the pictures: Use an Android app called Attractiveness test. This app uses artificial intelligence to rate your picture.

Run several pictures through the app, and put the ones which have the highest scores into Tinder.

As you can see in the pciture above, two of my pictures have different scores – without cheating / modifying how I look like!

This, my friends, is a massive break-through – I now have about 20 matches in Tinder.

profile text

I put “The map is not the territory” into my profile text, after previously having had a description of how I’m looking to meet someone for a long-term relationship, etc. I believe less is better here, as girls can project what they want onto you.

I believe after changing to “The map is not the territory”, I received more matches. Btw, if a girl asks what it means, I will have an interesting topic with her. So far I haven’t been asked 🙂

the Bejing scammer

An asian woman matched me, and we started to chat. After a while the conversation moved to my WhatsApp. I forget who asked whom.

Tinder was showing her distance as four kilometers from me. She said she is a business woman running an upscale salon in Bejing. When I asked about the story behind it, she said “there is no story”. She then told me something about going to a “western style restaurant” called [Y]. There’s no such restaurant in my city. I asked her, and she said she is in Bejing, but will come to Germany in April. I politely ended the conversation.

The whole story didn’t seem to check out (also the girl seemed “too much into me”). I did some research, and figured out that it was probably a scam.

Sure enough, I was contacted out of the blue by two different Indian dudes, inviting me to join a cryptocurrency investment WhatsApp group.

They want you to put money into cryptocurrency, and it will seem to do well, but you will not be able to retrieve it from there. Don’t do it.

This story led me to being more careful, and now I’ve set up a secondary phone number, and a separate WhatsApp for dating.

the freeloader girl

I matched another girl and started chatting. She asked me to move to WhatsApp quickly, which raised a red flag for me after the Bejing scammer. I told her, let’s meet in real life, if I trust you, I’ll give you my WhatsApp. She basically said OK, do you mind if I bring my five girlfriends, for food and drink? I said: “OK, but everyone pays for themselves”. She said: “No, you pay or no one goes”. I told her that I have a different suggestion: we could meet at her place and I would bring along a bottle of mineral water from ALDI which we could all share, and she would provide the food – didn’t have to be anything special. She unmatched me.

Bumble, K and the black woman

K, the doctor

On Bumble, I matched with K, a doctor. We got started talking about India – K at one point then suggested to have a phone call. I said, great – how about the evening today? She didn’t answer, but came back a couple of days later apologizing. We agreed on another time.

I called her at the agreed upon time (using Bumble), but she didn’t pick up. She then later send me a message: “Sorry, all of this is getting too much for me – here’s my mobile phone number if you still care to call me”.

From a certain perspective she was running away from me, but returning and increasing the stakes every time.

I called her after a couple of days, and she said that she was sick with Corona, and it was not a good moment to speak. I said I’d call in two weeks, and she said fine.

By the way, this was the first time I got to use my new “dedicated dating” phone number.

As I had met T, and didn’t want to waste more time with K (seeing a strong avoidant pattern in her behavior – she runs from intimacy I believe), I then later wrote her that I had met T.

black woman from Frankfurt

I was speaking to a friend about that Tinder and Bumble were not really working for me, and I was planning to go off from them. Exactly a day after this conversation, I matched T in Tinder (see below), and a black woman from Frankfurt in Bumble. (Btw: I’m just mentioning this because she is from Africa, which contributed to my “alarm bells” see below).

The black woman and me had a very good flirting connection from the start. She suggested to switch to a phone call – but I was doing a workout at that time. We agreed to speak the following evening. She also mentioned she had had some issues with Bumble calls before.

When I called her at the agreed time, she wrote me that her father was sick, and she was on the phone to her mother. I said “hey, if you want to reschedule, no problem.” – she told me that she would call in 10 min. I actually missed her call, and tried to call her back, but she said that she was back on the phone with her parents. And that we would reschedule. I agreed reluctantly. In the morning I realized that a red flag had been raised for me – after the Bejing scammer I was extra careful. I was thinking that possibly this is another setup to get money from me (“for the sick father”). I told her that I didn’t feel comfortable speaking to her anymore, and she unmatched me. In retrospect, I think I overreacted. Probably it was genuine. Possibly my attachment anxiety got the upper hand here. On the other hand, she was in Frankfurt, which would have been long-distance anyways.

T

I matched T on Tinder. T has short hair, which I normally don’t go for – but I was being more flexible after reading “the science of happily ever after”, and am very glad I did. I chatted with T briefly, suggesting that she come to the lake nearby (as she mentioned that she enjyoed the sea). She suggested to meet in town instead, and I immediately set up a date.

As an aside, that is also something which the relationship coach on YouTube recommends: when you suggest dates, make a very concrete suggestion (place, time, what).

We met, and this first date with her was the best date of my life. I felt really connected to her. T asked me questions and showed a real interest in me. She is also highly educated, which is a big plus for me. Also I really liked how she said “don’t worry, I’ll pay for us” after I told her the story of the freeloader girl and her 5 friends. I said I would feel uncomfortable on this first date her paying, so we we each paid our own share.

I had the book “The science of happily ever after” with me, as I was still reading it at that point. I discussed attachment types with T, she said she was secure – after hearing a bit about her last relationship I concluded that probably she was.

At the end of the date T got my actual WhatsApp number, as I trusted her. I still do.

I remember going home and thinking: “This is how a great date should look like, where you actually want to see the girl again.” I was reassured, that, indeed, A had not been a good match for me, but here was T who was.

A while later I reached out to her, asking how busy she would be – and set up a second date. T enthusiastically agreed. Which was a novel experience for me!

On the second date, T and I agreed to date exclusively and delete Tinder, as she was going to Turkey for two months. I was feeling good about her, and already liked her a lot, so I decided to take a risk on her. We kissed at the end of the second date. I wrote to her: “I deleted Tinder” when I was on my way home. She wrote “I deleted when you were at the toilet at the bar.”

We set up a third date, where I gave T a toy cat to keep her company in Turkey and remind her of me. She was very happy to receive the cat. We kissed several times on the date, but generally I felt disconnected from her this time. I told her that I would like to accompany her to the train on Saturday (when she would be leaving), and she said she’ll let me know when the train will leave.

After the third date, I was waiting for T to reach out, as she was going to Turkey soon, to set up our fourth date. The fourth date never happened.

As T had not reached out by Wednesday, I was becoming frustrated. I applied Thais emotional processing tool, and came to the conclusion that I wanted clarity from T, whether this would continue, and when she would be available. “How can I give this to myself? -> I need to write to T and suggest a date”.

T replied that she had been thinking and did not want to start a relationship at this time. I assumed that she did not want to pursue things with me anymore, and wrote her a nice goodbye message. By this point I had started to care about T, but was not “in love” with her. I wanted her to be happy, and I wanted to respect and support her.

I realized that T was probably not securely attached, but a fearful avoidant. Like myself. (hence the great connection!) She had experienced too much closeness, and deactivated strongly to protect herself. She probably felt this as doubt and loss of interest in me. I suspect that after several weeks, T will start activating – and might realize that she “made a mistake”. I half expect her to reach out to me, and plan to share this blog post with her (for full transparency), and also bring up attachment theory. After four and a half years with N (who has a dismissive avoidant attachment style), I would prefer to date a secure person, but the connection with T was real – and maybe she is prepared to work on her attachment style. In any case, I genuinely hope that she will find happiness in this life. I respect her choice at this point. She needs something else, and she is the only judge of what she needs.

Fun fact: I also started to deactivate, but I processed through these emotions, and was able to reconnect with my growing feelings for T.

Thank you T for being the first girl I kissed and cared for since N. (And I never had kissed N – not once in four and a half years!)

I was thinking to address the volunteering and the Meetup group with T and get her input on it (fun fact: T is a member – during the initial conversation on Tinder I told her about the group and she joined), but never got around to it. During the phase where we had agreed to date exclusively, I did not do any meetups.