My Best Friend Came up with an Amazing Way to Make Dating Apps Work for Women
How my best friend conquered dating apps
Dating apps are a nightmare, especially for women which is why men outnumber women on dating apps typically by at least 5 to 1, which paradoxically makes dating apps even worse for women.
Yup, it’s a double whammy, they don’t work for women, which increases the male-to-female ratio, which makes them work even less for women.
Needless to say, there is endless advice out there for how women can make dating apps work better for them. Most of this advice is along the lines of speak to as many as you possibly can, go on as many dates as you possibly can, be promiscuous, play the field, don’t expect a connection from the beginning i.e. give each person time to see if the connection can form, and so on.
So, the advice is typically maximise your matches, maximise conversations, maximise the amount of time you spend with each person you communicate with, sleep with lots of people, and don’t expect to feel a connection at the beginning because connections take time.
The trouble is, advice like this is exactly why so many women get turned off dating apps. This is because, for a person looking for anything other than sex, the only part of the above that is good advice is don’t expect to feel a connection at the beginning because connections take time.
Not understanding this is one of the biggest mistakes both men and women make when it comes to dating. Love for most people simply does not start with anything remotely like an instant connection, most people need to get to know a person properly to see if there is a connection there and a quick chat over a dating app and a short date seldom provides enough time for the majority to do that.
But when you are inundated with matches as women are, and you know most of them either just want sex, or have matched with you in desperation to get a match i.e. because it’s really hard for most guys to get matches, how can women ever hope to work out who to spend enough time with to give that connection a chance to form?
The inability to answer this question is why so many women end up giving up on dating apps, my best friend was one of those who did just that and had decided to just accept life as a singleton.
Then she had a revelation, an idea that at first glance was extremely counterintuitive but which turned out to be genius. Do the opposite of what everyone tells women to do, so rather than try to maximise your appeal, aim to minimise your appeal so that fewer men choose to match with you.
Men need to learn to maximise their dating app appeal to get matches, women need to learn to minimise theirs to get the right matches
The majority of the dating advice out there is tailored towards men, and often when it gets tailored towards women, really it’s just the advice that has been tailored towards men sold as advice tailored to women.
But men and women are different, our experiences are different, and this especially holds true when it comes to dating apps.
For example, men typically need to learn how to maximise their appeal to get matches, whereas women typically need to learn how to control their appeal to get only the right matches.
This is because women don’t use looks in the same way that men do i.e. women typically use looks to rule a man in or out, not to say “that is who I want to date.” Men on the other hand typically use looks to say, “I want to date her.”
That means paradoxically when it comes to looks, men are actually the most sexually selective not women.
This may seem a crazy thing to say, and many in response will say “but women are way pickier than men”, and they will likely use the countless YouTube experiments that show that if a woman walks around the streets and asks a man out on a date, the majority if they are single and she is attractive will take her number, whereas the majority of women won’t if the roles are reversed.
But that doesn’t change the fact that if a man is given a choice of women he does not know and is told he can get to know one, the woman he will most often choose to get to know will be the one he finds the most physically attractive.
That means when it comes to looks, men are highly sexually selective when presented with a choice.
My best friend argues that not understanding and acknowledging this is the biggest mistake women make on dating apps. Her rationale is not doing so stops us from taking advantage of men’s sexual selectiveness and turning it in our favour, which considering how much we outnumber men on dating apps, is something we very much need to do if we are to find the right man for us.
But how do we do this? Well, my best friend came up with the idea of lowering her sex appeal by making herself as real and individualised as possible.
So, she adopted the philosophy of presenting herself exactly as she was, warts and all.
To do this, she did away with filters so she would not look generically beautiful, she did away with make-up because she hardly ever wore any; to go with that, she dropped the picture of herself in the super sexy dress because she seldom wore one, replacing it with one showing her in her everyday wear, and she stopped using a clever angle to make herself look slim, and presented herself instead as she was, curvy.
Basically, she did everything she could to present herself visually exactly as she was, which is the absolute opposite of what everything tells women to do to attract men.
She didn’t stop there, people think that guys don’t read women’s bios, my best friend used to think that.
It’s not actually true, men typically do, but when it comes to the hottest women they probably don’t care about what is written as much so, the sentiment is probably true to an extent; however, if you don’t present yourself as looking like one of the “hottest” women, there is a much higher chance they will care.
My best friend decided to put this to the test. She had read somewhere that you should put a quirk that is very much you and that makes you seem as weird as everyone on an individual level really is, and put it out there. She decided to try that, and wrote an honest bio:
“I’m a big lover of Disney,” she wrote, “both Marvel and Disney Disney (yes, princess stories). I love romance novels, especially Nora Roberts, though I’m not a romantic person, nor do I want to be a princess… Is that weird? I am a home bird and not a big fan of lots of nights out, though I do like one now and then, I also don’t drink much, and won’t date a smoker (no offence, just can’t stand the smell). I like the gym, but only a little bit, oh, and I also love peanut butter and mustard in a sandwich. I’m not joking, I really do.”
Yup, she really does love a peanut butter and mustard sandwich. And she really did share that fact.
But anyway, she put her profile out there, and the number of matches she got plummeted, despite this, the conversations she had with the guys she did match with were a million times better. It seemed virtually every guy she matched with actually had things in common with her and so the conversations flowed even when they were a bit awkward.
This continued even when it came to dates, which is why every person she agreed to meet in person she ended up agreeing to a second date and a third — even though they didn’t really connect at first. So, she took the advice of spending time to allow a connection to potentially form, and for the first time she felt the advice was actually good.
With the first few guys, it did not work out in the end but she did not feel disgruntled like she normally did because she felt she was close, the dates had been nice, and the guys had been her kind of people.
Then she met a guy who also loved peanut butter and mustard in his sandwich. I’m not actually joking, I didn’t think there could be another person who could like my best friend’s unique concoction, but it turns out there was.
The first message the guy sent to her was:
“I love peanut butter and mustard sandwiches as well, I’m genuinely not kidding, everyone thinks I’m out of my mind.”
As of yesterday, they are now happily married and it really is crazy how much in common they have, which is why am very hopeful it will be a happily ever after marriage for them.
Final words
There is no guarantee that the method my best friend used will work for all women. But, men do have a surprisingly good knack for working out the specific person they want to date based on appearance alone, so why not try to use that to our own advantage?
That’s why truly, perhaps the best way to make dating apps work for women is to adopt my best friend’s methodology, and rather than fighting to make yourself more mainstream “appealing” so as to maximise matches, instead fighting to make yourself as niche as you can so as to minimise them.
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