From Swiping to Sexting: The Gender Divide in American Dating and Relationships

I have done dating startups few times, even went on 1+ dates a day for six months and on each actively tried to understand how people date; in my experience, people are highly random, rarely reach anywhere near a significant sample, and tend to focus of characteristics of an individual instead of characteristics related to relationships.<p>If I was to do another social platform that supports dating, it would be one that’s friendly first, dating second. Reason being that in my experience people don’t understand that they wrongly focus on attributes of individual when looking for a relationship instead of looking at the individual’s relationship attributes.<p>Individuals attributes are things like: attractiveness, age, hobbies, finances, religion, race, profession, etc.<p>Relationship attributes are things like: communication, engagement, supportiveness, helpfulness, honesty, trustworthiness, kindness, empathy, compassion, availability, reliability, consistency, mindfulness, openness, receptiveness, contribution, etc.<p>The relationship attributes apply platonic and non-platonic relationships — but are much better predictors of non-platonic relationship success long term than the individual attributes.

In my experience the only apps that I found helping people feel less lonely, finding partner and friends, have been couchsurfing (now paid) and Meetup.<p>In my 2nd tier spanish city Id say it&#x27;s a great success.<p>In other cities I&#x27;ve heard every meetup group feels like a business, but here it&#x27;s language exchange, going to eat something, museums, etc.<p>Apparently it&#x27;s a bit pricey for group hosts.<p>In my particular case I was stuck with friends that do nothing at all. Got into meetups and met a lot of new people, allways have plans, and just met an Italian girl who may develop (or not) into a relationship.<p>I&#x27;ve been in Tinder for years. Im ok looking and I get dates from time to time and it&#x27;s not even close. It always felt shallow and I had to force myself throufh it, as the experience is pretty meh.<p>I hope Meetup doesn&#x27;t become another bussiness like Couchsurfing, trying to milk the community and destroying it in the process.<p>Edit: Creeps can also destroy groups. I&#x27;ve seet it happen, and I guess that&#x27;s more of a problem in other larger cities, but there are some men out there that make people, specially women, really uncomfortable.

&quot;One 19-year-old women says that she’s looking for mutual respect in a relationship and someone who approaches issues with an open mind.&quot;<p>And probably a dozen other things. Self reporting is very hard for this type of thing. Theynshould probably have surveyed ex-partners and prior dates to get both sides of the story. In my experience, most of the time when a woman says she wants you to have an open mind, it means she wants you to agree with her because her mind is already made up. Respectful disagreement is unfathomable because it could invalidate or compete with her position.

Americans (younger ones anyways), simply don&#x27;t seem to know how to date to put it bluntly. I&#x27;ve been on Tinder in the US and to a lesser extent Canada, and everyone is hyper demanding and -- particularly women lately -- demand that the other person &quot;proves&quot; this or that (how cool they are, or how worthy of being paid attention to, etc). For hookups Tinder isn&#x27;t bad, but for relationships it should be avoided at all costs, especially if you are somewhat docile. :P<p>Badoo and OKCupid are somehwhat better.<p>In other countries (Europe and Asia say), people date more normally - or as you would expect. &quot;You seem nice, want to meet for coffee?&quot; &#x2F; &quot;Sure.&quot;

I&#x27;d love to read an updated version of the infamous OkCupid blog.

Dating is bullshit, online dating is bullshit squared. It&#x27;s like this game where you have to carefully scrutinize the other person while hiding your own flaws and not letting on that you are carefully scrutinizing them. It&#x27;s stressful in the way job interviews are stressful.<p>I only got married because I knew my wife really well -- for decades beforehand -- and so our relationship benefits from a sort of Lindy effect.

The results of the survey this article is based on seems to be nonsense. The numbers for women and men in each category should more or less match, unless there were a huge difference in same-sex or one-to-many relationsships or in the absolute numbers of male vs female, which seems implausible.

For me the most interesting thing was that generally Republican men and women are measurably more satisfied then their Democratic counterparts.<p>Is it because Republicans generally value family values and staying in stable relationships more?<p>Also another interesting thing is Gen Z relying on Friendships rather than online dating to find their partners. I think we have a generation fed up with algorithms and how shallow online partner selection can be.

Aren&#x27;t there traditional matchmaking agencies for people looking for serious relationships in the USA?

I wonder how many college educated persons work in or for tobacco companies... or at least somewhere in their supply chain...

Disclaimer: published by the American Enterprise Institute, a centre-right think tank: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;American_Enterprise_Institute" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;American_Enterprise_Institute</a>

&gt; The process of finding a partner—and the struggle it frequently entails—is an omnipresent feature of the American cultural landscape<p>Ah, yes, only Americans try to reproduce.