Meeting Women Archives

The Surprising Secret to Getting Dates on Dating Apps

October 13, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

As someone who’s been active on the Internet since 1994 — before there was a World Wide Web, even — I’ve seen a lot of changes over time. Few, however, have been as significant as the way that online dating has changed. I have seen things you wouldn’t believe. Spring Street Personals, shared across Salon and The Onion. Paying to send messages and buying “roses” to send instead of likes, winks and pokes. I watched major dating sites become infested with zombie accounts and new ones populated entirely with fake profiles and bots.

Screenshot of Roy Batty during the "Tears in the Rain" speech — All these moments will be lost in time, like AngelFire servers in the rain…

People’s approach to online dating has changed as well, especially as the rise of the swipe apps have taken over. Tinder may have helped bring online dating into the mainstream, it also changed the game. While the swipe-right/swipe-left mechanic has increased engagement, it’s also changed how people relate to dating apps… and the way people use them. However, while the apps may have changed, people’s misconceptions about online dating have remained stubbornly the same. In fact, their frustration has only increased, in no small part because the way people use dating apps is increasingly counter-productive.

Quite frankly, the people who use the apps the most are using them wrong. In fact, those misconceptions about how online dating works and the swipe mechanic coincide to make it harder to meet people.

However, the core reason why people struggle with dating apps comes from a very common mistake. The folks who have the most success with online dating understand a core truth that others don’t. If you want to actually get matches, responses and dates on the apps, then you need to make one simple change…

Get off the apps!

Surprise!

“What the actual *fuck* are you on about, Doc?”

As absurd as this sounds, getting off the apps and out into the world will turbocharge your dating life and improve your results from Tinder, Hinge and more.

Sound strange? Well, let’s talk about what people get wrong about online dating… and how to fix it.

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How To Talk To Women (And Get Them To Like You)

September 1, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Let’s talk about some common misconceptions when it comes to meeting women.

One of the most common questions I get from men is “where do I go to meet women?”

More often than not, the people who ask me this aren’t asking the right question. They see women all the time, throughout their day to day lives. The disconnect is that they don’t know what to do; they’ve absorbed so many conflicting ideas of when it is or isn’t appropriate to approach women or how to do so that they’re left feeling caught in a trap.

Two friends looking at a woman sitting on a park bench — “Go talk to her bro!”
“Dude, the wind is blowing in the wrong direction and the moon is in the wrong house. This is how you get canceled…”

If they don’t thread the needle of “right time/right place/right method” just so, they’re doomed to be accused of being a creeper. They’re terrified that they will screw up by accident and a good-faith attempt to talk to somebody will crash and burn in a spectacular fashion. Next thing you know, they’re in the final reels of Frankenstein, being chased by a torch-and-pitchfork wielding mob of faceless anti-creep vigilantes. In reality, the worst they’re likely to face is an awkward conversation that is easily forgotten as soon as they leave that person’s eye-line. However, our fears our rarely rational and logical.

The problem that they’re having isn’t that they’re not meeting women, it’s that they don’t know how to meet them. They’re seeing meeting women in terms of a cold-approach scenario, where they’re trying to approach a total stranger and impress her enough to make her consider starting a sexual or romantic relationship with them… and this doesn’t work. In fact, the scenarios most men imagine are almost perfectly designed to backfire in their faces for one very simple reason: women are tired of strangers trying to ‘pick them up’.

The men who are the best at meeting and dating awesome women understand this; they know how to connect with women in ways that bypass the feeling of “he’s just trying to pick me up” and create an immediate and powerful connection. You don’t need the gift of gab or to be a Hollywood celebrity. You simply have to know the right way to approach and talk to women.

Here’s how.

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What Does It Really Take To Find Casual Sex?

June 28, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Occasionally I get a letter that is less of an entry for Ask Dr. NerdLove and more of an a prompt for a longer form response — something between a Post-Mortem and a typical Wednesday column. This is one of those times.

Hello Doc!

Well , where can I start? The simple thing is that I don’t feel good enough to talk to women. Currently I’m training like hell to be more attractive (I go to the gym x6 times a week, in my country we are not in a lockdown) but it takes time to get the type of body women are attracted to, at least on Tinder. First of all, I’m not looking for something serious and I know for fact that for casual relationships (or casual sex for that matter) women like muscular/fit men so… well I must train everyday but Doc, I feel tired you know? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy training but it’s exhausting! I even take SARMS to accelerate the process!

I read your articles, but I disagree with what you said about casual sex and women. For example, women are the gatekeepers of sex because they are the ones who are approached , that give them by default the power. Why you believe that for example, on tinder men don’t get many matches? I mean, I know some men do get tons of matches but.. see those men, what they have in common? Good looks and muscular body, and yes, I know that Tinder is not real life but women in general will prefer muscular men for casual sex. So, Doc how can I be less tired? I feel that for casual sex I must be muscular to have a chance…

Gym Rat

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Ask Dr. NerdLove: Why Are Women So Afraid Of Me?

June 4, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

Hi Dr NerdLove.

Long-time reader, first time writing in. My problem is quite minor, and not technically a “dating” issue, but it’s been weighing on me regardless and I’m hoping you’ll have some insight.

The short version is that many women I pass by in public places seem to have very strong negative reactions to me, and I can’t figure out why.

It usually goes like this: I’m walking through town in the daytime to work or to get lunch or meet friends or what have you. A woman comes walking the other way or exits a shop or something. Our eyes meet by chance (inevitable when you’re keeping an eye out for cars and bikes or whatnot), and the woman in question violently jerks her head away, turns her body away from me, and starts walking faster. She’s using her whole body to signal: “Ew, no, go away.”

Here’s the weird part: I never have any intention of interacting with these women. I’m just going about my business when they enter my line of sight. I don’t say anything, I don’t leer or stare or ogle, I don’t catcall, I don’t look at them for more than a second. I just notice them, and keep walking.

Obviously, women have every right to be cautious around unknown men (or unknown male-looking NB people, in my case). These women are also all young and attractive, so maybe they’ve had to become hyper-vigilant even beyond the standards of other women. It’s just that this reaction seems to fly right past caution and straight into immediate, visceral fear.

A more specific example will illustrate what I mean (and was also the catalyst for this letter). I was at work, returning to my desk from the bathroom. A woman I had never met came through the door I was heading to. Our eyes met and she flinched with her whole head, like my gaze was a slap to the face. Her body language became panicked, her eyes darted around the room, and finally she ran through a side door in a completely different direction to the one she’d been going before. I didn’t know what to do, so I just kept walking.

Some extra context: this was in the middle of the day, in a crowded building, in a brightly-lit room that saw a lot of foot traffic, and I obviously worked there.

So with all that background, I guess I have two questions I’m hoping you can help with: firstly, how can I clearly signal to women that I’m not going to approach them? Secondly, what is it about my appearance that triggers such a rapid and extreme response? It’s happened too often now to write it off as a few very traumatised women; it really feels like it’s something about me.

I’m honestly stumped as to the second question. I’m not physically imposing, I dress conservatively but well, I’m young, I’m fit, I don’t have resting bitch face, I’m not ugly, and I’m meticulous with my grooming and hygiene. In short, I feel like my appearance is totally inoffensive. The fact I’m Māori might be a factor, but it feels unfair to just assume all these women are racist. My female friends are as confused as I am.

This problem has been getting me down because I don’t want to be a source of stress for anyone else, and also obviously because it really hurts my feelings when it happens. Plus, what’s going to happen when I meet a woman I do want to approach?

Before I sign off, I should reiterate: I’m not demanding that these women talk to me or smile at me or welcome me approaching them or anything like that. I just want to be able to go about my day and mind my own business without being treated like a landmine. And if this letter sounds like it’s trivialising the struggles of women who get harassed and catcalled, it’s really not my intent. I understand the world is dangerous for them; I’m just sick of being perceived as the danger.

So yeah, that’s my letter. Thanks so much for taking the time to read this!

Sincerely,
Innocent Bystander

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This is The Best Way To Meet Amazing Women

May 12, 2021 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

As more and more people get vaccinated, we’re starting to see the world take tentative steps toward returning to normal. This also means that people are taking equally tentative steps toward socializing and dating again…

…and a lot of folks are looking forward to making up for lost time.

young man with a medical mask on his face looking frightened out of the door — Let’s be real, nobody had “Roaming Sex Mob” on their Apocalypse Bingo cards.

But as various people are predicting “horny summer” or “roaring 2os”, one question remains: what is the best way to start getting busy once you’re vaxxed, waxed and ready to relax?

Virginia opossum in fork of tree, hissing — Hot girl/boy summer? We’ve all been in quarantine for a year and a half. It’s gonna be junkyard possum summer…

Is it time to just meander out into the streets and hope that wandering hordes of sexed-up former-shut-ins catch you up in a Bernoulli effect and try to draft on the mist of wine coolers and Astroglide? Now that we can leave our houses again, has the twilight of the age of Tinder and video dates truly begun?

Well, about that…

One of the mistakes a lot of men make when they want to go out and meet potential partners — whether for love or for sex — is that they assume that the cold approach is the way to go. Despite the fact that a plurality of straight couples1 meet their partners in person through shared activities rather than random encounters with complete strangers, the notion of picking people up at bars or going about their day is still seen as the predominant way to meet people.

But the truth is that cold approaches are incredibly inefficient… doubly so if you are attempting what the seduction community calls “day game”: meeting women going about their day or walking down the street. One day game enthusiast broke down his numbers from over the course of three years on his blog (all numbers are approximate):

1700 approaches
180 numbers
19 dates
6 sexual encounters

That’s an approach-to-date ratio of 1 percent. It’s even less than a percentage point if you filter to dates that lead to sex.

Now to be fair: this is understandable. You are attempting to convince a stranger that they want to consider a romantic or sexual relationship with someone they have literally just met — often as recently as 20 minutes ago. Now while that can and does happen, and cold approaches are a valuable and versatile skill to cultivate in general, it’s not the only, or even the best way to meet potential partners.

Instead, I want to teach you a better way to meet amazing women without getting on the apps. A way that will set you up for success. A way that will bring amazing women into your life almost effortlessly and give you advantages that other people won’t have. This is a method that will take what many people believe to be a weakness and turn it into your secret weapon instead.

Ready?

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