By Dating in our 40s has an uncomfortable habit of reminding us of our awkward teenage years.
In my case that was a heavily-pimpled time of many great songs and very little action.
Girlfriends, it seemed, were only for those super cool dudes with great hairstyles, (available only to those with straight hair), the right cut of trouser (baggy, tapering at the cuff) and a car.
Recently I’ve been spending a fair bit of time being frogmarched down that particular stretch of memory lane which I would probably rather not revisit.
The reason? The reason is that I’ve been on OkCupid.
It’s not fucking OK, alright?
I know that there must still be a lot of those ultra cool dudes out there these days – because someone has to be getting dates on OkCupid.
Don’t they?
Otherwise what would be the point of it? If nobody at all was getting any dates on it, it would simply cease to exist. At least one would hope so.
Ok, take a deep breath Maxy boy and tell us what’s got you so upset.
Love/hate and likes
The answer is that I recently checked out my “liked” page on OkCupid.
By this I mean the page of people who we have liked. Who have not liked us back!
It’s not something I do very often for the simple reason that I hardly ever get dates on OkCupid (and it is depressing).
I don’t even get matches on OkCupid.
At least nothing like the amount I get through Tinder or Happn or even, despite me maligning it a while back, Bumble.
Excitingly non-monogamous
Normally I can live with my lack of dates on OkCupid because I get enough dates elsewhere for me not to notice it.
But as I clicked on my liked page I suddenly realised I was missing out.
This! This is where all the really cool 40 plus women are hanging out, I said (or thought).
Profile pic after insouciant lady profile pic stared back at me.
These were ladies with great tattoos and cool jobs, who said funny and challenging things on their profiles.
Women who very often tantalisingly described themselves as non-monogamous.
Ladies who almost invariably clicked that they were also interested in hookups — not like the relentless Tinder “No ONS” line found in my part of the world.
But ladies it seemed, who were uniformly not interested in me.
A self-esteem torpedo
Why won’t any of you match with me? I wanted to scream (though obviously we men don’t do that these days).
Instead I rather politely asked it of the heavens – which declined to answer.
Just to further torpedo my self-esteem, I went into my messages.
You see, another thing I remembered from OkCupid was quite often when I did manage to make a match it would go nowhere.
They would often never answer my messages even though I put a bit of effort into trying to make them more interesting than just “hi how are you?”.
Perhaps it isn’t that they don’t find me attractive, I thought hopefully. Maybe it’s just that they’re never on this app.
The green circle of death
I was wrong. OkCupid women are not only on the app, judging by the amount who had a little green circle next to their names indicating they are online.
They’re actually on the app practically the whole time – gleefully chatting away to people.
And they are chatting to people who are not me.
So what is it about all of these guys who are attracting the OkCupid ladies’ attention?
All these guys who must be like those cool dudes from the mists of time…
Not cool enough
Something I’m increasingly starting to believe is that different apps are more likely to have a higher proportion of the right kind of matches for us.
I used to find match.com very good back in the day when I took a slightly more serious attitude to my dating and was strictly looking for long-term relationship material.
Nowadays it’s a little too serious – and way too expensive – for me.
Maybe likewise, I just have to face the fact that I’m not cool enough for OkCupid.
Just… not… ok…
There is another possibility. It’s the one that as a human being I would be inherently most likely to agree with – that it’s all OkC’s fault and not mine.
There is a bit of evidence for this hypothesis.
Hang on a minute, you say, before you lay the blame at Cupid’s door, isn’t the whole point of OkCupid that you message people who you might not have matched with in order to attract their attention?
Yes that is true. But the system doesn’t work!
Broken arrow
Because of its strange setup where you only see the messages once you click on that person’s profile, you’re just as likely to get a like as you are to attract someone’s attention with your message on OkC.
If they’re ever going to be into you, that is.
The thing is that on more than a couple of occasions there have been people whose attention I have desperately and unsuccessfully tried to attract on OkC who have matched me on other platforms.
But then I remembered another thing about my OkC experience.
Dropped convos
Often on those few occasions when I had matches, the woman would drop the conversation after a few exchanges.
I’m constitutionally incapable of thinking that I have bored my match – especially not when I’m into them and trying my hardest to be entertaining.
But let’s be real here. Those of us who have been around the online dating block a few times know what dropped convos mean.
It’s either that your match has got bored or has found someone who they’re more interested in talking to.
So maybe I do have to face the facts that I’m not really cool enough.
At the end of the day maybe it isn’t OkCupid which is not okay. Maybe it’s me.
