How Can I Beat Out Other Men on Dating Apps?

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

Hello Doc!

I have a simple question , how can i cope with the fact that there is a lot of competition in the dating scene?

For example , everybody knows that women gets a lot of message from guys who are :

• Good looking
• Rich
• Tall
• Muscular

Or all of the above

Basically if you are a heterosexual man you are competing with everybody! This is destroying my mental health, I can’t for example be as muscular as Connor Murphy in his prime or as rich as Elon Musk!

I, as an average man, am screwed.

For example on Tinder i’m competing with bodybuilders, male models and rich guys. I mean it’s hard

Women on the other hand, have all the options and they only choose as they please.

So how can I cope with this fact Doc?

Locked Out

There’s a lot to unpack here, LO, but I think we need to just throw the entire suitcase away. What we have here is yet another classic example of “the problem you have isn’t the problem you think you have.” 

You’re not the first person to complain about the “competition” out there, and I’m sure you won’t be the last. God knows it’s one of the most common complaints I get from guys on dating apps. But the thing is: those guys were wrong, as are you. You – like them – are looking at the entirely wrong things and drawing conclusions so far off the mark that they’re not even wrong. 

Let’s start with the most obvious: you’re making judgements based not on facts, but on assumptions. Specifically, assumptions you’re making about women and what they’re looking for. In fact, out of the list you gave us – money, muscles, height, looks – you’re basically 1 for 4; being tall is an advantage when it comes to dating, nobody’s going to dispute that.

What you’re missing, however, is that the rest of the stuff you listed are things men care about and find attractive. This is a very common issue; guys have a tendency to project their own biases and preferences onto women, assuming that these are somehow universal. A lot of guys have strong feelings about women with long hair and so assume that women must also have strong feelings about men’s hair. Considering the fan club that Patrick Stewart, Avery Brooks, Jason Statham, Stanley Tucci, Yul Brenner and others have (or had), this is self-evidently not the case.

The same goes with muscles. Men have been confusing super-jacked dudes for sexy dudes for generations. This is, in part, because men confuse power with desirability; men are socialized to see power and authority as being important and so project the outward trappings of power onto women’s attraction. Being muscular, especially body-builder type muscles rather than, say, a swimmer’s or gymnast’s build, is seen as being powerful and thus (theoretically) desirable.

(This is actually not true; body builder muscles are aesthetic, not practical. There are reasons why The Strongest Man In The World winners like Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson look like ambulatory beer barrels. But I digress.) 

However, seeing as Hulk Hogan or Triple H weren’t voted Sexiest Man Alive (more on this in a second) we seem to have tripped over another mistake.

Even if we look at the various Marvel Chris’ – Hemsworth, Pine, Evans, etc. – we can agree that yes, they’re jacked and good looking men. But you need to also ask yourself: who, precisely, decided that they needed to be jacked and have those shirtless scenes? What was the message of those scenes and who was the intended audience? 

The answer is very simple: men. Men – in the case of the directors and producers – made those decisions, and the target audience for those scenes were also men. Why? Because those scenes are representative of the power of those characters. Steve Rogers has gone from chronically underweight puppy dog to a behemoth at the peak of human fitness. Thor is literally a god. Peter Quill is a wise-cracking jokester, but he’s also an adventurer, explorer and former pirate; showing that he’s jacked is short hand for telling you he’s physically capable. While yes, it provides some eye candy for women, they’re a secondary consideration and you can tell, in part, by how those scenes are shot and where the camera focuses. When we see Captain America straining to hold a helicopter in place, the camera is focusing on his biceps. Not because it’s an incredibly sexy moment but because it’s about his power. 

Incidentally, compare that to Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones; yeah, he’s in good shape, but he in no way looks like a Marvel superhero.

The same goes with money. You talk about needing to be “as rich as Elon Musk” to be successful except right now you’re going to strain to find women who find Elon sexy; he’s giving off “Most Divorced Man In America” energy to the world as his antics on Twitter make Kirk Van Houten look like the last of the red-hot lovers. But I’ll give you three guesses who does think Elon’s the bestest ever, and the first two don’t count…

Again: it’s a matter of projecting what you find appealing in men onto what women. Women aren’t exactly beating down Jeff Bezos or Sheldon Adelson’s door as we speak. Sam Bankman-Fried wasn’t rolling with Leonardo DiCaprio’s pussy posse when his net worth was in the billions. Money can be attractive, sure… for women who are attracted to money. 

But that’s not the only mistake here. Your next mistake is assuming that women have all the choices and just have to raise their hand like they’re hailing a taxi to get laid. This, once again, is projection; guys are shotgunning messages and swipes at some women and assume that a) all women are experiencing this and b) women like this. 

Let’s focus on the second part for a moment. Have you actually seen what messages women are getting on dating apps? What women are getting aren’t “messages from millionaires and male models”, what they’re getting are twelve character messages from guys. Not twelve words. Characters, including punctuation. And most of the time it’s “hey”.

And thats when they’re not just getting barraged with unsolicited dick pics or insults for not responding fast enough.

Just because you’re getting sprayed in the face with the firehose of male attention doesn’t mean that this is good attention, wanted attention or even attention that they appreciate. At best it’s noise, at worst it’s actively threatening or repulsive.

But again: this is only some women who are on the receiving end of this. Many get no attention or messages or struggle with getting folks to swipe right or – worse – match with guys only to find out that those guys never wanted to match with them in the first place.  

So some women are getting their “choice” of men – in as much as one could call a constant and unrelenting barrage a choice – but not all, and trying to find a match they actually want to talk to, never mind actually meet up with in person is frequently akin to trying to find a needle in a haystack full of syringes. The rest are having the same struggles that men are; they just get ignored because those are often not the women that the guys who complain the most are trying to match with.

Just as importantly though, you’re not “competing” with millionaires and body builders and male models; even if it were the case that they were out there in force, there’s not enough to dominate Tinder or Hinge or Bumble. What you’re competing with are, primarily, guys who actually know how to make a decent online dating profile. And let me tell you: that shit is rarer than hen’s teeth. Many, if not most tend to make the same mistakes you make about what women find attractive. As a result, you get guys whose profiles are either weird flexes or lists of what they don’t like about women, whose pictures resemble the last thing you see at the House of Torment before you tap out and take the chicken’s exit and whose conversations with the women they match with have all the wit and sophistication of a shithouse rat.

And many times that’s an insult to rats.

Here’s the thing:  being good at online dating – that is, writing a compelling profile, taking decent pictures and knowing how to message someone – is an entirely separate skill from being socially skilled with women in person. It’s related, sure… but it’s like the difference between knowing how to lift a barbell and how to lift and cary bales of hay. 

There’s also an important hidden factor that’s frequently overlooked: the apps themselves. First is that different apps have different audiences and different demographics, and what works on one app isn’t going to necessarily going to work on another. Hinge has a very different vibe than Tinder, which has a very different vibe than Bumble or Feel’d. Your profile may work on Coffee Meets Bagel, but won’t work on Tinder. What works on Tinder is going to turn off someone on Facebook Dating. Crafting your profile to your audience is crucial.

Then there’s the code underpinning the app. Here’s a harsh truth: you are not seeing 100% of the single women in your area, nor are they seeing you. Your visibility and who’s being shown to you are affected by algorithms – algorithms that are written by folks who’ve made assumptions flavored by their own biases about who you would be compatible with. Not getting matches isn’t an objective measure on your desirability as a man; you’re dealing with multiple layers of code, presuppositions and just basic skill at presenting yourself to the audience you’re best suited for and who’s suited for you.

But none of that can help until you actually let go of men’s ideas of what women find attractive and focus on what women find attractive. Which, to start with, means that you need to quit sourcing your information from 4chan, Reddit, Fresh’n’Fit or some dickhead on TikTok who spent twenty minutes coating himself in baby oil before hitting record.

But what do women find appealing? Well, remember what I said about folks being voted “Sexiest Man Alive”? Yeah funny thing that… take a look at how anyone – Michael B. Jordan, Paul Rudd, Idris Elba, even The Rock – are styled on those covers and photo shoots. All of them are in soft, loose fitting clothes, all of them are in relaxed poses and they’re looking friendly or calm and approachable. Even Dwayne Johnson – who’s basically three protein shakes in a trench coat – isn’t flexing or showing off his guns. He’s looking thoughtful on the cover and seated and giving a big friendly smile on the interiors. 

(In fact, one could argue that some of the poses are actually more feminine coded than masculine, giving more of an appealing air to it all. Which is, admittedly, something that’s worked well for Chris Evans in the past.)

Now, does being conventionally good looking matter? Oh, sure, nobody’s saying otherwise. But funny thing, what people agree is “good looking” tends to vary wildly, and while it’s definitely a value-add, it’s not the only thing, and it becomes far less important when they get to know you.

People tend to forget that matching on dating apps isn’t the end of the process; it’s barely even the start. It’s easy as hell to get a lot of matches on Tinder; you just have to be willing to lie a lot. But getting matches doesn’t mean a damn thing if you never actually meet with them in person. And meeting them in person doesn’t mean a thing if they don’t like you when you meet up.  

This is a very common issue for guys, especially guys who don’t have much social experience. They focus on surface issues or getting someone’s attention – getting an approach invitation at the bar, matching on a dating app – and forget that catching someone’s eye isn’t as important as giving them a reason to actually want to talk to you or to go on a date with you. And I can promise you: every single woman out there can tell you stories about me who were the hottest thing since World War III, but who rendered themselves utterly unfuckable the second they opened their mouths. Sometimes even before.

Despite what people will tell you – and again, this is very much a “dudes projecting” issue – women aren’t looking for a hot but empty shell, nor are they looking for an ambulatory wallet. What they’re looking for is someone they like, someone who they can connect with, someone who has basic emotional intelligence and isn’t a simmering rage monster who’s bubbling with resentment. Lots of guys can’t even clear that bar. 

Now none of this means that Tinder isn’t a blasted hellscape. It absolutely is, and I think its influence on dating apps has made them worse. There’s a reason why I tell people that dating apps should be a supplement to how they meet women, not the replacement. 

But if you’re using the apps to meet people, then you need to use them correctly. And if you’re going to do that, you need to start recognizing that your so-called “competition” is in your head, not on the apps.  Learn to take better, more appealing pictures, work on presenting your best self, online and in person and focus less on getting matches and more on meeting people. A thousand matches you never see is worth far less than one match you get a first date with. And then a second. 

Good luck