Category Archives: Dating Advice
Prospective daters navigate algorithms that drive apps | Features – Bristol Herald Courier
CHICAGO –– A front-row seat in a crash course on app-based dating was the perfect place for JoAnn Thissen.
Online dating takes a lot of nerve, and the 68-year-old retired marine geologist was working up her courage. She’s dabbled on dating websites and apps, and even asked for a subscription to dating site Match for Christmas. She hasn’t had any luck yet, but she’s still determined.
That’s why she was there, sitting in a Loop hotel among dozens of other attendees interested in crafting the perfect online dating profile. There were men and women, millennials and baby boomers, singles and people in relationships.
The holidays are peak dating season, and the love lives of tens of thousands of Chicagoans hinge on how algorithms behind popular dating apps like Tinder, Hinge and Match piece together their data. Even a decade ago, 1 in 3 marriages started online, one study suggested, and dependence on dating apps has increased. Some users fret over creating the perfect profile to rope in the ideal mate. Others work to outsmart the algorithms behind the services they use.
“There’s a lot (about) meeting another person that can’t be determined by an algorithm,” Thissen said. “They take your info and they crunch the numbers and they come up with something. How do you get them to uncrunch the numbers?”
That’s where Bela Gandhi and Smart Dating Academy come in. The date-coaching company, which Gandhi founded in 2009, hosted the dating-app workshop Thissen attended this fall as part of Chicago Ideas Week.
The changing nature of the dating scene has caused Smart Dating Academy to change how it teaches people to approach online dating.
The increasingly digital world has changed expectations, Gandhi said. In the past, she made sure clients’ hopes weren’t built around Hollywood romances. Now she must preach that online dating isn’t quite the same as online shopping.
“Our brains are wired,” Gandhi said. “It’s like, ‘I sent an email to this guy, I want him personally to arrive to my doorstep with a dozen roses tonight.’ It’s like an Amazon Prime mentality to mate search.”
Flitting attention spans make app dating a delicate dance, Gandhi told the crowd at her crash course.
You have “about 3 milliseconds” to make a first impression online, Gandhi said. No pressure.
One attendee, Kelli Murphy, 35, said she has noticed how quickly people lose interest in potential matches. She’s not expecting instantaneous results — she’s been using dating apps long enough to know that’s not realistic — but she has crafted her approach based on other users’ actions.
“It’s best to plan a date within a couple of days or else people will forget about you,” Murphy said.
Still, Gandhi loves dating sites and apps. More than one-third of marriages between 2005 and 2012 started online, according to a University of Chicago study commissioned by online dating site eHarmony. Gandhi said that will only increase.
Almost half of Americans are single. Prospects are good for digital daters, especially this time of year.
Dating season peaks between Dec. 26 and Valentine’s Day, according to data from online dating company Match Group, which owns Match, Tinder and OkCupid, among others. More than 60 million messages are sent on the Match app during that time, and more than 750,000 dates occur.
Match named the first Sunday of the new year “Dating Sunday” and predicts there will be a 69 percent increase in new singles coming to the app. People resolve to find love in the new year, Gandhi said.
Meanwhile, all those people clicking and swiping in search of a potential partner are good for the bottom line.
For example, Tinder’s third-quarter revenues were double what they were the previous year, according to parent company Match’s most recent earnings report. That increase was driven in part by Tinder Gold, a premium service to which 60 percent of Tinder’s 4.1 million users subscribe. Match also bought a 51 percent stake in Hinge earlier this year. Facebook is looking to cash in too, rolling out a dating service in some countries.
But there certainly is an underbelly to the technology, Gandhi said. For better or worse, people expect to be able to plug exactly who they want into an algorithm and have that person in no time.
“The problem is, people think they know what they want, but they don’t know what they actually need,” Gandhi said.
In the beginning, online dating was not built on algorithms. Match got its start in 1995 with online personal ads. Singles searched through the site’s active profiles to find matches.
Then came the matchmaking era in the 2000s. Psychologists and self-help gurus got behind big online dating services. “Dr. Phil” McGraw dished out dating advice through Match.com, and psychologist Neil Clark Warren founded eHarmony, where users answered a list of questions in search of a soul mate.
“The idea was: ‘You don’t know what you want; you have no idea. You’re going to marry the wrong person. Let us solve that for you,’ ” said Sam Yagan, the Chicago-based co-founder of OkCupid. “Thus begins algorithmic dating.”
OkCupid used data differently when it launched in 2004, Yagan said. Its approach was less about narrowing it down to one soulmate and more about making sure dates weren’t a waste of time.
How the algorithms work can be a mystery to users, and they can change at any time. New York-based Hinge, for example, got its start pairing users with friends of Facebook friends, but last summer it ditched the requirement to log in with Facebook accounts.
Match introduced a rating system for users in 2010 that gathers data on customers that the app’s algorithm can learn from, said Dushyant Saraph, vice president of product at Match Group.
“We aren’t trying to solve for marriages or predicting who is going to fall in love with whom,” Saraph said in an email. “But putting two people in front of each other that will strike up a conversation on the app is something we can clearly measure.”
Algorithms learn from users’ preferences. They gather data on users and how they interact, and calculate which profiles will appear in feeds or as matches. If a user tends not to engage with people with tattoos, the app may stop showing that person people with tattoos, for example.
That worries some users, like Thissen from the app dating crash course. What if they miss someone special because of how an algorithm processed their data?
Yagan, who is also a Match Group board member, believes people generally know what they want, and apps do a good job satisfying those desires. And if they don’t, people will just try a different dating app.
“Ultimately, you have to be happy with the product,” he said.
Lilah Jones and Dani Martinez are getting married. They’re still deciding on the date — summer 2019 or 2020 — but they’re sure it’ll be in Spain, Martinez’s home country.
The two went on their first date in January 2016, and Jones proposed in August after the couple scaled Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. They met through Match, but Jones had to dig a little.
Jones, a Smart Dating Academy client, initially trusted the algorithms to do most of the matchmaking. She works at Google and has seen artificial intelligence and algorithms work well. Then she noticed a trend among the people popping up in her Match feed.
“I tended to be matched with people of the same color, people who were professional just like me, who live in certain areas,” the Old Irving Park neighborhood resident said. “It was a lot of kind of the same. The person who I ended up with did not come up in my feed.”
She ventured beyond the feed, played around with her filters and searched Match profiles on her own to find Martinez, 37. She noticed his photos first. He looked fun, and his profile was positive. The two have vastly different backgrounds, are of different races and grew up in different countries, but they hit it off, said Jones, 43. They each have a child, and their kids get along well too.
People have come to depend too much on dating apps’ algorithms to find love for them, Jones said. Sometimes it takes a little work to find the right match.
“You’re expecting this algorithm to find your next husband or find your next boyfriend or find your next hookup,” Jones said. “This is life, and you get out of life the effort you put into it.”
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©2018 Chicago Tribune
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PHOTOS (for help with images, contact 312-222-4194): ALGORITHIM DATING
It’s not a secret crush if he stares at you all the time, and you know about it – Hindustan Times
Are you having relationship troubles? Is the long distance bothering you or do you have trust issues? Are you looking for someone to talk your heart out about these problems? Worry not. So, TV anchor, theatre personality, comedian, political satirist, columnist and author, Cyrus Broacha is here to help you: From navigating relationship trouble to helping your love life go the distance, he’s got all the dating advice you’ll ever need from your first date to something that you can’t find a solution to. From how to approach your crush to how to handle a break up, shoot your questions to Cyrus and he will answer them.
There is a boy in my class, who has a secret crush on me. He keeps staring at me most of the time. I have mixed feelings for him. He is my brother’s friend. My family is against all this ‘love stuff’. Because of all these things, I can’t even study. I don’t know what to do. Should I talk to him or just ignore and move on? – AK
AK, how can it be a secret ‘crush’, if he stares at you all the time. What’s the ‘secret’ here? A secret is, like say your Pan Card Number which no else knows. Or who’s going to rule Telangana? Or Madonna’s real age? Or who is in charge of Pakistan. AK, I hope you get my drift there’s no secret. He likes you. Now don’t get confused with all the family stuff as yet. You are not going to marry him next Tuesday, are you? (By the way, now that would be a secret). First thing first. Do you like him? Mixed feelings is a positive sign. Only no feelings, is a negative sign. So first figure out your feelings, as his ‘secret’ is extremely open. The family and their opinion, should remain a secret for now. First deal with yourself, and your apparently ‘secret’ feelings towards to him.
There is a girl in my college and we both happen to make eye contacts quite a lot of times I don’t know if she is interested in me or is it just by chance that we happen to look at each other. How do I start a conversation with her? Also, she doesn’t speak a word with anyone else in the class. What do I do? — VE
Well VE, you could join the special ‘Eye Contact’ coaching classes available at Kedar’s Coaching Classes in Andheri West, or Bhola’s Classes in Vasant Vihar, New Delhi. Or since those classes don’t exist, and never will, you can search your body with both hands, until you find some courage. That courage is important, it’s like petrol for your car. Only courage is much cheaper. Just as obvious, as night following day, is the idea of dialogue following shared glances. Since, she appears shy, and not very talkative, you, have to start the conversation. You refer to 47% of my answers, which all contain the same answer, but with different spellings. Just, start with a simple greeting. A hello. A hello back means progress. Normal conversation about class room culture will follow.
There is a girl in my apartment, who is slightly elder to me. We have been good friends for now, but I somehow have developed feelings for her. The only thing I am sure is that she is single. I don’t want to lose out on a good friend by proposing to her. What should I do? — NT
A girl in your apartment, NT? Where do you live, in a working women’s hostel? Okay, ignore that. Remember Emperor Comodius of Rome? He fell in love with Rhinoceros, but wasn’t sure of the Rhino’s feelings for him. To be certain he had the Rhino brought three feet from him. History records that the wound to his Glutus muscle from the agitated Rhino’s horn never healed fully. Sadly, the girl in your apartment is hot a rhinoceros, so its tough to get such a clear picture. First and foremost stop treating her like a Rhino. Do not propose to her. Keep the good friend technique on for a while. Your next step is to ask her out for coffee. A date which is not a date. Slowly but surely get her to go out with you. If she does, you have your answer without even proposing. Forget Everest’s peak. Just climb the damn mountain, stop behaving like a Rhino!
I am a teenager and I seem to have been very interested in the concept of Polyamory. However, I am in a relationship with someone at present and I don’t know how to tell her that I want to explore this side of my personality too. Please help. — KR
KR, you have my full permission. And that word permission is the answer to your question. You want multiple partners? It’s all good as long as all partners give consent. No building contract binds you to monogamy. Polyamory can be explained through a simple political metaphor. The Multi party system. It can be practiced. But very often leads to chaos. Please check with your partner if she shares your interest in polyamory. Now if she prefers monogamy, your experiment with polyamory will lead to you being hit repeatedly on the head with a hot frying pan, until you give up your liberal views. So, I give you a thumbs-up and I’m sending you my friend Dr .Rustom Modi’s number.
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First Published: Dec 11, 2018 12:26 IST
Kiwi woman launches 'safe dating' forum for women – Newshub
WATCH: Dating can be hard at the best of times. Credits: Image – Getty; Video – The Project.
An Auckland woman has created a website for Kiwi women to share red flags or safety concerns about men when dating.
Zoe Garrett created a Squarespace blog entitled ‘Date Safe’ this week following the death of young British backpacker Grace Millane.
“I discovered a friend had been on a date with the alleged [killer] a year ago and had had concerns, a friend of a friend was in the same position, another friend almost went on a date with him,” she tells Newshub.
Garrett, 29, says she and many of her friends have had unsavoury experiences while dating, including bad vibes and feeling unsafe.
Her hope is that Date Safe will allow women to share those experiences, as a vetting procedure for dating sites like Tinder.
“I’m still figuring out the legalities in sharing details and names and what extent I can go to,” she says. She’s hoping by women sharing first names, descriptions of pick-up lines and first date spots, they can create awareness without breaching any laws.
“I know overseas sex workers have as similar way of sharing the details dodgy clients, and use it to keep themselves safe,” she says. “That’s kind of what gave me the idea.”
Garrett says she hopes the public ‘outing’ might make men think twice over less than savoury behaviour.
“When people are held accountable they might think twice about exhibiting these kinds of strange behaviours,” she says.
Since the shocking death of Grace Millane in Auckland, a former flatmate of Millane’s alleged murderer has come forward to describe him as “aggressive”.
The woman lived with the accused in Auckland, telling RadioLIVE that at first the man, who has name suppression, was “chatty” and “reasonably easy to live”. But it wasn’t long before alarm bells began to ring.
Garrett says she hopes Date Safe will be a place for women to voice those alarm bells.
“I’ve met my last two boyfriends on Tinder and Bumble, but you do have to really sift through and be careful about who you meet,” she says.
“It makes you quite resentful sometimes if you have to run your behaviours around what other people do.”
Garrett also says she would appreciate any feedback or advice on how to run the site. You can contact her through the Sqaurespace page.
“It would be great to get the conversation flowing,” she says.
Newshub.
Dating Advice For Women Who Have Had No Luck In Love – YourTango
Your approach may need a makeover.
Too often, I see women devastated by their dating experiences. Despite their best efforts, men never treat them the way they deserve to be treated.
Their lack of success in dating has very little to do with the men they date. Rather, they become too emotionally entrenched in the experience too quickly and fail to see how they create problematic dating dynamics.
You see, I used to make these same mistakes until I took dating advice to heart, recognized my part in the process, and began dating and eventually married a man who treats me the way I deserve to be treated.
For women looking for how to find love, here are some rules you should always follow if you want success.
1. Get off the pity train.
Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Let go of the self-defeating thoughts holding you back. How fun is it to hang out with someone who only puts themselves down?
Think about how people are drawn to someone with confidence. A person with confidence seems to love life. They don’t complain about themselves. It is a much more pleasant experience. If you don’t feel confident, fake it until you do. You will probably see a difference in how people interact with you.
2. Never cry about a boy.
I mean it. Never cry about a boy — they aren’t worth it. Sure, there are some jerks out there. Don’t give them your power by allowing yourself to feel bad.
We train people how to treat us. If you can work on your assertiveness and confidence, you will find a relationship with someone who respects you. Until then, it will just be the same guy with a different name.
3. Keep an air of mystery.
This is a big one. We all have baggage. Over the course of a relationship, your significant other will learn more about you. Until that point, don’t over-share.
This especially applies to telling a man how you feel about him. If you have been dating for two weeks and think he might be the one, don’t tell him! Although, if after two weeks you do start fantasizing about marriage and children, we need to talk.
Slow yourself down and find a distraction. There is no way you know enough about him that quickly to make a life-long commitment. If that is where your mind is, you are missing some key data.
4. Only put in a 30 percent effort.
This sounds harsh, but it is true. The feminists are going to hate me on this one, but I think “I am woman, hear me roar” has done us a disservice in the dating department. Think about it in mathematical terms: if you put in 100 percent effort, how much is left for him to give?
Honestly, when it comes to dating, less is more. The less effort you put in, the more he has to come forward. This becomes diagnostic of how invested he is in you. If he doesn’t come forward, run, do not walk. If he is putting so little effort into your dating relationship, what will happen once he gets comfortable?
5. Make him come to you.
This is especially true for the first few dates. If you go to his house on the first date instead of him coming to pick you up, I have two words for you: booty call. If he isn’t willing to invest the energy to at least come pick you up and have something planned for the evening, just say no. If he asks you to come to him and has no game plan, he is just looking to hook up.
A man who genuinely wants to spend time getting to know you will put in the effort.
6. Never see him with less than a seven days’ notice.
This doesn’t have to be hard and fast, but the point is that you should not accept a date on Wednesday or Thursday for that weekend. You are a busy woman. He needs to plan ahead if he wants your time.
Men are by the thrill of the chase. A woman who has nothing going on and is always at their beck and call is not desirable for a relationship. She is desirable for hooking up. So, let me ask you: do you want to be an afterthought or do you want to be respected?
7. Never call him unless returning a call.
Don’t be clingy. I can’t emphasize this enough. Men will easily get turned off by a woman who calls or texts too much. It is overwhelming and can end a relationship before it starts. Again, you are a busy woman. You have so many people and activities competing for your time and attention. You don’t have time to call him.
Let him call you at least for the first couple of months. Again, this becomes diagnostic of how much energy he wants to invest. After your relationship is more established, call him but still limit how much you do call. He is not a girlfriend with whom you should spend hours on the phone. If he has hours to spend on the phone, he can use the effort to see you.
8. Never return a call or text immediately.
Remember, you are busy, busy, busy. Don’t sit by the phone waiting for a call or text. If this is anxiety provoking, find some other way to spend your time. You can bet he isn’t sitting by the phone waiting for you to call. Meanwhile, your life is passing you by. Get out there and live it.
9. Do not get physical.
Hopefully, by this point, this goes without saying. For the first couple of months, you should limit your physical intimacy. Remember, men like a challenge. This, however, is not to say that they like a tease.
Don’t expect, like one unfortunate woman I know, a man to be okay with sleeping over in your bed without having sex. This kind of mind game is disrespectful on your part. You cannot expect anyone to be okay with you sending mixed messages.
If he is pushing for more intimacy, let him know that you don’t feel comfortable with that until you know each other better. You need to respect your body.
10. Let go of the outcome.
This is no indication of your worth as a person. So many women are devastated when a first date does not become a relationship. They think it is because they are not pretty enough, smart enough, successful enough or fun enough. They don’t even stop to consider whether or not they even like the guy.
Date like a man. Show up, have fun and if it works out, great. If not, on to the next one. Will following these rules help you get married or learn how to find love? Maybe, maybe not. But by following this dating advice, you will quickly be able to weed out people who are not worth your time and energy.
It may seem like adhering to these rules would be “playing games.” It isn’t a game. It’s about showing someone you are worthy of their respect.
The bottom line is that if you don’t respect yourself, no one else will either. Just like interviewing for a job, you need to make sure the man is someone you want, not just concern yourself with whether or not he wants you.
Michelle Lewis is a wellness counselor. Follow her on Facebook or Twitter (@LewisCounseling) for more information.
