Time to shout into the void:

My partner and I broke up and I'm thinking about doing the online dating thing - mostly because I figure it would be easier than going out to try and find someone due to a lot of self-confidence issues and the like. My best friend helped me find my ex, and I have recruited his assistance again but I figure I should get the ball rolling myself. Anyway, does anyone have experience with online dating? Reading the reviews of apps just feels off-putting, a lot are really negative and I'm not 100% that they are all accurate. So what did you find success with? What have you heard better things about?

I met my boyfriend on Tinder, he's great. :D I also met my previous so-called boyfriend on Tinder, and he was not great at all. Well, I met many people on Tinder, and it was fun. Perhaps mostly because to me, finding a significant other was a nice side effect of using the app, not the main reason – I just thought it would be nice to meet some people I probably wouldn't have met otherwise, and maybe go together to some restaurants or pubs that I wouldn't have motivation to visit. With most of them everything ended after the first meeting (or before), but I definitely spent many interesting evenings, so no regrets.

Thanks :) I suppose that's really what I need, is some motivation to actually get back out. Thank you for your help

@ livinneverland not much experience. but meeting people online is similar to meeting people anywhere else. You just need to keep your wits with you because it seems the world is crazier than we thought. i joined a pen-pal site -forgot the name. I wanted to find someone to hopefully motivate me study Chinese -_- Long story short, what i found was not what i wanted. nothing bad, but the other person thought i'm there for romance; i was (still am) just very cheap to go pay for Chinese classes. It seems these language apps/sites is where the better online dating happens. (the couple behind MyKoreanHusband blog and youtube channel seem to have met that way, and fell in love) You could even be married within 2 years, and not to a (very) bad person. i'm half joking and, yeah, it depends. PS: sorry to hear about you and your partner breaking up. :(

I have a rather creepy occurrence that happened around the winter of 2018 and I used plenty of fish. I live in Michigan and I don't normally like people not in my vicinity. Rarely will I like a guy who is in cities, like Chicago or Milwaukee but there one one guy. I kind of gravitated towards and he was from Chicago.

We got talking the normal, phone calls, video chats etc. Things were panning out quite well and the dude told me he was an author. This wasn't a red flag at the time but it would become a glaring obvious one eventually. When I asked him about his manuscripts he would always correct me and call them "manuals."

I passed that off but deep down something about how we would do that would give me a sense that something was not right about the situation. Well there was one day, we were voice chatting on Discord and he asked me if I would like to hear of of his "manuals." I thought sure why not, and he gave me the option. A Supernatural story, or one with a romantic ending and seeing how I did like supernatural stories. I told him to read me one of those.

This experience would scare the living shit out me from this day and make me reconsider online dating for quite sometime. He began reading the story as if the main character was possessed by a demon, the main character of the story. Was very attractive in his eyese, sort of a self absorbed sort of neurotic vibe to the character.

The dude, read on and let me tell you this story was quite well written from what was read to me and he main character for the msot part would sleep with homosexual males and kill them immediately after having sex with them. The main character, would also sleep with women and one women in particular was an adulterer in his mind. Which he killed the woman in this recant like it was his duty to kill her for committing the sin. It only got weirder and stranger from that point onward.

Like I said before this stories, were called "manuals" in his own words, also they were so well spoken to me that it felt like that this may have happened in reality or well if not actually occurring in reality. They were his own deranged personal manifesto on the situations that occurred within the story.

Long story short, be careful out there xD

Well, I can't say anything about any dating sites, because I've never used them, but I'm now married to the guy I met on discord. I had come to the conclusion I was very happy single, had a discord server for gaming, he joined from a PlayDate ad, we chatted almost daily and had a lot in common, I told him my feelings and we started dating. Two years later we're married and I'm in the process of getting my paperwork together for immigration. He's in Canada and I'm US. Sometimes it just happens when you're not expecting it. :) As far as the online part, it's tough, it has its own set of challenges. We're on opposite coasts, so it's about anywhere from 400-600 for a plane ticket round trip to visit, returning home is one of the hardest things to do and only gets harder each visit, just wanting to hug, kiss, even smell your partner hurts more every day, there's worrying if they make it home safely and are doing okay, and not being able to hold them when they're having a bad day is tough.

I met the first ex in an MMORPG a decade ago, lasted about a year. Not love.

I met the second ex in an online dating site, lasted maybe two years. Not love.

Then, I met my husband on Day 1 on Tinder after he sent me a terrible pick up line that worked. Deleted the app then we dated for a year and we both realised each other was 'The One'. We were in different states and would catch a fly every fortnight or so until I moved states after 7 months of LDR. We've been married for over two years and couldn't be any happier! He made me realise a lot of things about life and love and I can't imagine being in a world without him.

A few friends and coworkers got married to their Tinder/POF/etc. dates and one of them was the one who convinced me to go on Tinder. We both got married to our Tinder dates in the same year.

tl;dr - I liked online dating and it worked well for me.

So, my fiancee and I actually started out dating online. We met roleplaying through the Hetalia fandom and became best friends. I was straight at the time and dating long distance also online with a guy I had also met through anime roleplaying. Then I realized I had feelings for my online best friend when I stood up for her against a toxic friend of hers, ran panicking to my long distance boyfriend at the time, and we ended up as a long distance bisexual poly triad for a bit. Then the boyfriend started ghosting me and going quiet so then it eventually just became my fiancee and I. We finally closed the distance in 2018 and live together now <3 She's the reason I found out that I wasn't just straight at all like I thought I was and I would absolutely do anything for her.

I met my hubby in person. He and I are definitely made for one another. I have dated online, but it really didn't go well for me. I'm not going to discourage anyone from trying it, but it is way different from meeting in person. I have heard about it working out for people, and that's great. I just didn't have a great experience with it. I'm way happier now than I have ever been in my life.

I've never used a dating site or app before, but I met my girlfriend through mutual friends online. Full disclosure that we didn't have that much of a relationship on the internet since 1) I met up with her irl two days later for an event, and only starting talking to her because a number of my friends were already friends with her, and 2) she only lived about two hours away from me so once we realized we were in love it was very easy for her to come to my apartment every weekend until we moved in together. That was about 6 months after we started dating, so our relationship hasn't needed to be semi-online in a long, long time.

I think the biggest thing I would advise is if you're going to be in a mostly-online relationship (or just get to know someone online before meeting up irl), make sure you have frequent video/phone calls with them. The depth of any relationship can only evolve so far in text. It's not that online relationships are inherently unfulfilling, it's more that the limitations of text-only communication make it more difficult to develop serious feelings for each other, and on the off-chance that you ever decide to move in together you'll want to have spent significant time learning their habits/mannerisms so there are no nasty surprises after making a commitment to them.

I also read a very wise piece of advice in a Medium article ages ago, but it's helped me quite a lot over the years: don't send any form of important [relationship-building] information in a text. Tell them you want to have a call or video chat first, and make it a real discussion. Sending any info that warrants a conversation through a platform that denies you the full scope of communication (tone of voice, facial expressions, body language, etc) is never a good idea, especially if it's a conflict you're having with them. Learning what's perfectly fine to send via text and what's better for phone/video calls or saving for an in-person meetup is a crucial skill for any kind of online relationship, whether platonic or romantic.

I met my boyfriend on okcupid but I was more looking for a friend more than anything else and we just clicked. Been together ever since. And he’s a good one.

I’ve had my fair share of others too. Where I have met them on another avatar site and actually moved to a whole another state to be with them. It’s crazy I know but defiantly a learning experience that I don’t regret though he wasn’t good.

Just look for a friend it’s more important than anything else I think

I met my boyfriend through his discord server! We’ve been best friends for 3 years and have been dating for almost a year. There’s definitely some good people online dating wise, you just have to sift through the bad eggs and be careful.

I've done a whole lot of online dating (match, POF, Tinder, Bumble, etc) over the years. I actually met one of my best friends through it nearly a decade ago and he's getting married in November which is exciting. And I can now say I've found my person a little over a year ago through online dating. Just don't go into it thinking it'll happen immediately because it likely won't. I think talking to people and going on dates is a great way to learn more about what you're looking for in a person. In the end you're really just meeting someone to see if you both mesh and if not then that's okay!

I've had really good luck and met my girlfriend on an app. She lived one and a half hours away from me, she didn't want a long distance relationship, I didn't want a relationship at all but we just kept writing really long texts and just clicked right away. Then we started meeting and eventually got together on her birthday. We've been together for two and a half years and we'll get engaged next year.

My main advice is not to spend too much time texting people on that app. Tell them you want to text or have a phone call or face time with them and see if you get along. And if you meet up, take a friend with you in case something happens. Take care!

I have dated few guys offline and turned out to be crazy and its ended bad. please be careful

Met my girlfriend on Secondlife in an escort club of all place. We got to talk and realized we liked the same things and we both have chronic illnesses so someone who understands is a big plus. Long story short, she ended up moving here a year after we met on SL. I never thought I'd ever date on a game site especially doing what I did on that game, but she is amazing and I'm so glad I met her and clicked :)

I met my boyfriend on PlentyofFish, and we'll be together 8 years on the 19th of this month. I was on the site (as well as OKCupid and Match.com) for about 6 years before I met him, and I had very little success before him, unless you count the guy I went on a few dates with when I was in Scotland, and another guy I met just before my boyfriend who ended up breaking my heart pretty bad. I wouldn't say that online dating is easy or necessarily "fun," but there is something to be said for being in a space where you know that the people you're encountering are single and looking and interested in your particular gender. I've never really gotten the hang of just approaching people I don't know and talking to them - the idea that anyone could be comfortable doing that is completely foreign to me. I did meet someone on Match that I'm still friends with, although we don't hang out much anymore now that he has a wife and kid.

In 2014 or so, at the recommendation of a friend, I joined HelloTalk, an app that lets you find and message people who speak the language you're trying to learn and are in turn learning your language, so you can chat and help each other with grammar and vocab and such. I made the mistake of putting a nice picture of myself in my profile, and I was instantly inundated with messages from Hispanic men. It made me uncomfortable, so I changed my profile pic to a picture my dog. The deluge of messages mysteriously stopped after that...

i met my boyfriend [soon to be husband] of 6 years on ffxiv during a random encounter. we never really played together but he always messaged me after out initial meeting :3 it is hard doing ldr but honestly as a guy who has a past in ldrs its worth it. im moving in with him with winter and it feels so good. never had a guy respect and love me as much as he has