ONLINE DATING ADDICTION (Warning: Long Ass Post)

I got divorced at 43.  I was married for 18 years.  I had known my wife since I was 5.  My high school and college years with girls was decent at best.  A few girlfriends here and there and some pathetic sex in high school.  In college I had a smattering of average girls peppered in with a few hot ones.

And that was it.  Not terrible in comparison to some dudes, but not great either.

The success I did have with women was initiated by them, not me.  For the most part I was in the right place at the right time.  I did nothing spectacular to get these girls.  I was just there.

I never approached anyone I found attractive.  As a matter of fact, the more attracted I was to someone the more I avoided them.

I never went after what I wanted.  I was always intimidated.  And I always watched on the sidelines…waiting.

Sure, in my early 20’s right before I started dating my soon to be wife I’d take a girl or two home.  But again, they approached me.  I took what was handed to me.  I didn’t work to get a girl, and therefore did not earn any success I had with women.

Any girl I was truly attracted to felt out of reach.  Clearly I didn’t have great self-esteem or self-worth.  I knew even then I had unresolved issues I needed to work on, but I was getting just enough female attention to numb the discomfort and put off facing any insecurities I may have had.  It was just easier to sit around watch porn and get the occasional bang.  Nice and safe in my comfort zone.

Out in the real world with absolutely no direction, I looked at my future and saw the unknown.  The social pressures of finding a safe secure job, a wife, and raising a few kids was always on my mind.  I felt at the ripe old age of 22 or 23 I was running out of time to live a full life.

So what did I do?  I married my childhood friend and sweetheart.  It was easy, familiar, and convenient.

It didn’t take long to know we shouldn’t have gotten married.

But I went with it anyway.  I was a man after all, and I had an obligation to keep my mouth shut and be a good husband.  I figured this was the “way it’s supposed to be.”  Who wanted to upset our families?  Or deal with the guilt of jerking around my wife’s emotions?  I didn’t.  It was just easier to suck it up.

I will not go into the day to day of my marriage but I am sure most of you can imagine what kind of relationship my wife and I had.  Passionless, contentious, and boring.

During the marriage, at around 33 years old, with two little kids running around the house, I started training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. 

Again, I won’t go into the details of what this sport did, and continues to do for me to this day, but it kick-started my road to self-improvement.

I went from 5’10”,  260 pounds to 5’10” 198 pounds in about 6 months.  I started to read and write like a madman; philosophy, personal development, history, etc.  I started and built a lucrative side hustle.  And I enjoyed every minute with my kids.

But the marriage sucked.  Sex was rare and passionless.

My low self-esteem I carried from childhood plus the shitty feedback from my wife transformed into vicious self-talk: I wasn’t a good looking, attractive individual.  I just didn’t have what it took to have a wife that truly wanted me.  Therefore nobody from the opposite sex would want me. Crap like that.

Fast forward to the divorce (initiated by me), I was still fragile and passive.  As much as my social circle grew due to jiu jitsu and my confidence as well, my default mode when it came to women was I was not worthy.

But it didn’t matter.  I was getting divorced.

I was ready to be reborn as a man.  The problem was, I didn’t know what being a man meant.

I was oblivious to the fact that I had no idea about women.  I didn’t know I was blue pill.  I didn’t even know what a blue pill was.

I went into the dating world ignorant.  And ignorance is bliss.

So you could imagine my excitement the moment the marriage was over.

As hard as I was on myself I figured I was an ok looking guy.  I mean I wasn’t ugly or anything.  I was in shape (not jacked or anything at that point), I was smart and well read, and had been working on myself for at least 10 years.  I had a good career and I was a great dad.

What woman wouldn’t kill to have a guy like me?

This was going to be a no-brainer.  I’d prey on primarily women my age since I could relate to them and the barrier to entry was probably lower than going after girls 10 to 15 years younger than me.

It was just easier.  Not to mention I had zero confidence in myself that I could even get someone 10 years younger than me anyway.

Online would be the perfect place to pick and choose my battles.

I created profiles on all the heavy hitters.  Tinder, Bumble, Match, Plenty of Fish, Happn, and Ok Cupid.  And I paid the premiums on all of them.  I wanted all the features.  I wanted that edge.

Initially I knew I’d have to see where I stood in the dating world pecking order.  I didn’t know the term at the time but I needed to see where my SMV (sexual market value) was.

The strategy was to swipe right on everyone, or send messages to everyone, depending on what app I was using (Tinder swipe right like madman, Match message every single girl in a 35 mile radius).

After a month or two I’d see what type of girl I was attracting and where I stood compared to the rest of the dudes out there.

It took less than a week and I had three dates lined up.  All of them were 35 and older.

I didn’t care what they looked like at that point.  I just cared what they thought of me.  Not only was I trying to get an idea of my SMV, I was also seeking (craving actually) validation.

To have the ability to choose a woman based on her looks, personality, or lifestyle was not even a blip on my radar.  I just needed to know if I was worthy.

I learned quickly how to play the online game.  Endless texts, phone conversations, corny emojis, etc.

I was careful not to “offend” anyone or break any of the OLD rules these women insisted guys violated all the time.

No bathroom selfies, no shirtless pics, no pics with sunglasses.  I made sure to have a profile that states “looking for a relationship” NOT “casual dating”.  I followed all the unspoken rules to be a “good guy”.  I was a master of pre-qualifying myself.

I was basically a neutered cat.

When a woman did answer one of my messages I would get bombarded with questions like:

“What do you do for work?”

“Are you a good dad?”

“Is that your real height?”

“Is that your real age?”

“Are you really divorced? Single? Etc?”

“Are your pictures recent?”

“Do you have nice teeth?”

I’d scramble to answer these as fast as possible.

How could I not?  After 100’s of messages and swipes I finally have a woman on the hook.  She’s engaging with me.  She’s messaging back and forth.

Here are a few more I would get before meeting them:

“I am not into dating casual, are you?”

“Would you re-marry again?”

“It looks like you are fit and take care of yourself, do you?”

“Are you one of those guys who loves to go out with their buddies every Friday night?”

I passed every interview question.  Why? Because I didn’t know any better.  I told her what she wanted to hear.  My goal was to “win her over”.  So that’s what I did.  I was afraid of losing the interaction.  You never knew when you’d run out of prospects so I kept everyone on the hook.  I had no abundance mindset at all.  I was agreeable and easy.

Middle aged women ate it up.  I had women “falling” for me before they even met me.

The first ever online date I went on ended in sex within 15 minutes of meeting her.  She was a 5 at best…and I mean at best.  Ok, I am lying, she was a 4.

She invited me back to her place after one drink.  She initiated.  Nothing had changed since I was in college.  I was still passive.  I did nothing for the lay.

In hindsight she had been aggressive prior to meeting.  Always texting.  Always setting the tone.  I was just a means to satisfy her end.  I just went with it because that is just what I thought guys did.  I figured this is how you win them over.

The next two girls I met also ended in sex.  They fell somewhere in the 4 to 5 range as well.

Remember they were all on the “older” side.  Either divorced, never married, or a pain in the ass “career” woman.

They were all texting me the day after.  They all wanted to see me again.

I thought I was the MAN.  I felt like a freaking stud.  (I was really a moron)

They were not really good looking.  If I squinted they may have jumped a point or two.  But I didn’t care.  I was getting validation and it felt great.

I had no intention of carting them around my friends.  At that point I was just feeding my starving ego.

I figured this was my reward for all those years of being miserable, I earned this.

I’d tell my married friends they were crazy for staying married.  Online was gold.  It didn’t get any easier.

My next three dates also turned into sex.  I don’t remember if they were first nighters or I saw them again but I do remember banging like 6 girls in a row.  Their shitty physical appearance or cardboard dispositions didn’t phase me.  I was experiencing different women.  Each with their own nuances, their own kinks, their own curves, their own imperfections (and Jesus Christ, there were plenty of imperfections).

I thought I had finally taken control of my dating life.  I was on the cusp of landing some classy, hot chicks soon.

Again to be clear, all the women were in the 38 to 52 year old range, mostly average to below average and/or fat.  If they happened to be cute I’d learn rather quickly they were damaged.

I also learned that lots of these older women wanted relationships, immediately.

I didn’t have the balls to break anything off.  I felt guilty to just cut them off.  I was sleeping with them after all, and was conditioned already from a marriage of 18 years, to be an honorable man and stick to my word.  Plus I had no faith in myself that I could find something better.

I’d get myself into pseudo-relationships with each one.  I was juggling them all.

Eventually, I’d resent them, and like a coward, I would start to ignore their calls and texts and become more and more distant, instead of just being straight with them.

At some point they would just give up.

All the while I was swiping like a madman and messaging every single girl I came across.

It still didn’t matter what they looked like or what type of lifestyle they lived.

Fat girls, cross-eyed girls, yellow teeth girls, sort of hot girls but not really, smelly girls, anorexic girls, smokers, drunks, moms, cat ladies, hair dressers, lawyers, doctors, 7-11 attendants, squirters.  It just didn’t matter.  I craved the attention and validation I never got in my teens or in my marriage.  I couldn’t say no.  Even when I was repulsed I’d see them anyway.

I was starving to fill a void and each new date gave me another high.

Any day or night I was free I had to have something lined up.  A date, a lay, something, anything.  I had no filter.

I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted.  I didn’t know what I liked or didn’t like.  All I knew was I had to keep the assembly line going.

The last thing I wanted to do was stop and take stock on where in life I was.  I’d have to look at what I had achieved over the last year and see a man who left in his wake a string of women I was embarrassed to walk around with in public.

At the time though, as far as I knew I was finally a man.  I had game.  I was passing every test these middle aged women threw at me.  I was agreeable and laid back.  And for washed up controlling divorced women in their forties I was the perfect mark.  In my mind I wasn’t doing half bad.  Things were easy.

I also knew I had work to do.  I knew I had to upgrade the women I was seeing.  Not only in looks and personality, but in age as well.

But this was something I was also avoiding.

If I went for better looking women, I’d have to run the risk of rejection and disappointment.

What if I couldn’t do any better?  What if this was it?  What if I wasn’t worthy?  Was this all I was capable of?  Trashy 6’s and hideous 4’s and 5’s?  Did that make me a hideous 4 or 5?

If a decent 6 rejected me did that mean I was no better than a 5?

I’d suppress these thoughts as much as I could.  I was getting just enough sex to distract me from these lifelong insecurities.

Every now and then I’d nab a decent looking woman (usually a mom with emotional baggage and unruly kids).  And when I say decent looking I mean a low 7.

I’d keep these girls around.  May even go exclusive for a few months and bring them around my friends.

Every time I thought to myself – “ok, you happy now?  She is pretty.  She has her shit together in comparison to that fat girl from last month.  Can you stop thinking you’re not reaching your SMV potential?”

But I would always end it in some way.  It just never felt right.

The voice in my head that I could do better screamed louder and louder.  I’d ignore it and bang more sub-par chicks.

Time and time again as I sat on the couch on a random Tuesday with whatever girl I was dating I’d look at her and feel as though something wasn’t right.

I couldn’t articulate it.  I couldn’t verbalize it.  But it felt like a swishing and churning in my gut.

I figured it was just me jones-ing for more online meetups.  Bored with my “main” girl.  Just me being selfish, looking for more when I had someone good enough right in front of me.  It was irritating but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

As the first year of OLD turned into a second, things became a blur.  I started to notice for every 15 to 20 below average to average (at best) looking girls I would bang, a 7 (or even a super rare low 8) would pop up.  And the 7’s and 8’s would fizzle out after a few dates (Now I know why but at the time I had no clue why they’d fizzle).  This was not a good sign.

More and more I was getting disappointed in my results.

The doubt that I wasn’t worthy began to creep in again.

I decided it had to be my profile and pictures.

I cleaned up my profiles.  I wrote better bios.  I took better pictures.  I vowed to only message or swipe on 7’s or higher.  I had a year under my belt with lots of sex, I was ready to operate with a stricter filter and base my dating on my own preferences instead of taking everything that was thrown at me and banging them.  I felt good about this next stage of my dating journey.

In hindsight I was foolish to think I actually had some control over my results.

Within a week or two it was business as usual.  The “hot” ones weren’t matching with me.  On apps like Match or POF where you can send messages with no swiping, the “hot” ones would either completely ignore me or give me one word answers.  I also became sensitive to the fact that lots of 5s and 6s were ignoring me too.

I started to pay attention more and more to the feedback I was getting.

Things were not adding up.  I had good pictures up.  I had my shit together.  And I was exactly what all these women pined for online.

“Looking for an honest guy, with good values, and a family man.  Fit, smart, and handsome, blah blah blah blah”

I checked every box.  Why were they not responding to me?

Suddenly I found myself having nothing lined up for the weekends.  My perceived picky-ness was leaving me empty handed and bored.

Eventually a potential 7/8 would rear it’s ugly head and we would start messaging.

This would give me a temporary ego boost and I’d let out a huge sigh of relief.  I knew I was capable of attracting a decent looking women.  I couldn’t wait to meet them and put the string of poor quality behind me.

My expectations heading to those first dates with potential 7/8’s were through the roof.  I had a year of dates and sex with all shapes and sizes.  I put in the hours to get better and better.  And now I was finally deciding my own fate by filtering for 7’s and above ONLY.

But the minute I’d enter the place (bar, coffee shop, whatever) – there she was…all 300lbs of her.  Or boney thin, all haggard looking.  45 my ass, she looked 65.  The wind would be taken out of my sails.  She’d look nothing like her pictures.

I was too much of a nice guy to turn around and walk right the fuck out.  I’d suck up the evening and race home to enjoy whatever was left of my night.  Maybe watch Netflix, play video games, read, or watch porn – probably all of the above.

I wasn’t naïve enough to think EVERYONE who was a 7+ actually looked like their pics.  But come on!  Some of these broads must look like their pictures.

But it would happen over and over for the next year.  I’d be really particular.  Vet her as best as I could.  Study her pictures.  But it was always something.  They NEVER looked like their pics.  If she wasn’t 6000 pounds, then her face was caked in 9 inches of makeup.  If she was a genuine 7 or 8 in looks she smoked like a chimney, had an ex-boyfriend that lived in her basement, and had a kid in rehab.

Nothing had changed from the last year except now I was spending more time wooing these so-called classier girls.  My texts were extensive.  I’d constantly be qualifying myself.  Meeting their demands before we even met.  “I am so done with partying and one night stands.  I just want to settle down with a good man now.”  I would just nod and smile.

I began to dread meeting these women.  It was the same shit literally every single first date.  Me sitting across from a hideous ghoul while she yapped about how she “won’t settle” this time.  Blah blah blah.

But something far worse was happening that I didn’t realize.

I’d be at a coffee shop, a bookstore, a concert, sporting event, wedding, or out with friends…any REAL LIFE social event.  And super cute girls would cross my path.  I wouldn’t even think of them as potential partners.  My default setting was “I can’t get that,” and I didn’t even realize I was thinking it.  God knows my body language was probably showing it.

I mean, how could I attract normal real life girls?  I had been dating and banging online women for 2 years.  Those women were way different than the women I was running into in real life.  The whole dating dynamic was different.  I was conditioned to operate online.  I didn’t know how to operate in real life.

“You bang 4’s and 5’s,” I would say to myself, “these women you are coming across are on a whole other planet than you and you don’t have the chops to even visit that planet much less live there.  Stick with your 4’s and 5’s.”

As year 2 turned into year 3 I now started dating and getting seriously involved with the “best” I could get.  I’d have one main chick and fuck bottom of the barrel girls on the side.  Not much different than what I was doing already but now I would force myself to stay in the relationship with my main girl.  It didn’t feel right, but I figured it was just me.  So I sucked it up and stayed in a toxic relationship.

Meanwhile, I stopped worrying about strategy online and just started asking girls to come over right off the bat.  I was in a serious relationship.  I didn’t have time to dick around with these other girls.  I just wanted them to come over, fuck and leave.

My success rate dropped but I always managed to snag at least one new girl a week to just come over for sex.  To get that one beauty over sometimes took me 4 to 6 hours of work on the apps.  I was wasting my days and nights away.  Which was counter-intuitive since the whole point of these quick lays was to save time.

This, I’d say was rock bottom for me.  Nasty promiscuous girls were coming over to a strange dude’s place just to fuck.  Not only were they putting themselves in harm’s way but so was I.  How I didn’t get accused of false rape charges, abductions, kidnappings, abuse, or God know’s what else is beyond me?

All the while I had a main girl oblivious to all of this.  I was a true addict at this point.  My self worth was plummeting and to sooth that horrible feeling I went online more and more to grab validation from a desperate cow.  This would make me feel even more worthless.  So to soothe, I’d jump online and do it all over again.  A vicious cycle.

As for my main girl – I’d resent her more and more.  Again, I couldn’t figure out why.  But the nagging in my gut grew.

I didn’t look at women in real life anymore.  I couldn’t get them.  I’d see guys, ugly guys no less, with attractive women.  All I felt were pangs of anger and jealousy.

As the sex with main girlfriend got worse and worse; one – because I was bored.  And two – I was getting more of a dopamine hit fucking a slutty stranger.  I’d dove deeper into perverted shit online.

Soon sex for the sake of sex was boring.  I’d start meeting girls in parking lots because I couldn’t be bothered dealing with the whole sex routine.  It was too much effort to have them over, bang them, and then rinse and repeat the next day.  Not to mention always washing my sheets from the squirters.

I withdrew more and more from social situations.  I wasn’t worthy.

I wouldn’t sleep.  I wasn’t happy.  It was effecting my daily life.  It was effecting the time spent with my kids, my family, and my friends.  I’d stop training jiu jitsu for weeks at a time and just eat like a maniac.

I’d scream in my pillow until my throat was sore.  None of it made sense.

I had thought I was decent looking guy.  I thought I had my shit together.  What the fuck was I doing wrong?

I was in my mid-40’s totally free.  No wife.  Financially stable, two great kids.  Etc. etc.  And my life was wasting away.

My waking hours were now consumed with why I couldn’t attract a decent looking girl online.

I’d go online and just get more and more angry each time a fat miserable mother of three would flat out ignore me.

When I was out I’d see cute girls hanging all over these absolute loser guys.  Instead of anger I’d feel jealousy and sadness.  Clearly there was something wrong with me.

Until one Saturday morning it hit me.  Almost literally.

I was sitting across the table from my main (a pain in the ass 7) at a diner.  A giant plate of pancakes in front of me.  She was yammering on about what we were going to do that day.  Rattling off our itinerary.  Pumpkin picking, then the grocery store, then liquor store to pick up something for the dinner party we were invited to later that evening with her miserable married man-hating friends and the beta husbands that loved them.

A giant wave of dizziness washed over me.  I swayed back and forth in my chair and had to grab the table or I would’ve fell over.  My main stopped yapping and asked what was wrong.

Time slowed.  I stared at her.  What was probably a second or two felt like five minutes.

In those two seconds everything came together.

In hindsight it is easy to see what was happening.  At the time, I couldn’t put it into words.

My primal instinct, the physiological part of my brain, the laws of nature could not sit quiet anymore.

All the girls I had seen over the last 3 years flashed in front of me.

The one with the nice ass but a tacky tattoo behind her ear who dressed like it was the 80’s.

The one with the pretty face who played in an adult women’s rugby league and had wider shoulders than me.

The one who had natural beauty but had hair so short she could’ve been leaving for a commune in the morning to protest a war somewhere.

The one who was so mentally stimulating and could hang with me on any topic but weighed 95 pounds soaking wet.  I had bigger tits.

The one who had a magical vagina.  Probably in my top three of all time vaginas, but the noises she made reminded me of a wild boar who just got gutted with a spear.

The one who adored me on so many levels but insisted on basing her moods on astrology and number charts and couldn’t listen to heavy metal music because of the “evil vibrations.”

The one who was a semi-ugly sexy school teacher that only liked to be eaten out and nothing else.

The one who had the nicest set of fake tits I’ve ever seen.  A stripper caliber body.  But a face like an aardvark who bored the shit out of me.

And those were the good ones.

I am not even mentioning all the one night stands, all the face fucking in parking lots, all the depraved shit we’d do after only meeting for fifteen minutes.

Lots were unpleasant.  Most were fat.

They all had one thing in common.

Me.

I wish I could blame them.

I wish I could say the women online were not operating by the rules of attraction.

I wish I could say they were all defective.  Their biological circuits were crossed.

They were moody.  They had a small social circle, if any.  They were generally not well-read, or if they were, they’d over-compensate and try to impress me with their knowledge – which was masculine and creepy.

They always had some drama going on in their lives; whether it was with their families or their friends, or their ex-husbands.

There was no way in hell they’d be able to attract a high quality man under normal circumstances.

Online dating was their hack.  It was their work around.

It allowed them access to male attention and validation.

These were not feminine women.  These were the sexual marketplace’s rejects.

Prior to the internet these women would either adjust accordingly by losing weight and develop a personality, or they’d be alone – void of any men in their lives.

Instead, thanks to social media and dating apps they are carpet bombed by thirsty, pathetic guys (I was one of them) shielding them from their hard reality.

Why would any woman online need to face the fact their actual sexual market value is 2 or 3 notches lower than their perceived SMV when they have Chads messaging them?  Even if the Chad is just looking to get laid.

It was bad enough Disney rammed the Princess motif down their throats as children, now, OLD was like a self-fulfilling prophecy for them.

Since they were little girls they waited for their Prince.  Finally they’d have the opportunity to sift through hundreds of potential princes with no downside to their fragile egos, only upside.

The result was an over-inflated ego and a princess complex.

Create an online account and BAM – instant royalty – all their dreams can come true.

But I refused to put the blame on the OLD women. As right or wrong as I was about them, I took responsibility for where I was that morning at the diner.

It was my choices and behavior that put me in that unhappy place. Nobody else’s.

I blurted out to my main, “I want to go home.”

I never saw her again.

I went home and deleted the apps. I went to BJJ class. Hung out with my training partners. That night I went online and googled, “how to attract women”.

My life was about to change forever.