The things I’ve learned from 3 years of online dating from my own lived experience. What things have you learned?

1) Men and women aren’t really all that different when it comes to dating. We’re usually pretty similar. If I go on a date with a hot woman who has the personality of a piece of drywall, I’ll still run a dating cycle to give her a chance to come out of her shell. Women do the same thing with men they find handsome. Both genders go ‘goo-goo ga-ga’ over pretty face. Anyone who tells you otherwise isn’t being fully honest with themselves.

2) People have their cellphone on them all the time. If I’m interested in a woman, there’s no way I’m going to leave her on read for 16 hours. I would be too afraid of losing her. And if a woman is interested in me, there’s no way she’ll leave me on read for too long either. A slow response time has always lead to me either being bread crumbed or faded out. Interested people act interested.

3) Some authentic kindness builds trust and comfort, but kindness alone doesn’t get the horny tingles to happen. “Wow he was super nice to me the whole date and now I’m soaking” said no woman ever.

4) If she’s interested in you, she’ll give you a window of time to make moves. She’ll typically throw some signals your way by being close to you, lingering by your car or making it easy to kiss her. If you don’t escalate during this window, you will be rejected. She will think you’re not masculine, inexperienced, gay, not interested in her or something is wrong with you. You HAVE to act when you have an open lane. She’s literally holding out her hands to be her dance partner here.

4) Again men and women are similar and it’s unlikely they’re honest when they reject you. They don’t want to hurt your feelings and their goal is to get out as easily as they can. “I’m swamped with grad school and just can’t date rn” while she’s swiping away on Tinder.

5) First kiss is a chemistry check for a lot of women. It can turn a maybe into a no or a yes.

6) The first date spark is out of your hands. It can’t be manufactured. Either she thinks your handsome or she doesn’t. Either convo flows or it doesn’t. I would say 95 percent of it is out of your control outside of trying to look presentable and showing up on time. Even to this day with all my experience, I still have first date flops / duds.

7) If a woman isn’t attracted to your appearance, she’ll go into cold fish mode. She’ll have a flatness in her eyes, disengage from the convo and keep everything at a polite chit chat level with a sideways hug goodbye.

8) If a woman is attracted to your appearance, her eyes will be lit up and she will be very engaged. She will be super interested in hearing about your trip to Sacramento from 6 months ago. Of course things can still flop overtime if your personalities authentically don’t mesh.

9) You don’t want to blow through multiple dates being a platonic chit chat buddy. Just don’t. Again, you’ll miss your window of opportunity by doing this.

10) Sexual attraction is a huge component of chemistry, the spark and feeling it.

11) If they’re interested, you’ll know. If you’re confused, they’re not interested. This has been true 100 percent of the time for me.

Any thoughts or anything you’ve learned from your journey?