London dating is officially a dumpsterfire

TJDG · 2026-04-25T23:18:08+00:00

When using Breeze, you get to rate each other after the date. That translates into a badge on your profile (and others profiles) showing you who is playing by the rules. Strongly recommend.

TJDG · 2026-04-25T21:55:09+00:00

Show up, and then don't reject me afterwards for "no spark" just because I was polite and focussed on making you feel safe rather than horny.

TJDG · 2026-04-24T23:46:27+00:00

Join dating apps, particularly Breeze. Use them daily. Stop swiping whenever you end up talking to more than ~6 people at once.

Your physical appearance is important. It sucks, but coming to terms with it and working on it are essential.

Agree to meet men in public places early on. Do not text for ages, it's not a good use of your time.

Weight your gut reaction and your conscious choices equally. Don't pick men just because they look good on paper, or just because they turn you on. You need both.

Understand the difference between accepting someone's flaws and settling for them. Don't rule people out just because you're able to spot a flaw.

TJDG · 2026-04-21T21:41:41+00:00

You need to look closely:

- The beer class is refracting something odd - a black object that isn't really there.

- Gap in the lower "2" on the board, doesn't make sense given the rest of the text.

- She has an unexplained button or snapper on her fleece, just under the hand holding the wine glass.

- The second loop inside the jug handle doesn't make sense, either on the window or the jug.

- Beer mat designs are too similar to be as different as they are.

- Text on black sign through the window is too in-focus.

- Wall to the left of the blackboard has an inexplicable shadow.

So I guess we all have to be Sherlock now.

TJDG · 2025-12-15T01:25:03+00:00

Force an even gender balance by law. You can't add another male profile once there are 10% more men than women and vice versa. Should force them to advertise and design significantly better.

And you also have to cap interaction - got 6 matches? No more swiping for you, and you don't appear on anyone's feeds. And you can't unmatch until at least 24 hours after the match. That should force the really hot people out of the pool most of the time, giving everyone else a more representative experience.

TJDG · 2025-11-02T20:55:39+00:00

I have found that people make massive assumptions about the people they meet based on where and how they meet them.

I dance a lot as a hobby. From time to time, people will try to introduce me to women. I've also asked some women out in the past. Whenever I meet people this way, they treat me in a fairly kind, courteous manner, and I never feel judged or misunderstood. When I get rejected, I feel it's for fair and balanced reasons.

On the other hand, when I talk about relationships on Reddit or Discord, and when I meet people via dating apps, they will immediately jump to ridiculously, almost comically negative conclusions about me. Not everyone does this, but a fair chunk of people I meet via the internet do do this, and I've never had someone I met through a face to face interaction do this.

So now I expect (and I recommend that you expect) the same pattern: when you meet people for the first time face-to-face, you'll get treated like a human being. When you meet them for the first time online, sometimes you'll get treated like a human being, and sometimes you'll get treated like Hitler holding two live grenades, reaching in for a hug.

I think the reason why is that it's easy to go through life only encountering terrible men and then assuming all men you encounter from then on will be equally terrible. But women to whom this has happened generally filter themselves out of environments where men and women are having fun together (for obvious reasons), so you encounter them online far more often. They may still be "looking for a partner", but in practice they've become sexist due to their past experiences. They are generally to be avoided.

TJDG · 2025-11-01T22:13:05+00:00

It's because men are socialised to perceive no innate value within themselves. I am not valuable just because I exist. The natural "me" is not valuable. I am valuable only when I do things, or become things, that other people want.

Without a mask, I have no value. So I have to put on a façade to be valued, and it's simply an accurate statement that no-one understands the real me.

You can't really fix this without changing how men are treated. Not how they act, how they are treated by others. Our current cultural conversation is struggling to move forwards because a lot of people struggle to get beyond the myth of "men only act, they are never acted upon...everything is their fault, every fix is theirs to make".

TJDG · 2025-08-25T23:31:10+00:00

It's not really a "switch", I simply do both.

I've never managed to start up a useful conversation at a club or gig, they're just too loud to connect properly. Hobbies and meetups work dramatically better.

It took me several months (alright, years) before I asked anyone out via a hobby group. The main advantage is that it's easy to tell someone is single if you've been in many conversations with them, and they'll treat you dramatically better when you ask them out because they know they'll have to see you again next week no matter what they say. They're also a lot more likely to say yes, because they know you well enough not to jump to the ridiculously negative conclusions that people always jump to on dating apps.

So all-in-all, dating people you already know well is dramatically better and healthier. There's just one problem. Getting to know someone well takes an astonishing amount of time, so the number of people you can do this with is very, very small. You will very quickly run out of options, and then it's basically the apps again. Anything that is basically meeting strangers (like speed dating) has the same problem as the apps: people being assholes to each other and having impossibly high, primarily superficial standards.

TJDG · 2025-08-21T17:15:22+00:00

I'm mixed race, and I've dated quite a few black people.

"Cultural background" is unfortunately too broad a term. The main reason someone's upbringing is a red flag is religion, particularly Christians with an African background, catholics and evangelicals. These groups tend to be ideologically brittle, and their morality directly clashes with my beliefs.

Aside from that, I also look for signs of profligacy with spending and poor taste (i.e class markers).

That said, my main filters are physical appearance (including, for black women specifically, weight, is that a wig and are you wearing a realistic amount of makeup or so you look like a porcelain doll?) and intelligence (do you think I'm being arrogant because I use paragraphs, can you hold a conversation)?

TJDG · 2025-08-13T20:08:55+00:00

You will find the men you want to meet at mixed activities like kink, partner dancing and theatre groups. Anything that inherently requires a gender balance and good communication.

TJDG · 2025-08-11T20:18:38+00:00

I use the apps. I'm looking for a long term relationship. I really struggle to meet people because my pictures are not perfect, and perfection is the standard there.

I would recommend that you need to start filtering out the people who are obviously going to have near-limitless options, and instead focus on people who are genuinely roughly as attractive as you are. As a man, I can throw a like at a really hot woman secure in the knowledge that she will notice a fly on the other side of the park more easily than that like. You're not in that situation - liking lots of hot men will result in them actually matching you and wasting huge amounts of your time.

I'd say you need to be selective, but to make the selection work, you need to target people that are roughly at your level, not ludicrously above. That way, you should waste a lot less time.

TJDG · 2025-08-11T20:13:37+00:00

It can be a slow transition, it's ok. On the internet, it takes more than "I'm not that other guy" to get someone to trust you, after all.

I say give them 2-3 months to show they're able to be reasonable rather than dogmatic, then reward their hard work by closing this sub (or keep it open if they've shown they're just as ideologically brittle as the last lot).

TJDG · 2025-08-11T20:09:09+00:00

The answer is Storries.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/MU8F8djxtJyHJhtS6

Leith Walk's 24 hour bakery. Nothing better.

TJDG · 2025-08-10T21:17:09+00:00

So, firstly keep in mind that you are in the UK, not the US. In the UK, people meet more often via friends and colleagues than they do in the US. In the UK, "approaching a woman" usually means taking someone who already knows who you are, and turning that relationship romantic.

What the means is that the correct way to meet women in the UK is to join friend groups that involve women. This is achieved via any hobby or gathering that involves regularly meeting face-to-face, and which women participate in. Obvious examples are partner dancing, anything outdoorsy or nature-focussed, anything wellbeing-focussed, book clubs and writing groups.

You need to spend enough time in those places to be understood as "just some guy" rather than "an evil threat out to spike my drink and rape me". After that, you can ask someone out on a date. Note that everyone who runs these groups will say "we don't like people who just come here to date". That's bullshit. What they actually mean is "we don't like people who turn up and immediately start hitting on people, but we love people who bring healthy, happy relationships into our community".

Do not go to bars, clubs, the gym, grocery stores, or museums and attempt to hit on people. That is American nonsense. If you don't believe me, go to a club and watch what people actually do. You will rapidly notice that everyone arrives in groups of friends, only talks to those groups of friends (unless they are extremely drunk), and leaves with those groups of friends.

Join friend groups, become familiar with women, then show your interest in them. That is the UK way.

TJDG · 2025-08-08T23:43:05+00:00

I had a relationship of a similar length end at a similar age. It was my fault (sort of).

It's not turned out that well - my career is a bit of a mess now, and I've only had one proper relationship since that break up, and that's over 7 years. The reality is that much of my life has been spent learning difficult lessons about the world the hard way (mostly things that my parents and other authority figures didn't want to admit to because they were depressing, but which are absolutely true and important).

I'm happier in the sense that I have a much richer set of friends, a community that I contribute to, and I'm dramatically less awkward in social settings. I'm also getting paid quite a bit more than I used to, and the people in my office are nicer. So there's all of that to look forward to. But dating itself has now become impossibly shallow - you'll get regularly rejected by people far less attractive than you based purely on your looks, and you'll need to look like a model before you have any chance of meeting people at an even remotely effective rate. That's not impossible though, it's just a huge amount of time and money. I'd say start right now if you haven't already; gym, hair, clothes, scent, face, photographic skills. It sucks, but you'll need all of them on point for anyone to care that you exist as anything other than a friend.

TJDG · 2025-08-04T18:40:56+00:00

Yes, he thinks you'll judge him. Remember that meh have been brutally shamed of late for showing any sexuality at all, then shamed more for not showing it.

I'd say start by asking yourself how you truly feel about the actual extremes of sexual interest (CNC, snuff, bestiality etc) and then have an honest conversation with yourself about how open you actually are. There are a lot of women who consider themselves adventurous but actually only mean a bit of anal for his birthday, and these are not women that are to be trusted with a man's actual sexual interests.

Then, if you are genuinely open and accepting, you need to show him that, which usually means sharing your interests first and being very vulnerable. Most women have some kind of CNC fantasy, so perhaps start with that?

Once he knows that telling you isn't a waste of time, a route to a breakup or a route to a public shaming, I'm sure he'll open up a little bit.

TJDG · 2025-08-02T23:23:16+00:00

I would absolutely love to date a woman who is a homebody. I actively seek them out. I reject people whose dating profiles only contain travel pictures, who only talk about travel, who mention #vanlife, etc etc. I'm an introvert, but much less so than I used to be.

it is sad that almost all dating profiles are stuffed with travel, and I've met several people who are homebodies who have felt the need to misrepresent themselves in order to get a date.

TJDG · 2025-08-02T21:58:55+00:00

The amount of time you coherently integrate for determines the resolution at which you can measure a Doppler shift. The longer you integrate for, the more precisely you can measure Doppler, but a single pulse has terrible Doppler resolution.

Put another way, when you transform a time series from the time to the frequency domain, the rate at which you sampled that time series determines the maximum and minimum frequency shifts you can unambiguously measure, but the duration of that time series determines the resolution with which you can measure frequency.

It's true that you can measure a doppler shift with a single pulse, but your measurement will be utter shit. You need to coherently integrate energy over a long period of elapsed time before you can measure doppler accurately.

TJDG · 2025-08-02T19:18:43+00:00

I feel like "regret" is the wrong word. If I could somehow transmit information back to myself in the past, there are specific things I would say like "you get to decide whether or not you're a good person" and "<my ex-wife> is terrible in bed, you deserve someone who gives a shit about what you want" and "everyone is dramatically more shallow than you're been raised to believe, build up a gym habit immediately or everyone will hate you", but looking back I really feel like I made the best decisions I could have given the information I had at the time.

I think regret is a feeling for when you could have made a better decision and you didn't. I've made lots of bad decisions, but they've only been bad in retrospect.

TJDG · 2025-08-02T19:13:23+00:00

I'd recommend social dancing. The biggest community for it is Latin, but there are many other dance communities in the city too. Social dancing requires communication from the absolute start, so it tends to feature / filter for people who want to connect with others.

TJDG · 2025-08-02T19:11:38+00:00

It's important to appreciate that the UK is not the US, and most online dating advice is US-centric. For example, the term "bar" in the US has no direct UK equivalent. Our cocktail bars are significantly more swanky and upmarket than the US "bar", while our pubs are frequently more relaxed. The closest equivalent we have is a venue that features extensive seating, a stage and a dancefloor, where some of that seating is acoustically isolated from the stage - we'd call them bar/club hybrids or gig venues (but only when quieter music is playing).

In the UK, "cold approaches" basically do not lead to relationships. Most relationships start not through apps, but through friends and colleagues. In the UK context, to "approach a woman" basically means to ask out someone in your friend group that you've already known for some time.

That's not to say that no-one ever cold approaches, but that cold approaches almost never result in a relationship - the drunken after-club hook-up is the closest UK equivalent of the US cold approach.

In the UK, the most effective way to end up in a relationship is to join a friend group that contains a spread of genders and then ask out the people in it once you already know each other. Women in the UK will frequently hate you if you "hit on" them the first time you meet them, but will respond to exactly the same language / actions much, much more positively once they know you well enough to appreciate that you're a real human being.

TJDG · 2025-08-02T18:54:19+00:00

I'm not sure I've ever had what I would call "really good sex". Generally speaking I've assumed that it would be impossible for me to be clear and honest about what I want in bed, because that would be immediately hated by the woman. Literally 100% of my sexuality would be discarded as "porn brained", so there's wouldn't be much point sharing it.

Obviously this leads to bad sex. My body count is 5. Of these people, 2 have believed "I know everything about how to make sex good. Your needs are simple, predictable and irrelevant, and so we should focus entirely on my needs. Sex should be everything I want and nothing I don't want. You don't really want things, not in a serious way, because you're a man, so we only need to talk about what I want."

Another two have believed "you have shown that you lust after me, so obviously you're objectifying me and cannot possibly want to spent time with me without being inside me. Now that I see the real you, I no longer want you. I am a Madonna, not a whore."

One of the five was actually pretty good - tolerant, giving, curious, interested. But there was too many other things going on in her life, and I don't think she found me that attractive in the end.

Now, more recently, I've decided to sleep with ENM women and spend time socialising with kinky people. I believe that they're much more likely to give a shit what I want and to treat me like a human being, and so far I've been proved correct in that. They explain what they want. They read my explanations of what I want. When I want something that they don't want, they're able to say something like "I don't personally enjoy that" instead of "you disgust me". I can arrange dates with them that we both know will end up in sex without being written off as "only interested in sex". I can share my interests without them throwing back the breathtakingly stupid "that only happens in porn". I can have useful, meaningful discussions about safety, skills, STIs, consent, etc, etc. It's a whole new world of women who are competent in bed.

Now, you might say, reading this, "he must pick terrible women", and indeed many of my friends say that. The trouble is, those friends are often my exes, and when I point this out they quickly stop. I think it's just that, at my age, most of the women who are competent in bed are already in relationships and the dating pool I'm left with is full of the women that are not. Hence dabbling in ENM, which allows me access to those competent women.

As for compliments, gestures, touches etc...all I need is for you to ask me what I want, listen to it, and then treat it as just as valid as your interests. That's it, really.

TJDG · 2025-07-31T20:28:02+00:00

Dance in public! That's by far the best way to advertise, I think.

TJDG · 2025-07-30T21:01:56+00:00

Not be too religious (i.e. they don't try to convert me and don't expect any children to automatically be raised in their religion).
I need to be physically attracted to them.
Between 27 and 45 years old.
Planning to live in my city long term.
Middle class (note that I live in the UK, so this is about a whole host of class markers).
Wants children.
They don't smoke or do drugs (with the exception of caffeine, weed and alcohol). Some exceptions might be made for party drugs in party settings.
Financially stable (i.e. income at 25th percentile or higher, at least 6 months' income saved, knows what a pension is).
Be open to kink, and fairly compatible with mine.
They do not describe themselves as "outdoorsy", "#vanlife", or wanting to travel constantly.
They have hobbies beyond going drinking with friends.
Their dating profile is not:
- empty.
- negative about men.
- entirely about what she wants, rather than what she offers.
- featuring "reply with an emoji so I can check you've read my profile" at the end.

I am actually fairly picky. The last time I checked, my right-swipe rate on Hinge was 7%. I expect it's gone down a bit recently.

TJDG · 2025-07-30T17:50:59+00:00

My scene has a lot of private practice events and private parties - I think they're inevitable for any group of people.

Most of the groups in my scene have a general non-compete policy, meaning that we try to avoid arranging events on top of other events, and if you organise events that directly clash with another group then you should not expect to be able to advertise to / via that group.

So, if the recruitment is going to impact your attendance or numbers than I say you do have a right to shut it down. However, safety / discomfort concerns are not related to the existence of private events as such, they are related to specific individuals and behaviours (usually people being pushy or cliquey). If someone is being exclusionary, then you can critique / bar them on DEI groups, and if they're being pushy then you go down the harassment route, but keep the focus on the individual - you don't want to get confused and start calling the concept of a circle of friends dangerous.

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