So a bit of background, I've never dated anyone more than one lunch outing (3 girls), never kissed anyone, never had sex, etc. If it matters I also have ADHD and social anxiety. Over the years I've had good friends who were awkward like myself get swept off of their feet by someone in their social circle. This has not happened to me.
Recently I downloaded dating apps just to see what would happen. I knew I wasn't going to get 20 matches a day. I'm a college grad, former athlete and black (which might be affecting things, which would be ridiculous). I don't take selfies, I think my pictures are pretty good, and I have a full bio with prompts. I downloaded Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, CMB, Match, and Badoo to see how I would fare.
On the latter four I got no matches after a few days. I don't think many people use them around here (I'm in a metro area of 1M with a university).
On Bumble, I got a few matches a week ago, talked to one girl, and was ghosted when I brought up doing a video call. I had a couple matches on Tinder but they went nowhere, and I didn't expect them to.
From my perspective, in most profiles I swipe the girls are too much of the party type or are implicitly saying they want ONSs. That's not what I want, so I swipe left. But the ones who fill out their bios and I feel I'm compatible with, we don't match. So it's a zero sum game and I lose, even when I delete and reinstall the apps.
I come here and ask for help, they'll say it's either rule #1 or #2. I doubt I'm unattractive though? It's just the nature of the apps.
So where IRL can I meet someone that wouldn't use dating apps? Being in a pandemic is frustrating, but I'd like the advice for the future. Having to sit back and endure all of this is making me depressed, and it seems like therapy is the next step. Why would I pay a company to show my profile to women who may or may not be interested, and then will ghost soon after?
there doesn't seem to be anything here