This is my first post on TRP, and I’m not as deeply steeped in all the concepts as you guys are, so forgive me if I cross something up. Please note this is not at all a post to bitch, it’s a post to seek advice.

Background:

My wife of 18 years passed away early this year from cancer, and I’m now a widower and have sole custody of our two kids (5&7). As the summer progressed and I had all the family stuff squared away, I started trying to sort out how dating in the 21st Century works. I’m a resourceful, smart, analytical dude, and when I analyzed my experiences and tried to formulate what was going on, I was led to conclusions very similar to Red Pill core concepts. I don’t buy all the RP stuff yet, but certainly a lot of it rings true, and I think there’s some more, parallel stuff that I need advice on from folks who think in these terms.

Me:

43, 5’11” 180lb, under 10% body fat, former soccer player, 20 mins in the gym every weekday. Not ugly, no debt, business owner, million dollars in the bank, top 1% intelligence, I’m good at parties. BUT I’m a widower with sole custody of 2 small kids, and as anyone who browses Tinder profiles of single moms knows, “kids come first,” etc. That’s not negotiable.

Initial Forays:

Meeting people IRL isn’t a good option for me, because my social spaces are bereft of single women, and my time is largely absorbed by parenting, so I’m into app land. I had thought, perhaps naively, that being a single man at near peak SMV age for men, who’d never been divorced, who’d shown the ability to be loyal to a woman for around two decades, and who’s a great dad (I am) would be a Display of Higher Value I could capitalize on. What I discovered was almost the exact opposite, and I tooled it out with profile tests. One, I got more hits with less info in my profile. Two, when I dropped hints or admitted my situation, it was a recipe for getting ghosted. I got ghosted for being a widower by a widow. I got ghosted for having kids by several ladies with kids. Apparently nothing dries a woman up like telling her you have to arrange a babysitter. I’m not targeting a particularly high SMV bar, either – basically “Under 45, not fat.” Inside my dating criteria, the vast majority of hits are sugar babies, scammers, or actual hookers, which makes me laugh at women complaining about dick pics.

FWIW my current experience is via Tinder, Bumble, Zoosk.

Analysis:

So I dug into the numbers. The apps are lying about the ratios. Tinder M:F ratio is actually 80:20

https://www.statista.com/statistics/975925/us-tinder-user-ratio-gender/

Bumble M:F ratio is also 80:20

https://www.statista.com/statistics/975984/us-bumble-user-ratio-gender/

I’ve heard a number bandied about here on TRP that these apps are only good for the top 20% of men in terms of SMV, but I think that estimate may be off. If we take these ratios at face value, and pretend hypergamy didn’t exist, then a 1-1 match across the dating space would yield all women of any SMV matched with men of SMV 7.5 and above. 25% of men match in this 1-1 non-hypergamy conceptual scenario and the men of SMV 9 are matching with women of SMV 5. When you throw hypergamy in, the men for whom these things work probably narrows down to 7% or less. When you throw in the fact that men of top SMV are more likely to spin multiple plates, and each of those plates takes up a connection spot, then the ratio is smaller still. I’d bet only the top 5% of men are getting success in these things. (and if you’re one of them, congrats!) But this is not a post to bitch, it’s a post to seek advice.

I think I’m probably worth landing inside that top 5%, personally. But experience has shown that (widower, 2 small kids, sole custody) is literally a ceiling, very analogous to The Wall. And that ceiling appears to be under the cutoff for app dating success given my (under 50, not fat) criteria. My relationship goal btw is not to spin plates, because I don’t have time. I just want one in the bank.

So that’s the end. I need ideas. One idea I had was to focus on dating pools of women where (widower, single custody) didn’t matter. The obvious pool there is, funnily enough, married women. The problem there is that Ashley Madison is basically full of scammers, bots, and Russian hackers trying to steal your kidneys.

Grace me with your wisdom.