It definitely works for some. How it does is beyond me. I’ve had professional photos taken, I’ve changed my prompts, I’ve paid for all the subscriptions, I’ve had female friends go through my profile, I’ve gotten online reviews. I’ve been on two apps for the past five months and can count on one hand how many women have liked my profile. Either I’m just really, really, really unattractive or something else is wrong somewhere.
2 Likes
I think the riding claim is not gender specific. There is a woman in one of my hunts. She goes on and on about being a hard core fox hunter. She’s been hunting three years and hasn’t gotten out of third flight yet.
Being a guy in the english riding world is interesting. A little hyperbole here but I think every woman who rides thinks she is automatically a better rider than me and needing to tell me how to ride and take care of horses. It doesn’t matter if they been riding for two days or 20 years. I’ve only been doing it for several decades.
9 Likes
Well that “link” took me off on a wild email goose chase I couldn’t get back from so I had to turn my phone off and back on.
1 Like
I didn’t meet my husband online but I think every man who was a “prospect” when I met him said he had ridden or rode horses when he found out I had my own. I think many of them did trail ride with me and they did pretty well.
I married one and he hasn’t ridden since! He has faithfully supported my horse habit and we have been married 32 years 
I think the important thing is that they are smart enough( right away) to realize how important horses are to us and that they are part of the package.
15 Likes
What a horrible way to look at humanity.
4 Likes
I met my now husband on a vegan dating app called vegly 
in Jan of 2021. I was 38 at the time and he was 44. When I decided it was time to do an app, I chose that one because I am primarily plant based and having similar food values for me just makes life easier…and typically those who are plant based tend to be in tune with the broader health/wellbeing space/left leaning which are all very important to me.
Now. I will say that it was pretty slim pickins locally. DH was the only person of like 5 that I reached out to within a 60 mile radius. Thankfully too, he wasn’t a militant vegan; self described as a “non ethical vegan” which was perfect, because I will eat animal products on occasion.
Had I not met him, I don’t know that I would have tried the bigger apps like hinge/tinder/etc. I know people can luck out, but it felt like sifting through the crap would have been another full time job. And I’m a little “non conventional”…childfree by choice which means I don’t want kids of my own or anyone else’s, I’m agnostic, plant based, horse owner with chronic health issues…just a combo of hard line dealbreakers and alignment with lifestyle that I figured would make things even more challenging in a dating sense. I had to play mother and breadwinner to my ex husband and that was another role I was unwilling to play as well.
Good people are out there. I consider myself extremely lucky finding DH. I sympathise with anyone in the dating world. DH has SO many insane first date stories I don’t know how he kept trying!
6 Likes
@FitToBeTied I see this ALL the time. One of my trainers gives trail rides and I usually help him out. Many are couples showing up for trail rides and usually it’s the women who go on and on about how much better riders they are than their spouses. It’s like some sort of competition or something.
@Rackonteur I’m speaking specifically with regards to my experience on dating apps. I’ve been catfished, ghosted, I’ve gotten sugar babies, gold diggers, women only interested in me for my money, women trying to rush me into marriage/kids. It’s been a miserable experience.
@FjordBCRF I’m happy to hear it worked out! Maybe I should check out more niche dating apps but your experience definitely echoes what I’m talking about with regards to it being very slim pickings on these apps with regards to quality people.
3 Likes
Do you have other interests? Sometimes X university has an athletic club in an area, or my area has an adult flag football league, or if you go to a place of worship sometimes they have singles groups .
I have many interests, probably too many honestly.
I play guitar, I dance, I’m starting a series of classes soon on how to start a bee farm, I do improv and take improv classes. Unfortunately those haven’t yielded any results. I’m still a beginner at dancing and given my schedule, I can only take private lessons at night and whilst my instructor is now taking me with her to dance clubs, women have no interest in you at these places unless you’re a pro at dancing (which I’m not…yet).
I’ve met a few women in my improv classes that I was interested in but they were in a relationship. Maybe I’ll meet someone in my bee classes, who knows. I looked into church groups but none of them have any meetings at the time I’m available which is later in the evening and worship is Sunday morning, right during my riding lesson time.
4 Likes
I met my husband Rock and roll dancing. He was a beginner. I took up dancing like a duck to water. Apparently my Dad loved dancing. Mum did not, it was him who wanted to dance. I was so lucky that I was taken in by experienced rock and rollers and I learned extra fast.
The instructor had 2 classes in different suburbs. He put on a dance for both groups at a surf lifesaving club.
My dance partner took me, however he left me to take his son back to his mother.
My now hubby saw me reading the tide chart, and thought I would rather be dancing. He asked me to dance.
The rule was that if you are asked to dance you have to say yes and you should Dance at least 2 dances preferably 3.
He was so stiff and beginnerish. After 2 dances I started a sentence with Okay…
He took that as rejection and said okay and turned to leave me on the floor.
I grabbed his hand and brought him back to me… I said okay now dance with attitude.
He loosened up and we continued to dance. My eyes kept getting lower as he was too handsome to look at, until they really couldn’t get any lower without looking at his groin area!!!
I was very aware that we had gone over 3 dances and people would be talking.
It was very easy as we had the same instructor, so I knew the moves he knew. We started going to dance classes together and we have been together ever since.
We married in 2002.
He had never been near a horse. He said he didn’t want to do anything with them.
I told him I had to teach him to take a bridle off, because if he ever came home to a tacked horse and no Sue I knew he would want to help and he needed to be taught to take the bridle off without ripping their teeth out.
That took the mystery out of the horses. He would feed, oil hooves and rug and unrug.
He cried when we lost my mare.
When we moved here I taught him to ride.
He did a rising trot from the first stride, probably from watching for so long. He rides dressage now better than most people, although he has only ever ridden horses trained by me or at our riding school.
14 Likes
My dating story; pre dating apps.
I signed up for a computer dating service. Because I was 37, a full time horse person, and I had exhausted bars and sports clubs for meeting people. And my lifestyle put some people off.
The service matched me with three people right off. The first was a hard no, the second was interesting and I would have gone out with him had it not been for the third one, my husband of 26 years.
He joined the dating service because he was working night shift, didn’t want to date someone he worked with…and bars and clubs weren’t working for him either.
He was refreshingly honest and wasn’t in it just to get laid. On either the 4th or 5th date, he asked me to meet his family, saying he knew it was early days, but being able to handle his family was a deal breaker for him, so we might as well get it out of the way.
He did tell me that he had had a pony as a child, and his family kept horses. I took him riding and discovered that not only had he only ridden Western, he had only ridden gaited horses and he thought posting the trot was ridiculous. He has only ridden a handful of times since, but has always been supportive of my riding and helps with the horses at home.
I CAN’T IMAGINE dating now. The apps seem terrifying. I don’t know how you all do it.
9 Likes
I met my BF (of 2+ years) on Hinge. I must say, his profile left a lot to be desired, but I was curious so I swiped (or liked or whatever), and he started a convo. Pretty soon after talking, he suggested we meet up & I was in a new city with no real friends outside of work, so thought I should give him a chance. We met at a very very public spot & grabbed dinner and then sat and talked for 2+ hours. That was the start. I left feeling like I could talk to him forever, even though I wasn’t sure if I was attracted to him, I knew we could be friends. From then I fell more and more for him.
He was not a horse guy, didn’t pretend to be. Told me that his neighbors had horses & they got out one day and left a pile of poop on his porch, so therefore horses hated him. lol. But on an early-ish date, I invited him to the barn (where I board was very quiet, I was 1 of 2 boarders, so it could be low key), and let him meet my guys and he fell in love with my big dogs.
8 Likes
Sometimes there is such a thing as trying to hard. Dont ask me how but somehow others seem to know and will then avoid you like the plague. The best things often come when you stop looking for them.
7 Likes
I met DH through work friends; our first “date” was a group horseback ride with about six of us. I was the newby to the group other than my work friends that thought I should meet DH. It definitely was a proving ground since the ride was somewhat controlled chaos riding river bottoms in Feb so a ton of snow and ice and fast paced pranking and racing. DH showed up bareback on his hot Morgan mare while the rest of the guys were all geared up with their saddles and chaps and he outrode them all, was quiet, funny, nice guy, not flashy but cute to me. The couple that set us up ended up divorced after a few years but so far Dh and I have made it 28 years.
@centaursam, sounds like you are around a lot of people with like interests, maybe let the word out that you’re open for dating. Could end up being a different kind of torture but sometimes the matchmakers get it right.
7 Likes
@SuzieQNutter So you’re saying I’ve got a chance as a newbie dancer! I’m definitely going to keep going with my instructor to the clubs. It’s fun and it’s the best way to learn. Maybe I’ll meet someone who laughs at my amateur attempt at salsa and we hit it off from there, who knows 
@McGurk Thank you for sharing your story. I know dating services still exist but I hear that they’re many thousands of dollars. I was on the apps 10 years ago and doing very well. I took a hiatus from dating/socializing in my late 20s to focus on career since I didn’t want to be broke in my 30s. Now I’m financially secure and thought I’d jump back into dating but I was in for a rude awakening.
Even meeting people in person isn’t easy, many people are really closed off, especially post-COVID, unless you’re part of a class or group where you’ve got rapport built up. I kind of regret focusing on my financial life in my late 20s. If I knew dating was going to be this bad, I would have made it a point to somehow pursue a relationship back then whilst hammering away at career. Now, money just seems to complicate things with respect to relationships.
@leighbo009 The apps work for some but I don’t know what you all are doing to find someone on there 
It’s interesting that you swiped right despite the fact that his profile left a lot to be desired. That’s apparently one of the biggest complaints women make about guys on the apps.
@Annie10 There is definitely a certain amount of reckless abandon that one must approach life with, especially when it comes to people (and women). If you’re into it too much, it can come across as desperate which people can pick up on and it’s not attractive. I think I’ve just hit many milestones in life and finally realized what’s the point of all this if I don’t have someone to share it with, friends and/or a romantic interest. So I’ve been really focusing on my social life which includes dating. I probably just have to lighten up.
@OnAMission Truthfully, I’ve always felt strange putting the word out like that, I don’t know why. All the women I ride with at the barn know I’m single and wanting a relationship. I’m sure they have single friends who want the same or know someone. Occasionally they’ll say they have someone they’re wanting to set me up with, but it never happens. I just don’t want to push it.
4 Likes
After seeing your profile I don’t know why you haven’t found someone? If I was in my late 20’s again and single I think I might be intimidated just a bit. You appear very accomplished, secure and successful for someone like me.
Maybe some worthy women who would be interested in responding feel that way too?
5 Likes
Everyone is an individual and to go on with my experience.
Every guy was after me. I was single and dancing. My group I was safe with as they were already partnered and there for the dancing and not the dating. I was fending them off left and right and not interested. Absolutely NOT INTERESTED.
Hubby snuck up on me as he was learning to dance and did not make a move on me. His first move was to give me a gold watch for a Valentines present. It was about a year by then.
He only got near me because he was not after me.
That was a wake up call for me. Hubby was in his 40s and he had never had a girlfriend. I could accept the watch and in doing so him, or I could reject the watch and break his heart.
I am a very strong and big woman and even I ended up as a battered wife, although I didn’t marry the guy. He hit me once. I darn well hit him back and I did not cower in the corner. After that he would break my things and kill my hens. He ended up putting an axe through my windscreen as he didn’t want me to go to work. He yelled at me when I was with my mare and I couldn’t catch her for 45 minutes even though she was not hard to catch and taught to come when called.
I called the police. They took me to the side and told me it was the most violent thing they had ever seen and to get out. I took my horses and went home to Mum.
Mum and I paid to get rid of him as the banks would only give me so much and I was left with a lot of debt, but 2 houses in my name.
I went to work and was living in share accommodation with the guy who taught me rock and roll. I got in trouble for saying Sorry all the time. I had been walking on eggshells.
I paid back my Mum.
So believe me when I say that I was not interested in dating when I started dancing. Not one bit. It was probably a year after getting out of that relationship that I started dancing and I had been dancing for a long time before meeting now hubby.
So when hubby met me I was in Share Accommodation. He did not know I had 2 houses, which is a good way of knowing they are not after you for money!
THE most attractive thing about my DH was that one look at him and I just knew that he would never hurt me. I mean physically. I also know he would not hurt me emotionally.
He is a big guy. He is taller than me. He doesn’t throw tools like the other guy did. He is patient.
He would be the type to stay with me even if he didn’t love me any more.
I make darn sure he still loves me.
He is the most fantastic guy in the World.
He can make or fix anything.
He made me a dressage arena, a tack room and stables.
He is a keeper.
12 Likes
My daughter met her fiance on a dating app (don’t know which one). They were both 26, and met in person at the height of COVID. Their first date was a picnic in a park, with distance between them. He brought his dog, and I always tell my daughter that she probably fell in love with the dog first. They’ve been living together for four years now, getting married next year. They are planning a Pastafarian wedding, maybe with colanders involved in centerpieces somehow.
I met my husband the time honored way–in a bar, both of us totally blitzed, on St. Patrick’s Day in Flagstaff in 1980. Someone had been buying me shots of Irish whiskey, but the bartender wouldn’t tell me who was doing it. Eventually I left, but was back there a few days later when this hippie guy walked up to me and said “I bet you’re wondering who bought all those shots.” We started talking around 7 pm (both sober this time) and were still talking when the bar closed at 1 am.
Rebecca
11 Likes
Damn, what is wrong with women your age? The only problem I likely would have had with your profile, I would feel under educated in some of your interests, even now I couldn’t begin to have any sort of conversation about ancient mythology. I wish you luck, dating has never been easy.
4 Likes
If I wasn’t very happily partnered in a similar age range, I thought the profile was great too. The wanting kids would have been a hard pass from me, but that’s obviously in the minority so no idea why that profile wouldn’t be getting swipes or whatever the terms are, I am not on that scene 
6 Likes
