The Truth About What Women Want On Dating Apps
What women want in a man on dating apps is someone similar to themselves. The study "Homophily in Online Dating: When Do You Like Someone Like Yourself?" found that women on dating apps sought out people like themselves when looking for partners for a relationship.
Women's preferences on dating sites are "same-seeking," or a carbon copy of themselves, for the following characteristics:
- Marital History
- Wanting Children
- Physical Build
- Physical Attractiveness
- Smoking Habits
Study Examines What Women Want in a Man
The study was granted access to a dating site over 8 months. The study wouldn't say the dating site in question, but it did indicate it was a "major one."
During these 8 months, 29,687 users sent 236,930 messages to 51,348 other users. 78.2% of messages went not returned.
73% of messages were initiated by men. Only 20% of those messages were answered by women. Obviously, 27% of messages were sent by women, of which 25% were answered.
Study Results
The study crunched the numbers and attempted to answer what women want in a man for online dating. Women tend to gravitate towards someone similar to themselves across various characteristics.
Each characteristic had a different level of importance, however. The three most important characteristics for women looking for a partner are:
- Marital status
- Wanting children
- Number of children
The study labeled these as "life course" characteristics and found the following:
- People seek others with a similar marital status 64% more often.
- People seek those with a similar desire to have children 54% more often.
- People seek others with a similar number of children they currently have 39% more often.
Other lifestyle choices were also a factor but not as important as the "life course" choices above. These included smoking habits, drinking habits, and pets.
Lastly, people with similar physical builds were likely to seek someone like themselves 23% more often. Religion came in at 17%.
What It All Means
Women want men who are similar to themselves, and the study backs this up. The more similar a woman is to you, the more likely she will respond to your message.
This makes sense, right? How many women have you dated in the past who were similar to you?
Say you live an active, travel every weekend kind of lifestyle. Would you date a woman who is a lazy couch potato who hates traveling? Of course not.
Don't expect women to respond at high levels if you show you have a different lifestyle and desires on your profile than she does.
So, the first thing you should do before messaging women is to make sure you're really a match. Critical things you should check include:
- Make sure your desire to have kids are aligned.
- If you have children, women without children will respond to you less than women who already have kids.
- If you're a smoker, women who don't smoke will contact you less.
- Women want to date men who drink as much as they do.
- It's a good idea to get into shape if you’re interested in women who are in much better shape than you.
- Religion is important to women who share their religious beliefs on their profile.
Looking at these types of things is common sense, but most men simply message women based on photos. It’s no wonder men have such low response rates.
Take the time to use your dating site's filtering ability when doing searches to find better matches. You'll have fewer options to choose from, but the women in your search results will be better matches and MORE likely to respond to your messages.
When searching for women to meet on your dating site, do you factor in the study's findings of what women want in a man? Leave your thoughts below.