![[OC] A year in dating as a 31-year-old American male](https://www.byteseu.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/oszxlfepkaag1-1024x1024.png "[OC] A year in dating as a 31-year-old American male")
Riding this trend via the post from yesterday, I wanted to post my own experience this year as a guy who only recently started dating seriously in spring of this past year after spending most of my 20s single and not putting any effort into dating until now. A "date" here means any one-on-one meetup where it's understood as courting for the purpose of a relationship, typically in-person but for a few people who lived far away I did video call dates or other digital activity dates which I counted. I separated who rejected who for each set of dates, where the term "mutual rejection" refers to the scenario where either neither of us explicitly rejected each other but we both gradually faded away from continuing to interact, or we both explicitly agreed we weren't going out again.
The overwhelming source of most of these dates were from dating apps, primarily from Hinge (with Coffee Meets Bagel in 2nd). There was a singleton each from Twitter, Reddit, and oddly enough a personal ad I was involved with in the summer. Four were from in-person.
I welcome any questions.
Posted by Naxela
27 Comments
30 dates a year. Are you discouraged or are you numb by now?
Did you make this chart while on a third date?
I am baffled by the term ‘ongoing’!🙃
Has there just not been a fourth date with the “ongoing” person?
I assume this is online dating and you’re very successful on the apps? Because that’s a really high number of first dates
we both have a 26% rate of getting to the second date but i got called a hoe and was told numerous, numerous times that i’m the issue and have all sorts of faults, lol. anyway, wishing you luck in the dating world, OP
I’m just amazed people play the dating game at all seeing these graphs. Seems exhausting (and expensive likely).
Damn bro thats too much rejection for my brain to process
I’m so confused as to why the one third date didn’t become a fourth date and THEN become ongoing? How was a fourth date circumvented in that one case?
30 dates with new people in a year sounds fucking exhausting
Ive always wondered, is it like an American thing to go out on a “date” with somebody you dont like (yet) in a sense that you’d be a couple? Or do Americans just like 100 people a year and would consider them a partner for life so to speak? I would never go on a date (or consider it a date?) with just a random girl I started talking to.
Are you of the belief that first dates can only lead to rejection or a second date, with no other option?
I’ve been on plenty of first dates where neither of us pursued the other for a second date, but I guess I never considered that a “rejection” per se on either side. Like if he’d asked me I might have still met up again, or vice versa, but neither of us actually declined a second date. I don’t view those as rejection in either direction, just that it never went anywhere.
Good luck on that ongoing thing!
Apart from that, the graph is awful. This not at all how a Sankey Graph should look like. You should not have the same three categories all over, after every level of dating. After all, what is the difference? Instead, make those three categories at the left side of the graph and have lines pull in from the different levels. That way, the outcome is much neater, and the source is well visible.
Edit: Like the one in [this post.](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/s/sbsvFvCy6D)
The got rejected should come back together to form a category. Same with the rejected them, etc
Can’t shake off the impression that you all are not using the Sankey chart properly.
Why not share rejection categories? You only lose visual clarity, not information, by having rejection categories at each level.
And then the “ongoing” category should be at the top, not lost in the middle of all of the rejection categories.
It’s a mess.
You’re doing pretty well to be honest a lot of guys are not even getting 1 date
This is good data and a realistic view of what dating looks like.
My aunties call me a slut when I met a third woman in a year.
Look at you with 30 first dates
why is “Ongoing” branched out of third dates? it would also be equally valid to branch out of first dates no?
hmm I wonder why nobody is as salty here as they were when a woman posted a similar graph
Love the additional info and organization relative to yesterday’s post, with the exception of the ongoing, which to adhere to your scheme should be snaking up top above everything else!
(Also glad there isn’t the exhausting gender war that’s infected so much of online discourse yet between attention starved men and attention saturated women in the comments!)
I’m starting to see a bunch of these charts now. I don’t understand going on 30 dates to find one person that you vibe with. Are you just asking out random strangers at the bus station?
“Would you be interested in going on a date with me? And by “date”, I mean a one-on-one meet up with the intended purpose of courting to establish a relationship”
I mean, it’s a pick-up line that’d work on my autistic ass.
Who the fuck goes on 4 dates then decides nah its not for me?
I think this chart exactly shows the issue – instead of treating love like the magic that it is and treating human as human, you’re treating them as a process and data, likely including checklists and parallel dates, like when applying for a job. The mindset is your issue here and the existence of the chart and underlying table (not the chart’s content) beautifully demonstrate it.
ugh i hate modern day dating feels like im hunting for a job on linkedin
What application is this btw