Best Dating Apps for Serious Relationships

6 Best Dating Apps For Serious Relationships

by John Santana

It is no surprise that online dating apps are the best way to meet your true love. Their matching algorithms deliver profiles with all the attractive features for you.

You may be wary after hearing all the hookup stories that end in tears and heartbreaks. Indeed, some dating apps are for casual relationships only. That’s why you have to choose wisely. Below are some of the best dating apps for serious relationships.

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Best Dating Apps For Serious Relationships

1. Best Overall – Adult Friend Finder

Adult Friend Finder logo

Pros

  • 90 million users around the world
  • Best for interracial dating
  • Advanced filters for specific targets such as religion, height, and hobbies

Cons

  • Very competitive dating platform

Adult FriendFinder is the No.1 leading online dating app in North America. Since it entered the matchmaking industry in the 1990s, it has created millions of marriages and long-term relationships worldwide.

Regularly appearing on serious dating app recommendation lists, Adult FriendFinder is famous for its diversity. It serves everyone, including the LGBT+ community and interracial couples. It understands the diversity in the country and how to highlight the uniqueness of each community.

Its advanced filters highlight specific requirements such as religion, physical attributes, education, and interests. You can be as precise as possible when looking for a date. There is no more time waster, only genuine dates.

The global community opens a galaxy of possibilities for you as long as you can stay competitive among other high-quality daters. People often find Adult FriendFinder slightly harsh for daters with less attractive features. The fewer matches you get, the less frequently you appear on search results, which in turn further drops your success rate.

You have to regularly match with others to stay ahead of the game. It can feel time-consuming for casual daters or those active on a few other dating apps.

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2. Best For Homosexual Couple – Ashley Madison

Ashley Madison

Pros

  • Ideal for those with sexual fetishes
  • Good for homosexual couples
  • Women get to enjoy premium features for free

Cons

  • Hard to separate casual daters and serious daters

If you are serious about finding a stable partner that shares all your sexual fantasies, Ashley Madison is utterly the best place to look. In this judgment-free zone, you can easily open up to your date about your sexual fetishes. You don’t have to hide it as you normally would on other platforms.

Besides, Ashley Madison welcomes homosexual couples and all sorts of dating styles. Even polyamorous couples are able to find serious relationships here. Since the app was originally intended to be a safe space for women interested in online dating, it waives charges for all women.

Women can enjoy premium features for free, while men have to purchase credits. It sounds unfair at first, but once you look at the high-quality women it has attracted because of it, you will not complain.

However, Ashley Madison does not only cater to serious daters. It is a platform for both casual relationships and serious ones. Some members don’t specify what relationship type they are looking for. It can be confusing to know if someone is serious or only playing around. You have to be blunt to ask questions about their intentions.

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3. Highest Success Rate – eHarmony

eharmony

Pros

  • Over 150 personality questions to identify your personality type
  • High success rate
  • Most members are working elites with stable financial backgrounds

Cons

  • Expensive membership fees

Outsourcing the matching process to eharmony is a smart approach. The app is responsible for more than a million relationships over the years, with nearly half of them ending in happy marriages.

eharmony’s intelligent compatibility test contributes to its high success rate. In order to deliver you the best matches, every member has to take a personality test when they sign up. The test consists of 150 questions broken down into multiple sections. Your answers will reveal what type of a dater you are and how you would match with other personality types.

Then, the system will exclusively show profiles matching your personality type. Compatibility tests are psychologically proven to be an effective way for matchmaking services to generate the best results.

The lengthy signup process almost eradicates the existence of casual daters. There are a lot more options to find casual sex without having to spend 30 minutes completing a questionnaire. Therefore, members are serious about settling down. Most of them are working professionals with sizeable incomes.

To keep a high-quality member base, eharmony charges a substantial member fee that averages to more than $35 a month. If you are a seasonal dater (only active during certain months), the monstrous fee might not be worth it.

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4. Best For Meaningful Connections – Match

Match dating App Logo

Pros

  • High popularity in every state
  • Establishing meaningful connections with profile highlights
  • Lots of specific filters

Cons

  • Not a lot of young members. Mostly for mature members

Match is one of the top serious dating platforms in Canada and the US. It has a dozen of individual dating apps under its mother group. Each app serves a specific group, such as Latinos, Thai, and Russian dating. You can either join the biggest community, which is Match, or the smaller niche-specific platforms.

Each profile has a highlight section showing your best attributes. It leads to meaningful conversations about your life and work. You can get to know your date by asking questions about their relationship goals.

Sort your grid by last seen, most popular, nearest to you, and more. These features give you instant access to the most suitable profiles. Millions of daters are on Match every day, so you will never be bored.

As wonderful as Match is, it is not for young adults or teenagers. Members are almost strictly over 35 with high-paying jobs. There are also lots of divorced members with kids looking for another marriage. It is a dating app for a mature audience only.

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5. Start Your Relationship With Friendship – OkCupid

okcupid-geek-dating-site

Pros

  • Members are mostly open-minded young adults
  • Great for building friendships first
  • Easy to browse lots of profiles at the same time

Cons

  • Lots of idle profiles that the app doesn’t get rid of

If you are on the hunt for a young dating app, OKCupid is the all-in-one app you desire. There are millions of 20-something young adults looking to explore the next chapter of their lives. They may be younger in age, but they certainly cherish love the same way as everyone else.

Members are open-minded. You can start a conversation by bringing up a witty discussion on politics and human rights. OKCupid differs from other traditional dating apps as it advocates romance over friendships. You should have an existing bonding before asking your date out. That way, you have a higher chance of actually liking each other in person.

The grid layout on OKCupid gives you bulk reviews of a vast number of profiles. You don’t have to individually decide on one profile before moving on. You can browse through them to decide which one you want to connect with.

When you are skimming through profiles on OKCupid, you might have noticed there are a tremendous amount of inactive profiles with selfie screenshots straight from Snapchat. That’s how long those profiles haven’t been updated.

OKCupid is infamous for not removing idle profiles from the app, causing users to drown in a dead pool with minimal active members. It could take you a few weeks to hear back as you never know if the profile you just connected with is still a regular user.

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6. Best For Old-School Dating – Coffee Meets Bagel (CMB)

Coffee-meets-Bagels-dating-app

Pros

  • Matches are based on your Facebook mutual friends
  • Members are calm and enjoy the traditional type of dating
  • Male-to-female ratio is almost 1:1

Cons

  • Very limited matches for free members

CMB is a major hype in every English-speaking country. It requires users to connect their profile to a Facebook account, so its algorithm draws matches from there. Essentially, the logic goes that if you are friends with someone and they are friends with someone, then you probably will like their friends also.

Dating someone with mutual friends can push things forward as you already feel there is a connection. It is also safer and more reliable to open up to them. Chances are, you will share a lot of similarities since you are in the same circle.

CMB is not an edgy platform that endorses all forms of dating. Most members are looking for the traditional dating style. You meet someone, get to know them, start dating, get married, and start a family together. People are calm and prefer romance over hookups.

Half of the members are women. An equal split is key to building a safe environment. It creates healthy competition, so no one feels left out.

If you plan to be on CMB, you better be prepared to pay. Free members only get a handful of matches every day. You can decide on five profiles. After that, you will need to pay for credits to match further. Most paying members spend around $20 per month on CMB. It is not awfully a lot, but in a world where most dating app giants are offering free features, this certainly hits the CMB user base hard.

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Is Paying For a Dating App Worth It?

There are a few strategies that lead you down the aisle, and not all of them involve paying for a matchmaking service. That said, oftentimes, paying for a dating app will reduce the amount of time you spend finding that special one.

Most online dating apps will offer a free version to expand their member base. Free members will have limited access to the full features. They can usually only match with a few other members each day or exchange a handful of messages. These members increase the total traffic without squeezing service providers out of business.

Paying members get unlimited matches and messages. They can also enjoy premium features like profile analysis and insight so they can better position themselves to get more likes.

If you are on several dating apps, the membership fees can add up to a lot. Statistically, paying for multiple dating apps at once will not reap greater returns as you can’t divide your time well enough among them to make the investment worth it. But paying for one or two will likely accelerate the process.

Choosing one reputable dating app and investing in membership will shorten your search in finding a soulmate. You don’t have to wait 24 hours to get your quota back. You are entitled to full access at all times.

How to Establish a Serious Relationship?

4 Best Dating Apps for 30s

When you are finding dates through dating apps, confusion arises as to whether or not you are in a serious relationship. Serious relationships entail exclusiveness, meaning you should not be talking to others romantically anymore.

Before you establish a serious relationship, you need to know about the relationship goals of your partner. Are they on online dating apps because they want to settle down, or are they only browsing around? Ask early on about their intentions. If they are not ready to settle, you should focus your time on other members.

Formalizing your relationship should be mutual consent. After several dates, you should both get a sense of how each other is and if this could be long-term. Bring it up with your partner and see how they want to proceed.

Do they still want to date other people because they are unsure? Or are they ready to commit? Keep in mind that establishing a serious relationship means you both need to get off online dating. You should not be browsing the catalog for someone better.

Only ask your date to take the relationship forward if you are sure about it. You should not ask them to be serious simply to keep them on the hook while you are out hunting for other dates. Expectations should be the same for both sides.

What Should You Not Say on a Dating App?

Words and photos are the grading points on dating apps. Your polishing skills determine how many dates you get. There are many things you can say on a dating app, almost as many as things you shouldn’t be saying.

You should never lie to get more matches. It’s tempting to exaggerate your qualities to polish your online persona, but it will never work in dating. Sooner or later, your date will see through your disguise. Stick to the truth, and don’t oversell yourself.

Don’t tell others what you don’t want because it often sounds vague. Telling them what you are not looking for does not narrow things down. Instead, you should be precise about your goals. Let them know what you want so they can decide if it’ll be a good match.

Using a general bio makes your profile plain and dull. Avoid copying and pasting online self-introduction guides. Use your own wit to create a personal statement with your tone to it. It matches your style and attracts similar profiles.

Not everyone can handle a dark sense of humor or sarcasm with strangers. They can be fun by heart, but everyone is naturally wary of strangers. Throwing insensitive comments as a conversation starter will most likely put people off. Wait until you get to know them better before exercising your unapologetic charm.

What are Common Dating Mistakes?

Building a serious relationship takes more skills than hooking up with a random person. You have to meet them repeatedly and make them like you. Constructing a solid first impression sets the tone right.

On your first date, pay attention to what they have to say. Stop flattering yourself every 30 seconds. Not showing an interest in your date’s life is a big red flag for them. It shows that you are unattentive and self-absorbed.

Be patient about the pace. Occasionally, serious daters may jump into bed with you on the first date, although most people will choose to wait. If your date doesn’t want to go home with you, don’t force it. Being respectful gains trust and shows you are thinking about the long-term as well.

Never leave your date hanging after meeting up. Right after the date, you should always send a thank-you text to show your gratitude. Complement them and appreciate the good time together. Immediately arrange or suggest meeting up again if the date goes well. It consolidates your interest in them.

Your date is not going to magically open up to you about everything during the first few dates. Don’t be aggressive about their past if they are not keen on sharing. They may feel comfortable letting you on in their life with time, but there will always be things they want to keep private.

Communication goes both ways. Never assume the intentions of your date. If anything is unclear, talk it out, so you know where you stand. The guessing game should not exist in a loyal relationship.

Summary

Never be fooled into dating the wrong person again. Online dating apps are the most reliable way to find dates. Join these best dating apps for serious relationships.

Your forever love is just around the corner.

John Santana

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