What Is the Best Dating App for Long Distance?

None of them is best in general. The best dating app for long distance is the one that lets you search a city other than the one you are standing in, and that has plenty of women in that city. Tinder, Bumble and Facebook Dating each have a feature built for this, so the useful question is which of them is strong where she lives.

There are two different cases, and they need different answers.

In the first, you are about to move or travel. You want to meet women in a city where you will soon be, and you would like to arrive with conversations already going. That is a good use of a dating app.

In the second, you are looking for a woman who lives far away, and neither of you is moving or visiting soon. That is a harder case, and no app fixes it. It is the same problem at four hundred miles that it is at four miles: you need a plan to meet.

Tinder says you can be in one city at a time with Passport Mode, and you can change it as often as you like. It also says the women you liked there may be able to see you for up to 24 hours after you change location. So send your likes in a burst, and write to the women who match while you are still on that city's clock.

With Facebook Dating, adding a location also tells the women there that you are looking in their area. If you cannot find the setting, you may simply not have it yet. That is not something you did wrong.

For any other app, open its location settings before you pay for anything. If you cannot set a location, the app can only show you women near your phone.

Pick by where she is, not by which app you like. Open each app you can use, set the city, and see what you find. Look at how many women live there and whether they look like real people with real photos. An app can be excellent in your home city and nearly empty in hers.

Then count the cost against the trip. A paid location tool for one evening away is poor value. For a week in a new city, or a month before a move, the cost is small next to empty evenings.

a dating coach says many men find their results with women improve when they travel, because they feel more free and feel less social consequence for what they do. A trip is a good time to be on the apps.

Set your location a week or two before you land. Tell women honestly that you arrive on a specific date. Then propose a drink for your first few days, and ask for her number before you arrive so the plan does not depend on either of you opening an app at the right moment.

The trap with any long-distance chat is that it feels like progress. Two people trade long messages for weeks, get to know each other in text, and never meet.

Keep the conversation light and specific, the way you would with a woman who lives down the street. When she is warm, tie it to a date on the calendar. "I'm in town from Tuesday to Friday, free for a drink on Wednesday?" is a plan she can say yes or no to. "We should meet if I ever visit" is not.

Be honest about it. If neither of you has a real reason to travel, every hour spent charming her is an hour not spent on women you could see this week. Ask yourself whether either of you would move or visit, and when. If the answer is nobody and never, the match is a conversation, not a relationship.

If you do both want it, set the basics early: how often you talk, when you will meet, and who travels first. Distance can hide a mismatch for a long time, so ask what she wants before you have invested months.

If you get matches in another city and the conversations stall before a plan, or you are not getting matches at all, look at your photos and your first messages before you blame the distance. A woman who sees clear, real photos and a short message about something she wrote is more likely to agree to a date on your trip. A woman who sees a vague profile and a line that could go to anyone is not.