A match on Hinge takes two yeses. Either you send a Like or a Rose from Discover or Standouts and she accepts it, or she likes you first and you accept her like from your Likes You tab. Either way, the two of you move to your Matches tab, which is where you can start chatting.

The two ways a match happens

The first way starts with you. You find her in Discover, the main feed of people Hinge shows you, or in Standouts, and you send her a Like or a Rose. Nothing happens on your side until she sees it and accepts. If she does, you are matched.

The second way starts with her. She sends you a like, and it lands on your Likes You tab. You look at her page and decide. If you accept, you are matched.

Both routes need both of you. A like sitting unanswered in either direction is not a match yet, and the chat only opens once someone says yes to it.

Where the match goes

Every match ends up in the same place, your Matches tab. That is the screen where your conversations live, and it is where you can start chatting with her.

It is worth checking that tab on purpose rather than waiting for the app to remind you. A match you never open does exactly as much for you as no match at all.

Which route works better for men

Most men treat Hinge like a slot machine: send likes out, hope some come back. That works, but it is only half the app.

a dating coach's experience on Hinge is that most of his matches start the other way round. Women like one of his photos or something on his page first, and he decides whether to accept. He finds Hinge well suited to getting matches with very little outbound effort. On other apps, he says, he has to put in more swiping to reach the women he wants.

That tells you where the effort goes. If your page is strong, a good share of your matches will come to you, and your job is choosing well and answering well. If your page is weak, you will be sending likes all day to women who never accept. She checks your page before she says yes to anything.

What decides whether she says yes

Whichever route you take, the moment of decision is the same. She looks at your page and makes up her mind quickly.

Your first photo carries most of that decision. She should see your face clearly, in decent light, without sunglasses or a crowd around you. Your other photos should show what your life actually looks like. Your written answers should give her something to react to: a small story, a real opinion, a light challenge.

When you are the one sending the like, add something that shows you read her page. A short line about one specific thing she wrote gives her a reason to accept that a bare like does not.

From match to date

A match is a start, not a result. The whole point of chatting on the app is to get her off it and onto a date.

My method for that is built on three things she needs to feel before she will agree to meet. The first is attraction: you are fun, a little playful, and you are not trying to win her over by flattering her. The second is comfort: she knows a few real details about your life, enough to feel you are a real person and not a stranger she might regret meeting. The third is commitment: plans have come up in the conversation before you ask, so the ask does not feel sudden.

Done well, he says, it takes somewhere between four and seven messages. His last one barely changes from woman to woman: he agrees to the plan she has already warmed to, gives his number and asks for hers.

That only works because the earlier messages did their job. If she has never heard a plan mentioned, a sudden request for her number feels like pressure, and that is where a lot of conversations stall.

Where men lose good ones

A few habits cost men matches they already had.

Matching and then saying nothing. She accepted your like or you accepted hers, and then two days pass. By the time you write, she is talking to other men who wrote first.

Chatting for weeks. A long, friendly conversation with no plan in it tends to fade out. The date is what matters, and a good date outweighs anything that happened in the app.

Accepting every like. A match you never meant to take out adds clutter, not dates. Accept the women you actually want to see, and give each of them a real message.