OMA IHMINEN · FREE SAMPLE CHAPTER
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I am a perfectly good person. Why does no one notice?
Getting a date should not feel like a job interview.
You have a life.
Perhaps a job, a home, friends, children, hobbies. You can hold a conversation. You shower. You pay your bills more or less on time. You do not send strangers pictures of your body parts.
By many measures, then, you are already a perfectly decent prospect.
And yet, on Friday evening, you sit at home and wonder:
Why can I not even get a date?
This question easily becomes another: what is wrong with me?
Dating success does not measure your worth
A dating app compresses a whole person into a few photos, an age, perhaps a height, a job and a handful of sentences. The other person is not yet deciding whether you would be a good partner. They are only deciding whether they want to know more about you.
You can be a warm, safe, funny, interesting and lovable person with a terrible dating profile. You can also have an excellent dating profile and be a dreadful partner.
But Tinder cannot take all the blame
If dates are not happening, the reason may lie in your profile, your messages, where you meet people, or your reluctance to show interest. This is actually good news. Those things can change.
So we are not fixing you. We are looking for the point where your path and a potential date’s path diverge before they have a chance to meet.
First exercise: where does the journey stop?
- I hardly ever meet new people who interest me.
- I use dating apps, but get very few matches.
- I get matches, but conversations never get started.
- Conversations fade before we meet.
- I suggest a date, but often get turned down.
- People ask me on dates, but I often decline.
- I get first dates, but rarely second ones.
- I keep becoming interested in people who are not interested in me.
- I do not dare show someone that I am interested.
- I do not really know what or whom I am looking for.
Excerpt from pages 10–11 of the Finnish book, translated into English. © 2026 Iivari Nykänen / Oma Ihminen Oy.
If you would like to continue
In the full book, we explore profiles, messages, first dates, nerves, rejection and what happens when things begin to go well.
Towards Better Dates · Finnish-language PDF · 78 pages · €14.90
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