u/AnnatarLordofGiftsSR

As per the title, I am asking some suggestions from this community in hope to figure what to say if anything at all, I've just got someone liking me back, after I sent a like purely based on photos. I am male 37, and matched a female 30. She did not have any useful prompts or information, just one word prompts, and a bunch of photos, I kind of sent the like without reason to do so beyond that.

What do you all here think I should say for first message post matching?

[update] - She made my life easier by opening the conversation herself and sending the first message. I am going to meet her this afternoon over a coffee and a walk. Thanks you all for your insights.

Hi all I'm a foreigner man living and working in the UK for over the past decade. I'm in my late 30 s. Since arriving in this country I have never studied here. I arrived with enough skills and language fluency and immediately started working. I was never a person of blending professional and personal lives. So even if I had different jobs here with time I have never kept friends or even contacts with old work staff or while in a given work I have never really engaged socially. Coming here from a country where it's very typical to drink in my student years, I completely dropped the habit of drinking, so pub club bar cultures here were never drawing points. Being a person that never in my life appreciated sports or competitive group activities I have also not been keen, even if I tried, to integrate those activities.

I have more of a calm, quiet, reserved and private nature. I am more of a home body than a person that thrives in outdoors exploration.

I am able to enjoy the simplicity of presence without performative intent. All and all I think there is a massive mismatch between me and people in general in British culture.

With this said. I tried meetup apps and attended a few groups like language, workshops, single socials, in the first couple of years in the UK. Then found a relationship and that same ended.

For the last over 6 years. I have not met anyone new outside of work, and those are professional contacts that don't exist outside of the workplace and end when employment ends as well. Since my last relationship I have been on and off dating apps as I have very little performative energy, probably I come across as completely low effort neglecting lacking intent and whatever other mediocre tendencies self help, AI and other reading I do around tell me about dating profiles. Needless to say I don't have any matches turning into conversations and henceforth no interaction turning into dates.

The more I try to grasp on a cognitive level how dating works in general and what it means the vast majority of people in general and women in particular. Dating in the UK in general and London in particular. The expectations, the small stalk, the low key, and essence of the nature of it to being strangers together. Still I feel aloof here.

I try to be as expressive on the profiles I make and let it be clear I am not rushing, or sure of what I could potentially want out of it. I guess I only keep trying dating apps because I am lonely and since I have no social life outside contextual environments such as work house share etc, my social expectations also got numbed over time.

Truth is I don't even know what to do with a match on an app or how to react to a good in person interaction. My default mode is to not take meanings out of interactions isolate them in my mind as little bursts of activity and close them therein.

I am not the kind of person that will ask someone to go for a coffee just because we had a conversation or two that felt interesting to me. Asking numbers, asking to love platforms whatever it is. I don't make demands or requests by default. Interaction is good interaction ends are usually my baseline.

Another thing is that I can barely keep up with my own life, let alone get dragged to a situation that I am to organize imagine hope and plan for management of another person's expectations hopes demand etc, the concept of living and letting live are very strong in me.

I find myself asking why I can't take action or why this does not change... And all that remains is this annoying, silence cutting bad feeling of loneliness.