Gay Online Dating at Consonance (Gleichklang)

Since 2006, we are the alternative for effective gay online dating

Behind today’s online dating and also the well-known gay dating apps lies a tragedy that many users do not know:

• The search for a man for a lasting loving relationship does not succeed through many contacts, daily browsing through profiles, nor through “successful” sexual encounters.

It is even worse:

• The probability of actually finding a partner decreases the more contacts we have, the more frequently we look at new profiles, and the more casually we arrange sexual encounters.

Many gay men believe that by regularly using online dating they are doing something positive for their partner search. In reality, however, something completely different happens:

• There is an implicit shift in focus away from relationships toward matches, an attitude of rejection develops, and the willingness to commit decreases. So we stay on the apps, but remain single.

This is precisely where Consonance (Gleichklang) represents a counter-design not only to mainstream dating apps but also to gay dating apps. These have essentially the same mainstream structure and are therefore mostly unsuitable for establishing long-term loving relationships between men.

What does gay partner search mean at Consonance (Gleichklang)?

These are the main differences of our gay matchmaking service compared to gay dating apps and other dating sites:

• No mass influx and no mass portal: Consonance (Gleichklang) is not a place where you should consume hundreds of new profiles daily. Consonance is not built on people staying in the system endlessly because new stimuli are constantly being delivered. Although we have been established as a dating platform since 2006, before Tinder, Grindr & Co., we remain small because we forego features designed for entertainment, distraction, and addiction-generating monetization.
• Focus on sustainable connection: We place genuine connection, real relationship, lasting partnership, and sustainable friendships at the forefront. That is why we have not structured ourselves to rely on split-second photo decisions or to send attractive profile pictures as reward stimuli.
• Compatibility of life models: Matching is based on alignment of values, life philosophies, and relationship models. This is how men at Consonance find each other who truly match and can build a happy relationship together. Since our founding 19 years ago, we have placed relationship psychology as the guiding principle for our actions at the forefront. That is why we are exclusively optimized for the criterion that the chance is maximized that our members will one day find and maintain a sustainable relationship.
• Everyone demonstrates their own seriousness: A central difference between Consonance (Gleichklang) and truly all other dating apps and dating sites is that we do not have a free “gateway” mechanism that collects as many profiles as possible that are never available for a real relationship. All members pay a fair annual fee, which is socially reduced in cases of financial burden, ensuring that here all members are truly serious about finding a relationship. Because in online dating, free often means the invitation to complete non-commitment: multiple profiles, photo collectors, people who chat only out of boredom, users who are not actually ready for a relationship or are already in relationships but still scroll.
• Sex and relationship are different: Sex positivity is wonderful, and Consonance also advocates for it. But sex cannot replace a romantic relationship. Romantic relationship and sex are not the same, and therefore the selection criteria cannot be the same either. Those who want a relationship need different questions than “Who is currently available?” or “Who looks most attractive in the photo?”. Mechanisms of quick contacting, immediate photo exchange, multi-tracking, and rapid meetups can certainly facilitate sexual encounters well, but they simultaneously reduce the chance that a sustainable relationship will develop. If for no other reason than that with pure sex, the excitement with the same partner often diminishes quickly, new possibilities are in sight or at least hoped for. Thus, the willingness to truly explore with each other whether we can go through life together decreases.
• Optimized for relationship initiation: At Consonance (Gleichklang), by contrast, the chance increases that a relationship process can begin. Often not immediately, often after a longer waiting period, without constant distraction by new contacts. We have designed the partner search so that one day a suitable person will come. If you now recognize and seize this opportunity, a relationship will develop. This is not the case on the major dating sites and also on the gay dating apps. There, choice overload and selection processes dominate. Many do not notice when the opportunity to establish lasting love and happiness was actually there. Years of dating can be highly successful in terms of the number of contacts, but a relationship rarely develops. This is precisely why the rates of involuntary singles are continuously rising, while the apparent contact options through dating apps are supposedly constantly increasing.
• No constant variety and multi-tracking: Gay partner search often fails precisely because the dating apps are ready to provide the next hope, the next attractive picture, the next contact opportunity. That is exactly why at Consonance (Gleichklang) we deliberately and intentionally rely on principles that do not lead to variety, entertainment, fun, and short-lived pleasure, but instead to partnership: patience, depth, compatibility, exploring a relationship possibility, minimizing multi-tracking.
• Recognizing the right moment: From a psychological perspective, finding a partner is not a daily thrill and certainly not a domain. Finding a partner is much more a rare event, but one that still occurs for most people. However, finding a partner only occurs when you are not distracted, perceive the moment, and seize the opportunity. But if you still have many other contacts in the app or are expecting them, you may not notice when the man appears with whom you could find your life’s happiness. And even if you notice it more or less, you may be too distracted to seize this opportunity. Also because, unnoticed, our willingness to commit decreases through constant online dating.
• Relationship develops over time: At Consonance (Gleichklang), expect that initially little will happen. It may be that you have to wait for suggestions. The average duration of the search for our successful members is two years. For many it goes faster, for others it takes longer.

Incidentally, we have comprehensively evaluated our success rates:

• 34% of our gay members find a relationship if they did not give up for at least one year. 63% find a relationship if they did not give up for at least two years. Not included here are those who give up after just a few weeks.

Opportunities and risks of dating apps

We do not by any means want to badmouth the other dating systems and the well-known gay dating apps and dating sites. Studies also show that worldwide, gay dating apps give gay men and of course bisexual men many opportunities to make contact, escape discriminatory structures, arrange meetings, and live out their sexuality. Undoubtedly, sexuality can be fulfilling, liberating, and connecting.

But this is precisely where a phenomenon begins that gay men – and likewise bisexual men – have been describing for years and which is also substantiated by peer-reviewed research:

• Gay dating apps leave a feeling of inner emptiness in quite a few of those affected. Those affected cannot detach themselves from the apps, and yet they do not become happy with them.

This fits with the fact that dating apps overall are among the applications that are most frequently deleted and reinstalled. A cycle in which quite a few find themselves trapped.

This is also described in the heterosexual context, but seems to occur even more frequently among gay men. Many can hardly imagine daily life without the app and at the same time are not really satisfied.

True, something is constantly happening in the dating apps – chats, flirts, matches, meetings, sex, sometimes drugs – but something crucial is lost:

• The ability and willingness to allow a deepened, recurring, and developing encounter, to build attachment, and to let it become a lasting relationship.

As a result, through modern dating culture, especially in the LGBTQ+ area, more and more people have sex but no love. Relationships become fragile, interchangeable, and short-lived – a form of liquid love, as described by sociologist Zygmunt Bauman.

In online dating, we act like brands

Carolina Bandinelli and Alessandro Gandini conclude in a comprehensive study of dating apps that users of dating apps interact with each other like brands or micro-enterprises in a state of maximum uncertainty about reality and motives:

• We optimize our profile, hope to be seen, react to signals, compare offers, and calculate our chances. In doing so, we usually rely on maximum visibility.

And that is exactly the problem:

• Almost always, the encounter remains brief, interest breaks off, and the willingness to meet and connect decreases. While we are chatting, we feel like ten more profiles are already at the door, and in the back of our minds lives the hope that perhaps someone “better” might still come along.

However, this very thought is psychologically disastrous when we are striving for a lasting relationship:

Further psychological studies show that even the mere imagination of alternatives in online partner search reduces our willingness to commit. However, singles with lower willingness to commit actually remain single more often.

In seminars and in dating coaching, I (co-founder of Consonance, psychologist) repeatedly encounter people who have been dating for years and sometimes even think they are quite successful:

• They no longer even notice that they have lost sight of their original relationship goal and now measure success in matches and contacts that do not promote the achievement of the actual goal, but prevent it.

This creates a state that is fatal for many gay men with regard to a lasting loving relationship:

• Short contacts are easy, long-term relationships become increasingly difficult because the dating system that structures the getting-to-know-you process constantly generates distraction, permanently offers alternatives, and virtually forces comparison – and thus undermines the willingness to commit among those involved. Although I myself am still willing to commit, many others in the apps are currently no longer.

Of course, this applies not only to gay men. In the heterosexual world too, dating apps have long been part of everyday life. But especially in the queer and gay sphere, there has been a particularly strong shift of social life and the way we communicate into the online dating sphere.

So it is not surprising that many gay men of middle or older age look back with nostalgia at the earlier gay scene. The rise of gay dating apps went hand in hand with a decline in the non-virtual gay scenes and the sense of connection that many experienced there.

Places where gay and bisexual men met in parks, cafés, bars, on the streets, in initiatives, in clubs, in local groups, or in solidarity structures no longer exist or are becoming fewer.

If they still exist, behavior there has also shifted toward the dating apps – to the point where we look at our dating apps in the café. Thus, structures have been lost that for quite a few of those affected were an alternative culture and sometimes even a chosen family.

The apps do not compensate for this loss because for many gay men, although online dating creates contacts, it does not create sustaining connection.

Gay matchmaking instead of dating app

Psychologically based partnersearch using values, life goals, and relationship models

The key idea of our dating community is simple and at the same time radical in a dating world reduced to images and split-second decisions:

• A relationship is not determined by what we see in an app and what our preferences condition us to do. A relationship is determined by whether two people – or in open and polyamorous relationship models, more than two – are compatible in their life philosophies, life goals, values, and life paths.

Love between gay men is not fundamentally different from love between heterosexual people:

• It is a life project. Going through good and difficult times together is not old-fashioned, but rather a view that has always been almost revolutionary and solidary, yet beyond what the quick thrill of dating apps provides.

At Consonance (Gleichklang), we understand ourselves as an inclusive, value-oriented, psychologically based alternative in online dating. Our matchmaking service is designed so that we place at the forefront what enables and sustains relationships:

• Shared values, shared lifestyle, compatible future visions, similar relationship ideals, a realistic way of building closeness.

Approximately 20% of our members are LGBTQ+, 80% are heterosexual. The fact that we have existed for 19 years as a partner search for gay men, other LGBT individuals, and heterosexuals and continuously renew ourselves shows that the approach of a psychologically based and sustainable partner search remains current and viable.

Consonance is not conservative – the dating app market is conservative

Some confuse seriousness with conservatism. But we at Consonance are not conservative.

On the contrary:

• Many dating apps appear liberal because they offer quick sexuality, permanent flirting, and supposed freedom. However, behind this surface often stands an ice-cold marketing logic. The algorithm serves primarily not the users, but a structure that hardly knows solidary relationships anymore. In this logic, the best thing about apps algorithmically optimized for constant continued use is not when people find relationships – but when they remain “dating” permanently.

Consonance (Gleichklang) stands for diversity and for different relationship models:

• From the classic monogamous two-person relationship to open relationships to polyamorous relationships – and also for relationship-anarchist approaches, when these are sought. Predominantly, we have members with progressive societal attitudes. The entire queer spectrum is represented with gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, queer, and more. People of all genders and gender identities seek and find partnership at Consonance.

By the way, Consonance (Gleichklang) is not only a matchmaking service for gay men and everyone else, but also a dating community in which members also search for and find friendships, travel companions, projects, and communities. This way, in projects and communities, queer structures that some so painfully miss can also emerge again.

Solidary collective fees

We are also a company and thus confronted with the need to reproduce ourselves in the existing market-liberal society, to continue to exist, and to continue to operate. We have neither loans nor investors.

For almost 20 years, we have been living and developing from what we currently earn through our work. This is precisely where a core of our solidary, collective fee principle arises.

If gay partner search is to be an alternative to mainstream dating, then the financing system must not reproduce exactly the same mechanisms that we criticize in gay dating apps and other online dating systems:

• Premium doors, hidden paywalls, micro-payments for attention, permanent reward loops that keep people on the platform.

Consonance (Gleichklang) is a dating community that excludes no one, and this begins already with our fees:

Our contribution is therefore not a price for individual units of use, no billing for messages, suggestions, or functions. It is a collective participation contribution with which members jointly finance the platform:

Partner search, friendship search, travel contacts, projects, communities, contact lists, communication, support, further development.

Those who are with us should not have to think about whether an additional step in the relationship search process will again “cost” – because that is exactly how the market logic is created that transforms relationship into consumption.

Those who are financially stable participate at the regular rate. Those who are noticeably limited choose a reduction. Those in material hardship can receive a solidarity rate. And if acute need exists, we find solutions up to a purely symbolic contribution. Unbureaucratically, without stigmatization, and with exactly the same options as for all other members.

The collective fee principle enables the social reductions and gives us as a platform planning security to be able to work reliably:

• Programming, maintenance, further development, profile verification, support, information offerings, marketing where value-oriented people are.

A different kind of online dating

Our support consists of people and not AI. Our fee system is not a lure to present premium offers later. Every member is premium.

As a dating community, we are a solidary framework in which partner search, matchmaking, friendships, projects, and communities become possible as a value-based alternative.

Are you a gay or bisexual man looking for a monogamous, open, or polyamorous partnership, friendships, projects, or a community? You are in the right place with us:

See for yourself and join now: SIGN UP HERE!