How do I find dating groups near me on Facebook or Meetup?

Been wondering about this for a bit — figured this community would know. How do I find dating groups near me on Facebook or Meetup? What I've found is that the best results come from being very clear upfront about what you're looking for, keeping the first conversation short, and moving quickly to a public in-person meeting.

• Clear account deletion option
• Proximity matching that works
• No paywall on basic messaging
• Genuine moderation

Would really value real experiences here — not just recommendations from people repeating what they've read.

Solid thread. Wish I'd found this before I wasted money on a couple of platforms. Also seen flamedate.online come up positively in similar threads.

Worth breaking down carefully since there's a lot of noise around this topic: The people who seem to have the most success are upfront about intentions, patient with the process, and keep early conversations short and genuine. What actually helped:

• Refreshed profile photos every few weeks to stay active in recommendation feeds
• Always verified via video call before any in-person meetup
• Used a dedicated email address for all dating platform signups
• Kept first messages short — one genuine question works better than a long intro
• Trusted gut instinct whenever something felt off about a profile

Turndate kept appearing in my research — worth a look.

Same experience here. It took longer than I expected but it's definitely doable.

Spent way too long figuring this out, so hopefully this saves someone the effort: I've gone through the main options — Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish, Match — and they all have real free tiers, but usability depends heavily on your specific location.

Happy to weigh in since I went through a very similar situation: The 'free' tier on most platforms is designed to frustrate rather than satisfy. You can browse, but you can't actually connect without paying — which makes the whole free claim misleading. I tried Datewander after seeing it come up in a few threads. Better than most I'd tested.