I agree.....you just have to patient with it. I get a lot of ladies checking out my profile and get several likes a day however not all of them I am interested in and I don't take dates just to take dates. There are some people out there that don't want to mess with young kids, especially if there's are older but on the flip side I see plenty of red flags out there myself. Ladies that are in their mid 40's and never married with no kids is a red flag to me. I also don't reach out to many I just sit back and let them initiate with me. If they like you enough eventually they will.
Another thing you can do is create a fake account as a woman so you can go check out your competition
