It's really not as easy as you think

Post Reply New Topic

Also I think you guys are missing my online/offline point.

The kinda of people I meet are not the kind who spend large amounts of time online. They're busy out there living their lives.

To be fair, I am not seeing guys even attempting to talk to gals offline anymore.
I noticed this drastic change during the 6 years in the same gym.
In 2012-2015 I made tons of female acquaintances out of gym, and few friends,
people back then were little less obsessed with earphones. People used to talk to each other on treadmills, there was much more social interactions.

In the last couple of years? Nothing, nil, I go, exercise and back home - zero interaction.
I observed the others and noticed the same, no one is interacting with anyone and most put earphones.
The only interactions I am seeing there is 1-within the small groups who come together 2- women with their trainers.

I've never done online dating, because it sounds awful and exhausting. Offline I have had 2 relationships and a 3/3 success rate of asking girls out. Granted I've been out of it for a while because I haven't been on a date in 4 years. I also run in middle class professional circles. I provide this information to give context to my observations.

On-line: Everyone is looking for a date, because otherwise what are you doing on a dating app? Interactions are necessarily superficial at first, as it is not easy to convey personality online. There are no consequences because you'll never actually see the person again if you go on a date and it goes badly.

Off-line: It's a lot murkier who is and is not available. People may be in relationships, people may be comfortable being single, people may have a sexual orientation incompatible with yours. Interactions tend to be much more real as people will actually get a feel for your personality in in-person interactions. Lastly, consequences are real. Go out with a friend of a friend and it ends badly and suddenly your friend feels like they're choosing sides.

On-line: Men tend to be desperate because of the aforementioned stats on superficial interactions, and women tend to be choosy because they get messaged by a lot of desperate men.

Off-line: Both men and women tend to be choosy. Men who are exclusively dating offline in middle class professional circles are confident enough in their ability to attract a female, but tend to be looking for more than just cheap sex or are already in a relationship.

I wouldn't say my experiences are applicable to all men, but two examples:

1) I was at a restaurant with some friends and went to the bar to get a drink because the table service was slow. A random woman who I estimate to be 10 years older than me and twice my weight starts talking about how she could show me a good time. I order my drink and walk away because seriously: what the hell. What about me made you think I wanted to get hit on while ordering a drink? She may have been a nice woman with a great personality, but I wasn't going to stick around to find out.

2) I was at a new year's party and one one of my sister's friends starts hitting on me. She's an attractive woman with a good personality and I count her as a friend but I do not see the two of us as romantically compatible. She now has a stable boyfriend who I'm certain is a much better partner for her than me. I turned her down because I didn't see any long term potential and didn't want to one-night-stand.

^ Yup, I am giving my gym as an example.

I'm a man, but I agree with you. The way someone explained it to me is that in general, men are more likely to be rejected before the first date, while women are usually able to get dates easier but will often be rejected after one or several dates.

Honestly, the times that I've been rejected when I've asked someone out didn't bother me all that much, but the times where I went on a date with someone, fell for them, and was rejected really, really hurt, and it's an incredibly frustrating experience. I'm at a point where if I put a lot of effort into online dating I can get maybe 1 or 2 dates per month, but I honestly don't even want to try anymore because it's too painful to go out with someone, develop feelings, think they feel the same, and then surprise, they don't. Would have been better to have never met them at all, and to me, having gone on a date, or having had sex just isn't a sufficient consolation prize for being brokenhearted afterwards.

Most of my experience is with online dating, where treating people like s**t and nobody having any idea what they actually want seems to be the norm, maybe it's better in real life but I just don't have a big enough social circle(or any social circle for that matter) to make meeting partners offline practical, so I don't really know what dating is like in that context.

Well, statistically about 80% of people get married by age 35, not accounting for non-married couples.

So it is easy for most people, we are certainly doing something wrong.

I don't know what @hurtloam actually wants. If @The_Face_of_Boo is right, then it would seem she is basically hung up on some guy who's 8-9 years younger than she is, and at her wits' end because he isn't into her. If that's the case, I can testify that a lot of guys of marriageable age are highly reluctant to get seriously involved (and it would seem she is looking for serious involvement) with a woman that much older. I am not going to say it's fair, but it's true insofar as it was true for me when I was that age.

I may not be fully qualified to respond to this because by the time I was @hurtloam's age I was married so I don't know what it was like then (or is now) to actively seek opposite-sex companionship in one's 40s or late 30s. It seems it got easier for me as I got past 30, for a couple of reasons. But I don't now how things might have evolved had I remained single that long.

I would like to make one observation in general though. Single people should make an effort to clearly differentiate sexual desire from the need to be in a loving relationship. In particular, as somebody who has been married over 30 years, I still can't claim to know for certain just what "love" is. Most relationships I was involved with until getting married were primarily opportunities for regular sex. At the same time, I was also quite fond (to varying degrees) of the people I was having sex with. If not, I didn't stay in the relationship. I can confidently say that I never led anyone on about my feelings toward her just so she would have sex with me. There was one situation in which I was less than honest about my plans for marriage, but the reasons are too complicated to discuss in detail here.

Even when my wife and I first met, the first time we had sex (which I think was on the 4th date) we had not yet proclaimed our love for each other. On that occasion (when she came to visit me at my apartment) I am quite certain she consciously hoped to have sex with me because for the first time in a while, she had met somebody she felt comfortable doing it with. Which is way less than saying she had fallen madly in love with me. In fact, I am quite comfortable saying that we decided to get married more because it was the right time in both our lives to take that step and because there were no major points of incompatibility (or "red flags" if you want to think of it that way).

I think many women are dishonest with themselves about their sexual desires. Again from experience, and looking back on past relationships, I'm certain that many women get involved with a guy because they want sex, but feel a need to reconcile this with their moral code or whatever by insisting that guy is their "soulmate" or whatever even just a week or two after meeting him. I am not at all suggesting that women should be promiscuous, but when pursuing any guy she is attracted to, a woman should think first of getting him into bed, then becoming a steady (and hopefully exclusive) sex partner, and worry later whether a life-long relationship will develop.

One other piece of advice it to be up front about sexual attraction. You wouldn't pursue someone you weren't attracted to sexually, so if you're really interested then tell him as directly as you can that you fancy having sex with him. Now I am not saying you should outright ask him to have sex with you (although that's happened to me, of all people more than once) however you should be forthcoming as to how you would like to, although you might insist on getting to know him a bit better before taking the plunge. So yeah, I am by no means trying to encourage promiscuity. Trust me, there is no better way to get a guy interested, than to let him know in no uncertain terms that you think he's hot.

Speaking of promiscuity though, it would seem that the 80% of women on Tinder who are hooking up with 20% of the men must be aware that they are hooking up with men who have recently had a lot of sex partners. Is this the reality? If so, although the statistics may be accurate for the population under study, I find hard to believe that this is representative of the "typical" single person aged 20-45 in the Western world.