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Maybe it’s down to my social bubbles, but the way men are described in these kinds of posts just doesn’t mesh with the men I know.
Like the supposed truth that men aren’t big spenders and would happily sleep on a mattress in a cardboard box that had wifi. Sure men don’t tend to own as many knick-knacks and care less about interior decorating, but men loooove to spend big time on things they care about, like “gear” for their hobbies. Who’s buying $2,000 GPUs, 4k ultra wide monitors and pricy mechanical keyboards? Expensive guitars when they can barely string together a few chords? Ridiculously pricy sports gear? Who tends to spend extra on high performance sport version of cars even though they look basically the same as the base model? I don’t know any women who are impressed by a $1500 espresso machine, but I know guys who have them.
I’ve never seen an “average” man have issues with dating (casual sex, sure, but not dating). The guys I know who can’t seem to find a single woman to date… you can tell why from like a 5 min conversation. It doesn’t take the average guy an inordinate amount of effort to find an average woman and get married. Even awkward nerdy guys I know are getting married as long as they’re not actively unpleasant to be around.
I feel like that kind of malaise and blackpilling mostly happens to neurotic, terminally online people. If you touch grass in a first world country, those issues aren’t really there.
I could not disagree with this harder (+the data backs me up). Maybe it’s slightly different 5-10 years older than me, but there are so so many single men in my social circles. Sure some of them have some social skills to work on, but they’re mainly average guys with average hobbies. Some of them haven’t been on dates in years.
Are you a woman by chance? Perhaps that might explain our different perspectives.
I’m a trans woman but before that I was a man and dated women and men. My experience isn’t typical but I know a decent number of straight men and I have trouble believing an actual average guy can avoid having a single date for years, unless they’re avoiding all social situations with the opposite sex.
If you’re a regular straight person, everything is basically designed for you. You can ask out basically any single member of the opposite sex. People try to set you up with their friends/co-workers/whatnot. You can hook-up with random strangers at a party if the chemistry’s right without having to worry if they’re in the <5% that’s attracted to you, if you’re sexually compatible, or if you’re trans and passing, that they won’t react violently.
You don’t have to deal with people hiding your relationship, you can just follow a preset script, introduce your partner to your friends, meet their parents without fear, etc. And as a man the bar is honestly pretty low and it’s ridiculously easy to set yourself apart in terms of fashion/being a decent partner/a decent father, and your attractiveness is dictated by a multiple of things rather than just your rapidly declining physical appearance.
Plus most straight men seem to be attracted to most women? I don’t understand it but it should make your life easier to not be picky.
No one's is. I think the intercontinental, intergenerational (intersectional? a dirty word around here) scale of the internet makes comparisons nearly useless while also allowing almost any reasonably credible explanation to find enough support to pass as "true".
"You could meet someone at work" say 1000 people who work at bars in LA.
"I can't meet anyone at work" say 1000 guys who work in provincial warehouses.
"You can meet people at parties" say 1000 people who like to go clubbing in NY.
"I don't go to parties" say 1000 guys who like programming.
"You can meet people through friends and family, or at church" say 1000 Mormons in SLC.
"I was raised by 4chan and social workers after my dad abandoned my alcoholic mum and the only people who go to church are old or weird" say 1000 guys from the underclass.
"You can meet young, fun, attractive women online" say 1000 20somethings who live across the street from a middle tier university.
"Apps are full of divorcees and single mums" say 1000 40somethings who live in low turnover commuter towns.
Then a statistician comes along, shoves them all into one box and finds that 50% of people find someone at work/at parties/at church/online/etc.
It's like the blind men and the elephant. They're all true but without the full context people are talking past each other. This thread itself is a microcosm of this phenomenon.
On the other hand the internet is the only place where we can discuss this at length because workmates, party goers, friends, family, parishioners and statisticians alike are neither keen nor useful for sitting around IRL bemoaning one's dating woes at length, and maybe even less for proclaiming one's dating success. "Hello boss/barkeep/buddy/cousin/sir/professor, care to share some fully generalisable insight into why some people are struggling with dating? Not me though, I'm swimming in pussy. High five!"
Choose ten separate and unaccompanied strangers and then actively confirm which ones aren't single. As a trans woman you might have an intuition how different your approach and the results would be asking as a man or as a woman.
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