The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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Gentlemen (and ladies), it is with great pleasure to inform you that it is Wellness Wednesday, and with mild displeasure to inform you that I am once again asking for your dating/romance advice.
I previously asked for suggestions on how to deal with being banned from Hinge. Quick recap of my situation:
3.6 roentgenexactly average height for an American male, somewhat nebbish-looking due to glasses)Since my previous post, I have started going to the gym 3 times a week. I can already see some improvements in my physique. On the social side, I've started reconnecting with friends more, going to more parties, karaoke nights, etc. and I've become a "regular" at a couple of good date spots. I've been off dating apps the whole time. In the past 6 months, I met 2 prospects IRL and got 1-2 dates with each, but was rejected both times thereafter.
Honestly, I want to try meeting folks IRL for a little while longer. I've forgotten how interesting "day game" can be, since I've been using dating apps for so many years. If nothing materializes by March or so, I might go back to using apps.
To that end, there are 4 things I'm curious about:
Location, Location, Location
I lived in Manhattan for 5-10 years but moved out of the city for tax reasons around the time of the pandemic. It's still a convenient 20 minute commute to get to Lower Manhattan, but perhaps I'd be more attractive to women, or have more opportunities to meet them, if I actually lived in (a desirable neighborhood of) Manhattan.
I really don't have a great sense of how important this is; as I said, I left Manhattan around the pandemic, so it's not clear whether my relative lack of success in meeting women IRL is due to leaving the city, pandemic-era cultural shifts, becoming less attractive, or something else entirely.
Clubs
I know nothing about the nightclub scene in NYC and to be honest I don't really see the appeal of being surrounded by strangers in a dark, sweaty room where it's too loud to even have a decent conversation. But there is one aspect of clubbing that, in theory, intrigues me: a literal market where dollars can be exchanged for status and sex. To what extent is that a thing?
My career is going well enough that I would definitely be willing to spend ~$50,000 in a single night if it would guarantee me sex and/or a 50+% shot at a long-term relationship with an attractive woman who is my type (see above). My gut sense is that it can't just be as simple as spending a ton of money at a club, at least not with my average-to-below average looks. I am also aware that the kind of women who would make a good long-term partners are, shall we say, unlikely to be hanging around clubs and putting out for anyone who spends enough dough; however, I would be fine settling for hookups/casual sex with good-looking women whom I encounter in such situations while I search for a higher-quality partner elsewhere.
How much benefit in terms of sex, dates, and relationships can be purchased in the NYC club scene? And operationally, how does this work; do you just book a table/bottle service and then the employees bring girls to your table? I am totally clueless here.
Drugs and Augmentation
I cannot in good conscience write a post in a rat-adjacent community without throwing a bone to the transhumanist crowd:
Testosterone/anabolic steroids. I don't believe I have a testosterone deficiency or anything, but T or steroids could give a boost to my physique, height (slightly), and confidence. Has anyone completely turned their dating life around using these? Curious to hear about your experiences.
Laser eye surgery. As mentioned above, I wear glasses. Probably this detracts from my attractiveness somewhat, though it's hard to tell how much (FWIW, multiple women have told me [during glasses-off pillow talk] that I have beautiful eyes and eyelashes). There's also the benefit of having better vision than I currently do, and without the mild inconvenience of carrying glasses everywhere to boot.
Limb-lengthening surgery. Could make me a couple inches taller, but I'd still be under 6'. Worse, I think my friends and family would find it really weird if I did this. Honestly I am just including this one for the sake of completeness; there is very little chance that I'd actually go through with it, unless someone can convince me that the results are so life-changingly good that the expense, loss of QoL during the long recovery period, risk of complications, and mild social stigma are all worth it.
Matchmakers/Outsourcing
I am aware that soliciting a matchmaker rather contravenes my stated preference to swear off dating apps for a little while longer. Nonetheless, I am fascinated by the ads I sometimes see for so-called "elite" matchmaking services. They always set off my bullshit detector, but I suppose there is a chance that they really do work as advertised. Do quality women actually use these services? What's their success rate like?
In all honesty, though, more than a matchmaker, I would be perfectly happy to pay for a service that constructs profiles for me on all the major dating apps, takes my preferences into account, and then goes through the long grind of swiping for me so that I don't have to. Literally just an API where my photos go in, and matches with attractive women come out. How is this not a startup yet? Call it "Cyrano", slap a cool logo on it, and you'll be rolling in VC cash.
TLDR: Find hobbies where you can leverage money, insinuate yourself into spaces where you can meet women, lose the Asian fetish.
Hinge did you a favor. Swipe apps are built for college kids, focused on looks and maybe some basic one-sentence level of compatibility. Your best traits, filthy lucre and the skills that obtaining it represent, aren't actually that visible on a swipe app, at least not with any credibility.
Let's be realistic. Your income is more attractive than your body, and you evince a willingness to trade money for romantic or sexual opportunity. So how does one leverage the quid for the quo outside of actual sex workers?
It's time for you to buy yourself some hobbies. At a seven figure income, and hopefully decent savings if you've been making that money while being a single male living in Jersey, you have significant leverage to walk into something and be interesting to others right away. If you wanted to get into SCCA Spec Miata, for example, it would be easy for you to afford. You're not far from the ocean, buy a boat, because of the implications. If you wanted to get into a fitness hobby rock climbing, lifting, or boxing, or BJJ like so many tech execs you'd have the option of hiring private trainers rather than trying to make public classes, which will enhance your progress and your relationship to the staff at the gym. The world is full of jealous bitches who will resent your money and how you use it, but as long as you are competent it is just sour grapes.
Becoming a regular at good date spots is good. But the goal is to get to the level where you have a positive friendly relationship with the staff and other regulars there. The best thing that you can have is taking a woman somewhere and everyone says hey man how's it going good to see you. Be a capital-P Patron. You're in the NYC area, you can tip extravagantly well at dive bars and off-broadway theater spaces and start insinuating yourself into circles where your money will be valued.
Alternatively, seek out hobbies where you will meet eligible young women. I highly recommend auditing graduate classes at local schools, lord knows you have them around you, it'll make you interesting and insinuate you into those age ranges. Will people think you're weird/creepy/old? Yes. But you are rich, and people will value you paying for things more than they will resent you for those other things. Or at least one girl hopefully will fall for your bit.
Also, lose the Asian fetish, or at least make sure it isn't obvious. It's not cute or attractive to women, especially since you specified anglophone so you're only looking at ABCs I guess. Some Asian women have a giant stick up their ass about it from a woke perspective, but the bigger problem is that it makes you look weak. Guys with Asian fetishes value that they are feminine and submissive, this indicates to women that these men perceive themselves as insufficiently masculine, and target women who will be submissive even though these men are wimps. None of this may be true of you, but it's a rap that's hard to shake. Bang some white and hispanic chicks in between, for variety.
very good advice. I would amplify the the part about being a Patron.
In NYC, art and improv comedy are scenes that might be a good fit for OP - many opportunities to build a network of relationships, to improve social skills, to get to know a wide variety of people, and to strategically deploy cash in many ways that will be fun for the Patron and for everyone else involved.
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