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).
Jump in the discussion.
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Notes -
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.
Lasik is great, independently of the rest of it. I did PRK despite qualifying for Lasik, because it's better and how bad could the pain be for a week or two? Excruciating, as it turns out, but worth it to not have a flap in my eye
How'd you get banned from Hinge?
Could you literally hire someone to be your full time dating assistant/coach/fashion coordinator?
Well that one's definitely doable. In all seriousness, maybe a sugar baby? In addition to achieving the proximal goal, it could help you build confidence.
If you don't have a trainer, get one. Ideally get one who doubles as good practice interacting with women, if a lack thereof is part of your problem.
If your company is hiring remote employees, uh, DM me (faanger)
Am doctor but not eye doctor. Not a fan of LASIK especially in your age range. Carefully research the risks first, you won't get a good objective assessment from an ophthalmologist because if at all possible they'll recommend the procedure (because surgeons want to cut).
Does your ban extend to Coffee Meets Bagel? It's very popular in the Northeast and Asians are over represented. Recommend Asian adjacent real life activities if that's your mojo. Ex: EDC (or whatever local concerts there are).
Find a place to meet residents (physicians), easy way to pick up intelligent professional women.
Don't know how to find a dating coach but do recommend that.
I think Raya has gone out of fashion now but you might be able to find its replacement or try signing up for its corpse.
With your salary a good personal trainer is super affordable and is good for your overall health and mood and also for making you more superficially attractive.
If you have good insight- figure out why you aren't successful. If you are moderately attractive you should be drowning in women at that wealth level. Are you fatter than you want to admit? Fashion style not making it obvious you are bringing in money? No rizz?
Figure out what it is and then you can address. This ties back to matchmaking - if the issue is your profile was shit they'll fix it. Don't want to pay someone? Run it by women in your life if you don't want to pay. (assuming you can get on CMB)
fwiw, I consider my LASIK surgery to be some of the best money I ever spent. I did read about the risks beforehand, but after a lifetime of glasses and contacts, never having to wear them again was totally worth it. (I am getting old enough to need reading glasses, but I was told beforehand that nothing will prevent that.)
Short version: If you go to an eye hospital ophthalmology department you'll note that nearly everyone is wearing glasses.
Long version: When I'm teaching medical students in surgery I say something along the lines of "roughly 25% of surgical residents drop out, nobody ever says they are going to be one of those..." People almost never think they are going to be in the pile of bad outcomes (unless they have a nervous disposition). LASIK risks are reasonably rare (but more common than you may think) and nobody ever thinks they are going to be one of the ones who gets them, but most people's primary means of interacting with the world with is through their vision. Losing that, or having it appreciably worsened with dry eye or tanked night vision...it's awful.
That said medical professional skepticism is driven by actually seeing the bad outcomes, that isn't necessarily appropriate if everything is weighted correctly. And lots of eye doctors avoid contacts for similar reasons. You do also see plenty of eye doctors that get it done, but I will always remember the time in med school I asked an ophthalmologist why he still had glasses and he said "why the fuck would I laser healthy tissue."
The other piece you want to keep in mind is that surgeons want to "cut" but LASIK makes the most sense in a relatively narrow age range and for a relatively narrow degree of eye defects. Outside of that it makes far much less sense, but you can still easily get it done.
Yes, I know that I was basically rolling the dice and hoping not to be one of the unlucky ones. I calculated the odds and it worked out well for me, so I have no regrets. But I can certainly understand someone who doesn't think it's worth taking the chance.
Yeah totally fair, I do worry some people don't really consider however. For those who do - go ahead!
It's kind of amazing, this world we live in. Patients can and do consider risks/benefits of medical procedures when making decisions. Of course, some of them don't consider with italics. Some might be more willing to just listen to a doctor who "want[s] to 'cut'"1, while other doctors might have urged more caution (even if only by their action/inaction). Yet somehow, this amazing world keeps on turnin'. One might have been led to believe from this sort of story that we can't just let patients make decisions; they might not consider enough... or they might even make a bad decision! Most certainly, one could think that it would be impossible for said patients to include pricing information (including the possible cost if something goes wrong) in their decision-making process... if only, ya know, that was not the way things currently work on a day by day basis, all in this absolutely amazing world.
FWIW, I've done some significant considering about LASIK over the years; haven't pulled the trigger yet. But ya know, times change, money means different things to me at different times, risks/benefits mean different things to me at different times; who knows what tomorrow will bring? But at least in one area, I'm glad that I'm Free to Choose.
1 - Weird that doctors sometimes can just have preferences that may not always align with those of their patients, properly considered. I'm also intimately familiar with completely different situations where surgeons were extremely loath to "cut" and only after years of negative consequences from those decisions (to be clear, the surgeons' decisions, not the patient's), they finally cut, and everything went great! Statistics and different perspectives on those statistics are a wild thing. Ya never know in this amazing world.
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