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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Does anyone have recommendations on finding real life social groups of like-minded people? As a remote programmer my job is pretty antisocial. I’ve been doing Muay Thai for a few months to supplement bodybuilding but forging friendships there is slow going. I’m agnostic and consider myself basically a Platonist, but I’m open to Christianity and have done some cursory church-shopping, but frankly most of the ones near me seem hyper-progressive, while I’m on the other end of that scale, and it has me doubting if I’d be joining for the right reasons. I’m open to basically anything, meetups, conferences, political organizations, Toastmasters, whatever. I’ve done theater and school choir in the past as well so I’m open to whatever, any suggestions appreciated.
Try partner dance like East coast or west coast swing.
I see "dancing", "pottery", "volunteering at the animal shelter", and other female coded activities as things suggested to men struggling to meet women.
Am I the only one who finds the idea of doing any of those things dreadful? It's not that I think the people doing those things are fundamentally different from me or anything like that; More so that I just know I will not enjoy those activities at all, not even 1%, and that itself will be damaging to the pursuit of actually making connections with the people doing those activities, its like "I totally hate doing what you are doing, but lets hang out?", And also elements of "I'm so socially inept I have to do things I hate to meet people".
Seems to me for a guy like me who does WFH, has only male friends and hobbies are in a rather precarious situation.
This poster literally says “I’m open to basically anything.”
I’m also confused as to why and how partner dance is female coded for you. With strict leading and following roles I’ve actually found it to be a lot less woke and full of stereotypically ‘masculine’ men.
Have you tried to be more open to experiencing new things? It can make life a lot more enjoyable.
Well the OP asked about meeting "likeminded people" and I am talking about how dancing gets suggested to men looking to meet women. This is the first time I am seeing someone suggest dancing for meeting "likeminded people". And I am scratching my head a bit on this recommendation; Given that I don't think dancing selects for any type of ideology or worldview, maybe extravertednesss ?
Yes. Doing it continuously. Unfortunately my intuitions turn out to be true more often than not. My personal experience is that if some activity is in my "I'm going to hate it" bucket; Often times I don't hate it, but I don't particularly enjoy it either. On the flip side "I might like it" activities are ones that I do actually enjoy a whole lot.
I am differentiating not neutral-bad, but neutral-good.
Sorry to hear you haven't found things you enjoy. Maybe I was a bit too harsh in my reply, I find people write off dancing too quickly.
Sure dancing can be good for meeting women, but honestly I think it's just an excellent hobby. You get to meet interesting, relatively wealthy, and driven people. You can indulge your creativity while also memorizing patterns, and partner dance with repeatable figures really does reward practice and an understanding of timing/direction which many engineering or systematizing folks can be very good at. On top of all this you get a workout, and you meet people.
Hell if you're super competitive you can even start competing relatively easily, if you have the money.
Even though the OP specifies meeting likeminded people, I think what most lonely men need overall is just a group or community to regularly spend time with. Dancing helped me with that even after trying dozens of other activities and not liking any of them.
Good to hear that it worked out for you.
I agree, on paper its a great activity. (IMO) With the caveat being, for the ring kind of person.
I mean you mention selecting for extraverted persons, I feel like pretty much any gathering or hobby meet up will select for extraversion right?
Like being an introvert trying to find people to hang out with you're going to have to learn some extraversion.
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