Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
I see some people decrying dating apps and saying that you should go meet women in real life.
I'm sympathetic to this argument, because I was far more popular with everyone, including women, in high school, and then absolutely nothing after that. But where would those meeting places be? I'm probably eventually going to get a new job in a new city, and I'll need something to meet people at, but I can't think of anything that would provide an environment like high school, where you could meet a ton of people and let your charm, wit, athletic interest, and good grades be on full display to dozens of people. So, where?
Part 1: Actual Response To Your Question
First, you're thinking far too specifically about "where" to meet women instead of the general "how" strategy. If your total approach is to go to physical spaces that are disproportionately women and then just hang out, your odds of success are low. Women are not fish, there's a lot more to it than a raw numbers game.
The beginning and end of all "game" advice is that heterosexual dating is a sexual marketplace where men's primary (not only) value driver is their social esteem. If you don't have that social esteem / social proof, it almost doesn't matter what you look like. If you're movie star level of handsome, you'll be fine. If you were that, you wouldn't be asking this question in real life.
So your strategy should be "how" based. And that "how" is simple; have a good and dynamic social life. With everyone. Don't just go to Yoga studios to try to pickup chicks. This is anti-social and weird. Don't just play DnD in your buddy's basement. This is anti-social and weird. Don't just
post on The Motte and culture war harddiscuss issues of the highest importance with the smartest people on earth. This is anti-social and weird. Instead; do all of these things. Can you think of a thing that involves other humans that you enjoy doing? Do it. Then, once you are doing this thing, find ways to build social connections with people. Fast forwarding the tape, eventually you will have a circle of friends who do things and (social things). They will invite you to these things if you aren't anti-social and weird (see above) and, quite often, there will be other people whom you have not yet met at these things. You can repeat the same process to become friends with these new people. Keep repeating this now compounding process! If you do that, with intent and regularity, eventually some of these people will be women. In fact, they will be women you find attractive and fun and interesting and and and.But now you have what we were seeking in the beginning - social esteem. When people say "Yay! oats_son is here" when you arrive at the thing you are all doing together, the people who don't know you (yet!) will naturally be signaled (memed?) into believing you are a person that causes other people to be happy when you arrive. This is a massive, massive super power.
Part 1 TLDR: Go make friends (male and female) who do things you like to do. Be their friend for an extended period of time.
Part 2: Where I am less snarky, but more directly cranky
Treating dating like a problem to be solved, a system to be designed, an achievement to be unlocked is pretty much a guaranteed route to misery at worst and a particularly perverted version of the hedonic treadmill at best. If you try to setup such a system, you may be successful in "getting laid" and you'll be successful directly in proportion to your anti-social capabilities and the emotional frailty of the other party.
Okay, okay, so you're not a committed pervert, you just want to, ya know, casually date a cool chick or whatever. This is just a less salacious version of the same problem in the first paragraph. Specifically define the desire you have. Is it a need for emotional support? Maybe work on doing that yourself or with the help of a professional (who is also aware of the problem). Involving another human being casually - and under the pretense of romance and possible sex - is a pretty shitty thing to do, don't you think? Perhaps the need is to stave off loneliness. Totally reasonable. Why does this context have to be romantic?
Now let's say you're really in it for life - you're searching for a wife. If this is the case, then take all of my points above about meeting women through your social circle and multiply them by 10. There is nothing more effective than weeding out poor mate matches than a well bonded social circle of people who share a values system. And you not only want this filtering mechanism, you probably need it. Love is a hell of a drug and it clouds our judgement. Having multiple people who can offer you multiple different perspective on your prospective beau while sharing your essential value system is a big freaking deal.
"So you're saying I should let me friends pick my wife for me?" Yup. Preferably your parents and family provided you don't have some sort of horrible relationship with them. But, failing that, yes, your friends (note: I do mean close, good, committed friends here, not your drinking buddies).
Part 3: In which I relent and my inner Bro gives you that sweet sweet dope you crave
Don't go to structured environments with lots of women to try to pick them up. Dance classes, yoga, etc. This is because the people going there are going there on purpose, it wasn't spontaneous or organic. This means they want to do the thing and not have to deal with a guy thinking he's being slick. Instead, go to more broadly social and public events; farmers market (Superbad was right), First Friday Style events, harvest festival things (seasonal). Think of a totally outdoor or large space format that has a lot of different stuff around - booths, restaurants, whatever. The benefit here is that quick and casual conversations are totally fine because they can be quickly exited without hurting anyone's feelings. Example: You see a nice looking lady inspecting, I don't know, artisinal almonds at some booth, you walk up, inspect the almonds for a second and the make a comment in her general direction, "I though the ones with chocolate were as fancy is it got! a har har har har!" If she laughs back, okay start a conversation, if she doesn't (or does the exhale through the nose thing) she can simply drift off. No harm, no foul.
Don't ask for a number, ask for a date. In today's attention economy, it's really hard to get people back to re-focus on you after you've broken contact. The idea that a girl is going to give you her number, be excited when you text (because nobody calls anymore), and then get re-excited enough not to ghost on a date has to be balanced against the fact that she's probably receiving 20+ matches per day if she's on an app and, if not, getting semi-approached by random guys with enough regularity (assuming living in a metro area). If you ask for a date, you'll get, generally, an honest response. "Um, sure!" = "Eh, maybe. I'll probably ghost you!", "Definitely" = "Maybe" , "Yes! I would love that" = Okay, looks like you actually got a date, guy. The point is you're soliciting higher quality information and, therefore, not wasting your time or getting your hopes up. I think it's funny that guys have this image in their mind of slow texting a girl for weeks (!) before asking her out as if she's pining away for him. The connection should be pretty quick and pretty powerful. If it isn't, why bother? Dude, because she's hot! moronic.
Ignore everything in this section and re-read Part 1 again.
I agree with 99% of this, great advice.
The fast-forwarded bit is actually really important. Turning people from activity acquaintances into contacts and casual friends is a skill that should be consciously considered and practiced. Become the guy who proactively gets people's contacts, the guy who creates the groupchats, the guy who says "let's do X", the guy who picks the bar when people are vacillating. If you want to go to the next level, become the guy who founds things and runs events (I've had multiple women get very interested in me after watching me in charge of an event, even though there were no-shit movie star handsome guys there too).
This is good advice to a new guy who doesn't have the radar, but if you're looking to stay casual you can also just pick the girls who aren't emotionally frail and refrain from sleeping with the ones who are.
Re: Part 3, I just don't believe in those "day game" style meet-cutes at all. They probably work pretty okay if you're confident and play the numbers, but not enough to convince me to broil myself at a summer farmer's market talking to innumerable women in the hope that one is single, into me, and not a pain in the ass when we properly meet. If you want the dark arts to getting laid, it's very simple: find the right bars, learn to stay up till 2am without nuking your sleep cycle, and learn how to stay in a bar till then without getting too drunk (and, obviously, do not take advantage of girls who are way too drunk, you're looking for the ones who are there for the same reason you are). If you don't want to do that, stick to the apps or, I would suggest, serious dating via the social circle you're building.
Yes, you've put to words a lot of concerns I had here. Hitting up people at a farmer's market is not my idea of a good time, and probably not very likely to make anything happen. Who even goes to those kinds of things alone? That's just not how it works. I'm not looking for any casual fun here, I want something serious that ideally turns to marriage, because I'm 28 and not getting any younger. Actually, it would be better if we didn't have sex at all until we were engaged at least, but is there even any place for my sensibilities in today's sexual marketplace? I thought "getting a life" would be my best chances of keeping these values, because I doubt most women on a dating app would be understanding, even if I did get good photos somewhere and they overlooked my Norwood 7. Also yes, I had good friends in high school, but until I started doing sports, I didn't really see them much after school, and even then, I never did anything with them outside of those things.
N = 1 but I just got married, and we waited until marriage. It definitely happens even now. I am personally acquainted with at least three other couples that were the same.
Caveat: we are all religious though. I don't know if there are non-religious people who would be interested in waiting, but I would think it's very rare at this point.
I'm not religious anymore, but I see the good effects it has, and I also believe that you can probably make yourself believe anything if you give it a try, forgetting about Epicurian trilemmas or God of the gaps writings (as long as we're not into fantasy territory like with Young Earth Creationism). I was raised fundamentalist and the only times I went to church was when I was with other family members, which was like, twice total in my youth, so I would have to adjust to whatever church she went to.
Uh, what are the churches with actual young people?
I didn't meet my wife at church, but I've visited both a PCA Presbyterian church and a Southern Baptist church that had really substantial cohorts of 20somethings. For a while I attended an EFCA church (kind of a small, rather interesting denomination) that had only a handful of young women, but they were, for some reason, all staggeringly beautiful. I did successfully ask one of them out, but the date was kind of lame; but we parted as friends.
A related phenomenon: now that we're married, my wife and I don't have to try to find a church with young people, so we just go to the local church I like best. We are one of four couples below the age of 40; I can think of two eligible single girls there and one young man. It's a bit grim but we're trying to do outreach and things to make young people think it's worth a visit.
The more I think about this, the more extremely conflicted and broken I feel about everything. I was taught to not have sex before marriage, and so even the thought of a blowjob is gross to me, but I was never raised in the church and my family existed almost outside of the community entirely, and then I went and got my liberal education and lost my faith, because I could not longer believe that the earth is 6000 years old, because I could no longer believe that God would damn someone to an eternity of hellfire for being born in the wrong place. When I was 16 I started masturbating and dabbled in watching pornography. I feel like either traditional relationships or liberal ones, I would be very out of place in, and it feels like it's already too late for me. I am also disgusted by the results of liberalism leading to the death of Charlie Kirk. I might have to make a new post tomorrow in Wellness Wednesday about this, but it's obviously going to be super personal and uncomfortable. I now remember one reason why I never dated in high school.
Man, it's not that hard to find a church that doesn't screw these things up.
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I would be very skeptical that you are more debauched than I was. Even when I decided I didn't want to live that way any more, I still was quite determined not to marry and had no interest in children. By the time I started coming around to the idea, I thought I was too old.
I'm married with kids now, and much, much happier. It is almost certainly not too late for you.
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I would by no means tell you to go to church again if that's not something you're interested in; but I would note that at least according to my understanding, there's no expectation of perfection. I've had my own challenges with masturbation and many other things. We confess that we're sinners in every Sunday service, and we do mean it. All of which is to say, I doubt that you're actually too fucked up to succeed in a relationship. Those of us that are in them are very flawed, come from many weird and conflicting backgrounds, and make various compromises. Even the most perfect-seeming trads deal with all kinds of doubts, inner demons, and guilt about things they can't go back and change.
Anyway, you can continue changing and growing. I didn't marry until I was 35, and if I look back on it, I think that's the way that it had to be for it to work out for me. I had to find my own resolutions to some things which felt irreconciliable.
Hope you do post in Wellness Wednesday, will be looking forward to it.
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