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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   1820 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for October 18, 2023

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:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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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I’m astonished that anyone ever managed to date without dating apps.

I’m a 25-year-old man. This year I have been living a very social, outgoing lifestyle. To explain what I mean by that, this is what I’ve done in the past month.

  1. I went to 4 concerts
  2. I went to a friend’s birthday party
  3. I went to 8 Meetup events. Most of them were with a group called “20 somethings in [city]” that mainly does happy hours but I also went to a few board game events and an improv session.
  4. I hosted 2 game nights myself.
  5. I informally gathered with friends at bars 2 times
  6. I went rock climbing with friends 2 times
  7. I went to a haunted house with some friends.

These weren’t all with the same friends. I have lots of friends and I make new ones fairly often.

I’m hoping to eventually find a girlfriend, and other than dating apps it’s common advice to be very social and meet new people. I do. (Not only for this reason, I also like it.)

The problem is the demographics of those friends. I made a spreadsheet of everyone I’ve done social activities with lately and it was like 70% men and 25% women who are in relationships. Even though it was like 60-70 people, only a handful were single women. And of course being single and female is not the only criteria for being a good match for me. I’ve still yet to go out with a woman I didn’t meet online.

I don’t really understand how anyone did this in the Before Times because I don’t really think my situation is that unusual. I think it’s normal for a man to have more male friends than female friends and it’s also normal for many people in their mid 20s to be in relationships.

For people who regularly find or used to find people to date by means other than dating apps / the Internet, how does it actually work? Is my problem that my milieu is really unusual for having a low ratio of single women? Or is meeting people to date at general social activities unusual for everyone, and “cold approaches” more common than I’d assumed?

I dated in the early era of dating apps, but it was a weirdly low success rate compared to in person interactions. (or maybe it wasn't weird and I was using the apps wrong)

I played a co-ed recreational sport. It was about 75-90% male. After a tournament there would usually be a party. About half the time I could find someone to be with for the night at those parties. Aside from me there were many couples that formed. Something about physical exercise gets the human mojo flowing. Probably part of why dance is such a good activity.

It does sound like you are in bad ratio environments, but I can't honestly say that always stopped me. I met my wife at work, where about 80% of coworkers were male. The unspoken benefit of a broken ratio environment is that getting picked means you are a top pick, and not just whats available. I think it tends to create situations where maybe the women are a little more interested.

In general, I'd say don't be worried. If your end goal is to meet someone and marry them, and you are getting any hits then time is on your side. It may not feel like it. But five years of getting a chance means you are probably going to get lucky. The people I know that stayed single well into adulthood did so for one of two reasons:

  1. They chose it. They did not want a committed relationship, only sex and flings.
  2. They accepted it. They did not even attempt to get out in the dating game. They never asked anyone out, never flirted, and never even left the house.

Keep it up, you'll meet someone. Might take longer than you wanted, but don't lose hope. The dating 'game' is a game you can only lose by quitting.

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