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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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.
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 think you're short on what I would call Tier 2 social events, and heavy on Tier 1 events.
Tier 1 events are things like the Meetups where people would have to make a conscious effort to seek them out, or have minimal opportunity for extended social or physical interaction. Women don't usually attend these (relative to men at least) unless they're extremely female-oriented activities, or are an opportunity to show off (think dancing/clubs/bars)
Tier 2 social events are things like house-parties where you have to be invited by either the host or someone else who was invited. As you can expect, single women tend to get invited to things more than single men, so it creates a good ratio. The purpose of Tier 1 events is to make friends to invite you to Tier 2 events. Parties, formal events etc. This is where the "make female friends" advice comes in, but really just "make friends that are either female or sexually/romantically/socially successful is probably more accurate.
Typically, all social networks are comprised of interconnected social Hub People, each of who is a center of a social circle comprised of Spoke People who are connected to the rest of the group (other than 1 or 2 people) through the Hub. If you've ever met one of those guys who just seems to know everybody everywhere, that's a Hub. If you aren't a Hub, then you have to find one.
P.s. (I suppose there's probably a distinct Tier 3 sort of event, like a sex party or orgy, where you more or less know you're going to be sexually involved, but I've never participated in such things.)
Thanks for your reply. For what it’s worth, my experience is not consistent with the theory that “tier 2” social events have higher ratios of women than “tier 1” social events. I’ve been to private parties that are almost entirely men.
That's fair. Entirely possible it just varies based on the social circle. I can only go based on what I've seen and heard.
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