This is so true! I have many other friends now because my best friend is a textbook example of an extrovert. He just knows people anywhere we go or at least someone knows him.
Yea. My strat is to be friends with the extrovert and then identify the other introverts who're also friends with them and go be by ourselves together. I then return the favor by encouraging the introverts I'm now friends with to go to his outings.
I don't want the type of person I'd meet at a bar and there really aren't many events for things I'm into around me. The people I'd like are more than likely like me, hoping I'd teleport into their living room just the same.
I'm also in a terrible place for my personality. It feels like I'm in materialistic asshat conservative HQ, so there's that too...
A buddy of mine got his first girlfriend in college after a family friend noticed that his single niece also liked manga and anime and introduced the two. I was very jealous of his attractive, nerdy girlfriend-turned-wife for several years until I finally got on a dating site and found love for myself.
I finally got on a dating site and found love for myself.
Luckyyy! I was on them for over a decade, but because of my location there's a body of water separating all the cool people I'd see on there from me... Everyone around me is like the literal opposite of me.
I dunno how you went about it, but I've given some pointers to friends who weren't having any luck with online dating, and a lot of them were being too passive about it, basing their potential match choices mainly off of "vibes" and sending mostly generic opening messages - the quantity-over-quality approach.
While I was on the site, I spent hours a day going through every single person's profile - looking it over to really get as best of an understanding of the person as I could - and if I took interest in a few points, I'd send a message personalized to them based on what I saw on their profile. I also made sure that my own profile was well fleshed out, filling every field with well thought out responses, and putting up pictures of me hanging out with friends and doing activities like cooking and going to an amusement park.
Some, though not all, of the people who followed my advice eventually found success through dating sites. If you haven't tried all this, I'd suggest giving it a shot. If you have, sorry for being presumptuous, and I hope that you find who you're looking for eventually.
yes, because putting yourself out there just gets you yanked around by assholes -- ask me how I know.
Either Mr. Right will fall out of the great blue sky directly into my lap, or I'll die alone. But I frankly no longer have the will to really put effort towards that, anymore; and I can't fathom criticizing anyone else for deciding the same. Hell truly is other people.
not having a single person express genuine attraction and interest in me, in my life + the one time I thought I had that interest, after a few months, they dumped me on Christmas morning via text and said they essentially meant nothing of what they said before. Every single person before or since has either forgotten I exist or ghosted me outright within days or weeks of starting talking to them, even when they initiate. I suppose the novelty just wears off. Couple other highlights include the guy who used me as his therapist for a couple months until he forgot I existed when he got on antidepressants, and the guy who was over-the-top affectionate for weeks until apparently a switch flipped in his head and he became distant and quiet until ghosting me. And many more that I won't bore you with.
been slamming my head against that wall for 7+ years with absolutely no success, and I chose to stop trying for my own sanity. Sometimes you have to accept that some of the things you want out of life, are either simply not yours to have, or not in your control to obtain -- it's that or I keep raking myself over the coals trying to figure out what I don't have that others want, and I've done that for long enough.
and my story is just one of many, many people experiencing the hell that is other people.
You don't have to do it for everything. There's lots of lower risk, rewarding activities than trying to find someone decent to date. I'm way less depressed since I got over the idea that I needed to be in a relationship to be happy. I have friends I hang out with. I have hobbies that interest me. Sure I'd like to have sex more but being in a relationship is no guarantee of that either.
I remember being surprised to realize/remember that there are (were?) totally kids that will knock on a new neighbor's door to ask their parents if they could come out to meet them and play
Imagine.. taking action to put yourself out there and meet friends. That's kinda wild
Careful about where the posts come from-- Tinder et. al. have a vested interest in spreading the notion that the normal thing to do is to meet online, and so they publish surveys and press releases that reinforce that idea. Editorialists want a scoop about how the Digital Age is changing everything and the Youths Today are completely subverting existing norms.
Some people meet online, yeah, and good for them. But still, going outside and having interactions with real people is still the primary way to form relationships, and that's helpful in dating, career, hobbies, and wellbeing in general.
You don't just suck. Online dating is still hard, and everything is even harder when you don't have a solid foundation of other relationships in your life.
Does having a cat count as being in a relationship? Because I feel like it should. I used to have a tuxedo cat who I actually got married to all the time. I couldn't help it, he was all dapper.
Ive been going out more and looking at it as practice for when I meet someone I actually like. Id hate to run them off because I'm some kind of cave creature who can't interact right
(Me trying to catch up all the parallel universes my SO is ahead of me ... and barely holding back tears) Special technique: blast of emotional damage miasma that inflicts 1000 years worth of existential dead per second purely by proximity to me!
But I'm glad you have moral standards & appropriately chose an empty place where we can have our duel.
I fell in love with the first one, and still am, after 5 years, despite them ending the friendship after a year. Then we had contact again and broke it after a few weeks. A dozen times. And now I met the second introverted nerd, very nice and very cute, but I'm just scared it will end like the first time.
the great touring jam bands provided a wonderful environment to meet new people in back in the 90's. the parking lots of grateful dead and phish concerts were chock full of society's misfits, many of them well-read and witty (some of them not-so-much). It was not introverted at all - there were so many outgoing, lively, and fun people.
i think many of you are more outgoing than you give yourself credit for. you just live in a world where you don't want to mingle with the inhabitants, and i think that might even reflect a skewed view of the outside world. i'm pretty far left and i still have fun in bars in little ranch towns in the western states. most of those people are more fun than your average morose, urban-dwelling shoe gazer.
The main issue for a lot of people is a lack of good third places.
Combine less and less free time outside of work, with higher nationwide costs affecting access to third places that you would otherwise congregate with people in, (i.e. cafes, bars, clubs, etc) and you get people who, while probably somewhat outgoing, are unable to actually be outgoing, since there's not a good place to express that in.
Wonderfully cheesy 1970s movie "Logan's Run" had a deal like that. Instead of just swiping on an image, people teleported to your house. If you liked each other you'd step off the platform...
[The movie has a brief appearance by Farrah Fawcett, which gives it high 1970s nostalgia appeal]