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  • People used to “socialize” in person. We had nightclubs, bars, parties, dances. Young people gathered and met—in person. That doesn’t seem to happen anymore. Why?? The allure of nightclubs was live bands… too expensive now. Bars?… too expensive now outside of special occasions. Dances? Not sure what happened there… too expensive to rent a hall and hire music? And parties? Not sure about that either.

  • reading this thread I'm glad I'm a removed in a relationship. my spouse is the best. i got so fucking lucky.

    there's a massive epidemic of loneliness out there. the loss of the free/cheap third spaces, lockdowns, and social media have made a fucking shitstorm. I'm scared for the generations below me just starting to enter the workforce. so many kids just unable to function properly.

    i can't solve it. but I've been putting my devices down more and (trying) to get out more. get more sunlight and fresh air, even if i just sit outside and watch the ducks. it's hard out there. give yourself a break, okay? eat a snack and take a walk.

  • I'm 41 now but I haven't gone on a date-date in 3 years or so. The TL;DR online dating is absolutely not worth participating in. Neither is speed dating, and people are isolating more and more.

    I'm not wildly attractive but I'm not unattractive either. I'm probably like a 6 or a 7. I think I'm interesting and can hold a reasonable conversation. I'm intelligent. I've been told I'm funny (sometimes). I am a bit clumsy sometimes though. I've been in two long term (3+ years) relationships in my life but one of those relationships ended due to alcohol (we mutually sucked at the time), and the other due to financial reasons. Both hurt pretty deep when they ended and I didn't date for a couple years after either of those.

    In the time that I wasn't feeling some form of loss from relationships that meant something, I tried online dating. I tried OkCupid, Bumble, PlentyOfFish, some bullshit regarding a bagel, Tinder, match.com, etc. I probably tried any of them that were active at the time. Not once did it ever amount to a relationship, in probably 15 years of using those sites off and on. I've unquestionably had more bad experiences than good. 9 out of 10 dates are bad. 1 ouf of 10 are ok. The worst time I recall was when a woman drugged me after our date. Another bad time I can recall, my date showed up on drugs or drunk or just incredibly stupid or something. She racked up a $110 bar tab during our 30 minute meet and greet and dipped out without saying anything at all or paying the bill. I was once catfished (is it catfishing when it's just straight up someone else's picture, or does it have to be your own picture doctored up / photoshopped to be considered catfishing?) by a co-worker on Bumble. I've been stood up for a first date at three or four times. I've been cancelled on an hour or two before a date at least 15 times.

    The last time I had an online date, everything seemed to be going fine, we had a drink at the first bar, established that we seemingly got along, went on a walk around downtown, check out a show and then all of a sudden I'm being told about a sex kit that she purchased from a vending machine while I was in the bathroom that she wants to try out. I thought she was pretty cool before that. I wasn't 100% sure if I was attracted to her, but I knew we at least got along on a person-to-person level. Telling me about a sex kit like that on the first date was a "eh, hard pass" for me. Women have either been fully uninterested in me; or so interested in me that I find it repulsive.

    Speed dating is also, completely shit; and it's a scam. The first time I tried speed dating, it was some website where you pick your city, your age range, and then what event you'd want to attend based on your other parameters. They take your money, and then send you an email a day before the event saying the event is cancelled because they couldn't get enough people, but you cannot have a refund either. Then you attempt to re-schedule and it gets cancelled a second time for the same reason, then a third. Finally - you attend one of these things in person, end up getting "3 matches" emailed to you, and then you attempt to make contact and never hear from anyone ever again.

    I felt like a complete horses' ass when I attempted to do speed dating a second time 12 years later and had a very similar experience. This second time around though, I did a charge back on my credit card after the 3rd cancellation because "they couldn't get enough people to attend." Thanks for nothing Troy.

    After soooo many bad experiences, and never having any success with what are the now conventional methods, and coming to the realization that I'm likely halfway dead now... I feel like I have a trauma response to the idea of dating at this point. I'd still like to be in a happy relationship, but even thinking about trying the methods I've tried in the past one more time causes me anxiety.

    I'm introverted by nature, and as of 7 months ago, I live alone in a state, where I also work remotely from home and know no one. When I first got here, I tried a few events from Meetup.com thinking, "hey, maybe this is how 40-year-olds make friends," but didn't enjoy anything that I went to, other than the events where people sit in an audience quietly and watch someone else on stage. I found a really cool thing that I like attending where anyone is welcome to get up on stage and tell an 8 minute story about pretty much anything - fact or fiction. I really enjoy attending these, but it's no way to meet people. The epidemic in question is absolutely not just about dating. It's about making friends too.

    I imagine I'm not alone in my experiences.

  • So many comments echoing "women told us to stop approaching us, so we did!"

    I mean no offense, truly, but you missed the point if that's the message you took. It wasn't "Do not, under any circumstances, speak to a woman" it was, "if you shoot your shot and she's not interested, move on and don't make it weird. If she is at work, be very careful as customer service does not equal flirting." Yes, there are some grey areas (not sure even the best gentleman could slide up to a woman alone in a parking lot and not freak her out), but some of you are kicking up the board without even moving a piece. Stop pushing the narrative that only attractive men can speak to women. Not only are you assuming you're not attractive by saying that (which cannot be good for your confidence) , you're reducing women's feelings and concerns as being blindly shallow and unwarranted.

    The world is not full of only beautiful people, yet people still live and love. Not to dismiss the difficulties (as an uggo myself, I get it), but you can get out there, I know you can.

  • I've tried and I'm still trying. As someone who is a bit shorter than average and is socially awkward, it's tough. Recently I've been able to get dates with 3 girls from dating apps (due to me being better at flirting and getting a few more matches than before), but they all went nowhere.

    1 girl didn't seem to want any touching or flirty things on the first date and the conversation wasn't smooth, so I friendzoned her.

    The other 2 girls immediately started with a flirty text conversation.

    I hit it off with first one over text, we were having long phone calls and sending raunchy stuff over text. I had one short date with and was planning a spicier 2nd date with but she cancelled because I asked her to be my Valentine on Valentine's Day.

    The 2nd one wanted to take things slower, and friendzoned me after 2 longer dates. She also wasn't that into touching.

    I never kissed any of these girls. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, especially with the first flirty girl.

    • As someone who is a bit shorter than average and is socially awkward, it’s tough.

      You can fix the socially awkward part. And women aren't as obsessed with height as Lemmy and the interwebs make them out to be.

    • but she cancelled because I asked her to be my Valentine on Valentine's Day.

      You can't just say that and not provide the rest of the story. Do you have the transcript still? Because either you're lying or this is the wildest thing ever. Either way I think we'd want to see.

      • Sure, I'll give more details.

        I matched with her on Tinder and waited a few hours and she messaged me first, and not something generic but something about my profile. We started chatting over text and I suggested a short first "piano practice" date in a few days (we both play piano).

        The next day we had a 2+ hour call where we played video games (Fortnite, don't judge, I don't play that unless I play with someone else) together and just chatted. Everything was going great.

        The following days she was sending me super flirty texts ("my skirt will distract you", and suggestive stuff about touching each other all over). I've never gotten texts like this in my life so I was slightly reserved but still flirty.

        The date went well, we both got along with each other and we sat real close to each other. I even gave her a flower, and she told me that made her feel so special. There was one point where our faces were close to each other and she might have wanted a kiss, but I chickened our and just hugged her.

        We planned a 2nd date as a movie date at my place. All the while we were feverently texting each other lots of things, from platonic to romantic to sexually suggestive. We even had a call meant to be a half hour but it lasted 1.5 hours. It reached a boiling point where we agreed on an "inter-date" study session the day before Valentine's Day.

        It was just about half an hour and we were both trying to get work done in a very public place so I wasn't touchy at all. She also brought up more somber topics like politics (we have the same political views for the most part). At the end, because Valentine's Day was near, I asked her to be my Valentine (as per the suggestion of a female friend) and got an unenthusiastic "sure."

        10 minutes later she texted that "we'd be better off as friends than a couple" because there was "no romantic physical chemistry" and cancelled the 2nd date.

        I really wanted to explain that I had little experience and that the 2nd date was where the "action" would truly begin. By this point I had developed a huge crush on her and my heart was broken. She really was just my type: nerdy, ambitious, and beautiful. Heck, I'm crying as I write this right now.

    • Not doing anything wrong homie in fact youre doing it perfect. Just keep trying like you said, cuz it's nothing personal, you either vibe or you don't. Keep being natural so when you do click with someone they're connecting with the real you

    • it's a dating app. Nobody wants anything from them.

    • For the average man making unsolicited approaches, the latest stats I have seen tend to bounce between the 1-in-300 and the 1-in-1,500 range of a successful approach per total attempts. And this is just first-date-is-successful territory, it gets a good magnitude worse if you are looking for an LTR.

      From what I understand, the flip side is a lot lower: an average women making unsolicited approaches to men seem to be hitting a 1-in-5 to 1-in-20 success range, depending on conditions

      So yeah, being a man outside of the desirable 10% is indeed playing on hard mode. And from what I can see, things have only gotten much, much worse for the average man in the last few decades since I was young. I don’t envy young men these days, at all.

      I don't know what I'm doing wrong

      You are suffering from a lack of experience.

      Women have the ability to learn by proxy, when having intimate conversations with sisters, mothers, aunts, and other female role models. This gives them a massive buff long before they ever begin dating, because they are able to gain an emotional roadmap of how things go down, and then build on that with experience.

      Men don’t have this same transfer of knowledge, nor are we even psychologically set up to build one, so in aggregate we are massively nerfed straight out of the gate. This means our only way of learning is via direct experience and sheer volume: you need to circulate and learn from your experiences in order to percolate. It sucks, but that’s the breaks. The rare guy will get lucky straight out of the gate. The vast majority, however, will have to approach and be rejected by many hundreds to even thousands of women before they “find their groove” enough to catch a break.

      And your own insecurities are working against you: being nervous, desperate, or unsure of yourself is something that women - again, through that buff of intergenerational information transfer - are able to “smell” almost instinctively. If you want to vanquish those issues, you quite literally need to work on yourself, to focus on improving yourself and gaining confidence within yourself by overcoming obstacles and challenges that you set for yourself.

      Stoicism can assist in helping you become a better version of yourself, in becoming intrinsically motivated such that companionship shifts away from being a clawing need to merely a value-added proposition.

      • For the average man making unsolicited approaches, the latest stats I have seen tend to bounce between the 1-in-300 and the 1-in-1,500 range of a successful approach per total attempts. And this is just first-date-is-successful territory, it gets a good magnitude worse if you are looking for an LTR.

        From what I understand, the flip side is a lot lower: an average women making unsolicited approaches to men seem to be hitting a 1-in-5 to 1-in-20 success range, depending on conditions

        Where can I read more about this?

  • I think a lot of men are just satisfied staying home playing their video game of choice while wanking it or using online apps for hookups.

    Dating is a lot of work.

674 comments