I Do Not See Myself Represented in Essays on Dating

Sounds like this dude is insufferable and exhausting and probably presents himself as such on his dating profile.<p>Edit: Before you start writing a treatise on the socio-economics of contemporary market-based internet dating in the age of diverstity.. just try the following:<p>1. Put up a crisp, clear picture of yourself dressed nicely with a smile. Put up a second clear picture of you doing some kind of interesting activity (hiking in the wilderness, doing art, playing with a puppy, etc).<p>2. Write a self-description that gives off vibes of you being a generally positive person, and relatively charming and perhaps a bit funny. If you can&#x27;t be charming, you can at least be polite. If you&#x27;re not funny, you can at least be lighthearted.

&gt;For some people, their expansive social network provides a pool of friends whose friendship can grow into romance; this won’t work for me, since I am too exhausted from my day job &amp; side hustles to maintain hundreds of close friendships.<p>I see this right here as his principle problem. He needs to make time for getting out of the house and doing things with other people. On top of that, he needs to make sure that this social time isn&#x27;t laser focused on finding a romance, and let interactions with women play out naturally.

I spent years having an overall pretty bad dating experience very similar to the author&#x27;s. But there is one thing I eventually learned that seemed to help.<p>&gt; if I don’t get an extremely clear indication of interest, I try not to show any myself.<p>If you&#x27;re a weirdo like myself who has no idea how to flirt, your best bet may be to simply be as open as you can about your feelings. People generally like openness, and they like it when people like them. I&#x27;ve told friends that I was in love with them, and in cases where the feelings weren&#x27;t mutual they let me know, and I dropped it. I&#x27;m married to the one where they did turn out to be mutual. :P

From reading this, I wonder if there is a business case for a &quot;faux&quot; dating business. Before a date, you could get certain opinions on how you look, how you present yourself, etc. And you could go on some sort of outing with someone, and at the end, you get feedback on what you did well and what you didn&#x27;t do well. This would also give you an opportunity to &quot;practice&quot; your date skills (for lack of a better term).<p>Also, being blunt, with dating apps, it really is all about physical attraction first. If who you are trying to court isn&#x27;t physically attracted to your pictures (or think you&#x27;re trying to hide something), they simply won&#x27;t interact with you.

&gt; It’s soul-crushing to spend every day of your life making bets you know you’re going to lose, but the alternatives are giving up or becoming a monster.<p>I&#x27;ve never used dating apps, but I would assume it attracts a certain type of people, which this author seems to be complaining about. Why not try a sport or hobby to meet people?

I was like that. Actually, I&#x27;m worse. I never got laid before I was 32. I&#x27;ve always been very respectful of boundaries, didn&#x27;t want to impose, and due to social awkwardness, that meant I had a hard time approaching women. And to be honest, I don&#x27;t really have an easy solution; in the end I met my wife and we&#x27;ve been happily married for 12 years now.<p>For a while I did give up. Particularly in university, I wasn&#x27;t very interested in the dating game. I did have the occasional crush, didn&#x27;t know how to act on it, and when I did, it generally amounted to nothing. After 30, I decided to try this online dating, went on lots of dates, most of them amounted to nothing, then I met a woman I fell madly in love with, and she apparently with me, but we soon realised it wasn&#x27;t going to work: she smoked, I hated smoking. I wanted children, she didn&#x27;t. We broke up, and I soon met my wife on that same site. And I believe she was the one to contact me first, which definitely helps.<p>That site that got me two hits in a row, wasn&#x27;t a normal commercial dating site, though. It was really cheap, low threshold, aimed specifically at Christians, and not just at dating, but also at friendship. And it supported blogging. Maybe that lowered the threshold somehow. I don&#x27;t know. But I&#x27;ve become a strong believer in non-commercial, focused on special interest, dating-but-also-friendship sites.<p>For one thing, commercial dating sites are mostly scams. OKCupid used to love exposing those scams, but I believe they&#x27;ve been bought by the biggest dating scammer, so they&#x27;re likely as useless as the others now.<p>Ultimately, all you really need, is a way to meet new people with similar interests to yours. Not identical, but it helps to have some common interest, whether it&#x27;s a hobby, religion, activism, or whatever. It doesn&#x27;t have to be a dating site, it can be a real-life activity. It can be an online game (I know a couple that met on World of Warcraft). Make sure you can talk about something other than dating. See if you can talk to them about other stuff than dating. If it turns out you can talk to each other, ask her out for a coffee or some other small thing. Or maybe do something hobby related together, see how that works out. I suppose you&#x27;ve got to become more confident at making the first move if you don&#x27;t want to be totally dependent on the whims of the other, but the move doesn&#x27;t have to be aimed straight at dating.<p>Though to be honest, I don&#x27;t know how much my advice is worth. People like me never get a lot of dating experience; once we find the right person, we stick with them.

What about people who don&#x27;t want to have friends? I have had &quot;friends&quot;, people I considered my brother. A person I loved. But in due time, it all feels like they were using me. That I was just a toy for them to pass the time. Someone they could exert their demons out without judgement. Be the space that no one else would give them. I had boat loads of fun, but I never really felt cared for ever. The only people who ever cared for me where my parents.

Women call people like him &quot;nice guys&quot;, and that&#x27;s not a compliment.

The hacker ethos is &quot;It doesn&#x27;t matter whether the subject is popular, everybody who&#x27;s interested is interesting&quot;.<p>But the dating ethos is &quot;Men with badly-groomed beards who write harem anime reviews don&#x27;t get dates&quot;. There&#x27;s just no way around it, that&#x27;s the problem here. Having a house and job are attractive characteristics, in the same sense that a functioning set of limbs is, but they don&#x27;t set you apart. It&#x27;s the personal details that matter.

His point about the missing middle in dating apps is valid feedback about dating apps and all algo-based matching platforms (including news aggregators like this one, although in the case of aggregators it may be desirable).<p>Designing non-WTA systems is really hard<p>One system that gets around it is the matching algorithm for medical residency, which is designed to match every student with a space. But (1) this is probably not appropriate for dating, and (2) professional licensing has its own problems.

Opinionated advice, ymmv.<p>Get off dating apps; they&#x27;re toxic. Use Meetup, take a pottery class, a yoga class, join a hiking group, a book club. And crucially, don&#x27;t expect any of that to yield a romantic partnership. Make friends. Go to their weddings, parties, etc. There, you might meet women who are looking for a guy like you. Or maybe one of your friendships will blossom into more.<p>When I was single and presenting as male, I found myself in a similar conundrum. I found success in &quot;playing hard to get,&quot; eg., rather than immediately biting at every flirt, I&#x27;d respond with low-key flirts and not escalate for some time. After I got enough consistent-seeming signs, I&#x27;d ask somebody out long before I got attached to the idea. &quot;Hey, you wanna get lunch some time?&quot; &quot;Uh, do you mean a date? I&#x27;ve got a partner.&quot; &quot;Oh, haha, yeah I meant a date, no worries.&quot; When you can do that without feeling devastated, you&#x27;re on the right track.

It&#x27;s old but there&#x27;s a list of bars etc. here, if Tinder etc. are that bad: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.connecticutmag.com&#x2F;the-connecticut-story&#x2F;the-savvy-singles-guide-to-connecticut&#x2F;article_be536921-6669-5ec4-a6ad-1d830e4664e4.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.connecticutmag.com&#x2F;the-connecticut-story&#x2F;the-sav...</a>

I found OkCupid (where I met my now-wife) extremely easy to get to know people. Tons of filters and search options, the most amazing matching algorithm of any site (you answer questions from &quot;Don’t agree at all&quot; to &quot;Agree 100%&quot;, then you can say what you want your match to answer and finally how important their answer matching is; this enables way more than more naive sites). You can mark-up any word on your profile as a keyword.<p>And people reply. Back then I was pretty overweight but almost every woman I messaged replied, including those with the scary &quot;rarely replies&quot; badge. The few times I asked they said it’s because most men who write them either just said &quot;Hi&quot;, &quot;Great tits&quot;, or showed they didn’t actually read their profile first.<p>But this was all several years ago, so maybe things got worse. I know nowadays the push to pay them is a lot more heavy-handed and OkStats is gone.

Seems like he lacks basic social skills and expects women to date him because he owns his own house. He feels guilty and &quot;like a monster&quot; hitting on or asking women out because of this thought process. He himself said he had been successful in the past -- why not continue that and make yourself happy?

There&#x27;s a traditional low-tech solution to this problem, used by generations of nerds. Step 1, hang out in real life with a bunch of guys. Have fun with them. (If you&#x27;re really sucked into your work, this step could take a while.) Step 2 is that women will appear and you will date them.

Not that I am an expert, but like (I assume) most people I put in my time in the dating mines.<p>And this is my observation about people who have this complaint: the vast majority of couples are aesthetically matched. You might be hoping for a certain aesthetic. You have to match that. The easiest way to do this is to start eating healthy and working out. By working out, I don&#x27;t mean an occasional job, but the heavy stuff: lifting, crossfit etc. It goes without saying you should not injure yourself.<p>This small &quot;trick&quot; -- working out -- will have a dramatic effect on your dating life.

Online dating has many problems, but not all failures to obtain a positive outcome from online dating are the fault of the system. It is easy to blame the system and more difficult to accept that the system is not at fault in some situations. You can&#x27;t simultaneously reject the current societal dating standards but also expect that a system based on those same standards will work for you. Given this, might it make more sense to find a method of dating that is more in line with the societal standards that you seek to live by?

I think the problems may be that 1) he blames the patriarchy 2) he doesn&#x27;t see himself as a catch<p>I know men are in a difficult position because they want to err on the side of caution and not make a move when it could be seen as a violation&#x2F;unwanted, but these attitudes (blaming the patriarchy, etc) are projected to the would-be partner and it&#x27;s probably a turn-off. Find someone you can build trust with where every interaction between the two of you isn&#x27;t interpreted through some larger cultural lens.

Not directly related, but the biggest obstacle that I find I face is that people who share my religious background tend to be more conservative while, in terms of lifestyle and worldview, I tend to be more progressive. I find that the women who I am interested in rarely share my faith while the women who share my faith rarely share any of my interests.

What would be the optimal way of finding partners, or simply people you would like to spend time with, among 7+ billion people?<p>Here&#x27;s my answer* : train an A.I to &quot;flirt&quot;&#x2F;&quot;have conversations&quot; with others A.I. Use reinforcement learning to tailor the A.I. to specific users.<p>Nice, everyone now has their own personal I.A. that can go on dates with other personal A.I. Thousands of them per second, if needs be. If the system works well enough that A.I.s &quot;get along&quot; as well as their human models would (&#x2F;would not), you have found a very nice way to perform a &quot;double blind&quot; matching platform. Feed back the results after you go on a real date! &quot;A.I.&quot; here could be anywhere on the spectrum of a simple regexp, to neural networks, to AGI.<p>Of course, in my experience, shared experience is a big part of what makes relationships (non romantic, and prob. otherwise), while previous experiences or interests are a way to discover things to do together (or recall shared experiences), so this can&#x27;t replace getting out and sharing activities.<p>* TBH, that&#x27;s just shower thoughts, but could turn into a fun research&#x2F;week-end&#x2F;startup&#x2F;fediverse project (or just a writing prompt for a novel).<p>Edit: split this post in two different ones.

Maybe he should try speed dating. In that kind of context, it&#x27;s easy to start a conversation and not awkward to show interest in someone. And it&#x27;s more personal than getting to know someone through an app. But maybe it doesn&#x27;t attract to kind of people he&#x27;d be interested in.

&gt; I’m no catch, but there are probably a half dozen people I know who I would date &amp; who would date me if communication opened up. (I know this empirically: there was a short period in college where I hit on everyone, and while I stopped because I realized I was probably making a lot of people uncomfortable, I ended up having a casual thing going with about ten young women simultaneously — and this was back when I was broke, out of shape, and the special kind of dumb that only college students can afford to be.)<p>It sounds, friend, like you have a misguided (outsized) sense of nobility. You aren&#x27;t wrong about what women put up with in our society, but you also can&#x27;t write off <i>any initiative by you at all</i> as dangerous. Your own anecdote shows that when you put yourself out there, plenty of people have interest in you and don&#x27;t feel the need to run for the hills. It&#x27;s admirable how hard you&#x27;re trying not to be a part of the problem, but don&#x27;t make yourself a martyr. After a certain point, it isn&#x27;t helping anybody.<p>I&#x27;m sure striking the right balance is much more difficult for someone who has trouble picking up on social cues, but it&#x27;s just a matter of trying it out and learning the curve. Maybe you could practice with or ask advice from women you know platonically? You said you&#x27;re friends with most of your exes- maybe they can give you insight into how you came off in those relationships?<p>It&#x27;s a big and complicated world out there. It&#x27;s good to try and be sensitive to others, but you can&#x27;t let yourself get totally buried by worry about how you&#x27;ll affect them. You just have to do your best, and then apologize if you mess up. And that&#x27;s okay.<p>You have it in you to grow past this and find a companion. Everyone deserves to be loved. Best of luck.

It seems like a victim complex to me. If his mindset is like that no wonder he is not getting any.

&gt; in western society (and in some eastern ones too), women who directly reject men are subject to male rage &amp; women who seem too enthusiastic are subject to slut-shaming (which can also result in violence).<p>Perhaps he would have more luck dating in a less patriarchal society, with higher gender equality?

I read most of the post (unlike others in here) and his issue is distinct from that of many others on dating apps (or at least it is according to his self-reported behavior).<p>it is probably not relatable to most here (because he&#x27;s bending over backwards to be egalitarian and most on here lean the other way) so I&#x27;ll just respond in case he ends up reading this.<p>I share many of your concerns and sensitivities around feminism and autonomy. despite being arguably just as sensitive as you are (according to feedback from former partners) I do well on apps and in dating. how? I&#x27;m assertive and aggressive but I get explicit consent at every escalation. And if you think I&#x27;m exaggerating I am not. Evey escalation. now obviously I&#x27;m not tactless - I do not have multi form contracts that I ask for signatures on. I simply check in and we have a short, always interesting, conversation about boundaries and trajectory and all that. most of the time everything goes as expected but I have been rejected (which is also how I&#x27;m sure the way I&#x27;m doing it is working - because when feel free to say no).<p>it works very well. I have deep meaningful dates (that turn into relationships often).<p>aside from that I&#x27;ll say, from the photos of you online, you&#x27;re not doing yourself any favors. I think I could help you but I don&#x27;t know you personally. I have toyed with the idea of starting a consulting service that taught men how to present themselves such that they&#x27;re attractive.