I just got ghosted by the girl I was talking to, I want to find another girl to talk to. This girl and I met at the gym, but I don’t want to be the guy that goes to the gym just to meet girls. I mean sure there’s the bar and Tinder, but I want a real relationship. I mean, I guess it’ll come to me.
The bar and Tinder are not the exclusive domain of hookups. I met my partner of 5 years on bumble, my friend met his wife on Tinder.
I think the advice others are giving is true to some extent, work on yourself and good things will come, but for most people you also have to go the extra mile and put yourself out there.
Put yourself on the apps. Go to clubs, leagues, meetups, socials, events, parties etc. In general, say yes instead of no and talk to people instead of not. If something starts to develop you can give out those vibes that you’re looking for something more serious, and people will self-select.
Maybe a relationship will just come to you and maybe it won’t. A lot of the advice you get in these kind of threads is like ‘just be yourself’ or ‘don’t be desperate’ or ‘be comfortable on your own’ or whatever. None of that ever worked for me. I was never able to just be myself or be on my own without feeling lonely and desperate and that made me seem weird and off-putting to potential partners. Honestly it took recognizing my mental issues, getting serious about finding a solution to them, and working on them for a while before I was able to act like a normal human around someone I was attracted to. In the end what worked for me was a combination of Buddhist meditation and some kind of therapy. But everyone is different. YMMV.
On the other hand maybe you are perfectly comfortable in yourself, are handsome and charming, and have no trouble talking with women, but you just met some women with issues of their own. If so, just try to get out more and meet more people. In that case it’s a numbers game and eventually you’ll find the right one.
“Be yourself” is terrible advice. What they really mean is “Be the best version of yourself that makes you a great friendly person that people want to hang out with”. This might mean trying to change yourself to be whatever you think the coolest version of you is. This is fine because it’s a form of self-improvement.
You can be single and still have lots of friends and socializing.
The best advice I can give you is to stop actively looking and just have fun. Join mountain biking groups, hop on Meetup and do fun things in your city or state, and make friends naturally. The healthiest relationships stem from natural friendships because you build up a base of stuff in common and have a lot of trust before you ever make the jump to “do you wanna go out with me?”
All else fails, you can join singles adventure clubs which also look quite fun. The best relationships I’ve had with men and women were from natural friendships. The most awkward and short ones were generally from dating apps or where they just didn’t have much in common with me.
I met my SO through playing 1,000 hours of a video game with them during the pandemic, constantly being on VC with them, then going on a really fun ski trip with them for about a week. I got to learn their habits, temperament, how they handle conflict, etc all over a long period of time. And a lot of my other friends matched in similar ways.
For what it’s worth, I notice now when people are kinda hoping to like…date or something vs just be friends. Their body language and behaviors are just ever so slightly different than those that just want to be friends. I think when you aren’t looking, people notice that you are more relaxed and don’t put up walls as much. Might be one reason why it’s easier to make friends as a kid, who knows, though.
You have to active look and have fun.
Men who don’t actively look don’t get anything. It’s part of the gender role stuff we’re all subject to. Men are expected to approach and initiate.
The healthiest relationships stem from natural friendships because you build up a base of stuff in common and have a lot of trust before you ever make the jump to “do you wanna go out with me?”
See, that’s where I fucked up. My dumbass texted her at 12AM and asked if she wanted to hang out the next day (She’s usually up around that time, we both goto the gym around 11PM, which is why I thought it was okay). But we had only talked around 4-5 times, each conversation we had was good, but when it comes to texting, I fail miserably there. I think I just got too excited to meet her, and was a bit too forward. I completely messed up. Well, now I know not to do that again at least, lesson learned :(
It’s okay, that’s life! You have plenty of time to explore and make new friends. I really wouldn’t sweat the small stuff. You can probably text her at a reasonable hour with a different invite, and she might respond. I wouldn’t put too fine a point on making a date out of it, though. Just be friends for a bit first, no strings attached.
Plus…it’s kinda good to have mixed gender friends anyways, even if you aren’t dating. Gives you fresh perspectives and better advice. :D
This seems pretty sound advice - https://youtube.com/shorts/JhQI06_V6NQ Source: Single/dating for ten years, now married for ten years.
Hit the Lawyer, delete the Gym, Facebook up.
No wait
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I met my partner on Hinge. But all dating apps are awful these days.
Edit: Good luck!
Dating apps are useless for any man who isn’t stupidly handsome or parasitically wealthy. The bottom 90% of men on dating apps are routinely completely ignored. For every swipe an average woman makes that gets a response from a man, the average man has to swipe right somewhere between 500 and 1,000 times to get an equivalent response from a woman, depending on how he presents himself on that platform.
Your best bet is social events IRL, and networking through friends. Aim for connections and friendships over relationships, with at least ⅔ of all new connections being other male friends, as you cannot be seen as “thirsty” under any circumstances. If you come across as desperate, you will be either ignored or manipulated and taken advantage of as a “useful idiot” with nothing to show for it.
Another good tactic is to become intrinsically motivated. When you focus on yourself, cultivate your own personality to benefit only yourself, and adopt a stoic mindset, companionship of any kind shifts from a requirement to a value-added proposition. You need to be completely happy and satisfied with your own solitude and existence apart from others in order to be a good judge of how others are best suited for you.
And many men are abandoning relationships altogether because the juice is just no longer worth the squeeze. After all, why be with someone who hates you for the gender you are? Down that path lies pain and suffering, and it is better for your mental, physical, and financial health to go your own way.
I feel like an average guy and I met my wife on a dating app
Normal people win lotteries, too. Some even beat the house at the gambling casino.
You just can’t expect to build an effective financial portfolio doing so. Such things tend to be lightning strikes that affect a minuscule number of people.
You got stupendously lucky. That’s it. You’re the odd one out, with another 500,000 guys having zero such luck.
I mean I didn’t include the years of other relationships and ghostings etc, I didn’t meet her until like my mid twenties
Yes. my major complaint in life is that most of my dates want to date a man who is a better version of themselves, but don’t want to do the work to be that person themselves. They just seem to think they can absorb qualities via dating a better person or something, it’s bizarre.
basically most of my relationships ended because she refused to do the work to improve her life, and wanted me to do it for the both of us.
I am currently researching if being alone 90% of the time has any impact on the prospects of finding a partner.
After 37,5 years of constant research I have found a quite negative link between being alone and finding a partner
I mean, I guess it’ll come to me.
Well first you need to have some respect for women and recognise they’re not commodities. You’ll never get a girl to come to you if you speak about them like that.
It took me like 5 years of heavy app use to finally meet my wife. I met a few nice people in that time, but the process was honestly extremely depressing and difficult.
I hate dating app culture… but I also have some social anxiety which makes meeting anyone organically virtually impossible.
For me the apps just ain’t worth it so I got rid of them. There’s a whole sense of commodification abiut that that’s just awful and I find I’m happier without them.
That’s dating in general for most folks, apps or not. It takes a lot of time and investment and risk.
I had absolutely no luck trying. I went on dates, swiped apps, talked to every girl I thought was cute, and none of it went anywhere beyond some weird halfhearted relationships. About two weeks after I gave up altogether, I met a girl on my way to the water fountain and we just clicked. Six years down the line and we couldn’t be happier.
I guess my best advice is just don’t sweat it. Be yourself, do what makes you happy, put yourself in situations where you’ll meet new people, and sooner or later somebody will come along.
About two weeks after I gave up altogether, I met a girl on my way to the water fountain and we just clicked
I just have to say thank you for posting this, as I was just commenting earlier today how I got together with my (now) wife after giving up and focusing on myself. I really appreciate seeing that my experience isn’t a one off like I’ve been told before (which is amusing because I’ve had it happen multiple times since).
Nothing is less attractive than the stink of desperation. I said the same thing to a friend of mine. He was out of a relationship and looking for a new one. Within 6 months of not trying to find someone and just enjoying his life, there she was.
I think people are too quick to discount this advice but it’s honestly the best way to find a genuine life partner. Do stuff you love and if you find someone you’re interested in doing it (and they feel the same way) you have an excellent basis for a relationship.
And if that fails, if you do hobbies you love with other people, at least you’ll make new friends.
Do you like dogs (Or cats, I guess)? The animal rescue I volunteer with skews heavily towards women. Help some animals, make some friends.
Of course, don’t just do it to meet women. If current me had some relationship advice for younger me, it would be to be patient and just make sure you’re out there doing things you actually like doing. And be interesting, which, comes from getting out into the world and doing things you like.
Interesting to whom?
A lot of us have interests and interesting lives, but unless those interests carrying social currency in your data demographic, they aren’t going to make you attractive. e.g. I don’t like travel very much, and it’s the #1 thing women in my area are interested in, so it makes me very undesirable. They could care less about my interests in literature and art, because it isn’t anything they can use to boast about to their girlfriends.
I can assure you there are many women out there who aren’t picking men just so they can brag about their interests. If your concern is trying to find a partner, making negative, sweeping generalizations about women isn’t going to work in your favour.
I mean “interesting,” as in, have some depth, be passionate about things. I don’t think it matters if it’s sky diving or stamp collecting, just don’t make “getting girls” your thing. There are people, and for a time I was among them, who just do things because they think that’s what’s going to woo the ladies. But, how interesting is that?
I’ll grant you that some interests may be more conducive to meeting potential partners, but surely there’s something you care about that has some aspect that can get you out of the house. I like computers and I also don’t care to leave the house. It turns out, I love computers enough that I will tolerate going to conferences and meetups. 🤷♂️
It’s fine to meet someone at the gym, in fact it’s a good way to select for someone with an interest in fitness.
Going to the gym for the purpose of meeting someone means you’d be hitting on someone who’s trying to work out, which makes it easier to be an accidental creep.
