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.
Bro, go to as many concerts and gigs as you can. Take a single mate, its crazy watching how many random interactions take place.
Dont be scared to move around and chat to people. No one cares if you are trying to find a new viewing spot and its a great convo starter. I wish I went to more when I was younger.
… So you’re at a concert, wandering around the crowd (with earplugs) just conspicuously sliding up to different spots and striking up conversations with attractive people while they’re enjoying the performance? I would emphasize you want something more like a festival where there are multiple events and people have down time in-between to socialize. A normal concert would be like wearing sunglasses to a theater and moving around to get “the best viewing spot” while talking to everyone which is creepy as hell and not a good setting to strike up an actual conversation.
Nah, I didnt explain myself well. You arent going just to chat to attractive people. I just see plenty of organic interactions whenever I go to a concert. You def have to enjoy the music and have a good time. Any social situation can be creepy or non creepy, the individual needs social awareness to understand the difference. I dont talk to people while the music is playing but inbetween songs or sets you can simply comment that was awesome. I agree with you about festivals, downtime is good to chat and chill
I was just worried someone might take it to heart without realizing the nuance lol. You or I may do well, but someone asking such a broad question like finding a partner probably doesn’t have that much social awareness (it’s been answered so many times and really all boils down to the individuals or specific situations like the scenarios we presented). I was just imagining a guy walking around in cargo shorts with socks and sandals awkwardly screaming “hi” at everyone with a pair of orange earplugs sticking out.
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.
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
Yeah, she’s gone lol, I mean I’m 20 and she was 29 with a 9 year old kid and that’s not really what I want in a relationship. But oh my god she was easily the most attractive girl I’ve ever talked to, both in terms of looks and personality.
If you know you’ll be in a confusing area, there’s location sharing on cell phones. Most of em are good about giving you the opportunity to turn it off. What’s better for if they’re not always gonna have a working phone or might forget it is some kind of tags. No matter how you feel about em, airtags work best for this in the United States because they use apple stuff as a mesh network and there’s more Apple stuff than anything else.
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.
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.
May I ask how old you are? And what do you mean by a real relationship?
It is harder for guys especially when young. Most of my girl kids found guys on Tinder/Hinge, the boys met their girlfriends and wives more organically, out in the world.
But as an older person, I think that it’s better not to have a relationship goal, certainly not at first. If you have friends who are girls, they have friends who are girls. Hang out and see where it goes without expectations or goals. Maybe you hit it off with one of them but in any event you talk with girls, and get more comfortable.
This isn’t the most practical advice but here it goes: Live your life, chase your passions, find community, volunteer your abilities, and work on fulfilling yourself. Along the way, keep an eye out for other lonely souls. At least this way, you’re more likely to be starting from some sort of common ground.
If you’re a bit of a black sheep locally, it can also really help (in a multitude of ways) to move somewhere that you fit in better. It’s unfortunate but true, at least in my observations.
If not, then something like meetup app, find stuff you already like to do and go to events with like minded people. Make friends and maybe something more will come along.
Either way be patient. You can’t rush something 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.
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.
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. 🤷♂️
Woman here. I met my husband on IRC, on a channel about BeOS, 24 years ago. So don’t knock the internet or the bar as potential ways to find someone. If you’re meant to be together, it can happen anywhere.
Some great advice here already! So I’m going to suggest something novel:
Consider “settling,” just a tiny bit. What I mean is, don’t be so quick to assess someone new as A Partner…potential or otherwise. Try letting gals in who are attractive enough and carry themselves well, seem sane, easy going, smart, etc. Shared values, that sort of thing. A female friend with potential, if you will. See where it goes; be open to being surprised, pleasantly or otherwise.
I’ve seen so many younger men “auditioning” mates with unrealistic expectations about “clicking” or “just knowing” — and winding up as older bachelors who have never even had a chance to practice being in a relationship.
Yes, like literally anything else worth doing/having, it takes practice!
This is good advice. The issue with modern dating is people treat other people like amazon products… they want a return/full refund over the stupidest most inconsequential shit and have ‘requirements’ that are often ridiculously rigid and superfluous. That and they want instant, zero effort gratification. During the early dates… if there is any awkwardness or imperfection… they believe this is intolerable. I’ve had dates make dinner for me and the dinner game out imperfect, but perfectly edible and good, and they harped on it so hard and broke up with me over it.
Not to mention the double standards. Sooo many people want someone who is better than them and meets standards that they don’t meet.
Shared hobbies are often the best way to get your foot in the door. Book clubs, local events, concerts, charities, and religious locations are a good start.
I’ve had my best luck when I didn’t try/wasn’t actively searching.
I hated hearing that when I was single but it seems true.
I think sometimes the smell of desperation comes off even if you don’t feel desperate and it scares people off. Whereas if you’re not looking and happen to meet someone, it’s natural and there is no desperation because you’re doing you.
Not to say you can’t still swipe on Tinder, etc.; just put more effort into doing things you enjoy and the rest comes naturally. Take pictures of yourself doing those things you enjoy to share on your dating profiles which helps in this search too. Since you want something long term, you need some common ground and hobbies/common interests are perfect for that.
If you’re into reading and post about books you’ve read, you’ll meet someone who strikes up a conversation about reading the same book. Sort of like that, is what I’m getting at.
38 and I still hate hearing that. I think the people that believe this just got lucky and have some survivorship bias or something.
If you’re a guy you have to do something. Women will not just walk into your life, you have to actively try to find someone. If you don’t have a circle of friends it’s exponentially more difficult (see recent man vs bear in the woods conversations) as women want absolutely nothing to do with a “strange” man (as in a stranger).
Online dating is for young people (low 20s) successful people (wealthy travelers) and the very very attractive. If you’re a “typical” guy the experience is soul crushing.
Guy in my 30’s here too. I felt the same but the last 4 relationships I’ve had over the last decade, all of them approached me. Two women at work had an interest in me and reached out to me and another came by a friend and another came from online dating, she messaged me first.
I have spent time going hard on the search and didn’t have as much luck as when I just sat back and did my own thing. I focused on my hobbies and doing what made me happy than trying to please women I was interested in and making them my top priority in hopes they would see me and want to date me.
Yeah, I think sometimes people hear stop looking for a bf/gf and hear stop meeting people. The trick is to focus on bettering yourself and/or being happy outside of a relationship and your natural boost in confidence and value will likely get you out of your relationship slump. If you’re actively pursuing friendships with no stakes beyond genuine enjoyment, I think it does up your chances.
Also people hear stop looking for a relationship, and hear stop dating. I think it can mean just stop looking for the one. Stop looking for someone who completes you. Take your foot off the gas, be open to a shorter relationship or fling. You might be surprised what you find in a relationship when there’s no pressure for it to work. My sister and I both found our husbands in relationships we thought were definitely going to only be short term.
Plus a lot of very attractive people who get lots of attention have zero clue what it’s like to be an average person who gets little to none. And they all think they ‘are just average’. Or that other people should just ‘make more of an effort’. Wealth has a lot to do with it too. Ask a welathy person for dating advice and they will just tell you go out and drop five figures out the latest fashionable designer outfits… which isn’t viable for the person of an average wealth who is only spending like a grand or two a year on clothing.
Things are privileges because you don’t know you have them. And pretty people are clueless about how they are treated and assume everyone else gets their level of interest.
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