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.
I’ll get the ball rolling, as a married person myself. Just starting out with questions. First off, what drives the feeling of not wanting to meet someone at the gym, and second, what drives bar and Tinder only being artificial relationships?
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.
yes that’s what I was hinting at for the OP. If you go thinking you are going to hit on women, that’s bad. If you go worried that you’ll be creepy, that’s a confidence issue. If you go and think hey, maybe tonight I’ll see someone, then that’s healthy
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.
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.
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.
Didn’t mean it like that. The girl I just talked to came to me first. I really don’t expect every girl to come of me but you’re right regardless. I just was a bit sad.
No matter what so many people say, it’s not mandatory to have a partner!
Invest your effort in figuring out how to live with yourself. Build a life worth living on your own.
A right person might come, or not. But at least you didn’t waste your life chasing wrong goals.
And also, all relationships are valuable. A good friendship is a wonderful boon to your mental health… and if you’re seeking a relationship for sex there are far easier ways to do it.
Also, expanding on that, if you go into every interaction with a narrow expectation (e.g. to find the love of your life) you will be disappointed almost all the time but if you keep an open mind you might come out of that with some other positive interactions (a new friend, an interesting conversation, …) than you expected or were hoping for.
Love isn’t commanded, but if you have friends you’re so much more likely to meet people that might be like you, and that’s what makes love work in the long run too.
I mean, I understand people not looking for a partner. But sometimes having a person close to you can help a ton especially in hard times and great for fighting loneliness.
I have a a couple of close friends, but they’re all moving away for work/stuff, and being alone is hitting hard.
Fucking A…as a 42 year old guy who has not been married but been in relationships for the last 12 years…take the time to learn what you want, not settling for what’s available. Also listen when a person tells you who they are.
Thank you for being one of the only people to be real about how it’s not a guarantee. You might not find anyone. I see way too much fairy tale thinking and all the “just wait, she’ll come” nonsense.
Being lonely sucks, being single in a society that requires 2 incomes sucks, but I think being in a shitty relationship just to be in a relationship is worse.
Unfortunately I’m writing from personal experience.
After too many years I don’t think I’ll ever find anyone. But accepting it was a relief. It’s terrifyingly lonely at times, but at least I’m not suicidal any more. And I understand who I am and what is my way of life.
I can’t understate the benefits of understanding oneself can have on mental health.
I’m in a similar position, but I think I’m still working through “coming to terms” with my “situation.”
It’s definitely depressing as I’ve only had 2 real goals in life: be in a loving relationship, and own a home. Both of those are proving to be exceedingly unlikely to happen the older I get.
the bird will never land on your ship if you constantly stand guard to catch it, instead improve your ship and sail into warmer waters; the bird will land while you are not looking
Sadly if I had to expand on the analogy, I hate a warm and humid climate. I’ve learned to function in social situations, but never to be comfortable in them. I want nothing more than to be left alone by people I don’t know.
I am painfully aware that to get to interact with more people I already know and like, I’ll first have to interact with people I don’t know, and might not like. And that makes it even harder to get over that hurdle. And my asocial ass is not actually that bothered by loneliness so I just don’t bother.
The common advice is to do things you enjoy, and meet people who also enjoy those things, but my enjoyment of something is quite closely linked to how alone I get to be.
If dealing with other people is involved, I just won’t be as into it.
The warmer waters could also mean a place of comfort for you, and by being in a place you like and being comfortable you are more likely to meet someone compatible. It also feels less like a chore because you don’t have to chase or get out of your comfort zone so much.
I like to be alone, I hate when it gets too loud and can easily get overwhelmed by crowds. My wife and I spend plenty of time doing things in our own space or spending weeks apart. We both value alone time. Find yourself someone who values what you value.
Yeah no. This is just the exact same advice I can’t use. I know all this. I don’t think you understand my problem.
For me “warmer waters” means less people. Even when doing things I like in an environment I enjoy, the presence of people, or even a single person, puts me off. Always.
I like going to the gym, but I like it best in the middle of the night at the 24/7 gym when no-one else is there.
I like to move to music. I hate dancing with another person.
I enjoy multiplayer games, but I have zero interest in in-game chats of any kind.
I could go on.
The things I like, I enjoy MORE alone. Doing any of it in a way that introduces the possibility of getting to know a new person significantly reduces my desire to engage, or ruins my interest entirely.
The person I’m looking for, who enjoys the same things I do, isn’t someone I will meet while doing things I like in the way I like doing them. Because doing them in a way where I might get to know someone, means doing them in a way I do not like.
I do not enjoy the process of getting to know someone, there is no context where it becomes painless and effortless, because the thing I don’t like is the fact that another person is involved. Every word they say might be exactly what I want to hear, but it doesn’t alleviate my desire to be somewhere else, even as my excitement at meeting someone I might like, grows.
I don’t “value” my alone time. I literally can’t get enough of it. My alone time is so inoffensive to me I feel basically no need to change how I live my daily life, just so I can eventually find someone whose company I can simply enjoy once I get past the chore of getting to know them.
And the energy investment for me to make friends is insane. I basically have to feign wanting to be in someone’s company until I know them well enough for it to be true, and that’s a process that continues for me well past the point of my realising I like someone.
Even as I start wanting the company of a particular person, once actually in it, I want nothing more than to be alone again. It takes me years for that go away completely with someone, and during all that time I have to resist my desire to leave/kick them out, because if I do, things will never progress past that, and into the phase where I just… enjoy having a relationship.
I like this advice. It’s true. But some of us simply don’t work the way it precludes.
For me to find another person like me, I’d have to be making an “expedition” into warmer waters, fully intending to leave them as soon as provisions run out. And then during that, run into someone else doing the same. That is astronomically unlikely, especially due to how rarely I can scrounge up the provisions for an expedition.
I’m far more likely to run into people who are comfortable living in the warm waters. That’s not a problem. As long as they don’t mind visiting me in my cold waters, they can make for excellent relationships.
But it does mean people like me can’t directly apply this advice in the way it is presented.
You might ask a good friend, who is married or has a GF, if his partner might have a friend who might be interested. That’s how I met my wife. Bonus is we were able to talk at a bbq at the friend’s place.
Well, Tinder doesn’t has the best reputation. Not to shit on the users. Everyone I met through Tinder was super nice and I had a great time during those dates. But the App itself tries to drive you crazy and throw money at it. I don’t know where you’re from, but I’m sure there is a better alternative.
The best advice I can give is: Focus on yourself. Treat yourself good. Learn to love yourself. Then put yourself out there (maybe in one of those pesky bars?) and voilà! You start meeting new people. I cannot stress enough how attractive contentment can be. No one wants a sad lump.
Dating apps are at best a crapshoot. They’re more interested in prying money out of you than anything else.
Like others have said, doing things you enjoy is a good way to meet people who enjoy the same things. Maybe you won’t meet your next bf/gf/etc directly, but perhaps someone you’ll meet has a cute single friend.
Being in a positive and healthy relationship is better than being single, but single-hood is better than being in an unhealthy and dysfunctional relationship.
Dating seems a bit like working on your mental health, in that both imply working on self-improvement (which ultimately should be done for intrinsic reasons, not just because it may get you laid).
Like the quote from the Bojack season 2 finale: “It gets easier. Every day it gets a little easier. But you gotta do it every day. That’s the hard part. But it does get easier.”
I might have accidentally done something like that in the past myself to someone. I have 0 social skills and I am terrible at understanding relationships between people and picking up social cues correctly.
I feel like I just completely misunderstood the situation so I entirely stopped talking with that person (if that’s what “ghosting” refers to).
It’s definitely not accidental. Ghosting simply doesn’t happen if someone is truly interested romantically. They might be like “this guy’s nice” and be accidentally ghosting, but in that case it’s not a good romantic relationship anyway. If it’s “this guy’s so hot/amazing”, accidental ghosting will not happen, because the thoughts will be occupied in trying to be with the guy.
As the other person said with the quote about the ship and the birds.
Throwing my personal story out there: I’ve only dated a few people ‘on purpose.’ I’ve only had one relationship that emerged from a dating app. But I’ve dated folks because I went to local geek conventions. I sparked up something casual with someone I met via a Pokémon Go-like game, who later invited me to the house of a guy she was trying to bang at the time, and I wound up dating one of his girlfriends (open relationships, no drama). Met a burlesque performer while I was helping out at a show and we dated. Met a woman through a board game night. I met this chick through an online chat, where I was actually trying not to meet anyone - I was intentionally avoiding her because she was beautiful. Apparently she dug that I was funny and didn’t try to chat her up, so she asked for photos of my butt, then sold her house and moved 800 miles to marry me. (Some details have been simplified.)
The point is, you just go out, do what you enjoy. Don’t tromp through the forest looking for wildlife. Go sing in a meadow and let the rabbits, birds and deer come to you, you magnificent Disney princess.
It’s not bad. I’m like, 5’9”, but I have a 29” inseam. I’m all torso, so I got these short legs that are pretty thick. So, I got that curvy booty.
Technically, I baited her into it. I told her I had just sent butt pictures for a friend - explaining that it was a quirk of our otherwise normal friendship (my friend and I had quasi dated for awhile until she moved out of state, and she liked my butt).
My now-wife said I should send her photos next time I took some. I sent my butt, she sent her butt, and somehow we wound up with pets.
It’s pretty high-level, but important knowledge nonetheless. All of it is true in my experience.
I mean, I guess it’ll come to me.
However, this is an incredibly important mindset, if it means what I think it means. You have to truly be ok with being alone for the rest of your life. Just do whatever gives you most pleasure/fulfillment and talk to girls wherever you see them incidentally. Just go about your life, put yourself in situations that you like where other people exist, and strike up conversations.
It’s completely ok to talk to someone at the supermarket, on the street, wherever. Many women fantasize about it in a romantic way. Many women obviously want to be left alone. You have to calibrate your empathy and figure out who is interested or not. But you are allowed to approach and state your interest. Just "dont be creepy"™
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.
Add comment