At what step do you struggle the most?
I have trouble wanting to invest all that energy to effectively reduce my own autonomy in the end.
this hits home.
My wife.
You can date your wife
And should!
I currently hate my body and don’t feel comfortable dating until I like it again, as dating involves finding others who like your body (and other things about you, but still)
I’m sure there are people who would want to date me in my current body as well as my future (hopefully improved) body, but I just can’t summon any confidence while I feel like this.
Obviously there’s some mental health problems I need to work on too. I’m fortunate to have decent psychiatric care at this stage in my life and am slowly progressing in that area, and trying my damnedest to ramp up body improvement efforts.
I went to the gym today, at least. :)
I feel this.
I don’t have any love for myself, let alone spare any for someone else.
Honestly, social media… Facebook is just absolutely full of bullshit meme’s for every type of occasion, and clicking on a single one sends people down that rabbithole. Eg… Say a person has a breakup with a person who exhibits some narcissistic traits and then relates to a meme about it and clicks on it (or pause too long), next minute the feed is full of gender hating memes, groups and pages to feed that part of the brain, and I think it is incredibly unhealthy. It just seemed a lot easier to meet people before heads were filled with social media influence
oh my god reddit was the worst with this. “Oh my god he had a beer after work? He’s an alcoholic, you can do so much better, DUMP HIM. RED FLAG GET OUT”
Talking without making myself look stupid
Nah, just drop the feeling stupid part. The night I met my wife I had just one drink too many so I had turned off my ability to think I was stupid - and I ended up talking about Lord of the Rings lore. Which she loved. If I had listened to that part of myself I would have held back and thought it was stupid, and my entire life would have gone differently.
Now I want to hear about The Lord of the Rings lore
Whether it’s January 2 or February 1.
ISO 8601 supremacy.
Best interpretation.
We also just want to keep track of all these natural cycles that have no guarantee of having any reasonable ratio. Every calendar system except, like, Epoch is a little dumb because of that. It’s unavoidable.
Talking to people I don’t know and initiating conversations in general. If the other person doesn’t approach me first, I can’t do it myself. I’m not much into dating, but it’s really inconvenient for socializing in general.
I think this is my issue as well. You always hear about how women hate being approached, and I really don’t want to come across as a creep who hits on women in public.
Same. If I could skip the initial dating thing and just have an instant SO that I hang out with and enjoy, I’d be pretty happy. But I’m not good at meeting new people. Plus, after enough failed dates, it gets difficult to justify dumping more time into it. It’s so mentally taxing to find someone, get to know them, meet them (and deal with the amount of anxiety that goes into that whole ordeal), it probably doesn’t work out, repeat and try again. So I just hang out with my cat instead.
I’m still figuring all this out but for me the biggest things were:
- Dating app stuff. What to put in your profile, what to talk about when you match with someone, how to convert a match into an actual date
- Confidence. After you hit 28 years old and still haven’t been on a single date it starts feeling more and more like there’s something wrong with you. I really had to work hard in therapy to kill that particular demon. The worst part is, you have to kill that demon or nothing will change. You can’t successfully find someone if you believe there is some legitimate problem with you that people won’t accept. And sometimes, there literally is something wrong with you that you need to correct.
- Socializing. I’m autistic so a lot of the general rules of conversation, particularly how to have the kind of conversation that makes the other person enjoy talking with you, was really hard for me. I’m still working on this one, but at least for the time being I’ve gotten over the hurdle of getting a steady girlfriend.
Probably meeting people. I’m not a very outgoing person and when I do go out my hobbies tend to be 100% males. I also don’t use social media or dating apps. I have friends and relationships and I have no idea how I got them.
Its annoying because I feel like I have no agency I can’t just go meet people when I want to. I have to live my life and trust that I will eventually meet someone which has held true so far.
It’s a numbers game. Go to events where you are temporarily exposed to manageably sized batches of new people. One-time workshops and volunteering are great for this.
Poor, unemployed and depressed. Also because conservative society.
I haven’t dated in almost thirty years but I think what would be the worst is finding out someone is heavily conservative when you aren’t. Or discovering six months into a nice relationship that he’s a closet antivaxxer or something, basically where you find out something that really goes against your values. Thankfully many of those people are obnoxious and loud.
Agreed. I wish the quiet ones had better ways to find each other. Reminds me of a poem I’ll try to dig up.
Slightly different context, I suppose
My dick is too big, I make too much money but I am only 6 foot 2
Dating apps suck now. Thankfully, I met the right person and got rid of them.
Before smartphones, when comms on apps were more like emails, I had much better openings. I can’t be funny or interesting in a few sentences.
Nobody can. You get judged on your photos and the decision is already made before you type a single word. The conversation is just to find excuses to ghost
Better to have loved and gotten rid of, than never to have loved at all.
Not being completely turned off dating in general by past experiences…
Biggest hurdle? My husband.
Joking! Really, I never dated when young, just hung out in groups, right? And there would be hookups and then eventually that leads to some relationships. So I never got the hang of the one-on-one dates.
Even after my big breakup with my ex, didn’t really date because while I intended to, my now husband had other ideas, he had been dating for some years and said he knew when we met what he wanted so it got serious pretty fast.
But as you say it’s hard to meet people - I understand that, I don’t know how young people find people if they aren’t running around in packs like we used to. That network of people who know you, and also know other people, and might introduce you if they think you’d like each other. Dating apps are more like job searching.
