Is it as many people describe? Do you have an easy or difficult time with it?
I love dating later in life as opposed to dating when I was younger. People my age are usually much smarter and well rounded than when we were in our 20s. If they have kids, they’re usually grown enough to not be annoying. I love when I hear short fat older freshly divorced dudes complain. Like homie, there is a reason you are getting the responses you do on the apps. Although I am incredibly tall and in decent shape, so ymmv.
Being 6’2 at 12 then 6’4 by the end of growing did wonders for me. I’m also pretty charismatic and generally kind to everyone. The height thing as well as a mostly positive upbringing gave me a lot of confidence, which I think is the main indicator of success or failure in dating. So, I’ve never had trouble but I have always struggled with the idea that if I didn’t have a girlfriend I was a loser. That mentality led me to stay in a few pretty toxic relationships for way too long.
Somehow height didn’t work for me. It might be attractiveness; part of me also suspects something about the sum image makes me seem a little bit intimidating to people.
It did come in handy one time when a racist drunk guy was harassing a poor Korean commuter on the subway. It’s hard to quantify the ways being scary/intimidating is good for you, as opposed to the inverse.
After a couple years the dating pool, last spring I was fed up with all the bullshit, so I said “fuck it, I’m done” and gave up.
Shortly after I casually met my best friend’s sister after 10 years we didn’t see each other and had a really fun time, so we started hanging out. I didn’t even see her as a “potential candidate” in the beginning until I realized how much I enjoyed spending time together. So we started dating and now we’re in a truly wonderful relationship, I can easily say the best I ever had.And I think all of this wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t let myself truly enjoy someone without any preconceived goal or expectation, without that “fuck it, I’m done” moment.
Being a trans girl with pretty privelage tm and just hanging out in spaces for us had gotten me enough dates tbh
“Dating” is bullshit. Just go about your social life and you’ll meet someone.
And that’s how I found her.
Having a social life is the key. It’s more likely to meet someone you get along with if you keep hanging out with a larger group of people you get along with. Rather than relying on an almost random app algorithm.
Most definitely. A few factors at work here: being in a group makes it a lower-pressure situation. Also, being with a group demonstrates some degree of social proof.
Very good advice. My main addition to this advice is to accept that you may never find someone and to find a way to still enjoy life. Bizarrely it will help you find someone.
“Enter[ing] the dating pool” puts way too much pressure on the situation. I just go out looking to meet interesting people and make friends. Eventually I’ll meet someone where things feel different and we’ll both want to get to know each other more than most of the people we meet. That’s how I met my current partner four months ago.
That said, we did meet while going to events in our local kink scene. That’s a more unique environment where everyone understands that conversations have a high likelihood to be sexual and any kind of judgmental attitude is frowned upon by the community. It makes it way easier to be comfortable and confident in a conversation.
Dating apps are evil. I avoid them like the plague. Yeah it may feel “safer” to swipe through strangers on an app, but you’re really just trading your mental health (and whatever information the corpos collect) for the illusion of safety. Going out and putting yourself out there is hard and scary, but it gets easier over time and the results are much better.
I had met my wife on a dating app in 2021. I wouldn’t recommend it and I am pretty sure she wouldn’t either.
In short, it was just pure luck that we have matched. And it was also incredibly lucky that we had many things in common considering both of our backgrounds. And it is not like same taste in art, media, food. More of experience.
My reason is that even if me and my wife found each other, chances were close to 0. And on the way there we got both hurt many times on these apps. These apps are designed to keep you on the app, not to effectively find a match. They will make you miss good potential matches in favor or less good ones so you keep scrolling and eventually paying for premium.
You really have more chances to find a mate just living out there. Join interest clubs. Attend events. Socialize a bit more. That way your chances are thousand times higher than on these apps.
Well, i got on some dating apps, spoke with some guys who fizzled out, had some awkward dinners, and eventually got a boyfriend. Together for 3 years now.
For specifics.
- I live in a major city so dating pool is relatively large.
- be realistic about your own looks when approaching people. I’m pretty average looking and when I approach guys who are cute but not outlandishly gorgeous I had a better time.
- some people will try and neg you during a date. It will be super obvious. It will make the date suck
- don’t stick out a bad date because of any sense of obligation.
It took me a long time to find someone who I meshed with, and who I was excited to see every day. It only really clicked when I stopped trying so hard on dates. Just… had an honest conversation.
I would rather gnaw off my own foot than go on another first date.
Neg during a date?
Well I’m 24 and I’ve never even kissed anyone so I think that answers everything nicely…
I’m even older, you’re not alone.
Same, it feels awful at times and i try not to dwell too much on it.
Went through a nasty breakup, hit the dating apps, had a few terrible dates and then started spending more time pursuing hobbies. Made friends through hobby groups (skiing and mountaineering in my case) and one of those friends has now been my partner for over a decade.
Shared interest groups are the way to go IMO.
That’s great advice. I’ve joined a few hobby groups, made some good friends, and uhh, enjoyed doing hobbies with friends. No romantic success, but I did get out of the house and do fun stuff.
Extremely difficult.
I tried dating apps, but ultimately I have friends who I asked out and I got rejected.
For me the hard thing is going out and socializing. It’s just statistics; the more you go out to random places and meet new people, the more likely you are to find someone, but it drains my energy like nothing else and I also gotta gather confidence after only ever being rejected.
Turns out dating is hard, but as long as you keep being open it’ll happen at some point.
That’s basically where I sit, the emotional cost is just too great and it’s easier not to engage at all.
Best thing about being married
Not having to date
My marriage is coming to its end, and potential dating scares me the most.
I’m sorry.
Thank you, stranger! I will be less depressed, if I have people like you in real life.
people have met through xbox online games, so anythings possible. i knew someone in college who met thier partner at the time, probably married by now through games.
Life hack!
Waste of time. Now I’m 46, no kids, never married. Couldn’t be happier.
Not real great. I’ve always taken the advice to “just treat women like people,” and have had a lot of great friendships with women as a result. Then, for a few months some years ago, I decided to follow the “just be confident” advice, and forced myself to behave in ways that felt to me very transgressive and boundary-breaking. It worked stunningly well, but I just can’t keep it up. That’s not my personality, or my romantic style. I need some indication that a woman is interested in me, and pushing past her initial resistance makes me feel queasy. But, I’m not attractive enough to get those kinds of signals often, so, the single life it is.
Treat them like people because, well, they are people (lol), but don’t treat them like men. Humanity doesn’t just default to masculinity, after all.
Have you tried doing he same thing but with some very tactfully avoided eye contract? Works very well to look for a little signal that might not happen if she doesn’t notice you. If she ignores it a little longer than just at first, she is not interested. If you give it a few rounds of carefully looking and playing shy when she notices, she might start joining in the dance so to speak. That’s your signal that there might be some interest possible. I like to go up in a situation that does not pressure her or put her too much on the spot and just hand her mym number to contact me if she would like to chat.
Sometimes they write, sometimes they don’t. :) but it’s the much less boundary pushing way to measure interest before engaging and without making anybody uncomfortable. And yes, women are friends, not food.
After 21 years of marriage and about 5 years of working on myself after divorce, I’m finally dipping my toes in the dating pool. Honestly, it’s not as bad as people make it out to be. I don’t use dating apps, as they weren’t around when I was previously single and I don’t see them as likely being effective for me. I’m 60, but good looking and extremely fit, most people assume I’m in my mid 40s, and I do a decent job of attracting interested women in their 30s and 40s. I feel that I’d be screened out by age on dating apps and not even seen by women in my target demographic, whereas in person I do really well. Overall, reentering the dating pool has been an interesting experience. One surprising thing is that women over 40 are much more forward with me than I’m used to. They ask me if I’m single, ask for my phone number, and even proposition me point blank at times. Overall, it’s been a very positive experience for me, and I feel like I do at least as well or better than I did in my youth (which was pretty good).
I’m not quite as old as you, but you might be surprised on dating apps. I initially left the age requirements off when I first got on them and every single match I got was around 20 years old. I’ve talked to some older friends too and it’s apparently not uncommon. You can set your age requirements to whatever you want and I can almost guarantee that most of your matches will be at the low end and your age matters almost not at all. Very unexpected and I do not recommend dating someone in their 20s, but you might find that you fare a lot better than you expect.
Thank you. I’m a bit of an outlier in a lot of ways, and I’m awaking to the fact that if I want to find the right person from me, I’m going to have to increase the volume of people I date, and probably the easiest way to do that would be to tackle online dating, so it’s probably in my future.
It’s good that you are having good luck out there. I’m 50 and am trying to date again. No idea of where to go to meet people.
Let me tell you, I’ve discovered the best way to meet people effortlessly (more or less). I’ve consumed a lot of dating content on youtube, and learned a lot in the process. One of the videos I watched ranked places to meet people, and two of the top places were dance class and run clubs. I’ve been doing both. I run with a couple of different run clubs, and while I enjoy getting a good workout in, run clubs haven’t been very productive for me to meet women. One of the things that I feel is hindering me in that regard is that I’m not a great runner and pretty slow. In general, women are attracted to high status men, and status is contextual. As a slow runner, my status in the running context isn’t very high, and I feel that as a consequence, the women I meet in that context aren’t seeing me as a good prospect. YMMV. That said, I have met people at run clubs, so you may wish to find one in your area.
Dancing classes, however, have been a gold mine. I started at the end of last August taking ballroom dancing lessons to dip my toes in the water. While there are some younger people, the median age at the ballroom dance class I take is about 65. While on the surface, that may not seem like a good environment, I stand out in it. I’m fit, good looking, and dress sharp, and women notice. Women understand much better than men that being attractive is not something that you are or are not, but rather something that you cultivate. Most men don’t do much to improve their appearance and as they age just let themselves go. As a consequence, I am hands-down the most attractive man that regularly attends class, and always have women vying for my attention. I am the “big fish” in a small pond, and to the extent there are women in that group I am interested in, I am definitely on their radar.
Dancing is particularly good for meeting people and fostering a romantic context, because it involves physical contact within your partner’s intimate zone. I chuckle when dating advice videos talk about “breaking the touch barrier”, because in the dancing context you’re basically holding hands with your arm around them, standing in their intimate zone from the outset.
In addition, the dancing context overlays strong gender roles. As a man, I am the “lead” and the woman is the “follow”, and I communicate with her with my body. As the song says:
Bodies in conversation
Use your imagination
I like it
When we dance
Even if you don’t meet anyone in dance class, you’re learning a valuable skill that can only help you in the competitive arena of dating. Think about it. You’ve seen videos of birds doing their mating dances, tail feathers flared out. The mating dance for humans is dancing.
While ballroom was my initial foray into dancing, swing dancing and the social dancing scene has been amazing for me. It’s hard to get really good quickly at ballroom dancing, as there are fewer opportunities to practice. None of the nightclubs in my city have “Tango Night” or “Foxtrot Night”, but a whole lot of them cater to various popular social dances, including salsa, cumbia, swing, etc. Where I am at, you can go out and meet people dancing almost any night of the week. Moreover, as a lead, if you are any good at all you’ll have attractive women lining up to dance with you. It’s more difficult to be a lead, so follows tend to outnumber leads. My current focus is on East Coast Swing and Lindy Hop, but I still do the ballroom dancing as well. It’s good to be well-rounded.
I cannot overstate how helpful dancing has been for me with respect to meeting women. After a prolonged period of social isolation while I worked on myself following my divorce, I went from a social circle of zero (I literally had no one in my life), to an enormous social circle, with fun events to attend several nights per week, and a wide array of dating prospects. I highly recommend it.
Thank you for the information
