The problem is, everyone THINKS that they’re the woman in this meme.
They do? Oh… oh, I might need therapy.
True, in reality everyone in the ghoul. Dating does become harder the older you get. When you’re 18 and you date an 18 year old, both have very little life and dating experience. You basically mix water with water. When you’re 35, you’re vinegar and even if you like your date, she might be oil and you just don’t mix. You have to compromise, which only gets harder and harder.
It’s not harder, objectively.
It’s just that people’s expectations aren’t realistic. And nobody is more bitter than average folks who think they are the top 1% of the dating pool, which is what the average person thinks. So many people in the dating pool make like 50k/yr and think you should be a millionaire to date them.
I’ve met so many women who are complete average looking, average income, etc. who think they DESERVE Don Draper and anything less is ‘below them’. They’d rather be alone with their fantasy TV boyfriend then be in a real relationship with a person who is their equal with whom they can build a good life.
I’m a medium successful dude, and when I go out dating all I seem to encounter women who are worse than me in pretty much every metric who dunk on me for not being the top 1% man of their dreams. Like I can run a half marathon, no problem, but these ladies who can’t even run a mile will dunk on me for not being in the Olympics. I have more wealth than 80% of other americans, and to most women I meet, I am ‘poor’.
and if you go check out ‘female dating advice’ on social media… 99% of it reflects this crazy unrealistic attitude and it’s SUPER popular.
Social media has destroyed dating for both sexes.
The attitude of assuming all women you meet are inferior to you (and they’re the ones who have too-high standards?) can also make your dating life miserable, just saying
I’m not assuming anything. I’m reporting how people behave. If I meet someone who is a middle class job and they are telling me I’m a ‘POS loser’ for not driving car that is worth more than their annual salary, the issue isn’t me. I think my Subaru is pretty dope.
Just go on any dating tiktok or dating advice community. You will find tons and tons of people with these attitudes.
Date leftists? Like, actual leftists. I know, it’s a small pool in America, but you’d be surprised what’s out there if you join the right community.
You’re going after people who buy into the capitalist heirarchy and being surprised it’s all just shallow self-delusions. Idk, just seems self defeating.
A good chunk of the people I’m talking about identify as leftists.
Your political ideals also have nothing to do with your personal expectations and habits in relationships. Plenty of ‘leftist’ women I have met 100% expect traditional gender roles and aspire to be SAHM. And a lot of leftists I knew in my 20s are now hardcore right wingers now.
Hell half my liberal/leftie graduate school cohort is now support Trump/Republicans.
I think your definition of leftist and mine are quite different.
sorry, is there a test i can perform on people to know if they are ‘true leftist’?
if not, you should create a ‘leftist testing kit’ like they have for covid so i can bring it on dates and swab them and know in 15 minutes if they are a leftist or not!
As a general rule, not believing in capitalism and income based heirarchy is a good start.
Amazing that you turned this into a left/right argument. Are you the CIA?
Bad analogy. Vinegar and oil make a tasty vinaigrette but I get your point.
Especially if you can open that up to a little basil now and then
So threesome…
With a guy named Herb
I feel this in my core. Dating in your 30s is like dating at max difficulty
I find it much easier!
- People are less shy
- They have more experience
- They know better what they are looking for
- Their fantasy marriage/life has been renounced
- People are much more chill about sex matters
- Their romantic histories are quite telling
- Most people have their own place
- Careers are mostly stable
/
Cons
- Much smaller dating pool
- Many have kids already
- More difficult to make friends/meet people in general
speak for yourself. i have found dating as a 30+ adult to be way more dramatic and miserable than it was in my 20s.
nobody in my 20s was having a temper tantrum at dinner because the restaurant isn’t expensive enough for their ‘brand’.
This sounds like one very specific date
nah it’s multiple dates. it’s also a common attitude that men need to ‘impress’ dates by spending a lot at restaurants otherwise they ‘devalue’ a woman. asking someone out on a cheap date to get to know them isn’t the point… the point is to win them over by spending money on them.
basically a lot of people see dating as prostitution with extra steps. and wonder why they are single.
Dude, I’ve been on many, many dates in my 30s. I have never experienced this in the least and I am a frugle date. I recommend reevaluating your “type” of women if this is a recurring thing.
I worked for one of the major dating sites about a decade ago. Let me assure you, that people act like debased hyperhormonal chimps in heat when they think nobody is watching. Oh, and by the way - someone is ALWAYS watching.
If you’re a male who has some combination of a steady job, are remotely reliable, not drug or booze addled, have most of your teeth and hair and can tell a joke and hold a conversation - you’re golden. It is UTTERLY unfair to ladies, but just being able to hold that low bar will get you much farther than you might think.
It’s a strange dilemma - for a dating site to suceed, you have to protect the women. From the guys’ perspective, it’s shouting into the void, on the off chance you might EVER stand out enough to get a reply a week. From a woman’s perspective, it’s like the ozone layer protecting a constant bombardment of radiation and lethal rocks from space. A cornucopia of typically BAD CHOICES that manage to slip through the various cracks that the sites/apps put up to protect them.
But - the women ARE the site. If you have the WOMEN, then the men would follow you buck naked through the flaming tar pits of hell to get to them. But - the average male is a monosyllabic goblin with skeletons in his closet and bad intentions much more often than you’d think. It’s why Bumble tried female-only communication initiation. The women on dating sites have an invisible shield tbey don’t even realize exists around them to prevent bots, unsolicited dick pics, one word messages, repeat-offense harassers, and wide-net-casting quagmires who have more deeply held mysoginstic beliefs than they do good pick up lines.
I think the joke and hold a good conversation are where I run into problems.
This is a good ad.
Except that “the women” on your sites are often bots controlled by the site. Men will drag themselves through hell when they’re led on by a bot, too. And the site gets to control the bots.
Surely they can’t start browsing DMs?
Anything not advertised as E2EE can be assumed to have some 3rd party able to look at the conversation, malicious or not.
The real secret to dating after 35 - don’t.
Folks are not looking to “date”: they’re after long term commitment OR quick hook ups. The middle ground really vanishes when you get older!
you can’t build a successful relationship without dating and getting to know if you’re a good fit.
Yes and no; I’ve met some people who were great to date but hell to live with.
A good relationship starts with both people knowing what they want - and continual contact helps determine if the other person is being honest about what they want. Post 35/30, this process is often a lot faster, and dating skill matters less than ability not to annoy the person you’re suddenly around 24/7.
If it matches from the start, or a compromise grows, you’re in for a winner. Otherwise, back to the sea of the undead you go, no matter how good your dating skill!
I know you’re not from the South because down there the first wave of divorces is at about 21 years old with three kids
I hate how true this is.
What’s worse is that many of the people who didn’t fall into that trap have been waiting to responsibly have children later, which I also don’t want. Finding anyone down here that is interested in being child free down here is a challenge and finding someone who doesn’t expect to have a busy life to make up for it is even more difficult.
Southerner here to confirm. I’m 36, graduated in 2004, I know a few people my age with 20 year olds now. 🙄
Did you graduate 2 years early?
2004 was 20 years ago. You’d have been 16
Can get pregnant at 16, math checks out.
I don’t quite get it. Is the problem that you miss being pursued by younger people?
All the good men are already taken, the ones who are still available are single for a reason.
If you’re still looking for good men at 35 you’re also single for a reason
Not necessarily. If she was an anxious attached style she’d be more likely to fall for avoidant men. She could either:
- Now recognize the red flags of avoidants and not subject herself to that.
- Be unaware of the red flags of avoidants and keep making the same mistake
- Recently left a long term relationship as an secure individual and discover how many avoidants really exist.
Of course you are right, she could be avoidant to, in which case hopefully she’ll learn sooner rather than later that fearing intimacy and vulnerability is detrimental, and that healthy codependency is actually a thing. But it’s not easy for them to do so.
I don’t like to think that everyone is incapable of finding someone, people just need to figure out why. Pointing out “single for a reason” seems counterproductive and a bit disrespectful.
I think “single for a reason” is what all that attachment theory shit is trying to help contextualize. It specifically sets the context as “single for a fixable reason” if you have the courage and humility to do the work.
Is living in the forest because I’m afraid of the federal government a “fixable” reason?
no
:(
Sorry you’re so incurably single you’ve latched onto dating advice thats as accurate as horoscopes.
Like I hope it gets better for you but… yikes.
It’s not dating advice, it’s attachment theory.
So stop treating it like dating advice you weirdo.
Ok, I’m confused - can you quote the lines that werr dating advice? In no case was I advising anyone do anything, I was sharing the information I have learned on attachment theory. Providing possible insight. That’s not advice, that’s processing thought.
The bigger problem is everyone has kids already. But by 45 or so you can start looking for people with adult kids.
nobody has kids at that age in the urban coastal cities. i’m 40 i’ve never dated or met a single mother.
They must all be in the midwest…
I had my first kid at 40, which was on the later side but not at all unusual.
I came from a more rural area and occasionally here about people my age back there being grandparents already and just have to shake my head at those choices. It just doesn’t happen here
yeah i grew up rural and by mid twenties all my HS peers were married w/ kids or doing drugs/prison. I was in graduate school on the other side of the country at 25 and marriage kids was a decade away in my mind.
least to i haven’t been back there since i was 19 years old and never kept any HS friends.
No. No it does not.
No kidding. I’m apparently the only person who has ever had an amicable divorce where we just realized we weren’t compatible and never felt the need to bash each other. The post-divorce crowd can be pretty dire. They should mandate a certain number of therapy sessions before you can sign up for a dating app.
Dude, I hear that loud and f-ing clear. I’m also someone who left a marriage without any real hate toward my ex. We were chill during the marriage and afterward. No cheating; no drama.
So when I re-entered the dating world a decade after I had previously been in it, I did not expect the amount of bitter dudes I’ve since come across. If your profile starts with you saying you won’t tolerate a woman who does ______., I’m more concerned about how damaged you are from your previous relationship than I am about whether or not we would be a good match.
I had one too. My ex and I are on great terms. It makes for some fun moments when we can joke about our divorce and make people uncomfortable.
From what I’ve learned, it has a lot to do with attachment styles.
My ex is avoidant, with some pretty narcissistic traits (love bombing, then refusal to even hug because it’s too much).
I was/am anxious, or as the couples counselor told me “clingy.”
In our one-on-ones, she summarized up a book we had been assigned (which my ex didn’t read lol) that it was a statistic thing. 50% of people are secure style - they meet, and tend to stay together cause it just works. ~25% are anxious, and they do ok together and work fine with secure. ~25% are avoidant, and unfortunately, unless they work towards secure attachments, are pretty much always in and out of relationships. There’s a small amount of “disorganized” that has both insecure styles, but they tend towards secure over time.
The result is that the older you get, the dating pool shrinks. There will always been avoidant people available though. Secure style people are great at recognizing avoidant and typically don’t put up with their bullshit for long. Anxious attachment though end up with avoidants and it becomes a terrible thing, the anxious will do anything to stay, causing the avoidant to do things out of the relationship more.
If you could guess one common thing amongst avoidants that finally ends the relationship, what would it be? If you said cheating, you’d be completely right. It’s really hard to end amicably after that.
Incels are on the rise, both genders. Where do they fit in your 100%? We’re seeing the birth of hikkikomori culture.
If I had to guess based on my understanding of attachment theory, it could be the anxious attachment, the avoidant, or the disorganized (which has traits of both, and is rare). In any case it’s clearly the insecure attachment styles.
Based on the “incel” description itself though, I don’t think you have enough information to guess either. An individual hokkikomori is clearly more avoidant than anything though, as they don’t seek or hold relationships with others as valuable.
Holy shit go live your life. You’re not a cell on a spreadsheet about attachment theory.
Am I the only one having a stroke trying to understand:
“clears up again after the first wave of divorces (after 35?)”
yeah you are. it’s really easy to understand.
the pool was clear before people got married. it clears up again after the first wave of divorces. clear meaning ‘there are desirable people to date’
are you ESL?
Not OP, but I think it’s fairly confusingly worded because clear implies empty, but the intent seems to be to imply lots of choices.
no. clear empties quality when it comes to water. clear as in transparent.
clear water is good, opaque water is dirty and unsafe.
you are thinking of clear in the sense of space, not water. clear space is empty.
