201–210 of 222 posts
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Much of that can be summed up in the classic adage, "marry your best friend," someone that you really enjoy hanging out with in any setting.
But wait, doesn't that mean you're already in their "friend zone"? :)
Anyone ever heard of the paradox of choice?
All of the research I've read hints at relationships that start with a dating website being being much more fragile than relationships that have met more traditional ways and much more likely to end with a bad outcome.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/03/15/the-science-of...
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/06/is-onli...
One may argue this is good that we are ending "bad" or "not perfect" relationships... the other side of the coin is online dating may not be leading us astray from actually meeting someone we are compatible with and is just a distraction or worse, it may be making us bad at relationships once we met someone.
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Most marriages result in children. Most people want to have children. It's not an unreasonable assumption to make that most people who read the article will fall into that camp.
> Most people want to have children. How do you know? My friends who did have kids had intricate dynamics around that where 'want to have' was not really a big part of the equation. Pressure, religion, 'that is what you do', 'my spouse wants to', 'maybe now life gets better' etc are often part of the equation. For the 'want to have' you will need to look inside people's heads.
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> Do I like the family I marry into (which was a bit complicated by the fact that her family lives in Iran, I first had to go there visit them)? Curious about this one, esp given the distance. My family lives in multiple states, and I estimate at best 5-6 days with a 50% chance of seeing some of them in a year. And if I was married and had kids, I'd drop that guess to about 25%. There has been a related post realizin…
If the family is accessible I've found this to be a wonderful proxy for compatibility. Is their family structure how you'd like yours? Do you get along with and easily make friends with other family members? It's a good sign if your personality is compatible with the family and their way of life is what you're looking for. It's of my top indicators, I've rarely found people that strayed very far from their family in…
im in the honeymoon phase right now. sometimes i get sad thinking about the transience of this phase of the relationship. obviously i shouldn't fixate on that, but it's like this creeping twilight that i wish i could just stave off forever. anyone have tips on doing this?
When it fades, what do you do? Do you say, "That was nice while it lasted, too bad it's gone"? Or do you say, "I want that back, and I'll work to get it"? In my own marriage, every year to year-and-a-half, I've looked around and realized that we weren't as close as we used to be. We've had to rebuild the relationship, which takes work. It's been worth it, though - still being in the honeymoon phase at our 20th annive…
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Why on earth not? Various networks offer anybody the opportunity to go on many first dates with many people. It takes some effort, and you have to learn how to come across well & take good photos & stuff, but few people have all doors shut to them. I see you commented elsewhere you get few matches- why is that? Figure that out, fix that. Dating isn't take-it-or-leave-it, it's a life journey that most certainly includ…
>Various networks offer anybody the opportunity to go on many first dates with many people. Not if those people refuse to go on dates with the person. >why is that? No idea. I'm supposedly really attractive. If there's an answer I don't have a way of finding it out. >it's a life journey that most certainly includes working on yourself. Well I can't get in much better shape than I already am, I could make more money b…
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The only place I think that really applies is if you're in a small town. If you can't get past the first few dates after trying with 10-20 candidates in a big city (requiring 100-200 solicitations), you're probably facing one of a few very solvable problems, off the top of my head: - fails at basic hygiene (solved by showers, haircuts, clothes, cleaning your room, home improvement projects, eating vegetables, etc) -…
I find it interesting that you consider all these problems "solvable", almost in a sense of being trivially solvable, while I feel that most people wrestle with at least one of these for their entire lives. And people with these problems nonetheless have or had SOs. :P And people with... much deeper problems also have SOs. And then some people just can't find SOs, even if everything looks good on paper. I don't think…
Yep. Two reasons:
1) Like I said, they're easy solutions but slow. The human mind is not built for 2 year slogs without reward.
2) All of these things are moralized, which makes it really hard to "just try". We think if we fail it reflects poorly on us, which makes it slower to start, slower to recover from missteps, and we just run out of time.
> And people with these problems nonetheless have or had SOs.
True! I was responding to someone who couldn't get past a first date for a decade, with the major things that could be getting in their way. In reality, solving just one or two might be enough to get them over the hump.
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The only place I think that really applies is if you're in a small town. If you can't get past the first few dates after trying with 10-20 candidates in a big city (requiring 100-200 solicitations), you're probably facing one of a few very solvable problems, off the top of my head: - fails at basic hygiene (solved by showers, haircuts, clothes, cleaning your room, home improvement projects, eating vegetables, etc) -…
I've been in Cleveland 2 years and I have only went on dates with 2 people. At my most recent workplace there was only ever one woman around my age. We went to lunch together and talked a ton so I think she liked me but I didn't want to date a coworker at the time. Other than her though, dating through work is apparently not an option. But as for dating apps/sites and stuff I never get any matches. So based on all th…
Dating apps work OK if you're average to above average in attractiveness, writing skills, and flirting, and you can keep your anxiety in check.
If you're below average in some of those areas, you need to be in non-romantic group settings so that people can observe you move confidently in space and become attracted to you. That means hobbies.
> I don't understand how it's so commonplace for people to go on 10-20 dates
Yeah, I guess I was thinking about online dating. The in person stuff is slightly different. If you volunteer for environmental restoration every weekend, you will go on 10-20 "dates" over the course of 50 weekends, while pulling up invasive species next to someone who is a little bored. That will be your first date. If you like each other, you just have to say yes to more opportunities to be with them, and they'll be doing the same, and you'll eventually get to a "real" date.
Do your best to look cute before you show up to these events, and get your mental health in order beforehand. Events with physical activity help with both of those things.
> I have a hard time reconciling all my feedback with the notion that I'm part of some exceedingly rare group that is undatable.
Yeah, no, doesn't sound like you're in that category. From what you're saying it sounds like you're just missing the 10-20 first dates thing.
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I haven't done it, but speed dating seems like the best approach. It puts you right in front of a person and, imo, you're less likely to dismiss him/her outright than you would be on the mentioned apps.
Back in my day, people met their partners in the course of normal social interaction. Weird, right? Like, you'd meet a friend of a friend, or be someplace fun and meet other people having fun. Super weird. Sure, online dating casts a much wider net, and there's something to be said for moving your thumb to make attractive strangers appear at your door, but the old way was efficient . More information up front meant f…
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We met at 10 years old and are getting married at 24. When we really started dating three years ago, about a month in we did a spreadsheet of ~270 questions about how we wanted to live. We blindly answered so as to not concede or compromise in our answers. VLOOKUP and merge answers. 90% of them are basically identical. The remaining 10% are completely predictive of current and perhaps future points of disagreement an…
> about a month in we did a spreadsheet of ~270 questions about how we wanted to live. Would you be willing to share this spreadsheet?