OPENING CAVEAT: this is purely a rant about my own experiences as a not-rich leftist cis man in a mostly liberal city trying to date women. I cannot speak to any other experiences but mine.
I’m an occasional poster, mostly lurker here posting on a burner acct cause I don’t want to get at all personal on main.
all that out of the way….I am in my mid thirties, living in a large city, strongly leftist (maybe not by hexbear standards but certainly those of….virtually everywhere else), and holy shit does straight dating fucking suck in the 2020s. or at least it has for me.
over the course of my adult years I have rejected one way or another pretty much every structural advantage cis white men typically enjoy (especially higher income) in search of somewhat more ethical ways to get by. I quit my old “real” (bullshit) career and switched over to physical labor work that lets me completely unplug and helps me stay (relatively) fit but also keeps me perpetually on the edge of broke. when I tell women what I do there is a total incuriosity about it, as opposed to when I had a relatively well-paid bullshit career with a ladder - that, strangers can respect. now I scrape by but I no longer have panic attacks wondering what the fuck I’m doing. a personal win that has nevertheless rendered me a lot less dateable in the eyes of my peers. I am not imagining this change in perception, I don’t think, nor did I anticipate it. I guess I should have.
that’s when I even get to the stage of chatting someone up, mind you. when I walk into a small venue or party surrounded by strangers, to steal a line, “I do not light it up.” a single man (or at least a single me) at a social gathering or event is like a fucking wandering fart. (I have described this phenomenon to a couple of female friends and they didn’t disagree.) I guess this helps explain the enduring “wingman” concept but p much all my friends are partnered women I would never dare ask to help me in that way.
I’m slightly below average height which rules out dating basically all women over 5’7 due to idk internalized misogyny or whatever (ftr I would have absolutely no problem dating a taller person if they were attracted to me, and in fact was with someone significantly taller for several years, but since the advent of the apps I get the sense I’m getting filtered out altogether, whether on an app or in person). I know there are a lot of jokes about this but it really is just statistically measurably more difficult in my experience to date women as a short-ish guy (unless you're rich I assume).
in theory I could end my misery of abject singlehood by submitting myself to the mercy of The Apps - I met my last partner there a couple of years ago after a fucking shit ton of swiping - but I am too full of spite to consider going back right now. I hate hate hate using them, hate the feeling that I am entering a highly competitive meat market in which I am clearly a below average cut due to the above mentioned reasons, hate being reminded every time I open them up. also as mentioned I’m fuckin broke and at least as a man, ime, you gotta pay money to make them usable/useful (AKA shoot enough shots to even get a response before you hit the paywall).
that’s all beside my philosophical/political objection to using them which is that I fuckin abhor having to give my extremely personal information to some evil company. that’s why I have tried to manufacture as many scenarios/activities as possible to meet ppl IRL, but it’s been a couple of years of this with barely a hint of a spark anywhere.
here’s another major problem specific to my age bracket and gender: I emphatically DO NOT WANT to try to date significantly younger women, but ime they really do seem to make up the majority of women interested in dating a man my age who lives the way I do (that is, sans any sense of upward mobility or interest in “traditional” ways of doing things).
lastly, I wanted to add something about the cis aspect of all this….most of my friends and associates are women and nb folks, and virtually all of them are some flavor of queer. I’m not really, or certainly not enough to comfortably identify that way. it really seems like all the cheap and no-cost speed dating events and mixers I’ve spotted, or at least the ones that would theoretically be good for meeting other leftists, are queer-centric or queer-exclusive. great for you folks! not very helpful for me tho…
also before anyone chimes in with “it’s cool/ok/fine to be single” or any variant thereof….I’ve already spent major chunks of my adult life, years at a time, on my own. I’ve reaped all the benefits there are from singlehood, and I’m grateful for them, but I’m just so fucking lonely and it gets harder every year.
thank you for entering the leftist cis man rant zone. I invite other hexbears to share their grievances as well. I'm not really looking for advice tbh just wanted to yell somewhere
EDIT: shout out to all fellow hexbears struggling in this area I very much like you all!
yeah honestly I think the struggle with meeting people outside of apps might be partly just that we all have less and less time away from work to just be out, recreationally, in the community, socializing. And that when we are out social norms are shifting away from talking to strangers.
gotta love social atomization, baybee!!!
That's totally fair. I have no issue chatting with total strangers when I'm out too, and neither does the partner I go out with the most, so we meet all sorts of interesting folks by just...sitting down and talking to them. And not in the creepy polyam way of "hey we liked your vibe can we buy you a drink," we really just like talking to people. Once in a blue moon they're polyam too and we expand our community that way but...yeah it can be tough. I'm not gonna pretend it's easy but the old standby of "just do stuff you enjoy with people and you'll eventually meet someone" does work better than pretty much anything else. It can def be tough though.
I saw a guy who I sorta hooked up with once, at a rally/protest recently and honestly major swoon, he's so much cooler than me. I gotta just commit to doing more mutual aid and organizing work and maybe the right crossover of people will happen and I'll make a connection with someone (in addition to the work being meaningful of course, but I'd be much more effective at it if I stopped to talk to people more
Yeah that's also part of it...I think there's a hidden tip in the "confidence is attractive" thing. Like yes, confident people are more attractive, so if you want to date, you gotta believe in yourself and you gotta believe that people wanna talk to you and you gotta approach situations with that belief, but the hidden tip in there is that confident people just...talk to more people. I have a few polyam folks in my life who are really super cool people but they spend a lot of time at events or bars or whatever thinking "I should go talk to that person" rather than, you know, actually going and talking to that person. And then they get home and we chat about all the people they wished they talked to and how they wish they could be like me and just go talk to them. Like yeah, I know, "just go do it!!" is bad advice in every situation...but that should be the goal, to just get to know people in your community, whatever community that is. If it's a dating community or a soup kitchen or a protest or a union meeting or your local coffee shop or whatever it is y'all do. Dating is unfortunately an odds game...if you meet more people, you're more likely to meet someone you want to date, and the way to meet more people is to...talk to more people. Not in a creepy way or in a "I'm talking to date you" way, but just with "I want to be a part of and help build a community" part of way. Wherever that takes you.
So I guess what I'm saying is next time you see that guy at an action, just go say hi and chat a bit. If it goes somewhere sweet, if not, whatever. Now you got time to go talk to more people and keep participating in your community. And this is really just broad advice for everyone, in dating, or organizing, or any sort of community...community exists when people share thoughts and ideas and feelings with each other, and the way we do that is by talking with each other. So get out there and talk to people, all the people, all the time, even if they're super cool. Especially if they're super cool.