I've read out there that the ratio between men and women on dating apps is pretty awfully skewed. The estimates I've read, from a variety of sources all claiming inside insight, put it somewhere at 10:3 men:women on the high end and about half as many women on the low end. Let me tell you, I sure do feel it. I've been using some combination of Tinder, Bumble, and Hinged on and off for more than half a decade now and I've had two dates total. The first one didn't have a second date because she sexually assaulted me, the other because she just didn't feel any chemistry. I can get maybe 5 matches in a month if I'm maxing out my free likes on two platforms every day. The chance they even respond to the first message is like 1/10. So on, so forth. I think I'm a decent catch. I take care of myself. I have a job, hobbies (even ones that aren't video games/TV!), open myself up to plenty of new experiences, try to listen to others, and was lucky to be born with some conventionally attractive features. Hasn't helped very much.
This all sucks, but this is nothing that anybody who has used a dating app could tell you. What really kills it all is A) the way this shitty feeling is monetized to sell $30/mo dating app subs that I will not buy on pain of death B) the white-knuckled grip half the women in the south (where I live) seem to have on outdated gender roles C) the lack of any alternatives
Elaborating on that last point, I live about an hour outside of the nearest city of any decent size. I'm in maximum old-white-people-exurb territory. There's basically nothing for me to meet people my own age, let alone women my age, without an hour's drive. All but three of my friends are guys, and they aren't really positioned to introduce me to anybody either. Out of my ~10 closest friends, only one of them has even been in a relationship in the past 5 or so years. I can't move because I'm at my parent's house right now and it feels super hard to justify moving out when you're making less than 50k/yr and have a stable family situation just because I'm sexually frustrated. It's been so long I feel like I wouldn't even know how to flirt or recognize flirting even if I landed in a miracle situation anyways.
What do yall think? Am I making too much out of it?
The real problem is that making friends is hard. I've always dated people who I was introduced to by friends. Never had a single date on an app in my life. Ask yourself how to befriend people before asking yourself how to get on dates
travel back in time into a time when we all weren't so terribly alienated?
Yeah it's terrible, but there are always ways. There are people who really want to connect with you in that world
god I wish anyone wanted to connect with me but I don't think there is anyone even if I went out somewhere
Not with you in particular but they'd like to connect to someone who has something that you have
I mean its definitely still possible to make friends, but goddamn has it gotten hard, and to try to have a real friend group seems basically impossible. everyone is moving all the time, working too much, paying too much rent for tiny apartments too small to invite friends over or to have parties at.
nah that's wack. i had an ltr for most of a decade, never had an irl friendship last longer than a year beyond whatever activity was driving the socializing, and the online-only friends have been (understandably) entirely useless at helping me get a date because that's not what they're for.
it's probably more impossible to make platonic friends past college-age than it is to get a date, even if i had money and wasn't completely atomized and isolated in a hostile uncaring society.