it's so hard to find someone

esarati,

I can certainly sympathize with you, but I think that you have some deeply rooted misperceptions.

First, me: I am a 30 year old father of 3, have been married for 10 years, have been poly for 7, and while my wife has had many friends, romances, and lovers, sometimes several at once, I have yet to have any relationship outside of her. I have also tried to demonstrate some interest in girls around me and found it a challenging market, even though I figure I am relatively good looking (not handsome maybe, but not bad off) am well educated, articulate, and (hopefully) kind of funny sometimes. I do not, however blame the women for their lack of interest. I look around at the world and try to understand. There are a lot of guys out there with very attractive (physically and/or emotionally) women who are not rich, good looking, or famous. There are also lots of rich and handsome men who resort to calling escorts. That means that there is something besides being rich and good looking that makes the difference, and it is very likely something I can control. In my case I can easily identify the main problem, I don't get out enough. I have spent most of my marriage working 12-16 hours a day, with any free time being devoted to rearing my young children or projects around the house. When I try to get into conversations with women I find that I have little of interest to say, because I don't get out and do interesting things. I am working on fixing this, but until I do, I can't blame women for not being interested in a guy who does nothing but write code and play with his kids.

What I have seen in the world: Now take this all with a grain of salt, after all, I am not exactly getting called up for dates every weekend either, but I have been looking at the world around me for a while and this is what I have seen. First, it is a man's job to get the girl, women wait to be found, they don't find you. This is not a rule, just a general trend due to culture or whatever. I don't really care why right now, it just is. That means that men have to put out MUCH more energy to find a new relationship than women, but you already know that. Second, women have a HUGE variety of things that they are attracted to, but they all fall into generally attractive things (more later). This means that there is no point trying to become the 'perfect guy' or whatever, because no matter who you are, you will only ever appeal to a small subset of women; you can't be attractive to everyone. That being said, there are a ton of things you can do to become more attractive, which is what you need to do. You need to find ways to be happy and fulfilled in yourself. A woman needs to feel like being with you would lift her up, not that you need her around to lift you up. You need to find your interests and do things that interest and excite you. If you are doing things each day that you think are really exciting and interesting, then you are doing things that women will think are exciting and interesting. You also have to SOCIALIZE constantly. If you are the life of the party and meet tons of ladies, you will be much more likely to find people who you are mutually attracted with. Then there are TONS of things about body language and confidence and such that makes a world of difference. If women are taking one look at you and deciding they are not interested, you need to change the way you look, or the way you present yourself, or SOMETHING.

Lastly, I am going to say something that might not be particularly popular, but is my opinion nonetheless. A lot of people will say that you need to meet people 'organically', whatever that means. Basically, if you are going on about your life doing things you like you will meet girls and get relationships. That may be partly true, but that is like saying if you drive around on country roads long enough you will see a coyote; true, but there are much better ways of going about it, like going to the zoo. You need to be socializing where there are attractive women around who you can see and talk to. You need to be socializing with attractive women, and practicing being an attractive guy. I would even recommend getting involved in the pickup community. There are some really cheesy con artists there, but there are also some really good guys with good information about how to become a more attractive person. I would check out http://pickuppodcast.com/ They have some good information, and do reviews on a lot of other groups so you could try to find what will work for you.

Best of luck,

- A fellow under-fulfilled traveler
 
I don't know about directing anyone over to the pick up artists. They may have a few useful nuggets, but, there are unattractive attitudes there that might be catching as well.

I will admit that confidence is attractive, and a lot of what they teach is how to project confidence even if you don't feel it. Sort of a fake it till you make it thing.

So, whether in person or on the Internet, try to appear confident. It helps if you actually do like yourself and are not feeling desperate. I didn't go anywhere near dating until I was comfortable alone. I'm not interesting in settling for less than a great match and you shouldn't be either. It isn't good for either person.

On your profile and in any messages(or in person!) don't be negative. List things you like, not things that you don't like. Don't talk in any negative fashion about yourself or anyone else. Don't be negative about being on a dating site, as the people reading your profile are also on a dating site! You will have indirectly insulted them by saying negative things about yourself.

I dated a guy once, and the flaw that was most annoying was whenever he denigrated himself as "only a nerd". Only? The nerdy streak was the reason I was on the date with him! It was what we were having fun talking about!

Look at the interests that you have and the things that you are best at. Don't hide them! The best matches for you will be happy to talk about exactly those things! I know this because I found nerdy guys willing to talk about programming and video games and molecular gastronomy! And SCIENCE
Muahahahaa! Um.... Anyway.

Confidence! It is attractive. If you don't have it at least train yourself to not talk down about yourself and our interests.
 
Back
Top