Jacquelope

Occam's Razor for the win.

What? No! Women should walk around in burkas. LOL I'm only kidding! Seriously. (Though I wonder how far some guys are from thinking that when they say 'slut dress'.) This is freaking America, land of the free. Slutty, not slutty, who cares. Dress how you want as long as you're not exposing naughty parts in public where kids can walk, far as I'm concerned. I don't get what some people's hangups are. On the other hand some feminists have invented the term "stare rape" to describe the assholes who leer at women. That's freaking extreme. You can't rape a woman with your eyes but you can be an asshole who needs to be told off for tracking her like she's a steak passing by. JMHO of course.

That depends on the dating site/app. I used Match to find my wife and there's a hell of a lot you can do to build a killer profile that goes well beyond looks. They even have profile coaches on there. I used one and I've reaped 20 years of benefit from that. Adultfriendfinder has landed a few male friends of mine some great casual encounters and two men married the women they found there. None of them were above average looks. You can load your profile there with content besides looks.... such as erotic stories. Women will answer. One guy wrote a graphic cunnilingus story on there (following my suggestion) and became what some men in my social group covertly call Son of Ticketmaster*. He showed us more than 20 responses and got himself in a little bit of hot water bedding two women at once but he was successful, he just kinda got carried away. Yeah, you can use AFF to find a wife or a casual partner. As usual don't have a slovenly photo and you can make it work. * Back in the 1990s there was this dude that had an overly religious gf who thought his fetish for giving her oral sex was sinful and creepy and she broke up with him, even outed him to the women she knew for special spite points. ("Beware, he's a creep!") Well all that did was have his Motorola flip phone exploding with calls. We called him "Ticketmaster" because as the joke went he had to put up a Ticketmaster booth for all the casual action being thrown his way. Some of my friends were there when this happened; we now call this new dude "Son of Ticketmaster", drives him nuts now that it got him in trouble for double-timing but oh well lol. Good times. Let it be known that you're into going down on her and it never gets old, you'll catch someone. Just.... don't try to two-time, that's like juggling live hand grenades!

This woman is a superhero. It's about time someone said this. Women do get away with pushing this manipulation game and none of these techniques are new, I've seen them my entire life. My one truly bad LTR was a bunch of this crap back during my teens in the mid-late 1980s, 40 years ago. I didn't run away from her at first and ugh. The stink of these tactics drove me away from many women I was pursuing. I thought I was just being chicken or entitled. But I didn't run into that kind of girl/woman ever again so frak them.

Being attached to nothing is impractical and just plain not feasible. It's all about rightsizing your list of attachments, and examining the reasons why you're attached.

My opinion is there is your problem right there, you walked up to her because she is beautiful. What else do you know that she had going for her? I think you should try pursuing or getting to know a woman w ho has a lot in common with you rather than someone who is beautiful. Maybe even search online, but STAY AWAY FROM TINDER. Tinder is the soul eater of dating apps. Think about what interests, values and personality type you want in a woman, as well as what interests you hope she shares with you. Then go to some place like Match or Eharmony which gravitates heavily toward long term relationships. I'd advise you disfavor hookups. Hookup culture greatly favors women, they have ungodly amounts of power over men when it comes to looking for casual sex. Partially because so many women are not in the market for casual encounters, more than men realize. You're facing less competition if you're looking for a LTR (not no competition, but less). The extreme amount of competition you had (and did not see) for that woman you approached was your biggest cause of failure.

Also see my thread about the dangers of basing a relationship off "the spark". People are addicted to this craze about love at first sight and it's actually more toxic than beneficial to a long term relationship, at least that's my opinion. And what is this obsession about "high-value"? Isn't that transactional in nature? I don't see how that's going to result in a holistic fulfilling LTR. It sounds more like a business contract to me?

Lucky indeed. She checked off all my important boxes but there's nothing to say we couldn't have become friends-only. Knowing what I know now and imagining us being friends only? Dreadful.

I married my soul mate but I can't guarantee my methods will help everyone. First I looked for a woman whose lifestyle was compatible to mine. I also selected for strong moral character and empathy. Our sense of humor also had to connect in some way - not be the same, but at least connect. We needed at least some overlap in interests, too. (I'm a geek and my wife knows more about comics than I do lol.) If you noticed looks were absent in this list... well... YMMV of course. About 20 years, 4 kids and still going.

I hate giving women the power to reject me and boosting her ego at my expense. Women need to be more proactive and share in the risk, simple as that. Ultimately though I didn't always have to be the one to "man up" and approach women. My wife approached me first and she wasn't the first to do that. These outdated gender roles can go roger themselves.

Nikola Tesla wants a word with you

It would have been a New York tragedy (like Sex in the City level) for her to have learned how much men care about looks and then run into me back in my single years. I was wary as holy fuck about hot babes. I had learned through years of observation and unfortunate personal experience that they have enormous power in the dating scene and play way too many games. My first relationship with a hot woman was in my teen years and it was dreadful, as in so bad it made up for all the hell that I avoided in future relationships. I watched them in social settings and other relationships and they truly are different than the average woman. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Likewise angels fear to tread where fools fall off of cliffs, and I strived to be like these angels. Let the fools rush ahead and spring the traps for me, like the glass floor contest in Squid Games. This lady in this video would have run into me and found a man who was more interested in her moral character and personality than her looks. And she would have been very confused. But I learned to adapt to this after being thrown in the emotional wood chipper by my first hot babe girlfriend and 'get a hot babe' (as in the obsession with them) elicits an allergic reaction with me. I'm sure I'm not the only man who is like this, in fact I've met quite a few who aren't.

It all makes sense to me. My hottest LTRs lasted the shortest, but my marriage came from a slow burning fuse. ~20 years and counting!

I identified one of the fundamental common denominators for every relationship that lasted over a year (including my marriage which is ~20 years and going). For my wife and I our spark grew, it didn't flash combust upon meeting each other. Ditching the "happily ever after" in favor of working on our relationship is what kept us together for so many years. The relationships I had that started with the spark as this lady described it, lasted the shortest amount of time. That's my take, anyone else got an opinion? Thanks!

Bloody fabulously said.

Good to see at least one of the apps work for some. Best of luck!

Grats! I met my wife on Match. Thank God we were ~15 miles apart plus gasoline was $1.50 a gallon. Which dating site was it, if I may ask?

Over 60% of young men are single and girlfriendless. And let's face it, if you're part of that lower 80% eventually a woman will date and may even marry you. But that ain't gonna last long and if it is, it's not going to be happy for long. Dead bedrooms hit far more marriages than infidelity or divorce. Okay it's not like women aren't stricken with these same traumas, poor self-esteem, lack of confidence, and other unhealed issues. Basically what we have is men having to come with no outward trauma and all his issues resolved... but in so many (but not all) cases he's hauling her baggage. Why do men have to haul women's emotional baggage but not the other way around?

Well I speak as a Gen-X'er, someone who spent the first decades of my life with zero internet experience and drowning in street life, which colors everything that I write. As for Based, it means based in reality, real talk, that kind of thing. "Most of these social skills you are building get you further and furher away from your real self." wasn't the only sentence that knocked it out of the ballpark but this is an essential af caveat that must be attached to ANY talk about social skills whatsoever. To thine own self be true.

Step up for what, though? A young woman who is in their fucking and sucking (F&S) years? You're vying for a ticket on a train that's taking you right to Ground Zero. I see no sense in being there before the F&S bombs fall any more than after. And if my 20s were any indication the F&S wasn't all that great, she wasn't any better skilled than the male airheads she will (nowadays) monkey branch to. It doesn't matter how you step up, you are the next wine to be tasted at the winery. Women in that age group are never loyal; it's only ever your turn, and it's the same for men in that age group, it's only ever her turn before he monkey branches to the next experience. Back in my day the problem was they were air heads. Monkey branching wasn't as common as it is today. Even the "newer models" aka virgin men and women have FOMO. The common denominator is young people, they're utter trash nowadays now that Tinder has polluted everything online and offline. Everyone thinks the next wine taste is right around the corner, there's always someone newer or better to sample. Lemme repeat, getting a virgin is NOT going to negate that... Yeah it's true, as a man things are different - it's like the dating version of shrinkflation out there. You're doing tons more for tons less value. Paradoxically stepping up is what is making things worse. The higher the effort-input differential between men and women, the higher the differential women will want, and the less they'll give in return. It's a death spiral. Literally the laws of economics are in full Beast Mode in dating.

Women my age always icked me tf out until I hit my 30s. They were dumb, highly immature, too hooked on pop culture and conformity, and dating dudes who were the same. My sad reality was dating them, destroying my anime collection to fit in*, suffering soulless LTRs, breaking up, and reminding myself what I really wanted was an older (30something) woman. That in turn left me dodging women with mountains of emotional baggage, single moms, etc. Basically I had to thread the eye of a needle with a freight train. OMFG it was not easy. Then one day, Steve Harvey came along and said, "Don't hate the player, CHANGE THE GAME." This one statement TRANSFORMED me. I literally saw the light. I quickly worked it out in my head that I needed to NICHEMAXX. I couldn't find any women anime fans that didn't stick me in the LJBF jail, but I did run into women who were into younger men, sexual roleplay (dom and sub alike), interracial relationships, etc. That was potentially equally problematic, and was still a big case of needle-threading, but they weren't younger stupid women, so now I was occasionally bringing home LTRs from the metaphorical JC Penney's and Macy's rather than raiding the trash bin behind Dollar General like I was before. So if you're goth, a music nerd, etc., and dating is a desert for you, try nichemaxx'ing as one way to change the game entirely. Eventually in my early 30s I met and married a woman who knew hilariously more about Marvel Comics than I did, and caught onto anime and gaming like a bird to flight. But now I have a son whose voice has started cracking and I lose literal sleep wondering how he is going to navigate the dating scene. I feel like the door is slamming shut and if he even does make it, it'll be him scraping himself barely getting in for the last scraps of desirable LTRs. ONS is totally out and a non-starter for 80% of men, that era is over, kinda like home ownership lol. By the time my grandsons come along, 60% of men will be virgins at 20 and marriages will be 7 year contracts unless you plan on having kids, and then it'll be ~18 year contracts. I guarantee you this will be culturally set-in by 2060. There'll be so many wizards out there the US Army will have its own Arcane Battle Corps lol. * In my early 20s, friends over-reacted with shocking hostility when they merely saw my "Nausicaa" VHS tape on a book shelf, calling me a perv and all that crap. It took until decades later to find out from one buddy that they had associated anime with pedo porn (like "Wandering Kid", etc). Kinda makes sense, really.

Step up your game for what? The juice isn't worth the squeeze anymore. If she thinks she can get the perfect man she will never love any real human male for him. All she will be doing is looking for an accessory. Better a man be alone in the desert than with a woman like that. Quite close to what is said in the Bible. Edit: And I would have never, ever become a passport bro.

Women aren't at the level where you can't unsee what their true nature is, but they certainly jumped MANY steps in that direction after Tinder hit big. Things have gotten a LOT more transactional since then. Things will never get better, not even offline. ESPECIALLY offline. Love isn't dead post-Tinder but it is on ventilator and dying of spiritual COVID. Edit: @flowboy , your post is so unbelievably based.

If I was single, I wouldn't see the benefit of doing so. Why am I going to feed a woman's ego at the detriment of mine? And if someone goes on a spiel about how rejection doesn't hurt and you gotta man-up and tough it out, that's where I'm just going to tune that out as background noise. If 50% of men are at my side on this then I really don't have to listen to that - the revolution is already on and if I was single I'd be on that side. I honestly wouldn't want to deal with a cowardly woman who's too scared or too self-entitled to make the first move. Besides? My wife approached me first, and she wasn't the first to do so.

I'm going to have to address this because it's the most important and damning part. This myth about men being less given to emotionally commit is just locker room rumor and it's also highly toxic. Men who aren't damage develop deep emotional connections with their partners, particularly when they fall in love. Men who don't, are just as likely as promiscuous women to cheat or otherwise have little investment in the relationship. Let's say you're right - in that case it is still damaging enough for men and women that who's damaged the most really doesn't matter. Promiscuity for either gender is as much a sign of emotional or mental issues leading to promiscuity as those issues are caused by promiscuity: either way it doesn't bode well for that person in a LTR/marriage. Of course then what is "too many partners"? I ain't gonna get into that.