Roughly speaking:
- Work in public. I have met a lot of people through the work I do (see my profile). All sorts of good relationships have come out of that. Being open, friendly and generous with my time has helped a lot.
- Be genuine. Join communities as a sincere participant. Don't join a community to hit on its members. Everyone hates that.
- Be open. I have taken to inviting interesting internet strangers to meet, and had a lot of success with it. If I enjoy people, I actively reach out to them. Most people are friendly, just a little busy.
Time to recreate your life anon.
Met my SO after I had stopped looking for romance at a hobby club. In social and hobby contexts people can glimpse the breadth and depth of your personality. Others can vouch for you and speak well of you. You actually have something to talk about. It feels much more organic and not forced at all.
I challenge you to make 200-300 friends and acquaintances and not find a romantic relationship. Looking back, that's actually what I was doing, and somehow romance fell into my lap. We go married last year.
I find it a struggle to even become casual acquaintances with more than a handful of people a year.
There are some very low resistance social graphs. Just travel them consistently.
This contradicts everything else you say or imply here. Try to see how you fool yourself here.
If meeting a spouse is not that important — don’t pretend it is, just live your life as usual.
If it is important — then realize that it is not a business, not a process to measure ROI, not a jira ticket to resolve and forget etc.
you have to start trusting your gut feelings and be prepared to give away a substantial part of your time, your life, your energy to this new family you want to build together.
My mother kept persisting and I finally caved, just to shut her up. Three kids and nearly 20 years later, we're doing good. She's still gorgeous.
My only advice is:
- Create as many opportunity for chances as you can.
- Get out, attend activity-related events that aren't focused on dating (running or sports clubs, sewing clubs, meetups, whatever). Since they're not focused on dating, everyone's more at ease, their guard is down and everyone's more laid back.
- If you're in your 30s or later, consider long-term compatibility traits. If you are big on being smart with money or being healthy/fit, don't match up with someone who isn't. Chances are, you aren't going to change them. Same goes for the inverse.
We did long distance back and forth for ~2 years and then got engaged and married and now she lives with me in the US.
Anyway, what worked for me:
1- go to places where people hang regularly and have a chance to speak: climbing gym, diving club, a quite bar with game nights etc... Be ok to just making friends and see how/if that evolves
2- pay for dating apps, contrary to what people may tell you here. your time is precious and paying will allow you to skip some of the silly mechanics such as cool-down periods or gambling like mechanics (looking at you tinder!)
Edit (more thoughts on dating apps) don't overthink a match or a swipe, they're equivalent to a look from across the room in a pub.
It was a long time ago...before online dating so make of it what you will.
But it never was an optimization problem.
With relationships, all the work is ahead or it's not a relationship.
The selection process feels like work, but it isn't because it is easier than the work of a relationship.
Easier than the work of making a relationship work.
Good luck.
I was a year or so out of a 15 years relationship by then and she knew I had started to 'look around' again
