Asklemmy

I am currently researching if being alone 90% of the time has any impact on the prospects of finding a partner.

After 37,5 years of constant research I have found a quite negative link between being alone and finding a partner

The best advice I can give you is to stop actively looking and just have fun. Join mountain biking groups, hop on Meetup and do fun things in your city or state, and make friends naturally. The healthiest relationships stem from natural friendships because you build up a base of stuff in common and have a lot of trust before you ever make the jump to "do you wanna go out with me?"

All else fails, you can join singles adventure clubs which also look quite fun. The best relationships I've had with men and women were from natural friendships. The most awkward and short ones were generally from dating apps or where they just didn't have much in common with me.

I met my SO through playing 1,000 hours of a video game with them during the pandemic, constantly being on VC with them, then going on a really fun ski trip with them for about a week. I got to learn their habits, temperament, how they handle conflict, etc all over a long period of time. And a lot of my other friends matched in similar ways.

For what it's worth, I notice now when people are kinda hoping to like...date or something vs just be friends. Their body language and behaviors are just ever so slightly different than those that just want to be friends. I think when you aren't looking, people notice that you are more relaxed and don't put up walls as much. Might be one reason why it's easier to make friends as a kid, who knows, though.

If you know you’ll be in a confusing area, there’s location sharing on cell phones. Most of em are good about giving you the opportunity to turn it off. What’s better for if they’re not always gonna have a working phone or might forget it is some kind of tags. No matter how you feel about em, airtags work best for this in the United States because they use apple stuff as a mesh network and there’s more Apple stuff than anything else.

Dating apps are useless for any man who isn’t stupidly handsome or parasitically wealthy. The bottom 90% of men on dating apps are routinely completely ignored. For every swipe an average woman makes that gets a response from a man, the average man has to swipe right somewhere between 500 and 1,000 times to get an equivalent response from a woman, depending on how he presents himself on that platform.

Your best bet is social events IRL, and networking through friends. Aim for connections and friendships over relationships, with at least ⅔ of all new connections being other male friends, as you cannot be seen as “thirsty” under any circumstances. If you come across as desperate, you will be either ignored or manipulated and taken advantage of as a “useful idiot” with nothing to show for it.

Another good tactic is to become intrinsically motivated. When you focus on yourself, cultivate your own personality to benefit only yourself, and adopt a stoic mindset, companionship of any kind shifts from a requirement to a value-added proposition. You need to be completely happy and satisfied with your own solitude and existence apart from others in order to be a good judge of how others are best suited for you.

And many men are abandoning relationships altogether because the juice is just no longer worth the squeeze. After all, why be with someone who hates you for the gender you are? Down that path lies pain and suffering, and it is better for your mental, physical, and financial health to go your own way.

May I ask how old you are? And what do you mean by a real relationship?

It is harder for guys especially when young. Most of my girl kids found guys on Tinder/Hinge, the boys met their girlfriends and wives more organically, out in the world.

But as an older person, I think that it's better not to have a relationship goal, certainly not at first. If you have friends who are girls, they have friends who are girls. Hang out and see where it goes without expectations or goals. Maybe you hit it off with one of them but in any event you talk with girls, and get more comfortable.

Dating apps if you can mentally survive them.

If not, then something like meetup app, find stuff you already like to do and go to events with like minded people. Make friends and maybe something more will come along.

Either way be patient. You can't rush something like that.

It took me like 5 years of heavy app use to finally meet my wife. I met a few nice people in that time, but the process was honestly extremely depressing and difficult.

I hate dating app culture... but I also have some social anxiety which makes meeting anyone organically virtually impossible.

Do you like dogs (Or cats, I guess)? The animal rescue I volunteer with skews heavily towards women. Help some animals, make some friends.

Of course, don't just do it to meet women. If current me had some relationship advice for younger me, it would be to be patient and just make sure you're out there doing things you actually like doing. And be interesting, which, comes from getting out into the world and doing things you like.

Woman here. I met my husband on IRC, on a channel about BeOS, 24 years ago. So don't knock the internet or the bar as potential ways to find someone. If you're meant to be together, it can happen anywhere.

Some great advice here already! So I’m going to suggest something novel:

Consider “settling,” just a tiny bit. What I mean is, don’t be so quick to assess someone new as A Partner…potential or otherwise. Try letting gals in who are attractive enough and carry themselves well, seem sane, easy going, smart, etc. Shared values, that sort of thing. A female friend with potential, if you will. See where it goes; be open to being surprised, pleasantly or otherwise.

I’ve seen so many younger men “auditioning” mates with unrealistic expectations about “clicking” or “just knowing” — and winding up as older bachelors who have never even had a chance to practice being in a relationship.

Yes, like literally anything else worth doing/having, it takes practice!