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I became a widower in my 40's. I've not been in any relationship since then. Now that I'm approaching retirement age, my expectations for any future relationships are pretty much gone.
It's the same problems I see a lot of guys dealing with. You're not particularly handsome and loaded. You have to work lots of hours, sometime on off-shifts, just to get by. So going to the gym and being healthy, while important, can't be a priority. So you already don't usually interact with many people on a regular basis, especially women. Online dating is a joke for men. I've tried using meetup.com for local singles, and that hasn't been much better. The singles meetups would often be heavily men and not many women. I've tried getting involved in activities that tend to draw in women (wine tastings, for one) but those tend to be mostly married women.
Not once, ever, have I been hit on by a woman of any age.
I rarely meet women who are single, age-appropriate, and have any interest in dating. I had to rule out the possibility of ever having children when I could never find a woman with any interest in having children. I meet lots of much younger women regularly, usually as baristas, bartenders, waiters, etc. They will talk with me and we'll have some back-and-forth banter, but there's never any interest beyond that. This crap I hear about younger women preferring to date older men, I've never seen much actual proof of that happening.
A few men I know my age have found wives from outside the US. Some of those relationships have worked, more have not.
I don't know what's broken and how to fix things. I never imagined it would be like this.
Since your wife passed roughly how many women have you actually asked out you? How many women have you flirted or bantered with?
First a lot of women will refuse to ask any man out. If you talk to these women, they are absolutely convinced that men aren't interested in women who ask them out and that by not asking men out, they feel they are avoid the embarrassment of chasing after men who aren't interested in them. Even if you flirt and banter with them unless you actually ask them out, they still feel that you aren't seriously interested in them, you are just joking around with them and not really seriously interested in them, because these women feel if you were seriously interested in them, you would ask them out. So for a fairly large proporation of the famale population (I would guess a fairly substantial majority), if you don't actually have the courage to ask them out, they treat that as fairly strong evidence you are just simply not interested in dating them.
Second, a lot of women are just preoccupied with day to day living. Its not that they are interested or uninterested in you as much as they haven't formed an opinion on you one way or the other. Maybe you want to avoid pursuing coworkers, but there are a lot of environments where you can interact with women on a regular basis and let them get to know you, so that they can actually have an opportunity to form an opinion on you.This why people join bowling leagues or sign up for salsa classes or learn to play golf. Those are environments you can interact with women and banter with them and then later ask them out.
Picture based apps. They made OLD much more superficial.
I was married for 7 years and we dated for 3 years before that, so my pre-divore and post-divorce dating experience is conveniently separated by almost exactly a decade. Back then there was no Tinder et al...
The focus now is ALL on the pictures. To the extent I have asked my photographer friend to do a session with me. That is ridiculous, but the *type* of picture is extremely important when you need to influence someone to make a 1-second decision. This is not necessarily conducive to good matches.
Not that OLD was ever good, but it was somewhat better when you had a whole profile where you could share personality. Now you have to display that personality with the perfect pictures that hopefully someone will swipe on in a split-second decision.
I don't want to be approached by some stranger who thinks I'm attractive. It's happened to me before, and sometimes it can be downright scary! Have had two men follow me up to bottom of the stairs where I live because they "wanted to get to know me." (their words; not mine!)
Have walked to the store and some dude followed me. Actually waited outside for me. I had to get the store manager involved (who, luckily was about 6'3, and 250lbs!)
The point is, women have to be vigilant these days, for their own safety. So, yeah. If a man approaches me, my first question would be, "What do you WANT?"
That's entirely different than walking in the park with your dog and passing by the same person every day. Starting, for example, with hello while passing by and working up to what's your dog's name a couple encounters later, then hey the park's closed for maintenance next week, to an eventual stroll around the park together or doggie play date. The people still don't know each other, but it's not an aggressive out of the blue being asked out.
I gave my husband tips on the ski slope before I knew him. Skied a run or two one day. The next weekend the same. Then sat by him on the ski bus. Then had pizza at the end of the trip one evening. He was interesting, so when he asked me out I agreed. I wasn't playing some desperate numbers game, or worrying about whether he'd call, or whether it was going to lead to a relationship. I wasn't analyzing everything he said or trying to see if he checked off all the boxes on some dating requirement list. It was just a date for fun that lead to more dates.
Location: RI, MA, VT, WI, IL, CA, IN (that one sucked), KY
41,936 posts, read 37,191,467 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Taggerung
Dating struggles? Hell, it seems damn near impossible to even meet women and interact with them in a normal, organic manner any more, as a single male.
Sure. It's harder. I'm not in high school or colllege. I'm not at parties and bars 5x a week like I was in my 20s. I am way busier.
So? There are still ways, and even better ways.
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