Estimated reading time: 18 minutes
For the last 2+ years, I’ve(32M) taken a lot of steps to try and improve my social life. During that time, I moved to a city that is supposed to have a lot more people my age than the small town I was in previously. In the time that I’ve been here, I’ve gotten involved in a lot of things I’m interested in: martial arts, volunteering at church, going to a gym I like, and other smaller stuff.
The problem is, I haven’t met any single women at any of these places. I haven’t been on a date in about 11 years now, and I feel like that fact alone is on me like a bad smell. But I wouldn’t even know that for sure because I haven’t met any women who it would be possible for me to date, let alone someone I would be interested in. Back when I was around a lot of single women(college), I knew I was bad at attracting people but I had one long-term relationship. I’m not a believer in putting people on a 1-10 scale, but I have zero sense of where I stand on overall attractiveness except that I know my face is terribly unpleasant to look at. That’s my only tangible data point. The only other data I have is that most people I know like to crack jokes about men who don’t attract women (I’m not sure if they include me in that or are just not realizing that I’m the butt of the joke), and that my low confidence puts me at a gigantic disadvantage.
With that in mind, I want to experience love and belonging, so I want to know how to meet someone to be in love with. All of my friends are in committed relationships, and I’ve been told more than once that they’d like to set me up with friends of theirs, but none of their friends are available. Saturday nights are the worst for me because everyone(understandably) wants to spend that time with their SOs. There’s no space for a single guy in a gathering of couples, which is fair, so there’s no one to blame but myself. Being excluded at times is a natural consequence of being single. I view it as a sort of penalty for my failure to attract someone.
The next most common advice that is suggested is to go to activities where you can meet people. The trouble is, most of my weekdays are already packed with things I like and people I like. Some of my obligations are slowing down, so I’m thinking of getting back into yoga (I did it a few years back and liked it, but the instructor had a weird thing with calling my body “feminine” which got uncomfortable over time). But I’m worried that I’ll still be stuck in the same problem: what if I don’t meet single women there, and then I feel attached to something that isn’t actually getting me closer to my life’s goal of finding love? Additionally, yoga has the added stereotype of unattractive single dudes (like me) showing up to hit on women and/or stare at tight pants. While I’m genuinely interested in the topic, I don’t want to come off as one of those guys. Since people can sense my lack of confidence, I’m worried that I’ll walk in looking like a big ol’ red flag.
Online dating is a definite no go because it’s too picture-centric. The only way anyone might find me interesting is if I’m talking or doing something. My appearance has zero mileage.
So how do I figure out an activity or commitment to get me closer to finding love? Should I disregard my interests and throw out activities I love to find more stuff until something puts me in front of single women?
-Worthless on Weekends
The first step to any improvement on this, WoW, is to stop kicking yourself in the nuts.
No, seriously. You lead off with a list of qualities you insist you have that explain why nobody should ever want to date you and honestly that’s going to be one of the biggest problems you have to overcome.
Not, mind you, that you actually have these issues – I will say again that if I had a nickel for every guy who thought he was the love child of Quasimodo and the Toxic Avenger and was actually average at worst and usually in need of a better haircut and occasionally a better skincare routine, I’d be able to self-fund The Avengers – but that you believe you do. That is what’s radiating off you like a nuclear reactor with low self-esteem, not your “haven’t had a date in years”.
Seriously, imagine if you came across a single woman in her 30s who was giving off that same general attitude. Is that honestly something that’s going to make you go “yes, I want to take this woman out for a drink and a rousing game of skee-ball?” Or is that more likely to make you say “man, I really don’t want to have to deal with that…”?
Yes, I know you think you’re being brutally honest about yourself. I would point out that the people most invested in being brutally honest tend to focus on the brutality and not the honesty, but also that the people who say they’re being brutally honest about themselves tend to not be honest. It’s much more about feels rather than reals, and no being single for any length of time isn’t “proof” that it’s true.
You want to start having better success meeting women? Start by working from within so that you aren’t kicking your own ass constantly. It’s not appealing to other people and it only handicaps your own ability to improve. Trust me, you can’t shame yourself, neg yourself or otherwise insult yourself into being better. What you should be doing is working on loving yourself enough that you recognize that you should be treating yourself better and learning to recognize and give credit to the things that make you awesome.
A good start would be to start complimenting yourself in the mirror. No, seriously; look at yourself in the mirror and say something positive about yourself. It’ll feel weird and inauthentic at first, but push through that and keep at it. As cheesy as it sounds, the more you start telling yourself that you’re looking good, the more you’ll start to see it.
Now let’s get to the meat of your question, because you have three separate issues here. The first is simply scheduling. This part is the hard part because there are only so many hours in the day. Everything you decide to do comes at the expense of other activities. If you want to add something in to your schedule, it means having less time to give to something else. Sometimes that means giving up free time. Sometimes that means giving up time devoted to things like “sleep”. And still other times, it means swapping things out for different activities… even when those are things you already like.
Under most circumstances, this is where you would need to decide what is going to be a higher priority for you – the activity and social group you already like, or your goal of going out and potentially meeting people (not women, people, for reasons I’ll get to in a second). If meeting people is going to be a priority for you, then that’s going to take the place of something that isn’t as high of a priority… even if it’s something you already enjoy. If you decide that the thing you enjoy is a higher priority, that’s great… but you still have to accept that you’ve decided that meeting people isn’t as much of a priority. That’s a choice you’ve made, not an inevitable fate handed down by the cold, uncaring universe.
It’s also important to note that you will do much better if you’re going out and doing things that you enjoy that also facilitate meeting new people. If you hate going to bars and clubs, for example, then forcing yourself to go out and flirt with strangers there is going to be a waste of your time. You’ll be miserable, that’ll affect how you interact with people (if you do at all) and then you’ll just go home feeling even lower than you did before. On the other hand, if you, say, find an awesome weekend kickball beer league (to pull a random example) that you dig, you’d be both having a good time and meeting some cool folks. This makes it much easier to commit to going and increases the odds of meeting a sexy someone. When you’re having fun, you’re in a better mood and that’ll come across in your interactions with people.
But I say “under most circumstances” because, quite frankly, with the way you’re talking, I’m not sure it would do you any good. Even if we leave aside the way you think about yourself, you are too busy inventing reasons why doing anything is a hopeless case before you even set foot out the door.
That is the second issue you’re dealing with: you’ve assumed failure before you’ve even begun. In the same paragraph that you mention wanting to get into yoga, you immediately start listing off reasons why you’d be shunned and it would be absolutely pointless because what if, what if, what if, ok never mind it was a bad idea anyway. I’ve already discussed in detail why there’s a difference between “guy at yoga who’s there to do yoga” and “guy at yoga who’s there to leer at women in tight spandex”. Don’t want people to think that you’re the latter? Great… don’t act like him. Problem solved. If someone is determined to think you’re a creeper even though you’ve done literally nothing creepy – you came to class, you did your poses, you rolled up your mat and left – then they’re the weird one and are emphatically not your problem.
That’s precisely the thing you need to get over – you’ve assumed you failed before you even finished talking about the idea. If that’s your mindset, you’re going to fail because you’ve primed yourself to believe it to be inevitable. That means that you’ve set a frame that says that even the slightest inconvenience is a failure and any potential success was something you obviously misunderstood.
There’s also what you said about weekends and how there’s just “no room for a single guy when everyone else is coupled”. That’s not actually true, nor is it true that your friends being partnered off means they have no time for you. That is another example of you coming up with reasons why you’re fucked from jump street. I mean “I see that as my punishment for being single”? Jesus dude, not only is that not how this shit works, but this is why you’re single. I can’t emphasize this enough: all this self-recrimination/self-punishment you’re doing is just making things worse.
I’m going to go ahead and guess that this belief that there’s no room for you is a you thing, not something your friends have said because if it’s something your friends have said then good news, I have figured out how to free up a shitload of time in your schedule.
BECAUSE IT WOULD MEAN THAT YOU NEED NEW GODDAMN FRIENDS.
I can promise you that, if your friends are actually decent people, that they have no problems with a single friend being at their gatherings. If their parties and get-togethers are “must have a plus-one to attend”, then I am honestly at a loss as to why you would choose to hang around them.
But why I bring all of this up is because this is very much about your attitude and your beliefs and how they’re sabotaging you before you even start. If you want to meet women, then you need to actually be ready to succeed, not looking at it as just way of failing more slowly. This means learning to see yourself as a hot piece of meat. You don’t need to be the hottest thing since World War 3, but you can’t start from a position of apologizing for blighting the world with your existence either. Similarly, you want to be going into new situations with, among other things, the idea that these people already like you and are glad you’re there.
As woo-woo-just-**manifest**-success as it sounds, choosing to believe that people already like you works. It subtly changes not just your behavior – you’ll have more relaxed, open and inviting body language, you’ll be warmer and friendlier in your expressions and the ways you talk to people – but how you see the interactions. Your attitude and belief are the filter through which you will see the world. If you believe that people are going to be suspicious and looking for reasons to dislike you, then that’s precisely what you will get… whether it’s real or not. By that same token, if you believe that they already like you, then that’s what you’re going to see, even if their behavior is exactly the same.
And frankly, if what you believe affects the world around you, you may as well believe things that help you.
Now the third issue is going to be taking a more active role in meeting people – and I do mean people. One of the things I tell people all the time is that when you’re going to try new activities, you have to look a couple steps beyond who’s in the immediate vicinity. What if there’re no single women there? Well, you talk with the people who are there – men and women, queer and straight. Because while those folks may not be the women of your dreams, they may be the people who would introduce you to some of them. Meeting people and connecting with them facilitates meeting more people – the people they know. Sometimes it’s as overt as “hey, I told my friend Sheila about you and she wants to meet you”. Other times it’s as roundabout as some of your new friends inviting you out to karaoke and oh look some of their other friends are there too! Now you can get to know some of them – some who may very well be single.
Now let’s take those three issues and look at ways that they interact and make it possible for you to meet folks. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that you go to yoga and as it turns out, the people who are in that class aren’t single. But hey, that’s fine because you wanted to do yoga and meet cool people and now you’ve got some folks who are at the very least, new friends. Now seeing as Saturdays are lonely for you, you decide that the best way you can change that up is to throw a party. Maybe you decide to host a cook-out by your apartment complex’s pool. Maybe you decide to have an old-school kickback in your place. Maybe you decide that the party will be at a nifty bar with interesting cocktails or something.
The point is that you’re arranging an event and inviting your friends – both old and new – to come. And when you’re telling some of your new yoga friends about this shindig, you tell them “and hey, bring a friend or two… but only if they’re cool”, with a bit of a wink because obviously you’re not doing a weird Studio 54 velvet rope thing.
Well, coupled up or not, you’ve got friends coming to spend time with you; old friends you already know and new friends who are getting to see this side of you when you’re in your element as host and “Guy Providing Fun Time”. If those new friends bring some single ladies, those ladies are also getting to see you being at your best and are going to be that much more interested in meeting you and you, of course, are going to treat them like they’re already your new friends because why wouldn’t you be? This encourages them to like you back, which in turn, makes it easier to talk with them, get to know them and see if there’s enough about them that would make them someone you’d like to get to know better. And if they are… well, then it’d be natural to say “Hey, I’m really enjoying talking to you; is it cool if I send you a friend invite on WhatsApp/ Facebook/ Instagram/ Discord/ get your number?” Or even “you know $COOL_THING we were talking about earlier? Well $RELATED_THING is going on this weekend and if you’re interested, I’d love to take you”.
Now does all this mean that you have to be throwing parties every weekend or becoming an event planner for your friends? Of course not; these are just examples of things that you could do. But taking some initiative and creating opportunities for meeting people and having a fun time in the process is part of how you stop feeling like you need to go out and do cold approaches until you want to puke. It’s an organic and natural way of meeting people and upping the odds of meeting someone who you click with.
But none of it can happen when you’re busy apologizing for taking up precious oxygen from all the happily coupled people or because of your supposedly-ever-so-hideous face. Nor can it happen if you’re continuing to insist that you’ve failed and success is impossible before you’ve even started. Start with learning to love, appreciate and value yourself more instead of all the self-inflicted dick-punching. Loving and valuing yourself helps lay the foundations that make the rest much, much easier.
Good luck.
Dear Dr. NerdLove: I think I have a problem and I don’t know if it’s one you’ve handled before. I (non-binary, femme-presenting, 27) went to a local kink event with my best friend (m/29) with benefits where we played with another couple, an attractive woman in her early 30s and her slightly less hot but still good looking husband (late 30s I think?). Things went well, I vibed with both of them and they made it clear that they were into the possibility of seeing me again.
My best friend enjoyed it for what it was, but wasn’t as into it as much as me, so he’s cool with not being involved going forward.
They also made it clear that they play exclusively as a couple, which means either hard swaps with couples or threesomes. I’m ok with being the unicorn, so I had no problem with this at all.
All good, right? Well, lately the husband’s been reaching out to me privately and asking to get together. He’s telling me that they play together exclusively because it’s harder for men to meet women (I had to correct him on my gender) in the scene and so he’d like to see me on his own without his wife. I’m not sure how I feel about it and when I asked if his wife was ok with this, he got evasive and said it was fine but he’d have her confirm it with me. Since then I haven’t heard from her about this, but he’s been relentless in trying to meet up with me at times when I know she’s out of town for work.
I’m not sure what to do here, Doctor. Something about this feels off, but I don’t know if it’s just me. Should I listen to my instincts that this is weird? Do I message his wife privately to check on my own? How does a unicorn handle things when the couple wants to see them one-on-one?
The Last Pornicorn
I’m with you on this, TLP; as soon as you said “asking to see me on his own” my Spidey-sense went off like a car alarm at 4 AM.
Now, before I get into my answer, I have to note that you don’t say that you were interested in seeing him on your own. I don’t know if that means that you’re only interested in them as a couple, only interested in him as an accessory to time with his wife or what, but I feel that this would make a difference in how to proceed. But if I’m being honest, I think you may want to get some distance from them. Quite frankly, there’re very few ways to proceed here that aren’t going to have a high likelihood of blowing something up – either your relationship with this couple or their marriage. And if you’re at the middle of it, then the odds are good that you’re going to get the blame.
Here’s the thing: I don’t doubt that he’s being sincere about why they’re playing as a couple. In the swinger scene, men can be at a disadvantage and so a lot of couples will put themselves as a package deal. That in and of itself isn’t a big deal… provided everyone is cool with the arrangement. Where things get hinky is when someone starts playing the “no no, my partner’s totally cool with it” card without actually ponying up proof that they are cool with it.
This, I should point out, doesn’t automatically mean that he’s lying. Sometimes folks honestly don’t think to provide verification in advance or it didn’t come up previously. But there’re a few things that are causing my Spidey-sense to tingle.
Let’s start with the fact that they’ve said straight up that they exclusively play together in either swaps with other couples or as threesomes. Now maybe they mean at events, but that is the sort of question that deserves some more exploration. Absent confirmation from both of them that they do occasionally see their special guest stars on a solo basis, I’d say that you should take their “only threesomes” at face value.
Then there’s the fact that he’s said “no, my wife said it’s cool” but doesn’t seem to have brought things up with her and the fact that he’s asking to see you when she’s out of town. That is where the tingle goes to a screech.
(Although I also have to ask how you know she’s out of town? Shared Google calenders? You’ve tried to arrange a time for the three of you and her schedule didn’t line up with yours?)
I’d say “give him an ultimatum on having his wife confirm that it’s cool”, but I have to be honest here, TLP: this seems like an arrangement with a strong possibility of disaster. Similarly, I think asking his wife yourself is going to be the equivalent of lobbing a grenade at a box of nitro, and there’s a strong chance that you’d get the blame for the resulting explosion – deserved or not.
Maybe this really is on the up and up and it’s just the case that they’re not the best at communicating and keeping up on things. But to be frank that doesn’t make it that much better; this is the sort of arrangement that requires very good communication and a lot of trust. Without both, it falls apart, messily and all over the place. And – again, assuming that this is all legit – this little incident would be a strong indicator that the communication isn’t as tight as it should be.
But if the guy is going behind his wife’s back, then something’s going to blow, messily and all over the place, very soon, and I think you’d do better to get clear of the blast zone.
I think the best play here would be to just step away. One way or another, best of intentions or not, it seems like a potentially volatile situation with too much risk for too little reward. Tell them both that you had fun but you’ve reached the end of the road with them and wish them the best of luck. You might have to deal with some awkwardness if you see them at other events, but being polite-but-distant will get you through the worst of it.
Good luck.
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