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Comment by ramesh31 | Hacker News Reader

>I'm 33, only a few months into my current relationship, and I have to say that dating is so much better at this age than it ever was.

You can get lucky. There are certainly unicorns out there. Or you can date younger, if you're ok with that. But by and large, women and men work on different timelines. And you don't realize this as a man until it hits. The vast majority of women are out of the dating pool by 30. And by this age, you've both ossified into separate individuals with rigid expectations and assumptions about life, which makes the flexibility needed to build a real lasting connection infinitely harder.

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I’m afraid that’s quite a bit of self referential bias. So let me raise your hopes with some of mine: I met my wife when she was 30 and already had 2 kids. We’ve been together for 16 years now, got 2 daughters (so 4 children in total), and are nothing like the individuals we were 16 years ago. We’ve grown together, we’ve grown separately - we’ve changed yearly. Since you’re aware of it now: don’t become an individual with rigid expectations and assumptions. Life is constantly evolving.

Aim to hit 80 and still shake your head at the person you were when you was 70 ;-)

Here’s one of my favorite quotes that feels relevant:

“We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played”

You can find love at any age.

I love that quote. :) Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for sharing this lovely anecdote, and for the positive sentiment. Unfortunately I do agree with the person you're replying to - these days, it is vanishingly unlikely to find a partner past your early 30s.

Only a tiny proportion of the adult population in most western countries is single, and asymmetries in the dating pool induced by modern modes of meeting people (ie: apps) have radically upended traditional ideals about coupling and compatibility. Respectfully, if you met your partner 16 years ago (congrats by the way!), that might as well be a completely different world than the one we live in now. I sympathise with the GP's expression of urgency.

I am really really challenging your sentiment - we live in a time where more and more people than ever stay single even in their early 30s. Especially the gender balance there has changed immensly. What evidence do you have to the contrary?

Why wouldn't you date someone younger? At 31 assuming you have your life reasonably together and aren't living in some rural area (or san francisco lol) you can definitely meet attractive and interesting women 25+ that would be interested in settling down on your timeframe. Dating is all about self fulfilling prophecies so if you're telling yourself there are no women available that's what you're going to manifest.

>and aren't living in some rural area (or san francisco lol)

That was a good laugh. I think in retrospect spending my 20s in San Francisco had a lot to do with now being single in my 30s.

Why is that? What's wrong with SF for dating? (just curious)

>"Why is that? What's wrong with SF for dating? (just curious)"

Where to begin?

The tech industry is massively skewed towards male, so right off the bat your odds of meeting someone in your work life is near nil. Then, with the complete lack of affordable housing, there's no such thing as just being a single 20-something living independently and supporting yourself on a non-tech salary. Bare minimum subsistence income is about $80k. So that filters out the vast majority of women who are in non-tech careers and simply cannot afford to move there.

At that point you're basically left with the lucky few locals who have parents that bought houses in the 80s/90s and live with them rent free, or the unicorn types who make enough to live in SF independently.

From that vanishingly small pool of women, you're now competing with the guys who made startup money or have the $300k+ FAANG gigs and can afford luxury vacations, nice condos, BMWs, etc.

An average dude doesn't stand a chance.

Don’t feel too bad about the highly paid tech dudes. Tech dudes don’t stand a chance either because women don’t want to date another tech dude.

I’m turning 31 in a couple months and am coming out of a 5 year relationship. It’s looking grim AF. My only real hope is that I get back with my ex eventually.

I did the fancy vacations. I have the high income (~400k). I have a reasonably high net worth for my age (~2M). Even have the BMW! Didn’t stop her from walking away because she didn’t wanna date just a miserable workaholic techie anymore!!

Honestly, the best candidates that I think many women are aiming for aren’t the tech guys. It’s the guys with rich families. They’re the ones I see not really having any issues because they don’t really need to have any kind of shit job. They got parental money after all.

Would you say that the gender ratio also counts against you as a factor? Do you think you would be probably better off dating transnationally or internationally? Oh, and what kind of Bimmer?

135is convertible. Sporty, outrageously loud, and full of fun. I’d get a 1M but no drop top kills it for me. Also, I don’t have to feel as bad for driving it because a 1M is a collectible now.

Gender ratio is definitely horrible. Likely the worst factor against straight men. It’s obvious everywhere. Dating in other cities is likely a lot better (especially not on the west coast AFAICT). It’s no surprise that most long term couples I’ve met in SF have met outside the Bay Area.

I’ve heard access to the best dating in SF is by getting a cab down to SFO and flying anywhere else.

Is dating really that bad across the entire west coast? Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, and San Diego included? As far as your own dating life is concerned, what do you intend to do for yourself given how bad the circumstances are for you?

I hear LA and SD are better. But otherwise, pretty bad compared to east coast. Gender balance is just not there because of so many tech jobs.

I have nothing I can do. I’ll see if I can meet someone else in another city when I get back to traveling. That’s about my only hope. I have in person activities I do but I don’t think post-pandemic will bring enough new blood to make up for the bad odds. (Even the activity I do which is normally known for being woman heavy is more heavily male here than anywhere else I’ve seen in the world)

What activity would that be? Also, any lessons learned with regard to your ex that you'd like to impart just so the rest of us don't fall through the same cracks you did?

There is no money like old money.

2M@31 means you could do almost anything and not have to have any kind of shit job.

E.g. you could buy a farm in the midwest and hire laborers, marry a local, and live life with the salt of the earth.

Ah, yes, because that's clearly what I want to do. Who really earns 2M by this age and goes, "Yeah, I wanna hire cheap immigrant laborers and live on a farm in BFE." Nearly no one.

> It’s looking grim AF. > I have the high income (~400k). > high net worth for my age (~2M)

SF is like another planet. Unless you're exceptionally ugly or have an incredibly bad personality, you wouldn't have problem dating anywhere else on entire Earth.

I'm 33, living in Eastern Europe, and have nothing special in terms of looks (probably solid 6, but you can just google my username) or money (certainly nothing even close to SF tech salaries). And yet, when I re-activate my profile on Tinder, I get first 100 likes in a first day or two.

probably because its very heavily skewed towards tech dudes

> you've both ossified into separate individuals with rigid expectations and assumptions about life

This is the real issue, not the dating pool.

The obvious evidence against the dating pool is that a fairly large number of divorced people I know getting into serious relationships and married again fairly quickly regardless of their age when the divorce happens.

All of the unhappy single people I know (and there are some happy ones that don't mind) share the same paradoxical thinking: I'm unhappy with how my life is, and I want to be in a close relationship with someone, but am absolutely unwilling to change anything major (sometimes even minor) about who I am, what I believe or how I live.

It seems obvious, but if you are unwilling to change anything about your life, then the only changes you experience are going to be those that are thrust upon you, such as the pandemic.

I’m married to someone about my age, but I don’t see many downsides to dating younger once you’re in your 30s. Mid-20s is old enough for most women to be out of the immature phase of their life, and you’ll have a wife that’s going to look younger longer and be more fertile.

There was no way to type that out without sounding gross.

The proposition for women in their 30s is worse, even if it is easier to find a date. That biological clock is ticking and most men don’t want to date someone older than them.

There are 0 unicorns and 3.9 billion women out there. Many of those are dateable. I can see why somebody would think like you if they've been single for a long time, but my experience has been that arranging dates in my mid-late twenties and early thirties is easier than ever.

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