Why You're Still Single (2023)

I'm not sure if the article author sees it as in scope, but an obvious problem here is the paradox of choice and the high absolute bar to getting a date. We're seeing numbers in the range of 100s of attempts to start expecting to find a partner. That seems high.

If we look back at a hypothetical 1900s village, I don't think people necessarily had 100 partners to choose from. It'd be things like "in the local church group, I can pick between these 10 people and I have a very clear understanding of my relative social rank". The decisions made themselves, a lot of people had so-so relationships and that was acceptable because the alternative was worse.

This article is suggesting a much, much higher bar to being in the game than that. A hypothetical dude needs to invest hours solely in finding dates, has to master app use, promotional skills, meet unclear shifting bars and have a good understanding of what signals in the discourse to glom on to and which to ignore as counterproductive. Then multiply that by hundred(s). Some grasp of statistics is recommended. There is a real chance of investing years into a relationship and just having it collapse because a better alternative comes along.

Dating has probably gotten harder. That is before even looking at the changing economics of what a relationship is.

As someone that's been on a good number of dates and had reasonable success, something I've thought about in retrospect:

Date yourself and invite others along. Find things YOU want to do / go to places you'd like to go, schedule it in your calendar and invite potential mates along or join a group of others e.g. a hiking group.

It's also a marathon, not a sprint, and dating is like Leetcode, the more you do it the better you get over time.

Try different things, try the apps, speed dating, grab a drink at a hotel bar, join groups of people, build a network, pay for a coach... The main thing is you try things and learn.

Yes it's effort, yes it costs money, yes you may need to go to the gym and work on yourself, but try to enjoy the process.

Also, don't subscribe to limiting beliefs and don't go marrying the first person you meet just because you think you can't meet anyone else. There are literally millions of people out there, and there are plenty of bald short guys that do just fine.

Lastly, it's totally OK to have standards - go for what you want and adjust and learn, and not everyone you like is going to reciprocate. The main thing is that you make an effort.

Lack of opportunities for casual social interactions has got to be a killer for the introverted who work in sausage-fest industries, especially remote workers. If you can find satisfaction elsewhere, the increasingly high hurdle of initiating a relationship in this day and age no longer feels worth it. It comes down to a cost-benefit analysis, not a binary decision about wanting or not wanting a relationship.

Lots of tech people seem to dislike Tinder. I want to present an argument in favour of the 'swipe and match' model: If your personality is 'stronger' than your appearance, in terms of attracting a partner, this model is actually highly optimal. Think of optimising a database query to maximise selectivity: You want to narrow the search space as quickly as possible. If finding a partner who is physically attracted to you is hard, then everyone who actually does match with you has cleared that hurdle. Lots of tech people seem to idealise OkCupid, but it's really a better use of your effort to swipe/match than sending personalised messages to many people on OkCupid, only for a large amount of recipients to reject you on account of your appearance.

Alternate timeline of dating apps?

> The full right way, of course, would be a revival of OKCupid.

> Here we have a product that me and essentially everyone else who has ever heard of it says was insanely great. If you put in the time on the questions, which was inherently fun, the people who match highly with you are almost always extraordinarily good matches, with very good response rates. My initial response rate was something absurd, and when I got unprompted inquiries they were great. Rather than play a numbers game, I picked my spots and fully customized my messages, and it paid off. Positive experiences abound. Everyone constantly complains that it is gone.

> So, what if we simply created it again, the way it used to be? Do not reinvent the wheel, unless the wheel is lost, in which case by all means go reinvent it, people need wheels.

Speaking as a guy who doesn't want a relationship, every single instance of someone or something asking me to marry (eg: this article) only makes my conviction to refuse even harder.

I can't wait until I am naturally ejected out from the mating market I never even wanted to participate in.

Hi that's me, not even trying, or at least that was me until about a month ago. I had a relationship that affected me horribly in college, that took me 2 years to get over. Whatever you're thinking of, it was worse, and totally ruined my trust in people.

Then I was like eh, fuck this shit because I was in early career and couldn't afford to get mentally messed up again like that. So that was another two years. Cue Covid where I was busy trying to get a startup off the ground and dealing with the simultaneous end of the world and then financially recovering from not getting said startup off the ground.

Then, I got into my groove again and now I'm doing superbly. In fact I am probably only really ready and able to date now. So we're talking 2016-2024, 8 years of singleness.

I was (honestly still could be) very content being single, it's pretty great. I do whatever I want, whenever I want. I have a few close friends for my support and a few more social acquaintances I do stuff with. I make a lot of money for a 29 year old, I have hobbies and workout regularly. Honestly, as a person I feel pretty complete. I don't strongly feel like I need another person to complete me, but I do want another person in my life now.

I suspect a lot of people have just had a lot of heavy shit going on for the last bit of time, and like, the responsible thing isn't to throw your heavy shit onto someone else. Aside from that it takes a lot of energy, focus and caring to grow a relationship and like that's really hard to do when you're busy picking yourself up off the floor or just trying to stay treading water.

Anyway, fast forward to the current dating scene. It kind of blows. Online dating is entirely asymmetric for guys, and interactions are low quality. I get like 3-5 matches a week which as I hear it is a pretty good rate for a guy. Of those matches the quality of conversation is non-existant. "You're cute, let's grab coffee." is what I've been defaulting to now because out of 20-25 matches in the last month I've had literally one engaging conversation. I totally understand why people self select out of that nonsense. I'm just starting to go to events now, because I have no issue walking up to someone and asking them out and at least this article shows that should be a way more sane way to date.

I definitely don't have 57 to 73 minutes to read this article. If I was single I still wouldn't.

Did not read the article in any great detail, just wanted to post my anecdote:

I am a young male, far ahead of the curve career wise compared to my peers while also going for a bachelor in an equally fruitful subject. I have the height of a woman and the body of one too, although my face is not bad. I have passable social skills and have low inhibition when talking to people in general. I am somewhat exotic, not ethnically but mentally, as I grew up entirely in the west, and am now in the east.

In the past 6 months I have been working on a bet with my "local" male friends to get a girlfriend, in that time span I have talked to over 200 "local" girls, pretty much whenever I have a break between sleep, work, and school I am on the lookout for opportunity. I talk to them on campus, on public transport, on weekends when I go out, when I engage in sports, when I am studying, and when I eat. Pretty much the only time I don't is when I am sleeping, because even work and school is not so important to me.

Of these 200 or so girls, I would have no chemistry with 90% of them, not to say the attempt was poor or that I did not make a nice acquaintance, it was just not suitable to go further. Of the remaining 10%, 9% would turn me down when I ask for there number or a date, I would fail some test, I would pussy out, or it just was not meant to be. What struck me the most was how much they would tell me I was being "too nice" with the specific words I would use. Many would say it as though I was supposed to immediately pick up on the signal and talk to them worse. Even after explaining to them that my diction was only incidental, and I was not attempting to respect them intentionally, it would still turn them off entirely. The remaining 1% would likewise be turned off and plead with me, but they were in truth so ugly and/or desperate that they could live with it.

In comparison, in the same period of time I talked to 4 or so religiously/culturally incompatible girls. I won't go into details because it will go against the site guidelines, but I would say some pretty horrible things to them, I would make use of all of my niche religious/cultural/geographic/historical "knowledge" to argue and belittle they're core values (Or atleast those of their fathers), dismiss them, act as though I am better then them, lie and cheat them, and just generally treat them as though they are below me. Out of the 4, one would become a nice acqauintance, one would become a good friend and help me out down the line, one would go out on a date with me, and the final one would give me her number, set up a date, and so on. The last one was some wannabe instagram model way out of my league, she outright invited me on a date (Even then I managed to decline and played it cool, instead invited her to my own date afterwards). Most of all it seemed like my success scaled proportionally with my arrogance.

So to answer the original question, I am still single because I was taught and truly believe in the standard "western" or "romantic" ideal, and I am still hesitant to give up on it in the face of absolute failure.