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.