Anonymous wrote:Don't track across the DMV in bad weather. Meet where convenient, or not at all. You don't have to be unkind about it, just put your own time first.

Anonymous wrote:I have been using dating apps for TEN YEARS. First Okcupid, then Bumble, and now Hinge.
Throughout my life, including the years before online dating, I’ve only had boyfriends every four years. 2012-2013, 2016, 2020.

My online dating cycle goes exactly like this:
Swipe through 100+ guys who liked me. Match with about 25 of them. Respond to about 10 of them. Carry on conversations with 5 or 6. Go on dates with 3.
One date will be horrible. I’ll trek all the way from Maryland to Virginia in awful weather to meet a guy who is completely boring, or creepy, or incorrigibly awkward.
Another date will be reasonably fun. Carry on a good conversation but not much physical attraction.
Another date will be both attractive to me and fun, good conversation, and things seem great. The guys says he’s interested in a second date but never asks me.
I go on a second date with the guy who was reasonably fun, but not that physically attractive to me, thinking that if I give him a chance, there will be something about him that will ignite a spark. It doesn’t. He either senses that I’m not interested and doesn’t pursue anything further, or we go on a third date and I have to end it before it goes anywhere physical because I’m still not feeling it.

Get disillusioned with online dating and give up. Two weeks later, repeat the process. Or maybe I’ll reach back to one of the other matches, giving them a second look, but it’s usually too late.

As I said, I’ve only been in three relationships, one every four years. And they all fizzled out after about six months due to lifestyle differences or jobs.

The one upside is that even in my 30s, I haven’t seen a decline in quantity or quality of matches from when I first started. Maybe fewer obvious creeps. I’ve broadened my horizons to consider men into their 50s, divorced men with children, men without college degrees, and I’ve long since stopped caring about height and I never cared about race. And it’s 2024, so by that rule of my life I’m due to find a boyfriend this year, so…who knows.

For what it’s worth, I’m slender, I have long natural hair, I’m fiscally responsible/financially independent but not career-obsessed, I’m feminine in the ways that it matters, very low body count if that’s important, I think I have plenty to bring to the table in a relationship, but I’m perhaps too jaded and guarded to let loose and be flirty and feel sexy around strangers.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think we are all missing that OP had a very GOOD decade on OLD! Every time she wanted to she secured a boyfriend. The problem is going on with the relationships, not how they meet.

Why do you say she secured a boyfriend every time she wanted to? That’s not at all what she said. Sounds like she’s been looking for a long term relationship, mostly unsuccessfully, for 10 years.

A six-month relationship in your 20s is significant and OP had multiples of those.
I think I only had 3 relationships that lasted 6 months-year in my 20s and I never considered myself bad at dating. Interspersed with that was a lot of crushes, weeks-long situations, and periods I was too busy to date.

OP is pretty vague about how the relationships ended, so I think she should tell us more about that. Clearly her issue is not getting dates, but who she choses to commit to and then whay happens there.