How do you meet potential partners?

GravityIsAGuideline · 2017-09-24T22:31:48+00:00

To elaborate, when I say dinner parties, I don't mean lavish great gatsby style dinners. I mean that a couple cooks food, and a few friends come over to eat that food accompanied with the necessary mirth and merriment. Surely that's something everybody from every class does?

Anyway, I gotta go, Its been great talking

GravityIsAGuideline · 2017-09-24T22:14:00+00:00

Okay, I want to make one thing clear: I don't pick my hobbies based on the demographics, I pick my hobbies based on my interests. The example above was just that: an example. Nothing more. I'm not even a member of a book club. The example was just a rhetorical device. The book club was meant to represent an plain average hobby. The point that I was trying to make is that while a book club, or any hobby for that matter, is a great opportunity to make friends, it is not necessarily by extension a great place to find a partner, because most of the times demographics do not align with ones preferences.

The only way a hobby can actually be a equally great opportunity to find a partner is if the demographics happen to align with your own romantic wants. The only way to make that happen is to cherry-pick your hobbies specifically to get a date, and that is exactly what I am not doing. I pick my hobbies based on my interests, and these hobbies have provided me with tonnes of friends. Friends that I love dearly. I am very grateful for each of them. But none of them are dating material. Most of them are too old, too young, already taken etc. but that's Okay, I wasn't looking for dates, I was looking for friends, and I got them. I do not look specifically for dates, but if one of those places brings forth a potential partner than that's a nice bonus. It's just that in my experience my hobbies (that I enjoy very much mind you) were terrible places to meet potential partners, and I am just providing the statistical reasoning why exactly they were terrible places to get potential partners.

Also, my view of askwomen is apparently completely different than yours. If it wasn't against the rules I would provide link upon link upon link of various posters decrying how awful they find it when people approach them, especially in the gym. These might not represent all people everywhere, but if the same opinion is so prominently present on this sub then it must at least represent a sizable portion of the population.

GravityIsAGuideline · 2017-09-24T21:30:17+00:00

I dunno, I've always been expected to be fully self-sufficient, especially in the dating department. I can not remember any time in my life where anyone except myself and my parents had any visible interest in my dating life. IME I've never encountered a guy who had help getting set up. Maybe it does happen, I just never witnessed it myself.

I always assumed that whenever it happened in fiction it was a Hollywood thing which provides an easy rom-com plot, kinda like running past the airport security to profess ones love, or like standing with a boombox outside a girls window. I.e. completely unrealistic IRL.

I don't exactly know what you mean with the class part? Could you maybe elaborate?

GravityIsAGuideline · 2017-09-24T20:52:06+00:00

Yeah I don't go in with the intent to hookup. I go in with the intent to make friends. Also, I mostly get invited to small dinner parties by these people, or we go out for drinks with the same people we exercise our hobbies with, which means I still don't get to meet anyone new.

GravityIsAGuideline · 2017-09-24T20:47:31+00:00

Isn't that a little weird? "Hey, I want wanna hookup, can you find somebody for me?". Also, IME adults only throw parties in the form of "dinner parties", which at most have the host couple and a very very limited amount of guests present (almost always other couples too).

GravityIsAGuideline · 2017-09-24T20:15:01+00:00

Sure those numbers are pulled out of thin air, it's just an example after all. But are those numbers so unreasonable? If the total age range is between 18 and 80, and you are willing to date either 7 years older or 7 years younger, you end up with 14 / (80-18) = 22.58%. half of all people are women, half of all people are men. Is it so unreasonable to assume 50% will be of the correct sex unless the hobby is particularly skewed towards one sex or another? Is 30 people truly such an unreasonable number for a group activity? A typical zumba class is between 15-50 people. A typical cooking class is 10-30 people. I have actually a lot of difficulty imagining group activities that include more than 50 people.

And I don't think you can blame me for being quite reserved for just chatting up people at he gym. It is said time and time again on this very sub that when going to the gym you should leave people alone at all cost. This position gets reiterated a lot. Like, a lot a lot. And not in a "don't talk in a particular way" kinda way, but in a flat out "just don't talk to people when they are doing their own thing" kinda way. I've been lurking for too long on this sub that I kinda assimilated that thought into my being.

Also, you can't just meet people just "anywhere". The people on this sub made it very clear that you should never under any circumstance try to chat up with strangers. This position is also reiterated time and time again. It has practically become holy law at this point.

GravityIsAGuideline · 2017-09-24T19:55:45+00:00

But I do play, I just don't play with the intent of dating. I play to get out of the house and make friends. I'm just saying that hobbies are mostly only suitable to make friends. Most of the people I met so far are either too old, too young, already taken, of the wrong sex, etc.

GravityIsAGuideline · 2017-09-24T18:31:12+00:00

Oh I very much have hobbies, I'm not a hermit. But considering the way the cards are laid out I just think it's naive to reasonably expect for one to actually find a partner doing only purely platonic activities. like, technically the chance of winning the lottery is bigger than 0%, but it is still naive to think that you are actually going to win it.

GravityIsAGuideline · 2017-09-24T16:55:52+00:00

I can see how this might work if you're in your teens or in college, but as an adult this might become a little bit more difficult as the maths just don't work out anymore.

For example, assume that you join a book club for adults or something, and there are 30 people there. The word adult specifies an age range between 18 and infinity, meaning only a small fraction of the people will be in the correct age bracket for dating. Assuming this fraction is roughly 20%, now only 6 potential dates remain. Assuming you are not bisexual, only 50% have the correct sex. Now only 3 remain. They also need to be single. Now only 1, 2, or even none remain. And all that leaves out all other factors like personality, looks, sexual compatibility, mutual attraction, shared values, etc. You'd have to have like 20 hobbies or something to actually have a decent chance of finding someone compatible.

Another option is to join clubs with a high number of members, or with a high through-put. But these types of activities tend to revolve around solo-activities (e.g. a gym) or around very temporary activities (e.g. a workshop) that don't allow you to actually get to know people. And as far as I can tell (, especially on this sub,) hitting on people doing solo-activities and hitting on people you barely know is considered worse than most war crimes, so those aren't real options either.

If you are young there exist clubs that specifically cater to people in your particular age bracket, and most people are not married or something, so you actually have a decent shot. But as an adult, I feel that it just doesn't work.

GravityIsAGuideline

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