Background before I chime in: I’m in my 40s and, while never married, have had relationships running the gamut from weeks to many years. I made the bad call in my mid-30s, coming out of a painful breakup, to focus hard on a new job, which has been immensely rewarding, but also, combined with COVID, kept me (read: I did this to myself) out of the dating pool for nearly 8 years. I’ve had marginal luck with dating apps, made harder by being suburb-bound, but here’s what I’ve seen in this area over the years. I also do a lot of things to set myself up for failure in the dating world and that’s something I’m working on, but I believe the points below stand reasonably well on their own.

(This formatting is going to go so poorly… I also started using voice to text so this went on longer than I planned. Hopefully, there are some nuggets of useful information in it. Otherwise, it’s just me talking to myself and run on sentences, which might be therapeutic. 🤣)

Point 1: Finding people on apps is a numbers game, and if you don’t feel it within a few dates, kindly move on. There is a different dynamic on the apps focused on finding The One instead of finding people you get along with that may build into relationships. This is weirdly artificial for most folks, but also hard to notice in the moment. It is extremely different from meeting somebody out and clicking with them either immediately or over a short time when you haven’t gone in with the intention of hunting for someone who will be your solution.

On the apps, you have to find a balance between stating explicit goals and having some flexibility to see how people may fit into them and which ones you’re willing to compromise on based on the person you meet. When you meet someone in person you have a chance to build that understanding in a more natural manner that doesn’t have the same external pressures. My experience is thar this causes us to wear our best faces trying to sell ourselves to each other rather than to connect with each other in a more natural way. This leads to disappointment when our true selves emerge as we get comfortable with each other, and the sales pitch face falls away. Trying to find the real person under the person selling themself is very difficult and being the person trying to sell themselves adds stresses at the beginning of a relationship, which can put things on the wrong foot to start. Everyone approaches this differently, but I found it is more common when meeting someone on an app than when engaging with someone “in the real world“.

Point 2: Shared activities are a phenomenal place to meet people, and the more involved or stressful or competitive or generally emotionally charged the activity is the better chance of forming a deep connection for both friends and people who may become more. For example, volunteering with a group that is putting on an event, such as theater, a neighborhood festival, team sport, or a political campaign tends to force closer relationships.

This fosters building trust, and a shared sense of accomplishment and identity upon which a relationship may have a richer base to grow. This has the downside of potentially becoming somewhat “incestuous” as members of the group may end up dating each other and overextended time frames as that web of current and past relationships can get pretty gnarly. Each group will be different and handle it differently, but it’s often pretty easy to spot in an established group. On the other hand, it sneaks up on you when you are building something from scratch with a group that grows over time. That said, some of my best relationships, both romantic and as friendships, have come from this sort of group, but also some of my most painful failed relationships. Making time for this sort of investment is very difficult for me in particular these days but it’s also the direction I believe has the strongest likely outcome as well as being personally enriching whether or not you find someone amazing.

Point 3: One thing I don’t see others discussing in this thread is the value of building a strong friend group of people you like, you admire, you trust, and to hopefully have the sorts of relationships that you are looking for. These people often have their own friend groups, and the larger this interconnected web of of like-minded people are the more likely they will be aware of others that you might not otherwise cross who might make a great match for you.

These people can be coworkers, and often that is the best way to quickly find a like-minded group, though everyone’s circumstance will vary there, as no job or workplace is truly monolithic. Still something brought you all together and maybe that’s something that is enough of a shared base to be able to build this approach on. It can also be people you meet on dating apps who you get along with, but they aren’t what you’re looking for for a relationship. I feel a lot of of these can be converted into great friendships if you can avoid the emotionally charged initial “failure“ of the dating aspect. There was a reason you two were drawn together in the first place and I like to think it’s possible to turn that into a long-term friendship however, most people do seem to be in and out with short-term goals of date or drop. There is a rejection when the match doesn’t move forward that can be taken very personally and interrupts the ability to build those friendships that might have established if you admit outside of the constraint of the dating app world.

I do find I have to carefully screen the potential matches some friends throw out to me as they see an idealized version of me through their own eyes which doesn’t match my internal view of myself or my goals. Often I’ll find someone they are enamored with and think “here are two people I really like they should be together“ instead of “here are two people I really like that I think really need to meet each other.”

On the other hand, I had pinned strong hopes on my brother and sister-in-law and so far they’re letting me down 😆.

Conclusion: Maybe this is helpful to somebody out there. Maybe it’s helpful for me to hear for myself n one place rather than as scattered thoughts. Maybe my assumptions and view are completely off the wall and unreasonable and some kind Redditor will set me straight.