Men should work on themselves (gym, purpose, income, friends, hobbies), go out, and meet women in real life. Being able to date as a capable man in today's society is hard. You have to be a lot of things and be constantly working on yourself. I have some theories as to why this is, but it's the truth. The top 10% of men in the dating pool end up dating 80% of the women. Most men have no dating or sexual prospects at all - it's very binary.
I'm not stating this to brag but only for context: I get many concurrent matches when I'm on dating apps. I'm wealthy, pretty good looking (but short which is a big hit), and have a lot of hobbies and am in good shape. Overall, I'd say I get ~100x more matches than most guys and actually have girls who slide into my DMs on Twitter and Instagram. I still deleted all of the apps because I'd rather meet women in real life and I'm way happier and suggest all guys do the same for their mental health.
Online dating doesn't compare to real life. Not saying it can't happen (my ex-ex-girlfriend and I met on Hinge and it was great), but it's just not the same. I find I can meet higher-quality women in real life because I can show up with full energy and depth and showcase confidence in a way that's impossible when she's looking at me in a sea of other matches. I also think dating apps are a bad deal for women as well. They meet a bunch of men who will sleep with them but aren't looking to settle down. It's hard for women to judge the real energy and confidence of a guy online. It's just not a great dynamic for both parties IMO unless you're exclusively looking to hook up (which is fine and people should do what they want).
As a guy with extreme anxiety dating apps were life changing in a good way for me. I could put in a lot of effort into the looks aspect: gym mainly, but also clothes and professional photos. Then I could message and get comfortable and "know" the person before meeting them in real life. I had zero success in real life. I am far too anxious and socially inept to handle that. But I can definitely understand why they wouldn't be perfect for most.
> I am far too anxious and socially inept to handle that.
I was too (and still to a degree am). I once shared a rental with a female socialite. She said she accepts EVERY invitation to go out and suggested I do the same.
Getting used to being around people and being in awkward situations where you have to talk to randoms will develop calluses. It is a skill you can develop by just practice. (public speaking is another example).
I look forward to talking to you in a random party! :)
+1 to this. I had crippling social anxiety. Working with a therapist, I tried out exposure therapy - which was basically going out of your comfort zone more often. It definitely helped with my social anxiety.
For anyone in this situation and thinking nothing will help, I also had a positive experience with exposure therapy. Around 15 years ago I remember walking to get a pizza and approaching the restaurant getting pins and needles on my back, and drenching myself in sweat from anxiety.
One of my no-gos was going to weight room/area of the gym (I could tolerate cardio area) and one of the first homework activities things my therapist gave me was going to weight room and sitting for 5 mins to do some stretches. It was awful, but within a few months I slowly progressed to the point I was even confident enough to work with a personal trainer.
Slow but consistent incremental exposure to my triggers absolutely made a huge positive impact for me.
It's interesting you mention gym anxiety. I've had severe social anxiety my whole life. But the gym has been my outlet for 20 years and a great way for me to be around people in close proximity with really ZERO obligation to interact beyond gym etiquette and such ("how many sets you have left?", asking for a spot or being asked). It's a low risk social situation and helps me stay motivated to be around other people training. Get out in the world in a regular predictable way.
Due to a back injury (from pushing myself too hard, it wasn't just a shit-happens injury hencemy user name) that had me in horrible pain for the last 2 years I now get literal panic attacks in the environment I used to go to RESOLVE a panic attack. Ain't that some shit? My fear of reinjuring myself and going through the whole experience again is just too much. Even though I've learned my lesson and just desire to stay fit and functional I don't think I'll ever step foot in a traditional gym again. I like being able to sit down to make a poop in the morning without a burning ice pick shooting up my spine... I see what pro athletes talk about when a catastrophic injury and the painful and lonely recovery process robs them of the confidence to perform.
In between the pandemic and this injury the last 3 years have been very isolating. I've developed real fear of being in public from the amount of time I've been alone and physically confined. I feel like I got out of a 3 year relationship with a crazy overbearing girlfriend that no one could stand to be around and realizing how it just pushes people away.
Is getting better but doing things like progressing from a coffee to-go from a cafe, to actually sitting down for prescribed lengths of time and observing the waves of anxiety has been... interesting. You have to continually and willfully push your boundaries as you said but in safe increments the same way you increase your lifts in safe manageable increment. But it's hard to quantify how much more difficult one social setting or situation will be versus another. What's the "add 5 pounds" for exposure therapy? Haha. I'm sure it's different for every person.
I work with a therapist and it's going to be a process. Just started doing in office visits again. Social calluses indeed.
In the same way I associate discomfort and stress with progress in powerlifting (and subsequently in physical therapy) I try to tell myself that I'm not going to improve socially by putting myself only in comfortable situations.
Good luck. Looks like you've got a program that is working.
Have you read “Body by Science”? It’s a simple workout routine that works (I doubled my strength in a few months) and it is super safe. The book has all the science details for how it works.
Love this. Hoping you conquer your social anxiety over time though. Not just for dating but for yourself! I can understand btw - was prescribed antidepressants and antipsychotics from a young age and had to figure out how to live without them. Shit is hard.
Thank you for the kind words! Shit is hard. I am happily married so hopefully will never have to return to the dating pool :). Don't think I will ever conquer it, but I have learned to live with it and it is not bad as it once was. Ironically by accepting it and not trying to fight it, the power it has had over me has diminished. Good luck to you too and I hope you figure out whatever you are dealing with!
I'm also going to offer some advice to the men out there that may hit some people in the soft spot. I apologize in advance but this is some tough love: please, please work on your stamina for when you do end up in bed with that special someone. Ejaculation isn't the finish line and your partner will appreciate you aren't racing off to its little death.
I've learned to really enjoy all the other feelings around sex not ejaculating and that has given me a whole new lease on the act and my partners have really, really appreciated that I don't go for 5 to 10 "cum and done".
There's tons of methods of training yourself out there. Just Google around. It really helps when dates are thinking if they should keep dating you.
And yes, sex isn't everything but good sex sure does help and it's an intrinsic, important part of coupling.
> please work on your stamina for when you do end up in bed with that special someone.
I agree 100% and echo the same.
> Just Google around.
Google and YouTube will give you pelvis exercises, and that’s “not” the solution. My friends with that syndrome have met therapists and doctors to no avail.
>The top 10% of men in the dating pool end up dating 80% of the women. Most men have no dating or sexual prospects at all - it's very binary.
I've heard these numbers passed around but does anyone have a source for this? I ask in part because my own life experiences and observations match well with your first sentence - a person who works on themselves, IE: has hobbies and activities, has a viable career, etc - will be attractive to someone out there in the world. There is a body size and shape that will appeal to everyone, education and career are negligible as long as you are doing "something" with your life, etc.
That almost reads like an ad-hominem attack against someone whose perception of reality you don't understand.
My experience, too, is that the energy of meeting someone in person is much better than "meeting" someone online. Also, it's much easier to qualify if the person you're dating is mentally stable and at ease with themselves if you see them in person. It's way too easy to hide serious character flaws when only chatting online. But for a relationship, they'll be deal-breakers.
That means unless you want to waste hours on dates that lead nowhere, you need to quickly meet the other person in-person to do the basic sanity check.
Plus there's all that pheromone stuff which is impossible to check for online.
Seeing how many followers his Twitter has and other metrics the 30 under 30 list is still as useless as I remember it being. I wonder how much money his parents had to spend to
help him look like this. Even then he gives off the vibes of someone desperate it's probably why he uses it so frequently. Can't find any real form of connection with others yet doesn't understand his own problems and why women find him so unappealing. A real life click bait but that's what gets the most attention on these sites instead of any real form of human connection, though physical appearances do play a big role. So does a lot of things like proximity and well personality.
> The top 10% of men in the dating pool end up dating 80% of the women. […] Most men have no dating or sexual prospects at all - it's very binary.
I do not believe this to be true just based on what I observe in my social circles. It might be a bit skewed but these numbers sound absurd - do you have any source to back them up?
> The top 10% of men in the dating pool end up dating 80% of the women
I am sorry but this is BS. Mathematically speaking it's impossible.
It's the emotional component which makes people feel like perennial underdogs and say abominations like the above.
No matter how rich you are you can only bring one girl to a dinner date per night. Even a guy like Dan Bilzerian is on the record saying that a vacation in which he brings more than 8 girls rapidly becomes hell
What is true is that the top 1% of males is desired by 90% of women but that is also true the other way around given that men too have become extremely vulnerable to PR , advertisement and the promotional industry in general. So they deeply desire Kim Kardashian even though the college girl next door is probably conventinally hotter considering age and height.
I believe op was using "dating" as an euphemism for "having sex with".
That means dinner isn't required. Plus if the average unlucky guy has 1 date per 2 weeks, it would be entirely possible for a lucky guy to have 14x more dates. A 14:1 starting ratio leading to a 10:1 success ratio seems plausible to me.
Mathematically it works fine if the high value men go on more dates than the average woman. Let's say women go on one date a week, and the hot men go on one date per night. It works out.
> you can only bring one girl to a dinner date per night
I don't think he was suggesting that those successful men are dating 8 women concurrently - rather, that the other seven women themselves would rather be single than date anybody in the "bottom" 90%. I've been married for a long time now, but this matched my observations from back when I was dating, and from everything I've heard, things have gotten much, much worse for men since I left the market.
It doesn't even take them preferring to be single.
The basic problem is the dating apps have made the pool so large that they can keep trying to get the top 10% and the well never runs dry. Thus they don't settle for what they can actually get.
Thus you get a lot of men with no dates and a lot of women who get dates with men they aren't good enough to actually hook. In reality both sides lose.
The problem is thinking that all women share the same 90%! Sure, there are celebrities that many women would enjoy a date with, but there's tremendous variance in women's tastes, and most women's mates are fairly unattractive to many other women, for all sorts of reasons.
Rappers, actors and people who feel the need to bring 5 or 6 girls on a date, that's so rare that doesn't even merit counting. And also it ends up pretty quick.
No, I mean the population of the "dating pool." For example, if a "dating pool" consists of 10 men and 1 woman, and the woman enters into a monogamous relationship with one of the men, we can say that "the top 10% of men of this dating pool are dating 100% of the women."
> You have a different girl for every day of the week.
And that girl has a different guy for every day of the week.
It's like war. You only occupy the territory you control with your line of fire.
Likewise you only occupy the time of the person who is with you. As soon as they are out the door then you don't occupy anything anymore and other people will.
It's not a new concept either. All Playboy bunnies had boyfriends and they devoted their time 85% to their boyfriends and 15% to Hefner.
Hefner got more variety in exchange for less claim on each individual Playboy bunny time.
I'm not stating this to brag but only for context: I get many concurrent matches when I'm on dating apps. I'm wealthy, pretty good looking (but short which is a big hit), and have a lot of hobbies and am in good shape. Overall, I'd say I get ~100x more matches than most guys and actually have girls who slide into my DMs on Twitter and Instagram. I still deleted all of the apps because I'd rather meet women in real life and I'm way happier and suggest all guys do the same for their mental health.
Online dating doesn't compare to real life. Not saying it can't happen (my ex-ex-girlfriend and I met on Hinge and it was great), but it's just not the same. I find I can meet higher-quality women in real life because I can show up with full energy and depth and showcase confidence in a way that's impossible when she's looking at me in a sea of other matches. I also think dating apps are a bad deal for women as well. They meet a bunch of men who will sleep with them but aren't looking to settle down. It's hard for women to judge the real energy and confidence of a guy online. It's just not a great dynamic for both parties IMO unless you're exclusively looking to hook up (which is fine and people should do what they want).