feel embarrassed about using apps- I know it's pathetic

[pizzzzzzza]

I don't mean to offend anyone, and this seems to be a very common way to meet people nowadays.
However for some reason it makes me feel a little rejected, like no men at work nor in my friendship group were interested so I've had to resort to this.
I just feel embarrassed about it for some reason and like it's desperate to look for someone?

I constantly see on here how you're supposed to not be looking at all and you'll meet someone when you least expect it? Apparently that seems to have happened for many posters, so clearly they weren't on the apps.

This doesn't happen for me. I'm not constantly out on the prowl for men, I go to work and do my job, I see my friends, family, I travel etc. And I'm really not expecting anyone, yet nobody's decided they want to date me?

I think as well the world has changed. We don’t conduct a Teams meeting or discuss something via email and then sigh and say we wished we’d done that ‘naturally’. Life is busy and opportunities to meet people have changed. Using technology to open up conversations is a way of dealing with that, and it can be useful because you can be more direct about what someone is looking for etc.

Kindly OP, you are being silly.

Using apps doesn’t mean you’re unattractive or undateable in real life, unless you think anyone who has met someone on an app is those things too.

Naturally as we get older the opportunities to meet people in real life get smaller- our social circle gets smaller, people get married, we essentially meet all the new people we’re going to meet. None of that is a reflection on you, it’s just how it is.

Frankly, going into the apps thinking it’s a less legitimate way of meeting someone is only going to wind up in disappointment- unless you reframe your thinking, it’s a forgone conclusion.

I get where your coming from that you would rather it happened 'naturally' but for many people it's how they've met their new partners.
My friend met up with several blokes before she met, settled down with one, now married 8yrs. One of the others was lovely, we met him etc, did stuff around her new house, bugger was married with kids!
Talking to a friends daughter (20 at uni) and the majority of her friends meet up with people through sites. They choose to do this rather than the 'natural' , go out, see someone, approach and see what happens.

I think that meeting someone requires being purposeful, as much as anything else in life.

Many years ago I started a new job where a large group of young people were joining at once. The first day was a group session. A young man immediately engaged me in conversation during the breaks, began sitting next to me and, during the lunch break, he encouraged me to eat my lunch just with him rather than with the rest of the group. I thought he was just being friendly and was going with the flow! During the lunch we chatted about our prior experiences (his CV was a famous public school plus Oxbridge), where we lived and I happened to mention that I lived with my long term boyfriend. When it was time to go back he then, rather formally, shook my hand, said something polite like: ‘Thank you for your company, it’s been lovely to make your acquaintance’ and we walked back to the office.

I popped into the loo before the session resumed and when I came out found, to my surprise, that he was no longer sitting in the chair next to me but was sitting next to another girl of a very similar physical type to me. He then devoted himself to her company during the afternoon session, doing exactly the same things that he had done with me. He ended up with her for a month or two, then dropped her to became the boyfriend of (arguably) the prettiest girl in the intake and never really spoke to me again!

In short, he was perfectly pleasant but was on a mission to ‘get a girlfriend’ and applied the same kind of focus and drive that he had previously applied to his education or career. I was clearly a non-starter (pre-existing boyfriend), so he literally didn’t waste a further minute on me and simply moved on as swiftly as possible.

He took it to an extreme but, objectively, it was a very successful strategy and I think there would be no harm in you adopting a more focused mindset?