Dating in your 30’s - Where am I going wrong?!

[sparklychampagne]

I’ve been single since I was 28, I’m now 31 and only really started throwing myself back into dating this year but it just feels like dating is so much more soul destroying in your 30’s. Or at least I don’t remember it being so difficult in my 20’s!

This year I was dating someone in January/February when all of a sudden he just blocked me on everything on a Monday after a seemingly normal date on the Sunday and making plans for the Tuesday.

April-June I was dating someone who decided he was going to travel abroad and quit his job and left all in the space of a fortnight (not suspicious at all!)

July I ended up dating someone who turned out to be married despite saying on his profile that he was single and looking for a relationship

Since the beginning of September I’ve been dating someone who, after saying I wanted to take things slowly, has started being less responsive, not chatting as much so is clearly doing the slow fade

I make sure I only swipe on guys who have on their profile that they are looking for the same things as me e.g. a relationship, wants kids etc… but it just seems that people lie so freely on online dating or then don’t have the decency to be honest and break things off if they aren’t feeling it. I mean I know it’s never nice ending things/rejecting someone but there’s kind ways to do this and surely it’s the more respectful thing to do than to block or ghost someone?!

I just don’t remember having these problems in my 20’s although I could be looking back with rose tinted glasses! Someone please tell me it’s not just me and I’m not undateable?! 😂

@Uername4949 Reported.

Ah, good, I deliberately took time to return to this thread, so as not to waste it with trolls/incels. I am happy to see all the deletion messages, and I hope they were lovely and long essays, and thus a thorough waste of time with hopefully only one or two views.

Yes, reported also. I assumed things were bad in general but been eye opening to say the least.

Lots of men will sleep with anything with a pulse, so women are never short of offers. Men have to offer something of value

A good percentage of men will shag anything they can get their hands on. The average woman can get sex as easily as ordering a pizza, so of course the woman you quote has a ready supply of interested men. That's the supply and demand due to the male sex drive (that is the biology aspect).

While men will tend to have sex with any woman they can, they are more fussy about who they will commit to, but they still have to be worth committing to themselves.

Incels and red pillers have a list of core beliefs.

The guys on this thread - for reasons best known to their selves - are determined to trot out every core belief on here and bore/amuse us for days.

The belief that 80% of women chase 20% of men ... Is one of them. The 20% of men are over 6ft etc.

This is in spite of the fact that men under 6ft (the majority of the UK) are mostly married/partnered up.

Then there's the "body count" issue.

They love to quote ad nauseum a Utah uni (yeah the Mormons who were pro polygyny) limited study showing women with more partners are more likely to end up divorced. The same study found the same thing about men too ..... But you will never ever see them mention the bit about men .. ever.

They've tried to sink that into oblivion while ranting about the female survey (not a comprehensive one) and nattering on about men women fuck changing their DNA/leaving a DNA trace - yeah really. It's Science!!

They wax lyrical about men wanting chaste women ..... But it never occurs to them that they simply don't know lots of women s backgrounds.

Also that lots of men don't care about chaste backgrounds ..... They of course are "simps" and "cucks" for not caring.

They are the ultimate backlash against women getting some rights and opportunities. It literally scares the shit out of them and makes them viciously angry.

Like jihadi islamic fundamentalists, they all believe they're entitled to a 23 yr old virgin and become enraged at any factor that might obstruct that (like women daring to have a sex life, or women dating to earn their own money, or women daring to not get married at 20 etc etc)..

Seeing men like that makes me anxious about taking my multi-vitamins, they're red too

They also like to believe that only men ever bring resources into a marriage. Never ever women.

Women don't have jobs, incomes,,savings, don't get mortgages and start paying them off, never earn more, never have inheritances.

If you happen to know women like this .... It's your imagination, they don't exist. Or there's the vast vast minority.

If there's a divorce it's only the man who could lose resources. Never ever the woman.

Which I find quite odd given that I know two woman who had to pay men off in divorce settlements. And one lost her home and now lives in social housing due to it. They were also both abusive men .... But our divorce law takes no account of abuse, unless very severe, so they got pay outs for abusing their ex wives .... From money they did not put into the homes. Both homes were owned by the wives before marriage.

I know countless women who either earn more than their husbands or brought more assets into the marriage. I know women who had to support the household single handed when their husbands were out of work due to a recession that hit the trades.... but they of course either don't exist or at best, are rare cases.

The red pill world and the real world .... Never the twain shall meet.

Awww, did I miss the fun? This thread now has more holes than @Uername4949's greying, saggy underpants.

I'm not sure I see the link between men having certain dating preferences, and politically being opposed to women's rights. Could you explain it to me please? But please keep it simple, I am not particularly bright, also please note I don't agree with the guy that got removed, I love my partner very much for who she is.

being 37 and having children, you are not what men would choose if they had a choice. So you will only ever now be able to get a relationship from men that have no choice, but don't worry, there are lots of those.

Most men around her age have children too, dim wit.

Oh and for the record, it's very funny that you think only about men getting with women with kids from a previous relationship. Many single women don't want divorced and separated fathers either.

As an average Joe with an average income, the vast majority don't have the salary to comfortably pay his CM and other costs (CM is the tip of the iceberg with kids) for his kids from a previous relationship... And provide for more kids in a second household. She and her kids would miss out/get less than they would if she partnered a man without kids.

With a man with no kids, they'd get all the firsts together, and not have a complicated blended household and have all their inheritances for their kids together, and not have to get on with step kids who resent them etc.

Separated fathers have done the whole thing before ... And have a track record of failing in a partnership or marriage with the mother of the kids; they are not an equal prospect for a single woman with no kids.

And lots and lots of men are in this position as they get older.

The red pill incel world is full of James Bonds with no kids and fabulous salaries in their 30s and beyond .... The real world is full of average wage or not much above guys with kids from previous relationships.

Can we stop challenging @Honest2afault like she’s the arbiter of truth on this matter? She’s been all over the boards today perpetuating and supporting stereotypes, unacceptable behaviours and misogyny – including telling a woman with a young baby that her husband doesn’t fancy her anymore because she’s probably overweight and needs to tell him she’ll work on herself.

I noticed them on another thread, and decided already not to engage. They've taken the thread very far off-topic and the OP already reacted disapprovingly to that

It's a bloke.

Obviously

A mentally ill one presumably.

you will only ever now be able to get a relationship from men that have no choice,

My husband's home owning, handsome, senior architect friend has married a 30s single Mum.

He also has a young adult child from a previous relationship.

And my h reported him to have a great deal of choice, which I can well believe; he's good looking, Merc driver, good job, dresses sharp, decent social skills, own home.

So ... WRONG AGAIN.

Oh I forgot! They're just exceptions - all the billionaire's are exceptions, all the ordinary men are exceptions.

You said "men". That means even one exception makes your statement inaccurate and untrue.
Unscientific, in fact.

Lol

Also if you think women over 24 or single Mums only get low quality men .... What's your partner, other than a low quality, low self esteem woman??

That's the only kind of woman who'd stay with a man who's made it clear he's never going to marry her due to his incel, red pill beliefs.

Any high quality, high self esteem woman with options would have left your arse in the dust.

Unless you haven't made clear to her what you've stated about your intentions on here?!
That would make you a liar by omission, deceptive, a time waster, someone who leads his partner on etc. Low integrity individual.

I already went against the statistics yesterday but apparently I'm wrong for being like, so.

I think the "stats" are based on a bunch of delusional, ball scratching men on OLD - who think they should have and have a chance of getting early 20s attractive women, no matter what their age, looks or income.

We've all met them in real life. Even my abusive ex (and that's saying something) said that the middle aged, big bellied men hanging outside his local pub smoking etc. eyeing up good looking, dressed up 20 something women going in and out of the pub, and sleazing over them/commenting on them are out of their fkg minds.

"They're dressed up for the young, fit Gaelic football players in there, not his paunchy, hairy middle aged self" is how he put it.

Most likely the case, along with as I said before, this influence being peddled of what is deemed acceptable, which would be peddled by the same.

Of course most men would seek a younger woman and find them attractive but that doesn't mean they are entitled to her or stand a chance, especially when they are aging, overweight themselves or with views like that. If you look around in public, it's everywhere. You see an attractive woman, notice how many sleaze, even older guys with white hair do. So yeah, they sleaze but the reality is they wouldn't have a chance.

Although I don't look my age and people think I'm in my twenties still, dunno whether I would have a chance but I'm not interested, I would prefer to meet someone around my age bracket. I've been there and I know life experience matters. Having children I know that will put women off but I'm not going to be settling for anyone and therefore make do with a mother out of desperation, I'd rather be on my own.

But no, statically right now I should be forgetting about my children, moving on and seeking a 22 year old replacement to bear more of my offspring.

OLD has changed the dynamics of how we date hugely, in lots of obvious ways, but this article I found fascinating because it highlights how it has led us to date people who are not in any way in our own social networks, and how that encourages poor behaviour (because there are fewer social consequences to shit behaviour, basically - if you meet someone via friends or family, you have more of a sense of responsibility to those connections and it acts as a bit of a break on treating people like shit).

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/feb/13/how-online-dating-has-changed-the-way-we-fall-in-love

I know friends happily married to people they met online, but I think you do have to just harden yourself to a lot more frankly antisocial behaviour and remind yourself it is NOT you.

@laclochette I'm not convinced anti-social is quite the right word for all the changes. I think behaviour changes fairly naturally when there is an abundance, or at least it seems so. Coinciding, roughly, with the Internet I think how companies dealt with job applicants changed along with it. My experience was that the number rejection letters dwindled rapidly towards zero. I think it is connected to the Internet making it faster, and cheaper, to send in more applications.

I think to some extent overwhelm has shaped some of the attitudes we seen. With so much choice, some of our behaviours may have emerged to deal with it

You man with small dick