OPENING CAVEAT: this is purely a rant about my own experiences as a not-rich leftist cis man in a mostly liberal city trying to date women. I cannot speak to any other experiences but mine.

I’m an occasional poster, mostly lurker here posting on a burner acct cause I don’t want to get at all personal on main.

all that out of the way….I am in my mid thirties, living in a large city, strongly leftist (maybe not by hexbear standards but certainly those of….virtually everywhere else), and holy shit does straight dating fucking suck in the 2020s. or at least it has for me.

over the course of my adult years I have rejected one way or another pretty much every structural advantage cis white men typically enjoy (especially higher income) in search of somewhat more ethical ways to get by. I quit my old “real” (bullshit) career and switched over to physical labor work that lets me completely unplug and helps me stay (relatively) fit but also keeps me perpetually on the edge of broke. when I tell women what I do there is a total incuriosity about it, as opposed to when I had a relatively well-paid bullshit career with a ladder - that, strangers can respect. now I scrape by but I no longer have panic attacks wondering what the fuck I’m doing. a personal win that has nevertheless rendered me a lot less dateable in the eyes of my peers. I am not imagining this change in perception, I don’t think, nor did I anticipate it. I guess I should have.

that’s when I even get to the stage of chatting someone up, mind you. when I walk into a small venue or party surrounded by strangers, to steal a line, “I do not light it up.” a single man (or at least a single me) at a social gathering or event is like a fucking wandering fart. (I have described this phenomenon to a couple of female friends and they didn’t disagree.) I guess this helps explain the enduring “wingman” concept but p much all my friends are partnered women I would never dare ask to help me in that way.

I’m slightly below average height which rules out dating basically all women over 5’7 due to idk internalized misogyny or whatever (ftr I would have absolutely no problem dating a taller person if they were attracted to me, and in fact was with someone significantly taller for several years, but since the advent of the apps I get the sense I’m getting filtered out altogether, whether on an app or in person). I know there are a lot of jokes about this but it really is just statistically measurably more difficult in my experience to date women as a short-ish guy (unless you’re rich I assume).

in theory I could end my misery of abject singlehood by submitting myself to the mercy of The Apps - I met my last partner there a couple of years ago after a fucking shit ton of swiping - but I am too full of spite to consider going back right now. I hate hate hate using them, hate the feeling that I am entering a highly competitive meat market in which I am clearly a below average cut due to the above mentioned reasons, hate being reminded every time I open them up. also as mentioned I’m fuckin broke and at least as a man, ime, you gotta pay money to make them usable/useful (AKA shoot enough shots to even get a response before you hit the paywall).

that’s all beside my philosophical/political objection to using them which is that I fuckin abhor having to give my extremely personal information to some evil company. that’s why I have tried to manufacture as many scenarios/activities as possible to meet ppl IRL, but it’s been a couple of years of this with barely a hint of a spark anywhere.

here’s another major problem specific to my age bracket and gender: I emphatically DO NOT WANT to try to date significantly younger women, but ime they really do seem to make up the majority of women interested in dating a man my age who lives the way I do (that is, sans any sense of upward mobility or interest in “traditional” ways of doing things).

lastly, I wanted to add something about the cis aspect of all this….most of my friends and associates are women and nb folks, and virtually all of them are some flavor of queer. I’m not really, or certainly not enough to comfortably identify that way. it really seems like all the cheap and no-cost speed dating events and mixers I’ve spotted, or at least the ones that would theoretically be good for meeting other leftists, are queer-centric or queer-exclusive. great for you folks! not very helpful for me tho…

also before anyone chimes in with “it’s cool/ok/fine to be single” or any variant thereof….I’ve already spent major chunks of my adult life, years at a time, on my own. I’ve reaped all the benefits there are from singlehood, and I’m grateful for them, but I’m just so fucking lonely and it gets harder every year.

thank you for entering the leftist cis man rant zone. I invite other hexbears to share their grievances as well. I’m not really looking for advice tbh just wanted to yell somewhere

EDIT: shout out to all fellow hexbears struggling in this area I very much like you all!

  • SoylentSnake [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    8 months ago

    lol oh man, anyone who knows me from the megathreads knows ive been griping about almost the exact same shit for the past >half a year - I’m pushing 33 and got out of an adulthood-spanning serious partnership almost a year ago after a number of different long-standing issues made me realize i didn’t want it to be my lifelong romantic relationship. work an unskilled manual labor job that will probably be a foot in the door to a larger career, but one in a relatively low-paying, public service position. (i’m also shorter than average, though i think (?) conventionally pretty solid looking)

    honestly if i knew being single in the 2020s was this bad, i might have just tried to work things out with my ex (deep down i think it was still the right call to end things, but the misery of being single in our current dating environment sometimes makes me wonder lol). the apps are pretty much worthless, had to pay-to-win to even get a not-insignificant number of matches, but converting those matches into actual convos let alone dates has been pretty much a non-starter. the few times ive gotten promising seeming matches, they’ve dropped off the conversation but not given me the clear no of an unmatch. in addition to the self-esteem blow this all brings, i also hate how many profiles i have to swipe left on who i know with 95% certainty i wouldn’t be interested in - they’re people too who are probably lonely like me, and it feels like im just adding another layer of dehumanization into my life as a regular thing. these distinct souls with interiority are reduced to a “meh, i think not” in a human being catalogue. it’s fucking gross.

    i also know men are “supposed” to swipe relatively indiscriminately, but im honestly pretty selective about my type - if someone isn’t some combo of creative, intellectual, also a leftist, into some of the same nerdy shit i am, a lil “alt”, etc etc, i tend not to be attracted to them beyond physical attraction. and a lot of the matches i do get check these boxes! but, it’s just so hard to stand out from the sea of men/the “meat market” as you put it that those matches just don’t amount to shit. part of this boils down to enshittification/the apps not working being better for profit. but imagine if we could actually filter for hobbies, politics, etc as a given with these stupid things??? oh, the horror!

    i also think your point about this being driven by loneliness is important. i’d be more “fine with being single” if the world had any semblance of community or consistent access to consistent friendships built into it anymore. but as it stands its “wake up in my apartment box, go to work box where people only interact sporadically (if they get along at all), go back home to my home box, sleep, repeat, punctuated by seeing friends once a month if im lucky (where we spend waaaaaaay too much money to do basic shit like get dinner or drinks together), once every few months if not.” i will ask though, what’s your cutoff for “significantly younger”? i keep a pretty wide range of Solidly An Adult open (would be open to anyone from 26 to early 40s), i personally think it’s too hard to find a solid connection for me to be super inflexible about age. but everyone has their own standards and comfort levels!

    EDIT: oh also i just don’t list my height if its an option shrug-outta-hecks and while my results are still not amazing i think it’s helped lmao i just don’t see much upside in it, there’s a million different ways a date can be shitty or a waste of time and if height is a dealbreaker for the other person then whatever, they don’t have to go out with me again shrug-outta-hecks

    • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      8 months ago

      I’ve talked with some people about the app business and the strategy seems to be “make your profile have the appropriate features to attract the sort of person you are interested in without concern for the others, and then swipe right completely indiscriminately, without even looking at the profiles for a moment” because it’s just better for your mental health than actually participating actively in The Market. If you get a bad match, you can just cut it off then.

      • SoylentSnake [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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        8 months ago

        rumor has it that mass right swiping actually tanks your hidden score (so ur profile gets shown to fewer people). idk if that’s true (also kinda dont want to risk it) but since they’ve introduced a limit to how many swipes you can do a day w/o paying it also limits this strategy i think.

        • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          8 months ago

          Good lord I hate these apps. It doesn’t seem worth it regardless for a guy to use one of these apps without paying, but then if it tanks you then obviously that’s a bust.

    • burnerforyou [he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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      8 months ago

      solidarity my friend. I am too full of spite to not list my height on the apps tbh, if the other person is gonna be hung up on height at all I’d rather give them a chance to miss out

      • SoylentSnake [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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        8 months ago

        fair enough! i did used to list it but the thing that tipped me toward not is hearing many, many anecdotes of guys saying “women who care about height are generally not at all good at pegging your actual height” lmao. and i feel like a lot of people for whom its a secondary preference irl, who would totally give a shorter dude a chance, might swipe left in the dehumanized context of the apps where they’re making shallow snap decisions (as we all are, im sure there are people ive swiped left on who might’ve been good fits for me had we stumbled on each other irl). so i figured eh, might as well up the chances of an in-person meet where my easy charm and charisma win out over any prebaked sense of preference big-cool

        but i respect ur practice as well!