Hope everyone is doing well. I can only hope some of the OG posters are doing better these days, but I can see many people are still.... down bad as they say. Deciding to keep this kind of short but here it is. At 31 I think some people can do everything wrong and get dates/relationships/sex fairly easily, and some people can do everything right while seemingly making zero progress. There's a considerable amount that is simply out of our control in life. Your face, height, race/ethnicity, perceptions and beliefs of people in your area, and etc. All this plays in. Figure out what type of women like you and try to insert yourself around them . I cannot stress this. You throw a guy from Vermont in rural Alabama ? Alot of women may not like him for a variety of reasons, even if he hasnt done anything wrong. The human brain...the ghost in the machine if you will drives so much of our behavior. and sometimes language may not even be fit to describe it For me ? I got it down to kinda quirky/alternative chicks or women with conservative views on dating/family (immigrants 1st or 2nd Gen). Like 60% of the time, 100% of the time these women start throwing out overt signals. Its hard to explain but I can immediately pick up on their vibe and notice they are usually relaxed and inviting me to flirt.

That said widening my social circle, just being friendly to everyone and vastly working on my communication has helped out. I'm not sure if my status due to self-improvement is the key here, or maybe women are getting older and its what many in the misc would call "beta bux time" (Ie : women dropping standards and looking for stability). But seriously communication is key. Read the room. Understand everyone has cognitive bias and neural pathways that determine how they will feel about you doing/saying X. So many men cockblock themselves from not being socially aware. You may not agree, or think its stupid, but thats the game.

I don't think I'll ever get married, but I'm at least at a point where I can get dates / sex without a disheartening amount of work. I still feel sometimes I do worse or get less attention than many men I know personally that seemingly "do everything wrong", but I guess that's life. Example a lot of my gamer friends are some of the most depressing, lazy, defeatist men I've ever met in my life. Like even playing video games or partying with them is a drag. Yet magically many have secured cute to attractive wives or girlfriends. Or some associates that just want to get high all the time, bum money from people, and couch surf...but they are 6'2 or have good looking faces. They never have issues....ever. Like women fighting over them (inb4 those are low quality women) Or dating app experiments with male friends that do well. With their photos ? You can't say anything wrong to women. They use my photos or any other HWP guys that do terribly ? They can't even get women to entertain conversations. So being the third wheel or just kinda watching people for years has kind of made me feel like "personality" matters, but...I dont think it matters to the extent of explaining someone seemingly getting rejected non stop.

That is a bit of a hard pill to swallow, but that simply is what it is. Theres so much out of our power that we cannot control and hyper focusing on it is simply not conducive to your mental vibes. Like just in general across the board. This game of life is weird. To all my USA bros specifically. Stay in the gym, career grind, and stay hopeful. We're all gonna make it. I'm a lot happier these days and I wish everyone the same.

It's good to hear you're doing better and having dating success! You're still very young, don't rule out marriage. You never know when you're going to meet the right person. It could be tomorrow or next year.

You came back! Awesome! I agree with you that somethings are just like that. Life is unfair or it's just meant to be. You are definitely still very young like Legz422 said. As long as you are happier these days then that is the most important thing.

By the way, are you doing front end, back end or full stack now?

Site Reliability Engineer. Been knee deep in the terminal/Linux all day. Its pretty wild. Remember getting into this industry like "jesus christ wtf am I doing" and now the checks are coming in.

But yeah it just is what is. Maybe its "cope" but Im my brain isnt ultra focused on it anymore.

Very nice! SRE pays well. Have you automated your scripts to automate other scripts? Hahaha..

I think the word "cope" is used so much on this site that it is losing its meaning. Don't think of it as cope but it is just part of life. Have a great weekend!

Good for you! I'm glad to see that you're doing so much better.

what the fuk that's not "kind of short" at all

I'm glad to hear that OP! I'm trying to get back into the dating game. Wish me luck misc!

holy **** i remember reading your posts back in 2013 when i was in college and you seemed much more negative, glad to see you've turned it around

Can confirm. I give off horrible vibes and it’s the main reason I don’t get laid very often. People get uncomfortable around me and I’m socially retarded so I don’t know how to act fast enough to be “normal”. What’s funny is I wasn’t like this in my 20’s but too much time alone and here I am at 36, lost.

Appreciate it. Hope the same for youHad to do it manegood luck mane

found dating to be surprisingly easy when I re-entered the game at 30

I agree with OP find a girl that likes you, some just are in love with you from the start for whatever reason. They are the easiest to be with

I was surprised at how fast I found one only being single for 4 months and working on myself a ton

Also for some reason single moms are the biggest wastes of time IME... like they are not humble to the fact that they have tremendous baggage and they are even worst than normal women as far as standards. First off all these hoez should be discounted & kissing my arse but they are single moms for a reason, what man could tolerate their BS

i always assumed dating in 30s would be harder because all the quality ppl would be taken by then

Theres still time imo. Just....talk to more people. Social skills are perishable like anything else.

Taking care of yourself and having your **** together is huge as you get to late 20s and beyond.

Sometimes I don't feel like the convo is anything special or there's much "chemistry" flowing on dates yet they don't seem to lose interest because of the aforementioned points.

Good for you, OP. Glad to see another OG doing well. Dating in your 30s can be tricky, but it’s fun! You’re still relatively young, can blend in with the younger crowd, but you do have more money and you’re more established. One thing I’ve learned is that not every girl is gonna like you (no sht, huh?). Some girls just aren’t attracted to you. However, some are. Go for the ones that are…if you are attracted to them too. The dating apps can be tricky. Like skinnyfat88 says, just take care of yourself in every aspect and good **** just magically comes to you.

Damn OP been coming from nowhere.

I have found the same thing through the years. Everyone wants to make it so complicated but I've found the majority of guys dont do anything special to get women, they just exist and find women that basically like them just because.

The problem I have is that this never happens. Im also 31 and Ive never just ran into someone socially that liked me and made it easy.

Its to the point that ive just given up. Thats my lot in life. Basically this chit isnt hard. If you are at all remotely desirably and reasonable standards you should just be able to at least sometimes stumble on someone who likes you. if that NEVER happens, something is more fundamentally wrong.

the question then is how to deal with it. I still struggle immensely trying to accept being alone and moving on in life. I dont think its possible for me.

alot of girls sometimes already have it in their minds that they are already interested in or like you, obviously the opposite is true as well and that sort of shapes their interactions with you, which in turn shapes your interaction with them. like why chase a woman that doesn't seem the least bit interested.

it be like that sometimes. everyone is just so different not to mention have different things going on in their lives and are at different stages. nowadays I just don't pursue and don't waste any time if they don't seem to be the least bit interested. can't get all butthurt about that.

for me personally I'm not necessarily chasing marriage but just talking to different women. if a spark is there i'll pursue further but I'm not really sweating it. just gonna let it happen when everything seems to fall into place. I think that's the way you have to approach it to keep yourself from going insane. Just have fun with the process. You're right a lot of it is out of our control. At the same time too I think it should feel natural and not a lot of hard work at the same time.

how many women have you talked to and/or dated the past 5 years? any good or bad experiences? or things that you picked up and learned?

Only 1 during the pandemic from online. I wasnt attracted to her but she was nice and im incel so I just went with it.

Ive never in my entire life just organically met someone that liked me. My experiences arent good or bad, they're nonexistent.

If there's anything ive learned from what ive seen, its that the majority of the time guys dont do anything to get women, they just show up and women start liking them for no apparent reason.

If you are a guy and you havent at least had that happen a few times in your life, where a girl you met just takes interest in you without you doing anything crazy, you are either really unattractive or doing something wrong socially.

Hmmm, I disagree with that. That may be true for the top 5-10% of Men, but every other Man in this modern society has to put in the work with women, whether they like it or not.

In modern-day dating it is dog-eat-dog, hyper-competitive, Feast or Famine, for the vast majority of men.

Women on the other hand don't have to do much at all. Just create a decent tinder account with several clear pics and if she's a 6-9 out of 10 she will have 20+ matches within a few hours. Plus if she's on IG, fb etc she will be getting DMs from the ball-sak emptiers too.

Men now have to work harder at dating than at any point in history, it isn't going to just come to us. We have to make it happen and be the best human being we can possibly be with the cards we have been given. If you're a good-looking man but shy and boring, you won't get much. But if you're a 4-6 but are confident, can dance well, can make dates fun, keep conversation & interest going, and are good socially then you will keep getting dates.

Feast or Famine.

Refreshing to see this, OP.

I think "down bad" guys would be much better off if they got advice/responses similar to this post - some commiseration/sympathizing about the inherent difficulties/unfairness of modern dating while still emphasizing what we can do (and not insinuating that any guy who struggles doesn't shower or that they need to become CEO 10k/day for women to even make eye contact). Repped.

Spoiler!

I think OPie’s advice can be distilled even further to “be social”. That’s it.

If you endeavour to be social, you will naturally seek out your “type” anyway.

One thing I generally observed is that dudes will improve themselves in all manner of ways EXCEPT for upping their social game.

I think what he’s trying to say, and this is something I actually agree with, is that a woman’s role in dating is covert and a man’s role is overt.

The idea that women “don’t do anything” is bullchit and needs to go. It only looks that way because what they do is covert and subtle.

But yea, ultimately it’s down to the guy to “make the move” (overt action), but there is definitely something to be said for women putting themselves around men they want and making themselves “available” and giving off IOIs and chit like that, which are all covert actions.

Its not true man. Just this weekend in my friend group i found out this becky was very into a timothy in our group. He isnt anything special and he doesnt even like her back. he's just an average guy but by simply existing someone got a crush on him. Thats how it works for most guys, they just show up and then someone eventually is feeeling it.

key word ....he doesnt even like her back....bishes want what they can't have. They want a man who has bigger priorities. I never get women when I want them...only the ones I don't wan't. So i learned not to want any of them and only suck cock . Now they wont stop trying to eat my bum

I don't like her either. Neither does anyone else in the group. So why did she only pick him?

Misc needs to stop with this nonsense. I don't like 99% of women I meet either. None have ever randomly crushed on me. Misc is just so full of delusion and bullchit in this topic

It comes down to someone finding you physically attractive and then just being normal and social. If you can't EVER get a woman passively like that it means you're ugly

This post completely contradicts your other claims on the main misc where you go on about how average men have to put in super-physiological amounts of work just to maybe get matched with an obese chick.

So which is it? For the record, I think this post of yours is far closer to the truth, though I disagree that men don't have to self improve to get good results.

OP, glad you're doing well. I agree, things got a lot better for me with self improvement, social effort, and age as well.

Both are true. An average guy as I say should over the course of their entire life occassionally stumble into a woman who just likes him for no apparent reason. most guys take what they can get in this way and thats how they end up married. They just exist, like the friend I described, and some random average girl just likes him and he didnt do anything for that to happen besides exist.

very few men have mastered some pick up skills or whatever like the misc says you must do. they just exist and randomly stumble on something and take it at some point.

But that is few and far between. An average or below man who doesnt want to just wait his turn for random luck and actively tries out there will be getting rejected from the overwhelming majority of women even those at or below his level in looks.

So both are true. The majority of average men will eventually stumble on someone who likes them and all they have to do is exist. Now, that woman might be ugly fat or undesirable in some way. Or it might take forever to happen but it should happen. If that NEVER happens to you, you're probably ugly as fuk

This

Most guys just go places and stumble upon a women they start dating lol. Literally they just start talking and connect a bit and decide to hang out. There's no secret.

If this is not happening then you're either ugly or just not meeting the right person.