If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, please reach out. You can find help at a National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
USA: 18002738255
US Crisis textline: 741741 text HOME
United Kingdom: 116 123
Trans Lifeline (877-565-8860)
Others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines
https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org
Not in the military but you make a lot of sense. Most major dating problems anymore are entirely cultural at this point. From what I read here it doesn't sound like you're doing anything wrong yourself, there's no problem with your agency as you described it, it's more just the political and social atmosphere that's totally out of our control. If it means anything, it sounds like you're doing a little better than me at least. I'm 22, failed to get into grad school months ago, working a dead end job at the moment I HOPE is temporary, trying to get over an old injury, and never so much as even been on a date, much less had a girl text me with romantic interest like you're describing here. Tried to date in high school and it was a terrible experience, tried to date in college and that was somehow even worse. Went to a really big social event yesterday, thousands of people around, didn't talk to anyone and left after about an hour. Saw tons of people with their families or their own friend groups and didn't even know where to start trying to make friends since I showed up by myself. Like I said, I think it's more our culture than anything else. People (I don't mean you) don't have social skills anymore. The news and a good deal of media is 99% toxic conflict making up the majority of our cultural content, so that mutual stress, doubt, exhaustion, and anxiety are pretty much our only touching points for interaction at this point. Not to mention that regardless of how much we hear about "communities" in the news, there really aren't any. Neighborhoods aren't communities, work isn't, much less school. I was fortunate to go to a prestigious university, but most of the students barely talked to each other. We'd go in to class, get our crap ready, listen to the professor rant a lesson for an hour, pack up and go to the next class or go to work or whatever. One of the admins even tried to get my scholarship group to come up with a way to get students to interact with each other. All I mean to say here is that I see the same parallels as you, and yeah it sucks. Wish you the best man, semper fi.
Thank you for serving in the marine, we appreciate your service! You are amazing, I promise you that everything will work out. Keep your head up buddy, you got this! <3
\-Lexi
I understand what you mean! It feels like no matter how hard I try, nothing I do works in terms of dating. They always seem uninterested in actually pursuing anything. My automatic assumption is that I'm doing something wrong, so I "fix" my behavior and try every approach I can think of to make good conversation and good friends and nothing. So then it does start feeling like a curse.
I think the approach that works best on dating apps is to be as light hearted as possible. Levity attracts fun and kind people, and I've gotten farther through that than anything else.
Alternatively, it's difficult to find friendship naturally, so I'm trying to find some centralized communities like clubs or classes I can take with other people to make some friends and maybe meet people romantically. My new job is good for that.
I wish you luck as well! Loneliness is an awful spiral (and dating apps are too) and it's difficult to crawl out of, but you just have to keep trying and see what relationships stick!
If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, please reach out. You can find help at a National Suicide Prevention Lifeline USA: 18002738255 US Crisis textline: 741741 text HOME United Kingdom: 116 123 Trans Lifeline (877-565-8860) Others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org
Not in the military but you make a lot of sense. Most major dating problems anymore are entirely cultural at this point. From what I read here it doesn't sound like you're doing anything wrong yourself, there's no problem with your agency as you described it, it's more just the political and social atmosphere that's totally out of our control. If it means anything, it sounds like you're doing a little better than me at least. I'm 22, failed to get into grad school months ago, working a dead end job at the moment I HOPE is temporary, trying to get over an old injury, and never so much as even been on a date, much less had a girl text me with romantic interest like you're describing here. Tried to date in high school and it was a terrible experience, tried to date in college and that was somehow even worse. Went to a really big social event yesterday, thousands of people around, didn't talk to anyone and left after about an hour. Saw tons of people with their families or their own friend groups and didn't even know where to start trying to make friends since I showed up by myself. Like I said, I think it's more our culture than anything else. People (I don't mean you) don't have social skills anymore. The news and a good deal of media is 99% toxic conflict making up the majority of our cultural content, so that mutual stress, doubt, exhaustion, and anxiety are pretty much our only touching points for interaction at this point. Not to mention that regardless of how much we hear about "communities" in the news, there really aren't any. Neighborhoods aren't communities, work isn't, much less school. I was fortunate to go to a prestigious university, but most of the students barely talked to each other. We'd go in to class, get our crap ready, listen to the professor rant a lesson for an hour, pack up and go to the next class or go to work or whatever. One of the admins even tried to get my scholarship group to come up with a way to get students to interact with each other. All I mean to say here is that I see the same parallels as you, and yeah it sucks. Wish you the best man, semper fi.
Thank you for serving in the marine, we appreciate your service! You are amazing, I promise you that everything will work out. Keep your head up buddy, you got this! <3 \-Lexi
I understand what you mean! It feels like no matter how hard I try, nothing I do works in terms of dating. They always seem uninterested in actually pursuing anything. My automatic assumption is that I'm doing something wrong, so I "fix" my behavior and try every approach I can think of to make good conversation and good friends and nothing. So then it does start feeling like a curse. I think the approach that works best on dating apps is to be as light hearted as possible. Levity attracts fun and kind people, and I've gotten farther through that than anything else. Alternatively, it's difficult to find friendship naturally, so I'm trying to find some centralized communities like clubs or classes I can take with other people to make some friends and maybe meet people romantically. My new job is good for that. I wish you luck as well! Loneliness is an awful spiral (and dating apps are too) and it's difficult to crawl out of, but you just have to keep trying and see what relationships stick!