Catfish

[ZA Dater]

4 hours ago, Weezy1973 said:

You’re in a rut. You’re stuck in your thinking. You refuse to go to therapy. A move can shake things up. You can live with intention. Lots of beautiful cities in this world…

 

Everybody agrees, including you, that OLD doesn’t work for you. Yet you keep going back…it’s as if you continue doing the same things over and over again expecting a different result. It’s as if you’re caught in a cycle that you can’t break out of. Maybe a shakeup of some kind would help? Have you thought about moving?

Have family here so not moving is not an option besides the fact I'd basically be throwing away years of work on the great hope I'd fix one part of life, this is much the same sort of suggestion as these make overs, there is no assurance it will actually work. 

OLD is the only viable option for me so I somehow have to make it work. Meetup does NOT work, going on hikes with people 20 years older than me or people 45 with two kids, that does not help me either.

 

[ZA Dater]

3 hours ago, dramafreezone said:

You're quite obviously not happy.  Have you ever heard of cognitive dissonance?

Happy people exude happiness.  They're not constantly bemoaning what they don't have and how these other groups of people have it so good in life.

Case in point, I only had to go back two posts to disprove what you're saying.

You're comfortable where you are, comfortable is the word you're looking for.  Comfort is your enemy though.  It's not designed for you to be great, comfort is designed to keep you safe.

I beg to differ on all of this, dating is the one thing I fundamentally get wrong, sure not everything else works the way I want it to but each time I put in the work and I can see things improve, I have been trying to improve dating for 20 years with no improvement at all. 

Prefer safety over greatness, you can jump off a ledge, you might live but you will probably die, or you can turn around walk away and find a longer but safer route down the mountain. In my mind I am OK with life, I have some new projects to work on and some challenging ones to finish. 

The main motivation for me to date was to ironically be like everyone else, experience the sense of actually having someone want you, to be important in somebody life, to do things together and experience things together but maybe I misjudged the fact I am a person who has never done anything with anyone, a life loner who has had few friends and fewer experiences. I have however had some of of the best hobby experiences I could ever wish for, things I look back at and go "did I really experience that" and that is the key to me, I chase 'wow" but unfortunately what you all have taught me is its next to impossible to accomplish that at dating and VERY FEW actually do. It would seem to me, we all want the fantastic looking lady but most end up settling for something less than what we had hoped.

Me, its very easy for me to simply dismiss what I do not want because in my mind I'd rather gave nothing than something I do not want. The lecturer was a case in point I saw her twice and could have seen her again another twice but there was no sense to it. K, I met her and spent 4 hours with her and loved every minute of it, I even shrugged off my shyness for those 4 hours. A, well I have probably spend two weeks with her and again like everything about it. Unless I can get that feeling then dating for me is a waste of time, I chase that feeling more than anything else.

The only thing that compare to that is driving a super car or body surfing that big wave which I really should not body surf or writing that perfect piece of prose or getting that project to work, those are the feelings I chase and yes it feels really great to spend time with someone who turns heads,  I do not deny that but she also needs to connect with me and that is something all the money in the world cannot buy.

SO yes I chase this feeling on OLD, rightly or wrongly.

[Weezy1973]

8 hours ago, ZA Dater said:

SO yes I chase this feeling on OLD, rightly or wrongly.

Chasing feelings is bound to fail. And you’ll never find what you’re looking for through OLD. So it’s not “wrong” per se, just a waste of time. 

[ZA Dater]

7 hours ago, Weezy1973 said:

Chasing feelings is bound to fail. And you’ll never find what you’re looking for through OLD. So it’s not “wrong” per se, just a waste of time. 

Oh well then fail it will then. Clearly OLD does work for some people so it cant be totally useless. I can certainly tell you I will not find what I am looking for at a hiking club or a meet up. 

All is not lost I can window shop.

[elaine567]

Seems to me there is no real option here but OLD.
Sure ZA could trip over some single, gorgeous woman on his way to the shops but it is unlikely.
Even if he did, then a) she is not interested or b) he doesn't have the courage to ask her out anyway.

In his quest, he has no friend/family circles to speak of and no social life that is conducive to meeting women.
His work is no help either, nor is his main hobby, and he shows no inclination to try other hobbies or attend meet ups and the like, in an attempt to expand and change his social circle..
He has a distaste for bars, clubs, gigs and parties, where he could actually socialise with younger people and those of his own age.
OLD is actually the best and only real option for him IMO.

[ZA Dater]

1 hour ago, elaine567 said:

Seems to me there is no real option here but OLD.
Sure ZA could trip over some single, gorgeous woman on his way to the shops but it is unlikely.
Even if he did, then a) she is not interested or b) he doesn't have the courage to ask her out anyway.

In his quest, he has no friend/family circles to speak of and no social life that is conducive to meeting women.
His work is no help either, nor is his main hobby, and he shows no inclination to try other hobbies or attend meet ups and the like, in an attempt to expand and change his social circle..
He has a distaste for bars, clubs, gigs and parties, where he could actually socialise with younger people and those of his own age.
OLD is actually the best and only real option for him IMO.

Exactly that. Hence why I started with OLD from the outset and besides that women in the shop is never single anyway. I can count on two hands the number of single people I meet in the average year. 

What I learnt though is being attractive gets you a completely different sort of attention, people want to engage on OLD, they want to get to know you, when there is no real attraction it takes days for people to respond.

 

[Weezy1973]

3 hours ago, ZA Dater said:

Clearly OLD does work for some people so it cant be totally useless.

Of course it works for some people. I’m one of them! But you have to have the right mindset and you don’t which is why it won’t work for you. 

[Prudence V]

20 hours ago, ZA Dater said:

OLD is the only viable option for me

Except it’s not really, is it? It delivers no positive results, and a heap of negative side effects. 

[Prudence V]

4 hours ago, ZA Dater said:

I can certainly tell you I will not find what I am looking for at a hiking club or a meet up. 

On the basis of what? How many hiking clubs have you joined, and how many meet-ups have you attended? 
vs, how many swipes on OLD? 

[Prudence V]

3 hours ago, elaine567 said:

Seems to me there is no real option here but OLD.

Upthread (or on his other recent thread) I provided lots of alternative suggestions freely available in CT. OP chose not to engage with any of them, other than dissing the meet-up and hiking club suggestions because of at least one “bad” (as in, not successful; not as in having negative consequences, like the OLD experience has had for his self esteem). Yet despite the myriad bad experiences on OLD, he still clings to that despite a wealth of evidence that it’s not working for him. 
 

In my profession, we refer to that as confirmation bias (and cognitive closure). 

[elaine567]

I am afraid ZA Dater's experiences with people IRL has made him very wary of undertaking anything that involves him having to interact with strangers in a purely social capacity.
He is I guess fine when he can be officious, and is in work orientated situations but when he has to impress based on his personality and his looks, he is not so comfortable.
He is likely to be the guy standing at the edge of the meet up room not speaking to anyone. Similar to when he goes to bars and coffee shops. 
Some guys can go just about anywhere and strike up conversations with women and everyone else... I guess ZA is not one of them. 
In OLD he can hide away a bit and let women make  the choice whether to date him or not.
Even if he does ask, he avoids that very public IRL rejection.

There is also the HUGE problem of his pickiness.
Looks like a model = interested.
Doesn't look like a model = no interest whatsoever...

He needs a professional dating coach and therapist who can teach him the art of romance, right from scratch, tell him what to do and how to behave, AND a matchmaker to point him towards willing women once he knows what to do with them...

[Foxhall]

4 hours ago, elaine567 said:

He is likely to be the guy standing at the edge of the meet up room not speaking to anyone

lol I have been there Elaine!

Yet I found out later  I was actually good enough with women one on one,

I suspect Za Dater is quite capable in one on ones- he just needs a break or two to get to the next level,

comfortable was mentioned above in a few contexts,

making the lady feel comfortable in his company , putting her at ease, keeping the conversation going and appearing relaxed himself,

if he can get those things right his situation can progress.

[MeadowFlower]

5 hours ago, elaine567 said:

There is also the HUGE problem of his pickiness.
Looks like a model = interested.
Doesn't look like a model = no interest whatsoever...

This. 

[Prudence V]

19 hours ago, elaine567 said:

He is likely to be the guy standing at the edge of the meet up room not speaking to anyone. Similar to when he goes to bars and coffee shops. 
Some guys can go just about anywhere and strike up conversations with women and everyone else... I guess ZA is not one of them. 

He’s shy (though he variably admits or denies this) - but so are many of us. He’s neurodivergent - again, so are many of us. He has / claims to have niche interests, and dislikes pubs / clubs / etc - again, many of us share that. 
 

Yet when we share examples of what - *despite those constraints* - works for us, he rejects them out of hand, and clings to the hope that something that hasn’t worked for him ever, and has had negative effects on his self-esteem, is somehow magically going to work if he just does it one more time (with a different photo). 
 

 

[ZA Dater]

16 hours ago, Foxhall said:

lol I have been there Elaine!

Yet I found out later  I was actually good enough with women one on one,

I suspect Za Dater is quite capable in one on ones- he just needs a break or two to get to the next level,

comfortable was mentioned above in a few contexts,

making the lady feel comfortable in his company , putting her at ease, keeping the conversation going and appearing relaxed himself,

if he can get those things right his situation can progress.

You know I am feeling especially cynical today, at what point are these dates supposed to put in any effort to engage with me or is this purely one way traffic, at what point do they make me feel comfortable. Again I must be all of the conversing, why, sure I am happy to but then politics and current affairs on fair game and as is anything else I want to talk about. 

[ZA Dater]

22 hours ago, Prudence V said:

Except it’s not really, is it? It delivers no positive results, and a heap of negative side effects. 

Well I take it for what it is, this catfish experiment confirmed to me that mostly I have never actually been attractive to anyone because if I had they would have made the huge amount of effort these matches made to actually want to get to know me, I was even asked questions, they initiated conversation, what a change.

Many people do match up with people they find attractive, I simply do not, that is just the fact of life, the person who does not match with me is not suddenly going to find me amazing when she sees me at a coffee shop, even I am not that dense to believe something like that!

[elaine567]

30 minutes ago, ZA Dater said:

You know I am feeling especially cynical today, at what point are these dates supposed to put in any effort to engage with me or is this purely one way traffic, at what point do they make me feel comfortable. Again I must be all of the conversing, why, sure I am happy to but then politics and current affairs on fair game and as is anything else I want to talk about. 

Unfortunately you are coming from a place of weakness, not strength.
These girls are not naturally attracted to you, so in order to get them interested, then you will have to put in a lot of effort.
It is up to you to make that happen. Without any positive input from you, they will be very happy to let things slide.
You seem to assume you are in a position of strength and it is up to these women to put in some effort.
Wrong.
The onus, as the "unattractive" prospect, is on you to try to change her mind about you.
You may not feel you are the unattractive prospect, but if you are getting no positive response from her, then believe me, you are.
As you have found, women are very happy to engage with anyone they find attractive.
No engagement (in 99% of cases) = no attraction.

[normal person]

1 hour ago, ZA Dater said:

at what point are these dates supposed to put in any effort to engage with me or is this purely one way traffic, at what point do they make me feel comfortable. Again I must be all of the conversing, why, sure I am happy to but then politics and current affairs on fair game and as is anything else I want to talk about. 

I've been on quite a few dates in my day and this has never happened even once. Even instances where we were clearly not interested in each other, we managed to have, at bare minimum, a two sided pleasant conversation. If this is honestly the case (as you say), that 100% of the time a woman never asks you anything, never seems interested, and/or you have to talk for 90 minutes straight, then I'm guessing the issue is with you/your social awareness, and not them. Can you tell why they aren't conversing with you? Are they bored? Shy? Uninterested? If this happens to you repeatedly, you are doing something wrong. They were interested in you enough to want to you meet you, yet once you sit down with them, every single one suddenly loses all interest. That won't happen if you can read someone's emotions, interest levels, nonverbal cues, and/or have an engaging conversation -- and, since this keeps happening to you, it seems you cannot. I've not been one to throw the diagnosis around for you, but when people suggest that you may be somewhere on the autism spectrum, this is why. You aren't managing the conversation (topics, flow, reciprocity), you aren't piquing curiosity, you aren't being engaging, etc. This is basic social etiquette that don't seem to possess at a proficient level if this keeps happening to you. I'm sure there are books and YouTube videos about how to solve this problem, but if I were you I wouldn't disregard this because it seems you have a very big issue here. 

If you want to talk about politics and current affairs on a first date, maybe the person becomes disinterested and turned off quickly. With the internet and non stop news cycle, people get bombarded with politics and doom and gloom incessantly these days. A date should be enjoyable; a respite, not a congressional hearing. When I sit down with someone I want to learn about them and their life, and yeah, politics are sometimes an important aspect of those things, but you need to read the room. If someone is put off or seemingly uninterested in a subject, you should change it. Ask something about them personally. This is not limited to dating either. You need to find a way to make people comfortable, and if the subject matter is not doing it, then you've picked the wrong subject or you aren't engaging or accommodating enough with it. Leave politics and corporate stuff out of it on a first date.  

[ZA Dater]

37 minutes ago, normal person said:

I've been on quite a few dates in my day and this has never happened even once. Even instances where we were clearly not interested in each other, we managed to have, at bare minimum, a two sided pleasant conversation. If this is honestly the case (as you say), that 100% of the time a woman never asks you anything, never seems interested, and/or you have to talk for 90 minutes straight, then I'm guessing the issue is with you/your social awareness, and not them. Can you tell why they aren't conversing with you? Are they bored? Shy? Uninterested? If this happens to you repeatedly, you are doing something wrong. They were interested in you enough to want to you meet you, yet once you sit down with them, every single one suddenly loses all interest. That won't happen if you can read someone's emotions, interest levels, nonverbal cues, and/or have an engaging conversation -- and, since this keeps happening to you, it seems you cannot. I've not been one to throw the diagnosis around for you, but when people suggest that you may be somewhere on the autism spectrum, this is why. You aren't managing the conversation (topics, flow, reciprocity), you aren't piquing curiosity, you aren't being engaging, etc. This is basic social etiquette that don't seem to possess at a proficient level if this keeps happening to you. I'm sure there are books and YouTube videos about how to solve this problem, but if I were you I wouldn't disregard this because it seems you have a very big issue here. 

If you want to talk about politics and current affairs on a first date, maybe the person becomes disinterested and turned off quickly. With the internet and non stop news cycle, people get bombarded with politics and doom and gloom incessantly these days. A date should be enjoyable; a respite, not a congressional hearing. When I sit down with someone I want to learn about them and their life, and yeah, politics are sometimes an important aspect of those things, but you need to read the room. If someone is put off or seemingly uninterested in a subject, you should change it. Ask something about them personally. This is not limited to dating either. You need to find a way to make people comfortable, and if the subject matter is not doing it, then you've picked the wrong subject or you aren't engaging or accommodating enough with it. Leave politics and corporate stuff out of it on a first date.  

It does not happen all the time but a lot of the time the conversation just dies after 45 min, there is nothing more to say and YES I do like to hear about other people but when I need to try extract conversation out of them then I quickly become bored with the entire date. Frankly and honestly I can actually do without having to try and get someone to talk, there are MANY things I would rather do than sit down with someone like that. In my opinion again if someone has no interest in the world around them, then frankly I have no interest in that person to be very blunt.

Unfortunately more often than not what whoever sits down in front of me is so caught up in their own world they ignore the world around them, I think this is the benefit I have of having nobody around, I am more aware of what goes on around me. I have sat for hours taking interest in peoples jobs which I have frankly no interest in, asked them questions and really TRIED to engage with people, there is not a lack of effort on my part at all. I LOVE conversing but when I am asked nothing about anything or when I turn the conversation that way I get asked nothing then my interest is lost completely.

People make very little effort to make me comfortable so I really do not feel the need in a dating sense to reciprocate and actually do that, people put no effort toward me so frankly why should I bother with them? Its a pig headed idea but I think you get the point. For what its worth whoever I engage with I try to bring some humor into it because even I know that can break the ice nicely. Humor and the odd compliment, again the latter I never receive on dates.

My approach now is really of "well I do not NEED this but it would be NICE to have" 

[ZA Dater]

6 hours ago, Prudence V said:

He’s shy (though he variably admits or denies this) - but so are many of us. He’s neurodivergent - again, so are many of us. He has / claims to have niche interests, and dislikes pubs / clubs / etc - again, many of us share that. 
 

Yet when we share examples of what - *despite those constraints* - works for us, he rejects them out of hand, and clings to the hope that something that hasn’t worked for him ever, and has had negative effects on his self-esteem, is somehow magically going to work if he just does it one more time (with a different photo). 
 

 

I have never dismissed what works for you, I have simply stated what does not work for me and what does not interest me. The reality is OLD does work, it would not be the industry it is if it did not work, increasingly people are using it, people are finding partners on it, people are finding friends on it so you cannot say it does not work, clearly it does but what I am illustrating is the difference in attraction and interest and no attraction at all. I have matches, 2 of which are attractive and another who is not, the one who is not is desperate to go for lunch with the me the other two seldom respond and if they do it takes days. I have totally lost interest in all three of these people. I asked myself a simple question this week "would my life be better if I was dating someone and would it be better if I was dating someone who did not wow me in some way" The answer is NO. 

While I respect people who enjoy dating and like dating different people the simple fact for me is unless someone makes me feel something I am not interested. 

 

[ZA Dater]

4 hours ago, elaine567 said:

Unfortunately you are coming from a place of weakness, not strength.
These girls are not naturally attracted to you, so in order to get them interested, then you will have to put in a lot of effort.
It is up to you to make that happen. Without any positive input from you, they will be very happy to let things slide.
You seem to assume you are in a position of strength and it is up to these women to put in some effort.
Wrong.
The onus, as the "unattractive" prospect, is on you to try to change her mind about you.
You may not feel you are the unattractive prospect, but if you are getting no positive response from her, then believe me, you are.
As you have found, women are very happy to engage with anyone they find attractive.
No engagement (in 99% of cases) = no attraction.

Well I agree except for the fact most of these people are not very attractive to me anyway so why on earth am I going to put in effort.  They wanted to meet up with me so I would expect some effort at least but if nothing else I have learnt many women are quite alright with taking and offering nothing in the way of intellectual stimulation. 

I cannot be bothered to change peoples mind, its a futile exercise because one swipe away is a better prospect, I have tried with K, A and M and perhaps 3 more and its never something that works, either one is attractive or not, no amount of kindness, no amount of manners, no amount of giving will ever change that fact.

Yes, they are which backs up my point that nobody has actually found me attractive!! I am going to take a big dollop of advice here and simply ignore the players around me and their conquests, it must be great though to have that attention from someone and I will always feel like I "missed out" on that particular part of life.

My thought on this is, if I cannot date someone I really like, I may as well simply not date anyone at all and rather try find "exceptional" in other areas of life, that is pretty much the two choices I have. I get it there is grey area here and many date in that grey area but I cant reconcile that grey area because ultimately I look at A and K and M and each of those just had something special that I seem to rarely find, then again I need to look at me, do I really deserve that, probably not, do I deserve anything at all, again probably not. 

I go out acutely aware of what I am good at, acutely aware of the things I can do well, acutely aware I do have the intellect to cut it with some extremely successful people, the confidence with engage with them, they do intimidate me and I know what I can do. I am confident in those things, confident in the knowledge I have and confident enough to engage in conversation, what I do not have and probably wont ever have is any sense of romance, yes I'd love to walk down a beach, picnic looking at the sunset, go for a great dinner somewhere with a great view, by someone a great gift but all of that will mean nothing if I always wonder "could I have done better". 

My whole life is defined by chasing the best I think I can get/do and sometimes I simply know that I have done the best I can at something and to get better I need to take a different view of it, A is the best I will ever get, almost every single thing I look for in a person she has and many I thought I'd never find. Sure she is not in to me but that is almost beside the point, to me this was the best, the top of the mountain and it was good to finally get there. Could I take a different view of dating, maybe, maybe not, Prudence makes some good points but I have to say I am quite OK being at the top of this mountain, in all honestly I got more value, had better experiences than I thought I might.

[dramafreezone]

On 6/9/2021 at 7:59 AM, Weezy1973 said:

On 6/9/2021 at 4:16 AM, ZA Dater said:

Clearly OLD does work for some people so it cant be totally useless.

 

It works for you, you just don't like what's available to you.

You're like I was as a kid, when I would complain to my mother that there was nothing to eat.  She would say there's plenty to eat here, there's fruit, you can make a sandwich.  She was right, but I didn't want that stuff, I wanted a cheeseburger and fries from McDonalds.

It's the same deal when I hear some women say "where are all the good men?"  Good men are everywhere, those women just want instant gratification.

Edited June 10, 2021 by dramafreezone

[Foxhall]

18 hours ago, ZA Dater said:

at what point are these dates supposed to put in any effort to engage with me or is this purely one way traffic,

well ok I understand ,chances are, at least 9 out of every 10 dates you are not feeling any interest yourself in the date.

Perhaps a few simple things though could improve your chances when you are on a date with someone you fancy,

holding doors, being gentlemanly, speaking positively about your own life when in conversation, not highlighting that you never had a girlfriend,

giving the appearance that you are pretty content the way you are ( even if you have to lie a bit)

and being interested in her and keeping the conversation flowing (your probably ok at that when your interest is sparked)

I do enjoy those nature programmes often from South Africa,

If you think of the cheetah on the hunt for food, note their perseverance and how they learn lessons from their failed hunts,

They learn to target a small antelope rather than an oryx which may be too strong for them,

Also they know they dont have the power of their bigger counterparts like lions and tigers ( in the same way you are not as loud or as outgoing as some of your contemporaries)

Yet they find a way and with their speed they are more successful hunters.

So perhaps its learning to hone your dating skills, starting to believe that you have as much to offer as any other guy,

 you know you are smart, like the cheetah knows it has the speed, so try to have more self belief, convince yourself you are a good catch,

Stick to making friends with them for now but give off a more confident and relaxed vibe.

[ZA Dater]

10 hours ago, dramafreezone said:

It works for you, you just don't like what's available to you.

You're like I was as a kid, when I would complain to my mother that there was nothing to eat.  She would say there's plenty to eat here, there's fruit, you can make a sandwich.  She was right, but I didn't want that stuff, I wanted a cheeseburger and fries from McDonalds.

It's the same deal when I hear some women say "where are all the good men?"  Good men are everywhere, those women just want instant gratification.

Agreed. You would not like what is available to me either!

Your advice is good and has actually helped more than you realize, I am going to go back to the work, work, work approach I adopted in my 20's and put all of my focus there versus wasting time with dating. When people ask me why I am single I will go back to the work excuse and let that be what it is. I have a choice, to partake or not to partake, like the food, if I do not like it, I do not have to eat it.

 

[ZA Dater]

3 minutes ago, Foxhall said:

well ok I understand ,chances are, at least 9 out of every 10 dates you are not feeling any interest yourself in the date.

Perhaps a few simple things though could improve your chances when you are on a date with someone you fancy,

holding doors, being gentlemanly, speaking positively about your own life when in conversation, not highlighting that you never had a girlfriend,

giving the appearance that you are pretty content the way you are ( even if you have to lie a bit)

and being interested in her and keeping the conversation flowing (your probably ok at that when your interest is sparked)

I do enjoy those nature programmes often from South Africa,

If you think of the cheetah on the hunt for food, note their perseverance and how they learn lessons from their failed hunts,

They learn to target a small antelope rather than an oryx which may be too strong for them,

Also they know they dont have the power of their bigger counterparts like lions and tigers ( in the same way you are not as loud or as outgoing as some of your contemporaries)

Yet they find a way and with their speed they are more successful hunters.

So perhaps its learning to hone your dating skills, starting to believe that you have as much to offer as any other guy,

 you know you are smart, like the cheetah knows it has the speed, so try to have more self belief, convince yourself you are a good catch,

Stick to making friends with them for now but give off a more confident and relaxed vibe.

Exactly! Very good advice that which is going to be my new way I look at this, go the friend route of it is offered and just be happy enough with that and yes I in my mind can compete with other guys even if the reality is I cannot but if I go the friend route I do not need to compete anyway.