Half a year past terminating the last relationship, the time was up to open myself for some new mating opportunities. I have not yearned badly for pairing up with somebody. I still remember how lousy the recent relationship was at times and appreciate benefits of being single and superiority of such status over being in a dead-end relationship. On the other hand, I do not want myself to get too used to being on my own, hence the decision to stray out of the comfort zone.
Given the above, I should have cared little and had fun from meeting new women and giving them up if we did not fit each other. Instead, I ended up quite stressed out, totally not pertinently to magnitude of dating. I still have not dug into reasons of my distress.
Dating applications have somewhat moved on since my previous short episode with them in spring 2022 (not saved for posterity here). The crucial change from my viewpoint is a declaration on family plans. You can choose to write (or not to fill it in) whether you want to have offspring, not want it, do not know yet or are open to it. The former two declarations are clear, with women who do not want children being swipe left by me. With the latter two I do have an issue. A woman aged 25 might still not consider whether to have children, but a woman aged around 35, given her time is running out, should have made up her mind already. The “open to kids” badge is even more confusing. Given the hardships of pregnancy and upbringing, responsibilities and limitations parenthood involves, having nothing against having your life turned upside down sounds at best absurdly. Unless it means they don’t mind their partner having children from previous relationships.
Until now I met four girls. Spoiler alert – there was no second date in any case.
The first girl, Agata, aged 31. Was kind of businesslike, determined to raise a family soon. Before we met, she had begun a straightforward evaluation of me, mentioning several times if I had been awarded an upside or a downside. With limited hope it would click in I decided to meet her. The offline chat was nice, although overly revolved around her previous experiences with men, with a story of her peer, who struggled to have an erection and asked if they could watch porn together too boost his desire, being just the tip of the iceberg. We mutually agreed the chemistry was badly missing and went separate ways.
The second girl, Ola, aged 32. With hindsight, I wondered why I had swiped her right, but decided to give it a try. Subjective red flags cropped up soon, meaning I spotted potential conflict areas I have gone through in previous relationships and given I learn from my mistakes, I have resolved to back out of this after the first date. I communicated it openly one day after we met offline, as out of four girls she was the only one intent on developing the relationship.
The third girl, Monika, aged 34. Quite brisk and talkative in the app, turned out to be a bit of shy when we met offline to take a walk together. I suppose she was a kind if disillusioned when she confronted her image of me with me in reality. There was no major chemistry, however since her bio in the app was scant, I could have risked continuing getting to know her better. The morning after our date the match in the app was deleted. I have been ghosted and have not gotten over it lightly. It was not the very rejection, but the silent form it which has left me slightly burnt and bruised. If you treat people on your way with respect and communicate unpleasant messages openly, even if it depletes you of energy, theoretically you do not deserve to be ghosted. Nevertheless, such practice is prevalent in online dating and however crummy it is, there is no way to avoid it altogether.
The fourth girl, Dominika, aged 34. Seemed the nicest, a good soul and looking really nice. Messaging between us nearly faded after around a week, but in a whiff of irritation after being ghosted by Monika, I asked her to communicate openly if she did not want to meet me (she first proposed an offline walk). To my surprise, she did not give up on me and eventually we met. Chemistry was not in the air and the next day she informed it had been our first and last meeting.
For the time being my impression is that much has changed in dating apps since 2020, sadly for the worse. Maybe my sample is too small, but I observe communication skills on the wane. I could blame myself, but in other social situations my conversations go on smoothly and do not need to be awkwardly upheld. Maybe it is just the lack of chemistry, maybe involvement of only one person to carry on with talking.
Maths-wise, with more single women than men in my age in Warsaw or around, my reasonably decent look and other features, things should go well. The reality turns out to be against me. Pragmatically, I want to build a relationship with a woman who shares most values with me and wants to raise a family soon. The core reason, which I have identified away from the dating apps is that many single women in their 30s have their decent lives, filled with activities, live it up and prefer to be single to pairing up with a “good enough” partner. Besides, a man is hard to be squeezed into daily scheduled filled with work, pets, hobbies, sport, friends and family. I have asked ChatGPT why developed countries are plagued with an epidemic of singletons and its response unsurprisingly squares with my observations. A lower percentage of people in relationships is one of major causes of the demographic crisis exacerbating in Poland (fertility rate in my homeland gets close to 1.0).
Time to come up with an alternative vision of life if I do not manage to find a life companion to set up a family with. Given how ghastly the prospects of finding a reasonable woman are, throwing in a towel and settling for a lonely life might one day become the preferable option…
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