+1 for Mate, the best and most solid introduction to applied men’s dating that I’ve seen.
I wouldn’t consider being 26 to be a weakness. Age 26-35 is probably the age range with the most mating options for hetero males.
I agree that living in DC is pretty optimal for you.
Starting a campus club or teaching GRE skills might help
Sure but if you don’t feel like doing that is playing to your strengths (i.e. if you’re not sufficiently extroverted, organized or leader-like), I wouldn’t bother with it. Dating apps have already solved the problem of finding people to date for all but the least physically attractive people.
College educated black women in DC face a particularly bleak market, not sure where to meet them.
On dating apps.
The “mating market” section of the mating plan is now quite trivial due to the absolute dominance of the dating app option for anyone who isn’t strongly extroverted or already connected to a strong social network.
What you listed in Section 4 on “small wins” are all nice things, but mostly unnecessary as instrumental milestones to dating (except mental health). If your goal is dating, you can focus more directly on the tactics to get a date: Having good pics on dating apps, a specific kind of conversation skill that leads to dates, and conversation skills for dates.
Re “5. Focus on social life and fun”, also seems like a distraction. Dating apps have enabled a more direct and efficient process where you don’t have to just pretend like you’re having non-goal-oriented fun in a platonic social group, you can just instantly turn a stranger into a date and there’s mutual knowledge that you’re both evaluating each other’s compatibility toward your mating goals.
By the way, I’m the founder of RelationshipHero.com and specialize in helping nerdy people date. Anyone can DM me for some free advice.
My personal experience with dating apps has been pretty negative. It feels like it’s very hard to effectively filter for people I’d actually be interested in, requiring an enormous amount of dates. That wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, but dates also feel like a really unnatural and awkward situation to me, since both of you are basically trying to evaluate whether the other person is “good enough” to see again while also trying to act and feel natural. (Basically, “there’s mutual knowledge that you’re both evaluating each other’s compatibility toward your mating goals” is exactly the reason why I don’t like dates.)
So far my experience has been that the organic way of gradually making friends and then possibly turning the friendship into a relationship feels much better and natural. And if you don’t get a partner, you’ll still get a friend. But that’s also a pretty slow method, so I’m kind of stumped about what to do since both approaches seem to have major flaws.
Hmm sounds like you have a procedure to filter people, and the main problem is its inefficiency. Maybe you can design some automated initial screens: like a written portion, a recorded video portion, then one or more video hangouts/dates. Just brainstorming :)
Thanks for the comments, I suspect they would speed up finding relationships. A few notes
The “mating market” section of the mating plan is now quite trivial due to the absolute dominance of the dating app option for anyone who isn’t strongly extroverted or already connected to a strong social network.
This could be misinterpreted as saying that mating markets are no longer relevant, which is false. I believe you mean that the apps have collapsed whole cities into one big mating market. That’s probably true. For other readers, still think about the mating market when choosing a city to live in. If you’re a non-muslim guy and you move to Saudi Arabia, tinder won’t help you. If you’re a woman and you move to Kiev, same problem. But within a city, the apps probably merge the markets.
What you listed in Section 4 on “small wins” are all nice things, but mostly unnecessary as instrumental milestones to dating (except mental health). If your goal is dating, you can focus more directly on the tactics to get a date: Having good pics on dating apps, a specific kind of conversation skill that leads to dates, and conversation skills for dates.
Seems plausible. I have not been in the US adult dating market long enough to comment.
Re “5. Focus on social life and fun”, also seems like a distraction. Dating apps have enabled a more direct and efficient process where you don’t have to just pretend like you’re having non-goal-oriented fun in a platonic social group, you can just instantly turn a stranger into a date and there’s mutual knowledge that you’re both evaluating each other’s compatibility toward your mating goals.
That may be true. I like an active social life and networking has large career benefits. Probably would recommend socializing less to a third party.
+1 for Mate, the best and most solid introduction to applied men’s dating that I’ve seen.
I wouldn’t consider being 26 to be a weakness. Age 26-35 is probably the age range with the most mating options for hetero males.
I agree that living in DC is pretty optimal for you.
Sure but if you don’t feel like doing that is playing to your strengths (i.e. if you’re not sufficiently extroverted, organized or leader-like), I wouldn’t bother with it. Dating apps have already solved the problem of finding people to date for all but the least physically attractive people.
On dating apps.
The “mating market” section of the mating plan is now quite trivial due to the absolute dominance of the dating app option for anyone who isn’t strongly extroverted or already connected to a strong social network.
What you listed in Section 4 on “small wins” are all nice things, but mostly unnecessary as instrumental milestones to dating (except mental health). If your goal is dating, you can focus more directly on the tactics to get a date: Having good pics on dating apps, a specific kind of conversation skill that leads to dates, and conversation skills for dates.
Re “5. Focus on social life and fun”, also seems like a distraction. Dating apps have enabled a more direct and efficient process where you don’t have to just pretend like you’re having non-goal-oriented fun in a platonic social group, you can just instantly turn a stranger into a date and there’s mutual knowledge that you’re both evaluating each other’s compatibility toward your mating goals.
By the way, I’m the founder of RelationshipHero.com and specialize in helping nerdy people date. Anyone can DM me for some free advice.
My personal experience with dating apps has been pretty negative. It feels like it’s very hard to effectively filter for people I’d actually be interested in, requiring an enormous amount of dates. That wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, but dates also feel like a really unnatural and awkward situation to me, since both of you are basically trying to evaluate whether the other person is “good enough” to see again while also trying to act and feel natural. (Basically, “there’s mutual knowledge that you’re both evaluating each other’s compatibility toward your mating goals” is exactly the reason why I don’t like dates.)
So far my experience has been that the organic way of gradually making friends and then possibly turning the friendship into a relationship feels much better and natural. And if you don’t get a partner, you’ll still get a friend. But that’s also a pretty slow method, so I’m kind of stumped about what to do since both approaches seem to have major flaws.
Hmm sounds like you have a procedure to filter people, and the main problem is its inefficiency. Maybe you can design some automated initial screens: like a written portion, a recorded video portion, then one or more video hangouts/dates. Just brainstorming :)
Thanks for the comments, I suspect they would speed up finding relationships. A few notes
This could be misinterpreted as saying that mating markets are no longer relevant, which is false. I believe you mean that the apps have collapsed whole cities into one big mating market. That’s probably true. For other readers, still think about the mating market when choosing a city to live in. If you’re a non-muslim guy and you move to Saudi Arabia, tinder won’t help you. If you’re a woman and you move to Kiev, same problem. But within a city, the apps probably merge the markets.
Seems plausible. I have not been in the US adult dating market long enough to comment.
That may be true. I like an active social life and networking has large career benefits. Probably would recommend socializing less to a third party.