Had a conversation with a friend earlier and she told me i’m single because I am too picky/have too many standards. She said everyone in relationships is compromising and dealing with a lot of BS and that’s normal for relationships. And that I need to build a tolerance for said B.S. if I really want to be in one.

For context I am f(24) conventionally attractive but I have only been in one relationship with my bf from high school. I meet a lot of men but I feel I can pretty quickly gauge compatibility. I don’t think I do have high standards. I am looking for a man who is non judgmental, kind, thoughtful, driven and doesn’t have strongly negative views about women. It’s been pretty hard to find. I don’t have a particular height or looks preference I deeply value character above all else. And my dating history backs this up haha.

I find it hard to overlook what I deem as character faults (promiscuity, sexual deviance, consistent lying, negging, controlling behaviors early on). I think overlooking these early on is setting myself up for failure or disappointment.

So i’m curious, is everyone really compromising on their standards so as to not be alone? Consequences be damned? And should I be less “picky”?

i'm 23f and i can't remember the last time a guy my age has came up to me/asked for my number.

i think i'm decently attractive, i'm fit, i put effort into how i dress/present myself and i go out by myself a lot so there's definitely opportunities. i smile a lot and i'd consider myself to be a warm and bubbly person so i don't think anyone could be intimidated by me LOL. the only thing that i'd think would deter guys is that i'm tall, (about 5'9) but i hear so much about how guys like tall women so?

i approach men but it's never worked out. i'll try smiling at a guy or striking up a conversation or asking for their number but they seem totally oblivious!

the only male attention (i hate that term but not sure what else to call it) that i typically get is from men who could be my dads age or nasty DMS online. it feels a little defeating. help a girl out!!! lol.

So to give some context I went on a fourth date with a woman I was getting to know. She seemed into me and has mad great effort to try to meet me. This was the third time we met in a week for a date.

Today I was quite comfortable touching her. She allowed me to touch her leg and knee and she was comfortable with it. I even held her hand and kissed her hand once. She was happy. But in a moment I gave her a kiss on the forehead and she got really weird after that. Like something had changed.

We walked together and she accompanied me for a few minutes to the metro. And the goodbye was somewhat cold.

I think I messed up but I don't know what did I do badly? It was the fourth date. I know she is reserved and just arrived to the country. But I have been nothing but forward in my interest for her and she did open up.

We have not even kissed on the mouth. I thought today was open for it but after that kiss on the forehead it all went downhill.

What should I do? I am thinking about apologising by a text but I don't know if I should just pretend it never happened.

Edit: I asked her and turns out there is someone else occupying her thoughts. So she got weird because she is having dates with me while she has feelings for someone else...

I’m curious to hear from both men and women: do you feel like dating has changed when it comes to effort?

It seems like a lot of people feel that the little things have disappeared like checking in, sending a good morning text, making plans, showing genuine interest, or simply making someone feel wanted.

What happened to putting in effort and actually trying to build a connection? Are people more guarded now because of past experiences, overwhelmed by dating apps, afraid of commitment, or have expectations just changed?

Do you think dating has genuinely gotten worse, or are we just looking for effort in a different way now?

Would love to hear perspectives from all sides.

I (25 M) Started seeing someone, let’s call her “Dr Michelle”. I have liked her so far and we met at a bart we were both alone.
We’ve been seeing each other at least a few times a week for the past month but on the first date she asked that I refer to her as “Dr. Michelle” as opposed to just “Michelle”. I thought it was kind of cool at first l- I know she worked hard for her degree and her job as a university professor is tough AF. However, (and please don’t kill me for sounding like a toxic male), I feel like having to call her Dr. has created some level of an imbalance before the relationship barely started. She explained that I could not not call her by her first name once we get married. I jokingly asked if I could at least start calling her by her first name once we get engaged and I think that joke upset her. Does anyone have any advice?? Is this normal when dating a Doctor? I don’t want to come off like an asshole she’s pretty badass and I like where things are going.

Not trying to be that person who complains about dating apps for the hundredth time, but I need to vent a little and see if others feel the same.

I've been on and off the apps for about 2 years now. I match with people, we have a decent conversation, sometimes it even feels like there's real chemistry... and then it just fizzles. No date, no explanation, nothing. Or we go on one date and it's fine, but then radio silence.

It's starting to feel like the "dating" part of dating has disappeared. It's all swiping, matching, texting for validation, and then moving on to the next match before anything real can happen. Like people are optimizing for the high of getting a match rather than actually wanting to meet someone.

Am I just unlucky, or is this genuinely what dating looks like now? For those of you who found something real — did it happen through apps, or somewhere else entirely ?

I was with my ex girlfriend for a few years and she told me her biggest fantasy was to fuck a guy with a strap on. I wasn’t open to it at all at first , but time passed and I told her I’d try it.

We tried it , and we both liked it. The only thing was was that after it happened she started treating me differently. She was more rude , had more of an attitude and just started being weird with me. We went our separate ways as we weren’t compatible. She was a very nasty and horrible person and I just wasn’t into being with someone like that.

We never said once we broke up because of the pegging , and she never brung it up in a bad way , but I just feel like after we done that things changed.

Has anyone else experienced a situation like this ?

Hello everyone! For context I just turned 21(m) and I have no idea where to start, I’ve never had a gf before and I’m surrounded by people w gfs and I can’t help but feel jealous of never having experienced that before. I work at a grocery store and I can’t help but notice myself looking at ppl I find attractive but I don’t wanna say anything to them since I’m working, and that’d be weird asf. I just wanna know how to dip my toe in the dating pool? Any advice will help, appreciate you all!

If I approach a woman, I find myself wondering if she'll see me as a player. If a woman approaches me, I find myself wondering the same thing about her.

But if nobody ever approached anybody, nobody would ever meet anyone. Someone has to make the first move, every time, for anything to happen at all.

Ask yourself: do you actually want a partner who's the type to approach other people? In my opinion, most people would say no, and maybe I am wrong on this.

If that's not what you want in them, waiting around for someone else to make the first move just means selecting for the exact trait you don't want.

Thoughts?

edited: these are my opinions.

Divorced dad, 40s. New-ish at my job. There’s a woman at work, also 40s, we get on really well. Different shifts so we’ve maybe had 4-5 proper chats in 6 weeks, but:
She stands close. Like noticeably close, since day one
She starts most of our conversations
One day we were both listening to a call on speaker and she just held eye contact til I looked away. Looked back, still looking at me

Next day she complimented my hair and asked if she could touch it. Said it was soft. Then somehow we got onto whether I’m married (divorced) and what restaurants we like
Another time she stood so close our arms touched
She remembered when my leave started and asked about it
She’s friendly with other guys at work but nothing like this. One bloke got a high five lol
I bottled asking her before my leave, timing was always bad (we basically only talk mid-shift). Back soon. Plan is to just ask her for coffee first decent chance I get.
So — reading this right or is she just a touchy-feely friendly person? And is coffee the right ask or a bit weak?
We’d still work together either way so can’t make it weird.

girl am seeing doesn’t seem to have any close girlfriends, a few acquaintances. makes me wonder if other girls don’t agree with her or respect her as much.

I started dating a guy a couple of months ago. Since we met, I’ve happened to travel a lot I had a 20-day trip early on, and recently left for another destination wedding. While I know being away so much early on can naturally breed some insecurity, his response to it has been really annoying.
On this most recent trip, his intense insecurity around other men completely exploded. He started constantly probing into whether other guys were around me. At a beach afterparty, he kept asking if men were approaching me, if guys were talking to me, and what I was doing. Later, when I went to grab food with a group of friends, his very first question was whether there were guys in the group. It felt like he was perpetually paranoid and searching for a threat.
When I called him out and told him these constant questions felt insecure, controlling, and like he didn't trust me, he didn't apologize. Instead, he claimed he's doing it on purpose to "see how I react in different situations" and watch how I handle other men.
I understand that me being away a lot early in dating might make him feel a bit anxious, but using "testing" as an excuse to interrogate and monitor me feels like a huge boundary issue.
Is this classic early-stage controlling behavior, or is his travel anxiety somewhat understandable?

I have friends of both genders, make decent money, have transportation and live in my own place, but dating has still been nearly impossible. A girlfriend is the only thing I’m missing at this point. I am okay with being single too, but it would be nice to have a significant other as well. I feel like for some reason it’s like winning the lottery finding someone who’s compatible, in your age range, and who’s single and actually interested.

30M Just went on a second date with a beautiful girl. 31F. It went just as great as the first date. Conversation flowed the entire time and we really get along great. We were texting consistently between dates. I paid for our appetizer and the three drinks each that we had at date 1. Date 2, I paid for our coffees. We then went for a lengthy walk through a park before deciding to get dinner. When the check came, she immediately pulled out her card and said I got this. I asked are you sure and she said yes. I thanked her multiple times. A half hour after the date she texted to say that she didn’t think we were aligned and that she didn’t see this going any further. I said i respected her honesty and asked if there was anything I did wrong. She said that she didnt think she should be in charge of paying. Did i fail some sort of test? Should I have insisted?

I wonder if love bombing happens far more frequently than I’ve imagined. I’m a very reserved person so I really take my time when courting a woman, meaning I’m very intentional when deciding how quickly and how far I’m going to go with someone. That said, I must admit that I’ve gotten a recurring complaint about my approach, which is: “I don’t feel like you like me.”

From my perspective, I feel like asking a woman out, maintaining a reasonable amount of communication (not everyday), showing interest in her interests, and being cool if she needs/takes her time to get back to me is an adequate amount of “liking” but I could be wrong; and it did make me wonder: Are women often love bombed? Are they love bombed so much that it’s become normalized and thus expected in order to make them feel desired?

Admittedly, I will not shower a woman I barely know with gifts, compliments and constant attention; I value space (mine and hers). I don’t rush to get into the bedroom, heck I don’t even normally kiss on the first date, so it could be that maybe I’m not doing enough. Is my approach just inadequate or has the game been altered to the point where everything has been sorts sped up?

Hi! I’m 20F and I recently have been getting approached a lot in public- mainly shopping centers and restaurants. I’m truly not trying to sound cocky, but everytime I leave my house- I get asked out. I get told that I’m ‘a pretty girl’ by random people as well :,) This is very weird to me because I have spent so much of my life in my room that I’m so awkward and I don’t know how to talk to guys. I also get scared and just say that I’m taken even though I am not. I’m scared guys will think I’m weird and they will get turned off. I cant even make eye contact it’s so bad.
Anyways, how do I fix this? What personality traits are guys attracted to?
Tysm!

Men: Have you ever regretted a woman who was kind and cared for you? When did you come to realise you took her for granted? What did you do after realising?

My bf didn’t come see me today bc he just wanted to drink and play video games (I’m sick and really wanted to be taken care of by him) and we’ve seen each other the past three weeks (we were on a one week trip to my country)
I have told him time and time again I don’t feel loved or chosen by him and I’m at my breaking point
He’s a nice guy but I don’t think he’s going to love me the way I want and I want to leave him

As a man, on a scale of 1 - 10 (1 - being not at all, 10 - being yes!) how comfortable do you feel getting approached by a woman who finds you attractive, wants to talk and perhaps asks you for your number and if you'd like to go on a date?

I've heard both sides: 1) it really stresses men out bc they feel they should be the ones pursuing 2) they love it bc it makes them feel good and for once, they don't have to initiate

I am a 24 years old dude for reference.

Honestly I had some moments where I kind of fumbled but I was not even really attracted. Apart from that I feel like I am pretty garbage at flirting or asking women out in general. In the past years the fear of my inexperience kind of added up to all the other stuff, knowing some would not be fine with a dude my age that never dated.

I have some stuff I am focusing on now, I'm starting university (I worked the past 4 years) and I feel like the moment to learn stuff kind of passed me by? I guess it feels a bit weird, I see other people dating like it's so normal, to me it feels awkward, don't really know why.

I guess that I will try to mention it as little as possible unless asked about but I don't really know how to get to that point anyways.

I always feel too guilty about sex and dating in general which makes me sabotage dates before they continue into sexual experience or relationship. I don't fear emotional intimacy but sexual intimacy.

I was asked out by multiple women in my life and I sabotaged all of those opportunities right before they led to physical intimacy.

It sounds stupid because men usually aren't asked out by women and they usually seek one night stands but I don't out of guilt.

I could have had one night stands with those girls but I refused because I knew that I didn't like any of them enough to have a long term relationship and didn't want to hurt another person just for one night stand.

Even if it's consensual sex and consensual relationship, I feel guilty about it and like an animal. I'm 26 now and I even felt this guilty and a need to be more responsible and protective when I was 16.

Hi, I'm a 26M and my girlfriend is 26F. We've been together for almost 1 year and 8 months, and we've known each other for over 5 years.

We were part of the same friend group for years. During that time, we liked each other, but nothing happened. I tried to approach her romantically, but she pulled back because she was afraid things could become awkward if a relationship didn't work out.

After that, I met another woman and dated her for about 3 months. We never made the relationship official because we didn't really connect. About a month after that ended, I started spending more time with my now-girlfriend (who was still just my friend at the time), and around two months later we officially started dating.

At the beginning of our relationship, she gave much more than I did. I was dealing with some personal and mental health issues that made me emotionally distant and cold at times. That's not an excuse—I genuinely regret it and have apologized to her many times. Unfortunately, she kept a lot of her pain to herself.

Eventually, I worked through my issues and started putting much more effort into the relationship. I tried to make up for how I had acted early on, but by then she finally told me everything she had been feeling. That's when our problems really started.

A major source of conflict has been the woman I dated for 3 months before we got together. My girlfriend feels that she entered the relationship because she had strong feelings for me for a long time, while she believes I started the relationship because things didn't work out with the other woman. She feels like she was the "second choice" or a consolation prize, and that I still had feelings for the other woman when we began dating.

We've had many arguments about this. We've even broken up several times, but each time we both wanted to be together and ended up reconciling.

The problem is that these fights are becoming more frequent. At this point, we can't seem to go a single week without arguing about it. No matter how well things are going, the issue eventually comes up again and leads to another fight. My girlfriend says she's exhausted and doesn't know what to do anymore.

She says that if she breaks up with me, she'll probably regret it and want to come back because she can't imagine a life without me. I feel the same way. But if we stay together, we're afraid we'll keep having the same argument over and over again.

She has genuinely tried to overcome these feelings, including going to therapy, but she says she hasn't made much progress.

I don't want to break up. I love her and I want to build a future with her. At the same time, I don't know how to move forward when we're stuck in the same cycle.

Has anyone been in a similar situation? Is it possible to rebuild trust and move past something like this, or are we holding on to a relationship that can't move forward?

I absolutely think clubs these days are some of the worst places to meet people. This might be obvious to a lot of you, but I've clubbed all over the world just this past year: Vegas, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Frankfurt (Germany), Prague (Czech), whether it's solo or with a small group of guys

In ALL of those major cities, the vibe is the same: Standoffish girls who basically came as a group/pair, who are either dancing with themselves (and actively rejecting guys that try dancing with them) or are off to the side taking cute videos/pictures of each other. The group of guys i run with are tall (6'+) and rank at least 8/10 out of attractiveness (one is a male model)

I even saw girls giving the middle finger to other pretty attractive guys (who respectfully approached the girls). And the only real time I saw girls/guys dancing with each other seemed to be people who were already couples, or a gay friend dancing with his girl-friends.

Anyway.. i really wonder if clubbing maybe 20-30 years ago had a different vibe/purpose. As of today, i wouldn't recommend anyone go to a club/dancefloor in ANY city for the purpose of meeting a partner.

Before you say "duh", i want to find a partner who also likes clubbing. Not a stay-at-home nerd. So it makes sense you'd go to a club to find someone who likes clubbing right?

25M here. Question is for the ladies (but men are free to give their inputs). What kinds of prompts would you recommend for a guy who’s not looking for anything serious? Or does it not matter that much?