Depressed about Dating

Hey man... I just posted about this exact same issue! haha Doesn't dating absolutely suck?
I know people are going to say that we should join a LGBT group or something... Perhaps they are right... but I am in the same boat as you. I often use dating sites to find people. Like you said finding someone who you both have mutual attraction for and who won't just run away is nearly impossible. I think that is the problem of online dating, I guess.

 

Hi mathmajor, Welcome to EC! I'm glad I logged on for the first time in many months to read your post. Your main point is why I logged on for support tonight.

I'll start off by letting you know that you're not alone. I came out to my parents this summer, and I slowly came out to my friends over the course of 3 years. I started dating about 2 years ago, with mixed, mostly negative results. I went from dating women to dating guys, with no sexual experience in either crowd - wow, I'm 28, lol.

I had a lot of fears, that quickly started to diminish, when I realized that I am in control of my own person, and I can take things at my own pace. If the other person was not okay with that, then it wasn't a good fit to begin with. To say the least, I drove a lot of guys crazy because I never wanted to take things to the next step. I piss people off on mobile apps because I just want to talk. I've given up on dating for now.

It's been about 5 months since my last date, which I thought was promising, but ended bitterly. We had one date (only one person I dated did we have more than 1 date), and I gave him a peck on the lips at the end of the date to show endearment, and to make up for any mixed signals my awkwardness gave off. I kinda freaked out after the date, because he was saying he wish we could have taken things further. I was just showing interest in another date and I gave him the impression that I wanted to be physical (whoops). In my own fashion, my interest diminished in dating him anymore, and I ended up pissing him off by not setting a next date. Since then, I've been apprehensive on my next dating strategy. I'm pretty quick to say 'f*** it', and throw in the towel. But, I know I get lonely and wish I had someone so I keep as optimistic as possible.

I'm good at listening to people, I'm very perceptive, and sometimes catch myself psychoanalyzing while I'm on a date. I hate when I do that, so I consciously avoided it as much as possible on my last date. I'm an engineer, so it's hard to stop myself from thinking analytically. It's not that it's hard for me to find another date, I just don't know what I'm looking for. I'm not speaking in arrogance here, but I'm fairly attractive and have my shit together. It's frustrating sifting through countless dates and not finding any definitive interest. The guy who I went on 5+ dates with was a pretty good fit. Things just kinda fell apart for me since I wasn't out to my roommate at that point, so if the situation was more current, things would have probably ended differently.

I'm rambling. Don't give up. I'm thinking about different avenues of meeting guys besides the internet.. I was researching speed dating services (lol), gay meet ups and gay organizations to get involved in, but I think I got distracted and never committed to anything.

 

I've been thinking a lot about exactly the same thing this weekend, so I completely sympathise. I've been trying internet dating for about 1 and 1/2 years now and nothing has come out of it so far. I get so many people who send a wink (or whatever the sites equivalent is) or send a message saying hi, then don't reply when I respond. And there's people who send a few messages, sometimes we're exchanging long messages, then they just stop replying with no warning. I really don't get what's going on in their heads.

In that time I've managed to meet up with about 15 guys, and most of them I've not had anything in common with (although I usually could tell that just from prior messaging, I just thought I should give them a chance), and the ones I thought were interesting and I'd have liked to see again have also stopped replying for seemingly no reason afterwards. I've stayed in touch with a couple, although not very good friends even with them, just the odd text every now and then. I'm close to giving up on it, there's not many people in my area anyway, and there's an even smaller number who sound like I've got anything in common with from their profiles. And so far I've never had much of a reply, and usually nothing, from the people I've messaged.

I've been told by people that I should have guys all over me based on my looks (I'm not trying to boast, just repeating what I've been told) and that I'm a really interesting person, but that doesn't seem to translate into people actually wanting to be with me. I'm sure if I was the kind of person who wanted, and knew how, to pick up guys for random hookups I'd do fine but I don't really want that.

I wonder if there's something about my personality which means I'm unsuited to internet dating. I've got a few friends who have tried it too, and for most of them it's worked and they're in long term relationships from it, but me and one other have met up with the most number of people and we're also the single ones. We're also the two least experienced at dating, which is why I wonder if it's that we're expecting more from a relationship, because we've seen what it 'SHOULD' be like when you meet someone you like, and we've not felt it so have passed over perfectly good people too quickly.

Long rant that, but I suppose it's good to let it out every now and then.

---------- Post added 25th Nov 2013 at 07:20 PM ----------

Actually, now I think about it, it's more like 3 years I've been internet dating, that's even more depressing.