What happened with me was I made a great friend and we decided to start dating years after we’ve met and known each other. I have no experience with dating apps and stuff like that were you meet a stranger to them immediately try to have such a close relationship, never really understood how that could work (maybe my autism speaking there tbh) but it just feels so backwards, isn’t it better to start with a friendship, with no intent on starting a relationship but going there once we find out that it’s somewhere we both want to progress to. Maybe this craze for quickly starting a relationship with a total stranger is a product from romance novels and the lack of free time of our current culture? I don’t know but I know I love my boyfriend very much and we started as just boy friends.
I’m so glad to not feel so alone in this. A thousand times YES.
I met my wife over an MMO and we were close friends for at least a year before we decided to take it further. Our relationship has been strong for over 16 years and I can’t imagine my life without her.
It seems to confuse the heck out of single friends/relatives when I suggest seeking out hobbies and interests or church groups, or volunteering or whatever, and finding someone you want to spend more time with and seeing where that goes.
Neoliberal capitalism ultimately tries to reach its tendrils into every facet of our lives to make our human experience a “product” or “marketplace”, and what are dating apps, if not “online shopping for a mate”? It reduces people to products, the same way job applications do. People reach for it because they don’t know any better or it’s convenient, and end up disappointed that the men are pigs and the women are shallow.
It’s the same reason you aren’t likely to find a quality relationship by hanging around in bars before the apps happened. It’s just a bazaar of “mate hunting” and any meaningful connection made is a mere numbers game.
Of course you’re also right that there’s a negative feedback loop here with the job-life-takeover situation. Many people feel like some exploitative app is their only chance of meeting anybody outside of work. People are too burned out to do anything but work anymore, and social culture has degraded to such a point that walking up and talking to someone you don’t already know is “creepy and rude.”
isn’t it better to start with a friendship, with no intent on starting a relationship but going there once we find out that it’s somewhere we both want to progress to
I definitely think this is much healthier, but if you don’t have the time to make a large network of friends until it turns out one of them happens to be single, interested in you, and has known you for a long while, it just isn’t a choice.
Oh that’s def true, but at the same time a lot of people that do have time or can just make time for making friends or nurturing the ones they already have just don’t because they’re stuck in this mentality of rushing straight into meeting their next partner by chance instead, but it is really true that the people that can’t sadly don’t have an alternative
What happened with me was I made a great friend and we decided to start dating years after we’ve met and known each other. I have no experience with dating apps and stuff like that were you meet a stranger to them immediately try to have such a close relationship, never really understood how that could work (maybe my autism speaking there tbh) but it just feels so backwards, isn’t it better to start with a friendship, with no intent on starting a relationship but going there once we find out that it’s somewhere we both want to progress to. Maybe this craze for quickly starting a relationship with a total stranger is a product from romance novels and the lack of free time of our current culture? I don’t know but I know I love my boyfriend very much and we started as just boy friends.
I’m so glad to not feel so alone in this. A thousand times YES.
I met my wife over an MMO and we were close friends for at least a year before we decided to take it further. Our relationship has been strong for over 16 years and I can’t imagine my life without her.
It seems to confuse the heck out of single friends/relatives when I suggest seeking out hobbies and interests or church groups, or volunteering or whatever, and finding someone you want to spend more time with and seeing where that goes.
Neoliberal capitalism ultimately tries to reach its tendrils into every facet of our lives to make our human experience a “product” or “marketplace”, and what are dating apps, if not “online shopping for a mate”? It reduces people to products, the same way job applications do. People reach for it because they don’t know any better or it’s convenient, and end up disappointed that the men are pigs and the women are shallow.
It’s the same reason you aren’t likely to find a quality relationship by hanging around in bars before the apps happened. It’s just a bazaar of “mate hunting” and any meaningful connection made is a mere numbers game.
Of course you’re also right that there’s a negative feedback loop here with the job-life-takeover situation. Many people feel like some exploitative app is their only chance of meeting anybody outside of work. People are too burned out to do anything but work anymore, and social culture has degraded to such a point that walking up and talking to someone you don’t already know is “creepy and rude.”
Tragic stuff.
I definitely think this is much healthier, but if you don’t have the time to make a large network of friends until it turns out one of them happens to be single, interested in you, and has known you for a long while, it just isn’t a choice.
Oh that’s def true, but at the same time a lot of people that do have time or can just make time for making friends or nurturing the ones they already have just don’t because they’re stuck in this mentality of rushing straight into meeting their next partner by chance instead, but it is really true that the people that can’t sadly don’t have an alternative