4 ms·

I've never once used a dating app, and I frequently meet new people, make new friends, and date new women. I'm in my early 40s. Prior to ~10 years ago, differe

I've never once used a dating app, and I frequently meet new people, make new friends, and date new women. I'm in my early 40s. Prior to ~10 years ago, different story... I was miserable, depressed, and socially isolated. I had a series of LTRs, so I was rarely alone. But I couldn't make friends to save my life. I always felt like an outsider. I'm actually poorer than 10 years ago... Definitely in better shape, fitness wise, but also my face is 10 years older. The thing is, I devoted a lot of time, energy, and attention to becoming a better person. Therapy, 12-Step meetings, volunteering, and spending a TON of time doing physically and mentally challenging stuff outdoors... And I actually AM a better person for all of it. Not perfect, but I used to be kind of a piece of shit. At first, I was just meeting new people in my hiking & climbing circles... But after a while, with practice & effort, you develop real skills at talking to people. Nowadays, I can chat up random strangers at a grocery store, if I feel like it, and end up with at least a new FB friend, or maybe a date if we have anything in common.

spywaregorilla 4y ago
Why do you want a new FB friend?
- SkittyDog 4y ago
  FB friends sometimes turn into more, over time. If not, there's no real cost to having another one... If they're noisy, it's as simple as clicking a mute button. Also, this is a PERFECT example of those social skills I talked about, in my earlier post... Valuable relationships don't just magically appear out of thin air, when you just happen to meet the right people. You have to meet (a LOT) of people, then spend time & effort to cultivate a common context, figure out their character, decide whether you want them in your life... It's a winnowing process, wherein you might only build ONE truly significant relationship out of meeting hundreds of people. The very first stage of that pipeline is just getting in contact and observing the person. Facebook is a great tool for that part. But the knowledge of this whole process isn't some kind of inbuilt human instinct. Some people are lucky enough to learn it while they're young, but the rest of us have to figure it out as adults. It's a very complex skill set, so it can be a long,frustrating, frightening learning process.

spywaregorilla 4y ago

Why do you want a new FB friend?

SkittyDog 4y ago
FB friends sometimes turn into more, over time. If not, there's no real cost to having another one... If they're noisy, it's as simple as clicking a mute button. Also, this is a PERFECT example of those social skills I talked about, in my earlier post... Valuable relationships don't just magically appear out of thin air, when you just happen to meet the right people. You have to meet (a LOT) of people, then spend time & effort to cultivate a common context, figure out their character, decide whether you want them in your life... It's a winnowing process, wherein you might only build ONE truly significant relationship out of meeting hundreds of people. The very first stage of that pipeline is just getting in contact and observing the person. Facebook is a great tool for that part. But the knowledge of this whole process isn't some kind of inbuilt human instinct. Some people are lucky enough to learn it while they're young, but the rest of us have to figure it out as adults. It's a very complex skill set, so it can be a long,frustrating, frightening learning process.