I am THIS CLOSE to giving up

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ya, sick and tired of being led on

I feel like I'm close to giving up myself. I can get people to date me, but they'll lose interest within a month or two.

It's depressing because I don't know why it happens. I wouldn't be so lonely if I felt like I just had a choice in how my relationships turn out. I like myself. My friends like me. My coworkers and extended family seem to like me well enough. I'm not uptight about alone time, communication, sex, or jokes. I'm not negative or controlling and I have hobbies.

I don't understand what's wrong with me.

Hey, ThisAdamGuy. By no means give up forever but if this is how you feel just give up for now and pursue other interests. You never know, something positive might come of that instead. Anyone you meet is likely going to share your hobbies, and being a "good boyfriend" to them is something you can work on over time.

I feel people punish themselves by eternally seeking love at times it looks like it won't ever rear its head, rather than letting life take its course. Don't punish yourself by looking, just do other stuff that makes you happy and see how that goes.

A lot of people don't understand that online dating has been abused so much, the whole concept has practically become useless for people actually looking for someone. Fake profiles... scam artists... sites themselves set up to auto-renew your subscription whether you want them to or not...

One thing that HAS happened within the last 5 years or so is that a lot of men have simply said the heck with it, left the sites, and have gone solo, leaving the women (those who are real, not stolen pics with ghostwritten profiles) wondering not just "where have all the good men gone", but where ANY of the men have gone. Some men have left the country to find love---they have their pet regions, for some it's SE Asia, for others it's Latin America, but the results are the same either way.

In my opinion, the concept of online dating might have seemed great in theory, if women would have initiated contact 50% of the time. That didn't happen, so in practice, online dating was broken from the start. Women will only initiate contact about 10% of the time, and I'm probably being very generous with that number. Ergo, many of the men took this to mean the women weren't interested, so the men left. You can get angry at me and call me sexist all you want, but that doesn't change what happened.

With meetups, it's been a different situation. Trolls and fakes just don't go to dating meetups, for obvious reasons. At all the dating meetups I've been to in the last 3 years, men have outnumbered women by 3 to 1, if not more. Either the women just aren't interested in a relationship, or they're hoping the man of their dreams will somehow use his ESP to find them and come knock on their front door.

Asexual meetups are just the opposite---roughly 9 women for every man who shows up, though the jury is still out on whether it's because fewer men are asexual by nature, or just too ashamed to come out of the closet about not needing sex.

Go figure.

My desk at work just got moved a few days ago, and now I sit next to this really cute Asian girl. She's really friendly, actually thinks I'm funny, and was legitimately impressed when I told her I was an author-- even if just an online one. I asked the other people sitting near me if she was flirting with me (because I'm a thick headed idiot who can't pick up on that stuff), and they all said yes. So I asked her out. She seemed embarrassed, but didn't explicitly say no so I persisted. Kept getting answers like "That would be weird!" and "I don't deserve it." Like an idiot, I kept going anyway. Finally, after a couple days of this, she finally tells me she already has a boyfriend. I'm a little disappointed, but not really surprised. I honestly didn't expect her to say yes anyway. But that still raises two big questions for me:

1. Why was she flirting with me if she's not single?

2. Why the hell didn't she just say she had a boyfriend at the start? I'm not gonna try and make her cheat, I would've stopped right there.

I read your first post, but didn't read the whole thread. First thing is first, put wanting a girlfriend on the shelf for right now. If you don't have a car, your own place and a decent career; focus on getting all that in order first. Health comes first, career second, women third. As a man, you need to become a good provider. I don't care what the BS media says about men being stay at home dads, that's all bs. Sure it can happen, but it's rare. Make yourself a good provider and women will become attracted to you. I'm in the same boat, I still don't have a license but come next year I should be licensed as a medical tech making in the 50k a year range. Most women won't give you a chance if you don't have a career and yes a lot of those women are shallow, but even the ones that aren't may not have a car and may not be able to see you, because you don't have a car. I've run into this issue countless times. Make yourself a provider and then look for a girlfriend/wife.

I wish I was a person that could enjoy themselves, I was unfortunately raised to value family. No one I know lives for their career, it's mostly working class people and the family is the center of the universe and that has always been the case for me. The happier people in my family were more traditional and together, the more disjointed and dysfunctional like my immediate were the ones that strayed from that even then nobody was alone like I will likely be. I don't interact with my extended family anymore, its embarrassing and I don't think they care one way or another which is another depressing thing where you go from having a big family to just having your parents. I just feel broken and fear irreversibly so, hard not to feel trapped and incredibly bitter.