For those who struggle with dating, what do you consider to be your biggest hurdle?

I (w4w) don't date any more, but my experience on dating apps was mostly:

• Women with the personality of a manilla folder
• Couples seeking unicorns
• Fully bearded cishet men posing as women

I'm quite social and comfortable talking to people, but struggled to find anyone that interested me. Though I'm in a relationship now :)

Predatory lesbian brainworms, I have forced myself to set the benchmark of "if someone repeatedly compliments your appearance they will probably be flattered even if they don't reciprocate" and that has helped.

I have Asperger's, so it's a big struggle for me in general.

A few days ago, I spent £89.99 on a three month subscription to Hinge X. This is something I've been contemplating for a while because I'm a 32-year-old virgin, have been single for the past two years (my previous ex basically led me on and used me for my money in what I can best describe as a 2.5 year on/off intimacy-free relationship), and I thought that in desperate enough to actually pay for a dating app.

Lo and behold, after sending well over a hundred likes with written prompts which I put genuine thought into, no new matches. And I've been keeping a mostly intricate log of this shit because if you're blowing the equivalent of 3 WoW subscriptions on a rejection simulator, you may as well keep tabs on whether it works.

I'm about 80% convinced that I either overwhelmingly give women the ick, or Hinge is a scam.

My social life is only a bit better. Work is quite solitary for me, and I mainly hang out with a friend group on Thursday evenings and weekends that do pub karaoke.

I work from home and live on a sailboat, sailing up and down the west coast (south in Winter, north in Summer). Not exactly a lot of opportunities to develop or maintain social connections other than on Discord/Steam. How would I even meet anyone during the week or so I stay in a given town before shipping out? And who wants to date a guy who's only in town for a week or two per year?

The only way I could maintain a relationship would be an LTR where she lived onboard with me, but I don't see how I could every date someone to establish that LTR in the first place. Kind of a chicken and egg situation.

I may be one of the few guys in the 6, 6, 6 club who's been single for years with no hope of finding a woman. And I just don't think the changes I'd have to make to my lifestyle to make that easier would be worth it. So... I guess I'll just die alone?

Just not very interesting. Most people just don't show much interest in me beyond work buddy status, and work is pretty much the entirety of my social life. Down-side of moving to a new area. Making friends as an adult is hard, dating doubly so when there's no one to introduce you to new people.

But historically the hardest part for me is expressing anything that can't be back-pedalled into "just meant as a friend, buddy." The second you cross that line, nothing will ever be the same for better or for worse. I hate committing to that change. Just feels like I'm ruining things irreparably every time. I'll toe that line all day, crossing is just a bitch.

Meeting people, especially since I really dislike the idea of making someone uncomfortable or putting them is such a position. If I'm out in public I do not want to ask out someone who's working a service job and I rarely talk to people otherwise. So unless there's a good setting for natural talking to happen it feels rude/unwanted as they just want to do their thing in public.

I have trouble wanting to invest all that energy to effectively reduce my own autonomy in the end.

Actually finding people i guess? I meet tons of people with my shared interests but none I want to date. I am demi so maybe that's part of it

My marriage. ^/s

Myself, I'm my own cockblocker 😅

I'd say I have 3 problems:

• I have zero game, can't read signals, don't know how to appear interesting, all that stuff
• Despite being 32, I still don't know what I want, my sexuality is very fluid, so one day I may be super attracted to a girl, and 3 days later I may not care enough to even text her
• I don't put myself out enough, I don't want to use dating apps but I also don't want to visit places where I get in contact with a lot of people because I get anxious

My wife.

I'm still figuring all this out but for me the biggest things were:

• Dating app stuff. What to put in your profile, what to talk about when you match with someone, how to convert a match into an actual date
• Confidence. After you hit 28 years old and still haven't been on a single date it starts feeling more and more like there's something wrong with you. I really had to work hard in therapy to kill that particular demon. The worst part is, you have to kill that demon or nothing will change. You can't successfully find someone if you believe there is some legitimate problem with you that people won't accept. And sometimes, there literally is something wrong with you that you need to correct.
• Socializing. I'm autistic so a lot of the general rules of conversation, particularly how to have the kind of conversation that makes the other person enjoy talking with you, was really hard for me. I'm still working on this one, but at least for the time being I've gotten over the hurdle of getting a steady girlfriend.

I currently hate my body and don't feel comfortable dating until I like it again, as dating involves finding others who like your body (and other things about you, but still)

I'm sure there are people who would want to date me in my current body as well as my future (hopefully improved) body, but I just can't summon any confidence while I feel like this.

Obviously there's some mental health problems I need to work on too. I'm fortunate to have decent psychiatric care at this stage in my life and am slowly progressing in that area, and trying my damnedest to ramp up body improvement efforts.

I went to the gym today, at least. :)

I struggle most with meeting people, and then with talking to them, and then with continuing to talk with them.

It took me 5 minutes to send this

Whether it's January 2 or February 1.

ISO 8601 supremacy.

I don't want kids so that narrows down the dating pool to something more like a dating puddle.

I generally keep to myself. Every social skill I have comes from deliberate practice.

I did manage to find a girl. What I did:

Figure out what my strengths are and in what situations I get to show them. I get compliments on having a pleasant voice. So anywhere I'll talk some is good.

Work on mitigating your weaknesses.

Work on being a {pick one or more: fun/pleasant/useful/positive/etc} person to be around.

What I did not tell you is how long I had to do this.

I struggle to take the relationship from "dating to get to know each other" to "dating with sexual interest". I hate taking the first step and I'm too awkward to make a move or just straight up talk about it. Trying to work on that in therapy currently.

Talking to people I don't know and initiating conversations in general. If the other person doesn't approach me first, I can't do it myself. I'm not much into dating, but it's really inconvenient for socializing in general.

• Decades-long crippling social anxiety
• Money

Probably meeting people. I'm not a very outgoing person and when I do go out my hobbies tend to be 100% males. I also don't use social media or dating apps. I have friends and relationships and I have no idea how I got them.

Its annoying because I feel like I have no agency I can't just go meet people when I want to. I have to live my life and trust that I will eventually meet someone which has held true so far.

I haven't dated in almost thirty years but I think what would be the worst is finding out someone is heavily conservative when you aren't. Or discovering six months into a nice relationship that he's a closet antivaxxer or something, basically where you find out something that really goes against your values. Thankfully many of those people are obnoxious and loud.

Up until recently, I hadn’t gone out dating in over 15 years. I feel like the thing I struggle with the most is finding people who would be interested in me in a romantic/sexual way. I’m not a social butterfly by any measure, but I am able to put myself out there. I’m also not the type of guy that exudes charisma. I also have a semi-permanent resting bitch face/scowl. And at 6’3” and 260lbs, I feel that intimidate people. If I were with a group of people that I felt comfortable with, I know things would be a lot different. I also tend to overshare. 😉

Talking without making myself look stupid

Getting past the mean mugging appraisal stare as i approach her

Finding women for whom my appearance isn't a dealbreaker. I have moderate to serious rosacea and acne on my face. That filters out 90%+ of women before we even speak to each other.

To all of the people whose reasons are something self-deprecating about their confidence/appearance/personality/etc:

I'll go on a date with you, if you want! ☺

Honestly, social media.. Facebook is just absolutely full of bullshit meme's for every type of occasion, and clicking on a single one sends people down that rabbithole. Eg.. Say a person has a breakup with a person who exhibits some narcissistic traits and then relates to a meme about it and clicks on it (or pause too long), next minute the feed is full of gender hating memes, groups and pages to feed that part of the brain, and I think it is incredibly unhealthy. It just seemed a lot easier to meet people before heads were filled with social media influence

Poor, unemployed and depressed. Also because conservative society.

Ehhh, I'm out of the dating world, so this is all past tense.

But I was the biggest hurdle, with the second biggest being my unwillingness to date assholes.

See, I'm big, which is not a huge hurdle since plenty of women (I'm hetero) like big guys. Power lifting rather than body building, so that cut availability down a little more. I'm also hairy as fuck all. Not necessarily to unusual levels, but definitely towards the high end of things.

Then, I have resting psycho face. When I'm just chilling I look slightly angry. When I'm deep in thought, I look like I'm plotting murder. This is as described by people that love me, so I inconsiderable imagine it's more severe to others.

In other words, I don't look approachable. And, in truth, I'm not always. I don't like crowds, so if I'm at a bar or other casual meeting spot, I'm unlikely to be happy at unexpected contact. Even when that contact is from someone attractive to me, and ready to mingle, so to speak. So I don't go to those kinds of places on my own impetus, which means pretty much all contact is unexpected.

Then, I would run into the expectations of the typical kind of person that wanted a hookup with sasquatch, which isn't my preference to begin with.

So my dating was never a random thing where I'd just meet someone and ask them out or get asked out. It was always after some degree of comfort had been established.

So, my biggest hurdle was the need (on multiple levels) to gain enough interaction with someone for there to be a date to begin with.

Not that I lacked such opportunities. Despite being self contained, and introverted by the usual standards, I'm a friendly person and enjoy the company of people I like enough that I can meet new people via old contacts fairly often.

And my main job had me interacting with people other than my patients often enough that I would be able to establish some friendly contact that way too.

But it was a struggle to get past the initial contact and get to dating even then.

Strangely I did do plenty of dating. It just wasn't an easy thing. Like 8/10 times, it would be someone asking a friend about me rather than anything direct. Knowing me, my friends would kinda screen things out so that the obvious incompatible folks didn't get disappointed, and that meant the ones that they thought were good matches usually were.

The other 2/10 were usually from work related gatherings or hobby related gatherings.

It was really rare for me to meet and date someone without that kind of slow introduction

Finding things to say is the most difficult. I often get flustered and have nothing to say. Basically become brain dead in front of people in general not just women.

Dating apps suck now. Thankfully, I met the right person and got rid of them.

Before smartphones, when comms on apps were more like emails, I had much better openings. I can’t be funny or interesting in a few sentences.

My dick is too big, I make too much money but I am only 6 foot 2

Geographical isolation.

Biggest hurdle? My husband.

Joking! Really, I never dated when young, just hung out in groups, right? And there would be hookups and then eventually that leads to some relationships. So I never got the hang of the one-on-one dates.

Even after my big breakup with my ex, didn't really date because while I intended to, my now husband had other ideas, he had been dating for some years and said he knew when we met what he wanted so it got serious pretty fast.

But as you say it's hard to meet people - I understand that, I don't know how young people find people if they aren't running around in packs like we used to. That network of people who know you, and also know other people, and might introduce you if they think you'd like each other. Dating apps are more like job searching.

Not being completely turned off dating in general by past experiences...

Meeting people as crazy and wacky as I am outside of online spaces. Yay, someone from Australia likes me!

I'm an astoundingly selfish person, and unapologetic about it. Makes for having relationships, romantic or otherwise, pretty much impossible.

I'm middle aged, dated, had relationships in the past, etc., and honestly just don't have the drive to make relationships work. I do the bare minimum to keep my professional relationships in tact, which honestly is exhausting enough, and otherwise just keep to myself. It's so much easier than when I was trying so hard to pretend I was interested in where another person was coming from or what they were going through. Now at least that effort ends after I clock out for the day, and there's less socializing where I work, so there's less of those kinds of social expectations overall.

Time commitment. Not being physically attracted to anyone in my geographic area. (Long distance)

Face. After that maybe personality

I'm what's called demisexual. Essentially I am mostly aroace unless I have a certain kind of emotional bond. That can happen pretty quickly, but it can also take years depending on the circumstances.

Unfortunately that doesn't work well in today's society that's focused on instant gratification.

Like, if you aren't all over someone within x hours somehow that's considered to be a rejection. And if you ever show any interest in getting to know someone they immediately assume you want to bang them that evening.

Please!

Really, actually, truly being vulnerable. I've always got something in my head telling me no one could actually be interested in me for me so therefore they just want something I can provide, so I've also got my guard up. Basically a combination of my anxiety and depressive personality.

Objectively I do have plenty of valuable qualities but logic doesn't override my head.

I don't consider them hurdles any more. After a while you adjust to who you are. That means less dates than many people around me, for good or for bad.

Not really dating per se but socialization in general. I never know what to say in a conversation, my mind is just not good at that. And then I spend too long thinking of something to say and people lose interest.

I just don't think people like me for me and want to be with me because there's something of me and about me that they want to be around with. I can find something to be attracted to with almost anyone, but for some reason, it's the opposite with me.

Tbh I just think women would find my hobbies stupid