But things can change awfully fast even if it seems hopeless, don't give up. The potentially partners you'll meet at this age tend to be more mature on average (generalizing of course!), and I think have a much more healthy perspective on life than the people I often met dating in my 20s. Keep in mind that dating is a numbers game, and like any numbers game, you increase your chances of success the more you play. You need to meet as many people as possible and have fewer expectations--the worse that happens is it doesn't work out and you move on. The hardest part is getting over the fear of rejection, but it can be done, even for the shy.
If it's more the isolation in general that's getting to you rather than no partner, I think if you look around you'll find clubs or groups you can hang around potentially--again you need to get yourself out of your comfort zone and just go join those things. If you're into gaming, feel free to message me (or chat about IT stuff or whatnot--Moonshine#3246 is my Discord).
Covid has been really hard on a lot of people for various reasons, but you're definitely not alone and I'm sure there are plenty of people also looking for more social interaction right now. Just need to find 'em.
I'm about to turn 32 and I'm a bit confused about the whole "last couple of years of being able to meet someone".
I know people who met and got married in their 40s...
Edit: go easy on yourself pal. We've all got enough to deal with in the world without beating ourselves up over imaginary deadlines.
Edit2: also, a lot of marriages are not happy. Imagine having to live in one of them during a pandemic. Usually made me feel better about being single!
Also 35 is the point where medicine considers a pregnancy to be 'geriatric'. And some people are going through menopause by 40! You don't have an infinite amount of time in life no matter how positive your outlook!
While online dating was indeed a bit of a nightmare, dating older women in general was a net positive for me.
I liked people who have lived life a bit, made mistakes, hopefully learned from them, are past the point of obsession about body type, and are more focused on character and how to treat/be treated properly.
People do learn and grow as they age, and most of us become better people.
Which is a dated term that isn't used frequently. Yes the risks for certain things increase after 35 but pregnancy after 35 or 40+ is healthy and common.
> some people are going through menopause by 40!
The average age of Menopause is 51, before 40 is considered "premature menopause".
https://www.webmd.com/menopause/guide/premature-menopause-sy...
It all depends on what you're looking for I guess. Certainly you can get married in your 40s. But at that point having a single child, let alone a few, becomes a monumental task. It's not an imaginary deadline. Fertility falls off a cliff at 35 [0].
Even ignoring the fact that fertility treatments exist...
1 in 4 healthy women in their 20s and 30s will get pregnant in any single menstrual cycle. (The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists, 2018)
1 in 10 healthy women in their 40s will get pregnant in any single menstrual cycle. (The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists, 2018)
hardly monumental
Once more, the number of chromosomal abnormalities skyrockets after 30 and by 40 around three quarters of eggs (or more, for an individual) will have serious abnormalities.
Even if only a small fraction of women would struggle at 35, but could have gotten pregnant at 25 - for her it's a tragedy. And she is not helped by these messages that 'no worries it's easy to get pregnant at 40'
Regarding your anecdote I do not see its relevance to a discussion of population statistics. People can be infertile because they were paralyzed in a car accident but that doesn’t mean the original claim wasn’t overstated and now walked back.
Regardless, I think narrowing in this specifically on reproductive biology of women in the context of who you date and how you think about relationships is a recipe for failure. Not only does it have somewhat creepy bio-essentialist connotations, but socioeconomic factors and healthcare access also have huge impacts on the health and success of any given pregnancy and childhood/life.
In short, "I have to date right now because I'm 30 and my hypothetical childbearing vessels are becoming less optimal" is an unhealthy and probably incorrect attitude.
2) "1 in 10 healthy women in their 40s will get pregnant in any single menstrual cycle". I.e. there is a 90% chance that a woman over 40 will have at least some difficulty getting pregnant. Likely more than that if their partner is similar in age because male fertility declines with age as well.
3) Getting pregnant is only the first step. Miscarriage rates also increase with age.
That is not what it means. It is unlikely at any age to get pregnant in one menstrual cycle.
"Each month, the average 30-year-old woman has about a 20% chance of getting pregnant. A 40-year-old only has a 5% chance of getting pregnant each month."
https://www.verywellfamily.com/what-are-the-chances-of-getti...
Edit: Wanted to add, though, that _dating_ in your 30s and 40s just gets better and better. Don't worry about that. Maturity is a bonus, not a drawback.
It's an incredible blessing to have been locked-in and had 24/7 support from someone I love and I wish you had it too.
Sorry you had to face this alone.
Being alone sucks and an internet friend won't fix that, but maybe it can help :)
You still have plenty of time - even to meet someone and have kids. Just focus on getting yourself into a good state - gym, hygiene, activities/hobbies where you can meet people. The rest will come.
What?
I'm 33, only a few months into my current relationship, and I have to say that dating is so much better at this age than it ever was.
You can get lucky. There are certainly unicorns out there. Or you can date younger, if you're ok with that. But by and large, women and men work on different timelines. And you don't realize this as a man until it hits. The vast majority of women are out of the dating pool by 30. And by this age, you've both ossified into separate individuals with rigid expectations and assumptions about life, which makes the flexibility needed to build a real lasting connection infinitely harder.
Aim to hit 80 and still shake your head at the person you were when you was 70 ;-)
Here’s one of my favorite quotes that feels relevant:
“We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played”
You can find love at any age.
Only a tiny proportion of the adult population in most western countries is single, and asymmetries in the dating pool induced by modern modes of meeting people (ie: apps) have radically upended traditional ideals about coupling and compatibility. Respectfully, if you met your partner 16 years ago (congrats by the way!), that might as well be a completely different world than the one we live in now. I sympathise with the GP's expression of urgency.
That was a good laugh. I think in retrospect spending my 20s in San Francisco had a lot to do with now being single in my 30s.
Where to begin?
The tech industry is massively skewed towards male, so right off the bat your odds of meeting someone in your work life is near nil. Then, with the complete lack of affordable housing, there's no such thing as just being a single 20-something living independently and supporting yourself on a non-tech salary. Bare minimum subsistence income is about $80k. So that filters out the vast majority of women who are in non-tech careers and simply cannot afford to move there.
At that point you're basically left with the lucky few locals who have parents that bought houses in the 80s/90s and live with them rent free, or the unicorn types who make enough to live in SF independently.
From that vanishingly small pool of women, you're now competing with the guys who made startup money or have the $300k+ FAANG gigs and can afford luxury vacations, nice condos, BMWs, etc.
An average dude doesn't stand a chance.
I’m turning 31 in a couple months and am coming out of a 5 year relationship. It’s looking grim AF. My only real hope is that I get back with my ex eventually.
I did the fancy vacations. I have the high income (~400k). I have a reasonably high net worth for my age (~2M). Even have the BMW! Didn’t stop her from walking away because she didn’t wanna date just a miserable workaholic techie anymore!!
Honestly, the best candidates that I think many women are aiming for aren’t the tech guys. It’s the guys with rich families. They’re the ones I see not really having any issues because they don’t really need to have any kind of shit job. They got parental money after all.
SF is like another planet. Unless you're exceptionally ugly or have an incredibly bad personality, you wouldn't have problem dating anywhere else on entire Earth.
I'm 33, living in Eastern Europe, and have nothing special in terms of looks (probably solid 6, but you can just google my username) or money (certainly nothing even close to SF tech salaries). And yet, when I re-activate my profile on Tinder, I get first 100 likes in a first day or two.
E.g. you could buy a farm in the midwest and hire laborers, marry a local, and live life with the salt of the earth.
Gender ratio is definitely horrible. Likely the worst factor against straight men. It’s obvious everywhere. Dating in other cities is likely a lot better (especially not on the west coast AFAICT). It’s no surprise that most long term couples I’ve met in SF have met outside the Bay Area.
I’ve heard access to the best dating in SF is by getting a cab down to SFO and flying anywhere else.
I have nothing I can do. I’ll see if I can meet someone else in another city when I get back to traveling. That’s about my only hope. I have in person activities I do but I don’t think post-pandemic will bring enough new blood to make up for the bad odds. (Even the activity I do which is normally known for being woman heavy is more heavily male here than anywhere else I’ve seen in the world)
This is the real issue, not the dating pool.
The obvious evidence against the dating pool is that a fairly large number of divorced people I know getting into serious relationships and married again fairly quickly regardless of their age when the divorce happens.
All of the unhappy single people I know (and there are some happy ones that don't mind) share the same paradoxical thinking: I'm unhappy with how my life is, and I want to be in a close relationship with someone, but am absolutely unwilling to change anything major (sometimes even minor) about who I am, what I believe or how I live.
It seems obvious, but if you are unwilling to change anything about your life, then the only changes you experience are going to be those that are thrust upon you, such as the pandemic.
There was no way to type that out without sounding gross.
The proposition for women in their 30s is worse, even if it is easier to find a date. That biological clock is ticking and most men don’t want to date someone older than them.
I've come to learn that relationships and my ability to navigate them have only improved with age.
I look back at myself and how I treated people in my 20s and cringe.
I had not yet learned that at the point where there is an argument, both people have already lost.
Sounds like well-earned confidence with a bit self-possessiveness . But on the whole that's not unusual or something that should be frowned upon.
>>I had not yet learned that at the point where there is an argument, both people have already lost.
I used to think like that and all that resulted was having my concerns paid lip service to if not outright dismissed, being blamed when something didn't go someone's way despite not being given clear instruction, being guilted into keeping the peace at the expense of my sense of self, etc. Being useful meant becoming easy to take for granted. Anything less was regarded as "not doing my best", "defiance", "rebellion", and "causing trouble". Polite logical debate and asking the hard questions (when I eventually got to that stage) were met with evasion and scorn in addition to rampant hypocrisy and double standards. At the end of it all, arguing was the only way to truly know where I stand in the world and on what terms or, at the very least, led me to learn how to salvage myself and cut my losses (too late in my opinion, but better late than never). If I had been more willing to be upfront with my disregard for certain ideas, more willing to leverage "No" or "I don't care" without fear of reprisal (real or perceived), then I probably would have been in a better position to know in advance which arguments are worth it and which ones would be pointless time wasters. But I know first-hand that if you don't make yourself or your desired way of life a priority to be defended by whatever means you can muster, no one will. And you will suffer for it.
A five year gap is nothing by the time you're in your thirties.
What some of you people are describing sound more like autism or some kinds of personality disorders. That's very different from introversion--- which roughly half of the population could be categorized as.
I certainly don't miss working from the office, but I miss the variety of downtime. A camel doesn't often need water, but they still need it.
I need a vacation.
I believe for many people, this is more because "everyone else does it" and the general "miserable office atmosphere" in our industry. I'm not accusing the OP of anything by the way.
I would have said that I was in the group of "you've said hello, that's enough social contact for one day", yet after 15 months, at least according to friends and family, I'm more friendly, more sociable, and more outgoing.
I think really for a lot of people that are enjoying WFH for the last 15 months, what they're really enjoying, myself included is not sitting 2 feet from someone who is not family, that talks, fidgets, coughs, sniffs, slurps, and eats food at their desk 3 times a day, and being in an open plan office with 10-100 other people.
But now it’s back on again, frankly, that feeling is coming back. It was nice while it lasted, but that’s clearly not sustainable for anyone.
I'm dreading going to back to the office if I'm honest.
I enjoy isolation, I love the intensity of coding that I can get done. I'm generally more introverted.
That doesn't make the pandemic fun and rainbows. It's still been psychologically the most difficult time for me because I live in NYC. Walking the dog twice a day on ghost streets empty of any pedestrians, devoid of the hum of traffic and hearing nothing but the wails of every ambulance in the area for the better part of a month was deeply disturbing in a way I still haven't come to terms with.
Rubbing down the door knob with bleach. Double masking and surgical gloving when going to the bodega on the block for fruit. A real and valid fear of death and maiming for multiple months isn't something you just bounce back from.
So yes: It's a subjective statement. However it's not like just being an introvert made the pandemic a walk in the park. Don't mistake your experience as speaking for all introverts.
This article [1] implies the chance of catching COVID-19 from contact surfaces is 1 in 10,000 *at best* under lab conditions, and negligible at best. You're more likely to be struck by lightning or hit by a car.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/science-and-r...
The same daycare that 2 weeks ago had an outbreak of noro or rotavirus which caused entire classes of toddlers to be infected and go home and vomit for a day and was spread to siblings and parents at home.
But they are still sanitizing pens. People’s risk profiles are crazy, and there is an insane amount of cover your ass for PR purposes.
This advisory wasn't even available in March or April of 2020: there was nothing. The URL has only existed since April of 2021.
Definitely subjective though. I'd say I'm an introvert, and I've made it through ok, but it still very much feels like I lost a year of my life. It's really not been too different from being in prison in the country where I live.
I will miss that. I liked not being told that I look angry or that I should smile sometimes.
I was even stopped by a random stranger in a supermarket once and they asked if I was OK... I said I was fine, and then she asked if it had been a long day... erm. Guess it's just my face.
I remember in the supermarket I was actually just thinking about if a man could beat a giraffe in a fight.
Humans probably have more stamina, if you can drag out the fight.
I think it's hilarious that HN needs such a disclaimer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resting_bitch_face: "Using a type of facial recognition system, they found that the phenomenon is real and the condition is as common in males as in females, despite the gendered word bitch that is used to name the concept."
On the other hand, it gives me a chance to step back and develop some real empathy for everyone else. I recognize that I am blessed, and most people aren't wired like me, and the isolation has been really tough for them. When I interact with people over videoconference, I have to remind myself that this person might very well be suffering to the point of a mental breakdown from all this, and I need to communicate with care and thoughtfulness.
This is what I hope everybody else can come out of the pandemic with: empathy, particularly for people like you and me who have thrived during the pandemic. Unfortunately, I fear you are an exception and people will push to make things just how they were before, as evinced by your email. On the bright side, I think it will at least get a little easier to find remote jobs, etc moving forward.
But what stopped you from distancing from people and using self-checkouts before the pandemic? If you hate people, fine, just go home straight after work, you aren't obligated to hang out with anyone. It is not like the government would fine you for coming home before 11pm, right?
This was not uniformly accepted behaviour. Yes, some people could find roles and a situation where this was possible before, but most couldn't. Stores didn't really optimize for a self-check out experience.
The social pressure in many organizations and communities to conform was high and there was no escape. If you you wanted to work at a tech company or startup you would have to accept open offices, happy hours, and other social requires to a great extent. It was not acceptable to skip many events and you had no option to switch your working environment in the office because the only option was open space.
The pandemic has forced a change, most importantly, in a relatively uniform manner. I'm not making the argument that we should all accept this other extreme. Just as we return to normality we should consider the experiences of others, and try to make some reasonable adaptations.
Now almost all the aisles are self-checkout and are friendlier to larger cart-fulls like I buy (having a few kids means there's no such thing as a quick trip with a hand basket anymore...).
No one is forcing you to pretend interest in small talk. If you're not interested in it, say so instead of pretending.
Are you afraid you'll lose your job over being antisocial or rude if you don't pretend to get along with your coworkers?
You might be happier if you look for a job you don't hate.
(Also if you stop seeing other people as beneath you, but that's a taller order)
> just go home straight after work
In your own hypothetical example, I'm still required to be in an office or else be jobless. Finding remote jobs isn't trivial.
I feel like it's a pretty ridiculous over-statement to say that introverts feel like they're in a pandemic normally. I'm an introvert and don't feel like that. I suspect the only people who could reasonably feel like that are people with anxiety disorders or phobias.
I don't know, I'm not saying you can't express your opinion or feel how you feel. But I want to express I'm a bit grossed out reading your post, as you seem just a bit too gleeful and smug at this whole situation.
> Those of you who have found the slightly over a year duration of the pandemic difficult have gotten a sample of how miserable pre-pandemic life was for those of us who are more introverted or misanthropic.
It doesn't impact me what other people feel, but I do hope that people who have not enjoyed lockdown can gain some empathy for the people who have enjoyed lockdown. It seems more like you're defensive at somebody having different preferences than you, which is just how life works.
Additionally, I don't have anxiety. Not before nor during the pandemic. So my point was not anxiety, my point was that the same way life during the pandemic has caused many people inconvenience and frustration, pre-pandemic life is inconvenient and frustrating to me because of the obligation to play social games and always be around people. It's quite tiresome and irritating.
> I'm an introvert and don't feel like that.
I also didn't say all introverts feel like I do, I said pre-pandemic life is miserable for those of us who are _more_ introverted or misanthropic.
I’m pushing back on the sentiment you pose because it’s far too often used and oppressively effective.
Please tell me where I expressed any glee at other people's misfortunes. What I said was the following which is a statement, not an expression of emotion:
> Those of you who have found the slightly over a year duration of the pandemic difficult have gotten a sample of how miserable pre-pandemic life was for those of us who are more introverted or misanthropic.
How other people feel doesn't impact me, but I do hope that people who have not enjoyed lockdown can gain some empathy for the people who have enjoyed lockdown. Pre-pandemic life was as uncaring and dismissive of people who thrive during the pandemic as pandemic life is towards people who thrived before the pandemic.
The large majority connect via smiles, laughs, hugs.
“While most of the early studies were on children residing in orphanages that were deficient in almost every dimension, even children who are reared in relatively good orphanages but who are subject to social and emotional neglect display many of these characteristics while living in the institution”
The effects of early social-emotional and relationship experience on the development of young orphanage children :: Atypical Behaviors
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2702123/#:~:tex...
https://open.spotify.com/track/2chEZfdAqJvlw9dM3hAU6p?si=c8f...
Those of you who have found the slightly over a year duration of the pandemic difficult have gotten a sample of how miserable pre-pandemic life was for those of us who are more introverted or misanthropic.