Once you are out of the dating game you may get married and start a family. That also has a mental overhead, and it can be hard to keep your kids schedules aligned with demands / timelines from work in tech.

I think you learn to bear the load more gracefullly as you age and mature. It also puts life more into perspective.

My main point is you learn to handle it, which is actually a good form of personal growth.

Work to live or live to work.

Dating and relationships add to the mental overhead, but navigating a tough marriage and eventually divorce add a whole layer of mental overhead that I can’t even describe. It’s a miracle people manage to stay employed after going through it.

Pretty much feels like a second job to me and currently in the stage of advancing in my career and learning Rust on the side and more devops things and then the actual job as a Java SWE I already do like a 150%/60+ hour week, I can not have a 250% load.

There are phases of life where it makes sense to prevent preoccupying yourself with romantic relationships (which end up occupying large chunks of your free time), however I believe that long term this is a bad strategy. Focusing on career above all else will not make you happy in the long run unless you define your entire identity as a career professional.

In short bursts this is probably fine (and I followed a similar strategy early in my career) but I am personally happy to have not fallen into the trap of focusing on my career to the detriment of my personal life throughout my entire youth.

Well, no-one can decide your priorities for you, but this is a path you want to be sure you want to follow, as your life options narrow more quickly than you might imagine.

Advancing your career may seem important now, but will you feel that way on your deathbed looking back?

On my deathbed I'll be fondly remembering all the value I created for the shareholders, and the KPIs my team exceeded.

i'll pass those KPI metrics down to my children!

Staying single is only one of the ways to get out of the dating market.

Your loaded comment reminds me of Sheryl Sandberg's statements. "Look how easy it is to maintain work/life balance if you LEAN IN!" -- ignoring the fact that an army of people supporting her "LEAN IN" lifestyle.

To be fair to her, after her husband died I think she had to re-assess a lot of the Lean In stuff.

Is it considered „loaded“ to say that starting a family is um… an option? What a time to be alive.

What are other ways?

Maybe getting married?

The only type of marriage that does not require constant effort is a failed marriage.

It requires effort, but it's not always a chore. It should make your life easier by sharing the load of everyday burdens. I'm thankful to be sharing my life with my wife.

I wrote "effort", not "chore", and yet I got downvoted...

I think because it came off as gloomy. I tried to differentiate effort from being and solely negative and emphasize how marriage is a combination of the good and the bad.

Life in general requires constant energy. Unless you’re freeloader. Be it relationship, participating in a society or anything else.

Are you implying that marriage is, somehow, the end state of relationship building? I can assure you it does not end at marriage.

marriage, which is presumably the intention of dating

It used to be. But people are now pushed towards the dating equivalent of 'fast fashion', hookups via apps, throwaway relationships, shopping around for something new and exciting.

And then people get surprised that somehow it’s exhausting. It was not supposed to be used like that. Just like shopping in a fast fashion lifestyle is exhausting. Compared to buying long lasting outfit once in a while.

I've never dated in this mode before. It's it like... an interview?

haha yea basically, "dating with intention" can be pretty awkward

Plenty of couples don’t get married and have happy lives together.

Mail order bride

Lol, you and George Costanza: https://youtu.be/AariEduyb7s?t=56

too absorbed in work making money for a corporate overlord to try to breed.

I hope you're working at a startup that you own, otherwise you're just helping fund some executive's Disney vacation with his four kids, while you end up an evolutionary dead-end.

but maybe you'll write something that everyone will use for a couple years, then replace, right?