My wife can love me one day, and scream that she can’t stand me the next (I can be a really infuriating person…)
Robot Arm, maybe this is an opportunity?
In the US at least, testosterone levels are going down.
Add in porn as a substitute, add in the fact that people expect way more from a partner than they did 50 years ago, add in the fact that we are more socially isolated than in the past, add in the fact that wealth and education are negatively correlated with fertility (and for many people marriage and partnering up is done to have kids. No desire for kids = less need for a partner), etc. and I can see why the number who decide to pair up is declining.
Get a sex doll, or go to Japan? Either one seems to raise additional questions.
Get a sex doll? I think that the idea was that, as a Robot Arm, you could make a good living, er, ‘aiding’ the lonely (and notoriously robophilic) Japanese in, er, ‘dealing with’ their urges and needs yourself. 
Online dating, from what I’ve read, is a tremendous annoyance to many men and women alike. Men experience great futility and frustration (I believe that some men get 1 response out of 100 messages sent, or some statistic like that) while many women are bombarded with messages from men they don’t want or aren’t interested in.
Oh. Well, in that case…
a) It’s not really the arm of the doll that gets to have most of the fun, is it?
and
b) I’m not actually a robot. (Don’t tell anyone.)
I’ve also noticed that a sizable percentage of men, especially the younger ones (<25 or 30) have a thing for posting pictures of themselves and there’s part of a woman’s head in the corner.
:smack:
Go figure.
In my experience the rate of return was higher than 1%, but it wasn’t a whole lot better.
As far as women being bombarded with messages from men they don’t want or aren’t interested in, that may be the case but thats part of the issue why people are single. What % of men are truly attractive and interesting to a wide swath of women? 5-10%? If you have a situation where 50% of women all want to land the same 5-10% of men, the women end up empty handed too. It is musical chairs, there aren’t enough exceptional men for all the average women who want one on those sites. On sites like tinder a lot of guys say if you aren’t in the best looking 10% of men, to not even bother. If you aren’t you may get some responses but it’ll be a frustrating, shameful slog uphill.
At the end of the day, the gender ratios are about equal and in a random sample of people you’ll find 100 women for every 100 men. If huge numbers of women consider 70-95% of men undateable, that means there aren’t anywhere near enough of those dateable men to go around. Plus those exceptional men (the best 10%), if they do decide to settle down, will only settle down with exceptional women (the best 10%). Maybe 10% of jobs pay six figures, but if 50% of people want a job that pays 6 figures, at bare minimum 80% of those people will be disappointed.
I agree it is a tremendous annoyance. The men are thirsty and frustrated, and the women are chasing elite men that they can’t get.
I’ve often posited that I need a something between a FWB and a boyfriend. I’ve been calling it a FYB+. Don’t see each other more than 4 times a week, frequently only 2-3 times. Sometimes only once. Family visits only necessary when it is beneficial for the prevention of the “aren’t you ever going to meet someone” questions. Arm candy for work functions when required.
I suspect that might be the same reason people who send out 100s of resumes get similar hit rates. My brother met his wife on an internet dating site, so I think it must work sometimes.
When I was in college there were lots of parties designed to help you meet members of the opposite sex who were also interested. I met my wife during college (not at a party) and have often wondered how I would have fared if I had started working single. Internet dating sites seem like a reasonable answer, especially if you don’t like bars.
A visit to any WalMart proves that men and women do not have to be physically attractive to get hooked up. Or rich. Now if someone is unattractive and only wants to date supermodels or superstuds, there may be a problem.
Yes! A million times, yes. That’s another reason I’m single. One of the things I’ve learned in the course of my relationships is that I need a lot of space and time to myself, even though I’m highly monogamous and form a deep attachment to the person I’m with. I think people need a chance to miss each other from time to time. I also think that little things–disagreements over washing the dishes, or picking up socks on the floor, or whatever–can wear away a relationship. It’s always good to have your own territory.
And I agree with all the other posters who said that they’d rather be single than in a relationship that wasn’t right for them. It’s always better to be alone than to wish you were. Once again, a million times, yes.
And, once you’ve been in a few relationships that haven’t worked out, you get much better at seeing areas of incompatibility early on. That means you don’t even start getting involved with people who you suspect won’t work out for you. (Or, for people who are all about hookups, you don’t have any illusions about falling in love with anyone you’d like to bang.) That can mean long, long periods of singleness. But being alone beats ending up attached to someone who’s not a good match.
I am that most likely and I see it as a life hack. For us there is no such thing as casual sex. For others, casual sex is ideal except that it leads to problems. There’s almost no common ground between the two.
I’ll just add (since I’ve gotten quoted twice for my brief note) that there are plenty of lost, broken people out there, as well as plenty of dysfunctional relationships (I saw my sister’s marriage go up in smoke this past year, and it wasn’t what you would call pretty). There are plenty of places to find yourself in that make being single and unattached seem like a halcyon tiptoe through the tulips…
This would be GREAT!!! I was married for 35 years, so I know I can maintain a long term relationship. However, I am not sure I ever want to commit like that again. I’m rarely lonely, enjoy living alone, but I would like to have someone to go places with.