>>36420
I feel like when you're in your thirties you need to have a valid reason to be single. That is, if you're trying to date.

Women in particular are more direct about what they're looking for because, at that age, you should have your shit together. You no longer can sell yourself on potential because when you're in your thirties that should have actually materialised into something, otherwise you'll be written off as too much of a risk and a time waster. A dead wife seems like an acceptable amount of baggage.

>>36425

It's a nice rationalisation but I don't think it holds out in reality.

Women are terrible at judging if a person "has their shit together", because even if they tell themselves a steady job, orderly home and well rounded selection of hobbies are the green flags, they will still be distracted by the lad with a motorbike who promises to take them to Italy or whatever. Just the same as men are terrible at judging if a lass will be a bunny boiling psychopath or not, no matter how many times they have told themselves "never again, I have learned that lesson" they will still forget all that when they catch sight of a nice arse.

I maintain that most people don't significantly grow up any further than they have already done by the time they reach 25, the problem with dating in your 30s is that if you have figured out what you want and have the self-awareness to look for compatible traits in others, you are looking for a much more specific needle in the haystack than you were in your 20s.

>>36426

>the problem with dating in your 30s is that if you have figured out what you want and have the self-awareness to look for compatible traits in others, you are looking for a much more specific needle in the haystack than you were in your 20s.

Seconded. Not only will your dating pool naturally be more limited because a not insignificant portion of the population are married by their mid 30s and off the market. And they are by and large the best women and the best men. It's no cliché. But all the thinking of "I'm not doing that again because I did it in my 20s and it was shit" narrrows down your available options all the more. Fine, it's reasonable to not want to repeat some of your mistakes from your younger years by avoiding certain kinds of people or partners or situations. But you're then in turn going to have to accept that it makes getting to know somebody much harder and you will spend a good deal of your 30s and beyond alone.

I see a lot of thought has gone into advising the guy who likes to think about all the shagging he could get up to if only his wife wasn't still knocking about.

I went out with a woman last night and I thought we had a great time, we ended up kissing a lot, talked about future dates, life plans, our past and it took us ages to say goodbye. We were just going for dinner originally but ended up spending 5 hours talking and sat in a nearby park. I sent a follow up message this morning and it was left unread, did the profile picture zoom trick and it turns out she's deleted my contact and she's gone from the dating app too.

This feels like something that's getting more common these days. I gave her multiple chances to say she's got work the next day and asked if she felt like walking to x place and she was always eager to spend more time with me. It's just a bit shit when I thought we'd made a connection I guess. Bloody women only want to snog and leave us.

>>36451
Commitment issues I'm guessing. I could see myself doing similar. Infact they're probably back on the service under a different name.

>>36455
Who knows what goes on in other people's heads really, I imagine it was the problem we all have (on here) of being too sexy for our own good. It must be intimidating and they start asking themselves if they're good enough.

I'm meeting another woman for a first date tomorrow but I've just had to talk her through a plumbing emergency. I may have to start charging for my time.

>>36451

Sometimes people just wake up the next morning after a hot date and decide they don't want to continue the budding romance after all. It happens. It's happened to me too, and it was usually just a feeling of coming to your senses. Even if you were enjoying yourself on a date while it was happening, it could be you'll think about it all and then decide you want out before it gets serious. Maybe it does have to do with commitment issues as otherlad assumed. But more generally, I would assume that there was something that ended up putting her off, which wasn't front row centre while she was out with you, because maybe she was still having a good time.

>>36458

Or it's just the equivalent of how lasses would just happily let blokes buy them drinks with no intention of even staying for a chat because they knew they could get away with it, only now in the Hinge/Bumble era, it's you being a disposable partner for the night.

That's being very uncharitable, obviously, but all I will say is that it has happened to me twice in the past year, whereas it had never happened before in my life before this point. Back in the old days you at least got a shag out of this kind of arrangement. Horrible transactional treatment still happened but at least both parties profited from the exchange.

>>36459

>only now in the Hinge/Bumble era, it's you being a disposable partner for the night.

>That's being very uncharitable, obviously, but all I will say is that it has happened to me twice in the past year, whereas it had never happened before in my life before this point.


It's our modern times of instant-gratification consumerism. It'd be dishonest to say that that kind of thing wasn't happening before dating apps, as somebody who started dating as long ago as the early 90s. Even before modern social media, with every lass you were chatting up and having a drink with, there was that residual risk that she was just looking for somebody for that evening or that night. Maybe you'd go home with her, maybe if you were really unlucky she only wanted to have her drinks paid for by a whole series of unwitting blokes one after the other that evening. But I don't doubt that all the dating apps have made that whole kind of thing far worse.

I'm feeling a little frustrated with the woman I'm seeing. She wants to start a family - okay, if it'll make her happy. But she wants to do it exactly her way, cohabiting immediately which means one of us moving. For me to move means giving up the career I've been working on, to a far smaller house with no privacy indoors or out. She could move to mine and continue her career, and I've suggested many compromises but she won't budge. Either I give her everything she wants her way, on her timetable, while she gives up nothing, or I'm a selfish bastard leading her on like her ex did.

>>36466

>or I'm a selfish bastard leading her on like her ex did.

That should be your clue right there.

Some people are just pathologically self centered, and even the suggestion of compromise is perceived by them as a personal attack. Everything is then always everybody else's fault, including an eventual breakup. They never see that it makes them unable to live with that everything always has to be about them.

You sond far enough along in the relationship where cutting yourself loose now would involve a good bit of heartache. Even on your part. But my honest advice would be to run, not walk to the nearest desert island.

>>36466
>She wants to start a family - okay, if it'll make her happy.

To be honest, I don't think having a kid to make your partner happy is a good idea to begin with. It is a massive undertaking. I can't imagine taking on any emotional, logistical, and financial challenge that big without also enthusiastically wanting it for myself. Have you fully thought through what you're getting yourself into?

>>36467 may well be right and she simply can't see past her own needs, but let's give your partner the benefit of the doubt for a moment. Does she have any reasoning behind her requests at all, other than that it would be better for her?

Just some examples: I could understand moving to a less comfortable home if that place were closer to grandparents or services who could help with childcare, or had a really good school nearby. Another is that I could understand prioritising the preservation of one partner's career over another if they were a significantly higher earner or the career provided a big part of that person's identity and purpose. Does she understand how much your career means to you?

What I'm hoping is that this is just a failure of communication and not a sign that your partner is just selfish. The best couples typically either agree on things together, or there's a conscious choice of one partner to defer to the other. But coercion and lack of compromise is antithetical to either of these.

>>36466
This is something I was warned about when I started thinking about buying a house years ago - she's not going to move to your place because it will always be YOUR place. Just as if you moved to hers you'll feel like a permanent guest. You'll have to both move.

Like otherlad says it's something that needs a grown up conversation with lots of 'when you x you make me feel that y'.

>>36470

>This is something I was warned about when I started thinking about buying a house years ago - she's not going to move to your place because it will always be YOUR place. Just as if you moved to hers you'll feel like a permanent guest.

And it can be fuel for quite nasty arguments. When the old couple next door died, their granddaughter inherited the house. She then moved in with her husband, and then at some point the fights started, and we overheard through an open window her saying things to him like, "You don't own this house... I could kick you out today and you couldn't do anything about it because you own NOTHING here".

They did break up a while later and she sold the house because it was too expensive for her single income as an early years teacher. I guess my point is, you will be a guest in someone's house, and as long as you've got no right to it in writing, you are at your partner's whim. Probably not at first when everything is still lovey dovey, but you will have that hanging over your head as time goes by.

>>36469
I appreciate the responses but I was just tired and venting. I hadn't gotten around to the point of broaching how I felt with the grownup x-makes-me-feel style conversation yet but she left me a long voicemail pre-empting that where she clearly had thought about it and seen it more from my perspective already.

>>36472
I wonder if it works if one partner ends up paying a significantly larger amount of the mortgage or even if you split that 50/50 but all the furniture ends up as theirs.

>>36473
>she left me a long voicemail

Aw lad, you can just get a wife from the Philippines if you're that desperate. They already live in the UK thanks to the NHS.

>>36473

Glad to hear it, lad.

Do you ever say something to a woman and just instantly watch even the most nascent hint of attraction leave her body? This isn't really a moan, more an observation. Nevertheless, if she asks what you're reading and it's Hitler's Last Gamble by Jacques Nobecourt, change the bloody subject.

>>36495

>>36496
In my defence I wasn't trying to flirt. Let's just make that clear right now.

I find Beevor a little lightweight, to be honest.

>>36495

In an ideal world, people would be mature enough to realise that what you read isn't a direct reflection of your views, just exposure to a viewpoint. At the same time, adjusting the amount of information you share depending on social context is a valuable skill.

A bit of tactful vagueness like "I like history so I'm reading about the second world war at the moment" might have served you better, there. Though, thinking about it, even the act of sitting down and reading a book would earn derision and an eyeroll from a good part of the population.

>>36498
I brought up books the other day at work with some of my colleagues, all in their twenties it that makes any difference, and not one of them had read a single book since they were at school. They did seem a bit ashamed of this but they all had their excuses, mainly that they couldn't find the time for it.

That said, it in this instance it was more likely to be the subject matter. I think the internet has warped the perception that if you're interested in history you're likely to be a white supremacist, especially if your particular interest is the Second World War and the Nazis. It's nearly as bad a turn-off as having a picture of you holding a fish on your dating profile.

>>36498
>>36499
Oh, no, she didn't think I was Nazi either, just boring.

>>36499

I've been criticised for having bookshelves, apparently it's just showing off if you keep books and don't immediately get rid of them after reading.

>>36501

>apparently it's just showing off if you keep books and don't immediately get rid of them after reading.

As with many things, do you keep your copies of Plato, Shakespeare and John Steinbeck because you enjoy re-reading them, or because you want visitors to take note of how big of a pretentious cunt an intellectual you truly are?

>>36506
I'm not him, but I just don't want to throw them away. I keep them like trophies to remind myself of the time when I read them. I'm not a massive reader, so when I read Crime and Punishment or Ulysses, I feel entitled to take pride in my achievement.

>>36506

Do you keep your old DVDs because you want people to know how good your taste in film is? Fuck off.

>>36507
Crime and Punishment wasn't hard, even if I only read half of it. Les Misérables or, god forbid, Mody Dick would be more impressive.

I only made it to the end of the Bishop Myriel's section of Les Mis (literally the first book). I absolutely love it but I think the idea that it should be read kept me from enjoying further. It might be easier to tear into smaller chunks, less demanding to enjoy.

>>36509
People collect things mate. Displaying your stuff is an identity claim. I for one 'display' my old DVD collection in horribly scratchy but colourful binders. Check out this book, it's interesting.

>>36510
I have also read Les Miserables, and it is one of my favourite books of all time. Did you get to the random chapter where a man falls overboard off a ship and drowns? That was fantastic, and I especially liked how neither the man nor the ship are mentioned at any point in the rest of the book; it's just a total diversion from the main story. A bit like that chapter in The Wind in the Willows where one of the characters meets an ancient Greek god, or the other one where he goes off to become a pirate for a bit.

The most horrifically unreadable book I have ever read from start to finish was Atlas Shrugged. That, admittedly, is not something to be proud of if you want to impress ladies.

>>36511
I didn't get to that part, no. It does sound humerously tangent.
Atlas Shrugged took such a weird direction with the blue steel and free-energy device that I found it difficult to keep my conception of the internal world intact. But again, only read half. I donated plenty of books recently, hopefully not Atlas if it's a dating line.

Bringing it back to dating woes, a friend of mine used to live in what is now my flat and I strongly suspect, believe even, that they used an old key to look around my home. Over the course of our brief relationship they used the information gathered from my cupboard bookshelf to strike conversations and force a connection that might not have been there otherwise.

>>36511
I seem to remember the whole plot is driven by impossible coincidences, that Mme. Thenardier's villainy underlined by her taste in terrible pulp novels that Hugo certainly hopes his readers wouldn't deign to touch, that Marius finds one of Valjean's handkerchiefs and sleeps with it over his face, and that Javert is actually just an autistic man who could do with some support.

>>36507
I believe it's standard practice to burn every book you've ever read once you've finished it, otherwise your fellow Presbyterians will be concerned about your lack of modesty.

An attractive woman has set up a coffee stand in a local park I have to walk through on the way to work. The coffee is overpriced so I try to avoid it but she's already got me once before where I realised I basically had nothing to talk to her about as she made my coffee. This morning she smiled and said hello to me, I was already running late for work but I'd probably have been her best customer of the day if I wasn't.

Obviously I'm not going to buy coffee just to try and chat up a local coffee woman. Service staff have to be nice to you and if it all goes wrong I would want to walk through that park in future. But this is also how my parents met where my dad kept buying scratch cards from the petrol station my mum worked at as an excuse to talk to her.

>>36495
I think it's acceptable and even expected to lie in this situation and say a more socially acceptable answer that you still enjoy. The question's purpose is to elicit conversation.

>>36506
For me they make good conversation pieces and people can use your book collection to get a feel for you as a person.

>>36510
>Displaying your stuff is an identity claim.
This is not a public place. It's "displayed" for me, inside my house. As is my oven and the spices I don't always but do occasionally use. Are we supposed to hide everything I own in case someone happens to come by while feeling intellectually insecure? Little cupboard doors on all our bookshelves?

>>36514
Fuck it, I'll leave for work a little earlier for couple days over the next 2/3 weeks where I'll do some light friendly chatter and see if I'm living in a Richard Curtis movie by how she responds.

The difference won't make much sense unless y you saw the rumeo trouble.

>>36515
I don't know what the fuck you're talking about but identity claims reinforce our own perceptions of ourselves as well as others perceptions of us.
Your items are indeed displayed for you as are my DVD and CD synthetic fabric printed binders (one of them has a devilish cherub on it and holds a small collection of horror and erotic films).

Read the book, it's a tenner on amazon. Paperback. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. When you're done put it in a charity shop, apparently some pulp books now.

>>36516
I been there mate, least it could go better than this.

>>36520
>Read the book, it's a tenner on amazon.

Oh, you're one of those people. If you're buying a book brand new on Amazon then chances are you are doing it for show. Always buy second-hand, it's usually about a quarter of the price.

>>36521
I'm not him, but I don't follow your logic. Where is the added cachet from buying a book on Amazon? He also suggests immediately sending the book to a charity shop once you're done with it, something that hardly allows him to show it off. It's worth remembering that you can buy plenty of secondhand books through Amazon.

>>36521
Unfortunately it takes somebody to put it in the charity shop before I can buy it second hand. Start the cycle, brother - I paid £50 for a book on Ancient greek lexicon, internet said it was worth over £2000 I later did more exentive research and it's worth about a fiver. Got another that's worth £10, tho!

This'll be the third time I'm correcting back to thread topic - guess what I heard echoing through the halls late last night? 2 girls getting fuuuuucked for an hour. How the fuck do I experience that? Preferably in a relationship with an open minded woman. Pegging lad, shower us with wisdom.

>>36522
Apparently Amazon prints on order. Lots of pdf art and colouring books.

>>36520
They're not a display mate, they're storage.

>>36523
>Apparently Amazon prints on order. Lots of pdf art and colouring books.
That's not really the case. You can buy plenty of actual books from Amazon directly or via the company, but from another retailer, as well as secondhand copies.

A mediterranean m8 of mine plays the numbers game. He constantly approaches women outside of the traditional contexts of pubs and clubs (e.g. when we're just walking somewhere, in shops, public transport, or in a museum) and says stuff like "hey I think you're really cute blahblahblah I'd like to get to know you better, can I get your instagram or number". Nine times out of ten he fails but he does it so often that it works out for him.

Is there a trick to cultivating the same ability to not care?

I was organising a date with a woman over an app, she said she was happy to go out but is organising her brother's birthday party so we'd have to find a time around that. I said not to worry and to feel free to prioritise family over some stranger on an app, but said I could be flexible outside of tomorrow or Tuesday so to let me know if there's an evening free later in the week where we could go for a dinner date.

She came back and suggested Tuesday night.

>>36514
>>36516
Phase 1 complete: Today I paid £5.60 for a small latte and a pastel de nata.

She's very bubbly and chatty but I don't really know what to say to someone running a small coffee business so my ideas of the 'what happened to Costa Rican blends?' and 'does it get busy here during the rush hour' seem quite bad for getting a friendly conversation going which meant I mostly stood in awkward silence. I'm not sure if I like this new hobby.

>>36527
I think it works like thumping people where you need to do it for it to get easier and easier. Maybe that explains why those PUA courses took off in the 00s because their core target was telling insecure men to try talking to women and keep doing it until they learn how to talk to women and don't mind the initial awkwardness.

>>36530
>said I could be flexible outside of tomorrow or Tuesday
I read this as, "It doesn't have to be tomorrow or Tuesday; I can be flexible and do a different night instead." So if she suggested Tuesday, she's probably trying to be accommodating.

There's a woman at the chipshop who's continually showing some level of interest in me, a semi-regular customer, despite seeing that I barely interact with anyone and am generally .. shabby. She's commented on a change in my appearance and has just now spoke to me on the street, as she was leaving work.
I'm pretty sure she's not just being nice for repeat custom.

What would you say to explore relationship potential in this situation more than "Small chips, thank you"? I did once appologise to a different woman for touching her hand during change transfer - she giggled and did it again, which was nice.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo_9UgaxeJE

>>36551
If you won't ask her to batter your sausage for you, just start a conversation. Ask about her day or something.

>>36552
>Ask about her day or something.
That I didn't even think to say that shows how hopeless my situation is.

>>36553
You've done well to pick up on there being any signal at all. Subsequently maintaining enough self-esteem to want to do something about it is another accomplishment, as a lot of blokes are too clueless and/or depressed to make it as far as you have now.