Let’s hear some stories from the thready-verse about how you guys met your significant other.
For me it was during the first year of COVID, my company asked who from Europe (I was living in Sweden) wanted to go for a three month business trip to coach a big Korean automotive supplier on how to do modern software development. Most of the other people had families and especially during COVID nobody wanted to travel. I said I could do it, even though I never coached before. But because nobody else volunteered they sent me and and another guy who also was single without a family, etc.
I was convinced that the other guy would have good game with the women here, and thought that there is no harm in installing some international dating app and to try my own luck. During COVID I just lost a ton of weight and found new confidence and it was far away from home and what happens in Korea stays in Korea and so on :D
Anyway, to my surprise during the first two weeks I got some matches and I hit it off with one of them. We met and started dating and very quickly fell for each other. Then when the 3 months were over, I asked the company if the customer would still have some use for my skills and they said yes and send me for 3 more months. I had to go back to Sweden to get a new Visa and spent another 2 weeks in quarantine (as the first time). But then the second tree months were over too and I asked again for more. By that time I was really sick of all the time in quarantine and asked if they could move me from the Swedish office to the Korean office and they agreed.
I went back to Sweden, threw away most of my stuff and put the most valuable things up on a friends attic and moved to Korea with one suitcase. I stayed at AirBnB’s for two more months and then we found an apartment and moved in together.
She has a daughter from a previous marriage and we now have a 1.5 year old son together and we still live in Korea :D
These stories of getting laid thanks to videogames seem like fantasy to me (if you’re not lying). I’ve been playing for 25 plus years of my life and still a virgin. I guess I have zero chances in everything.
Finding a partner has two roadblocks.
The first asks are you fun to be around? If you were a fly on the wall in your house would you think “this is a person I want to be with, their activities, demeanor, and level of self-care are something I find attractive”. If you don’t want to be with yourself why would anyone else? Work to being and staying a person you enjoy being around.
The second is more applicable to people who are alone and introverted. If you lived two streets over from yourself how could you meet yourself. If you’re not someone that ever interacts with new people then how can you meet anyone? Find ways to open yourself up to meeting people you want to be with and who want to be with you. This could be through hobby based communities, to socializing with classmates and co-workers, to meeting friends of friends, to joining new groups or classes you’re interested in.
No I’m not a fun person. But I can’t erase myself… And trust me I can’t change. I don’t have co workers anymore and only did middle school. Nothing around my minuscule town is for me and I’m an poor immigrant, I have everything against me.
I’m not really going to argue with that much defeatism, I just want to clarify that being a person that’s enjoyable to be with doesn’t mean being a Hollywood movie definition of a “fun” person. It doesn’t require you to change into someone else. It just means you work to improve yourself, reduce the aspects of yourself you don’t like and increase the prevalence of aspects of yourself you do like.
You don’t need to become a “fun” person, just a YOU that you would want to spend time with.
Nobody is forcing you to improve yourself, but like I said before, if you wouldn’t want to spend time with yourself why would anyone else? Even if you live the rest of your life alone, would you not prefer being able to enjoy your own company?
No I wouldn’t. Because being alone for the rest of your life a death sentence regardless how I feel, I rather kill myself. A life that doesn’t reproduce is worthless, right now I’m worthless.
I’ve said this before in other comment, my father wasn’t a fun person, was almost as anti social as I am, he grew up dirt poor and was hit and lashed by his father, he became a scary muscular man, stone faced… Yet he managed to “secure” my mother for over a decade. He never believed in this bs of loving yourself or being “normally fun” yet he did his role in this world and got me and my brother.
Why not me? Just because I’m not fun?
Ok, let me be fair and clarify my FFXIV story. Yes I did meet my SO in a video game, and that all does sound too good to be true. What I left out was the hard work getting myself into in therapy and on a path to meaningfully and deliberately work at being happy. By the time I met my girlfriend, I was already in a much better head space, and I was already trying to put myself out there to actively start dating.
Regarding your other comment about life that doesn’t reproduce being not worth living, I don’t buy that for a second. All life hits a dead end. All will need to contend with The Big Freeze, The Big Rip, or The Big Crunch.
Life is meaningful precisely because it is finite. Infinities are a dime a dozen. And infinities await us all.
The fact you need to be this paragon of goodness and being happy and cheerful is a death sentence for me. If that’s mandatory to get some company they I’m cursed to be alone and virgin for the rest of my life.
If you want your life to change, you yourself must be open to change. Life itself is change. What exactly are you clinging so fiercely to? Misery? There’s a reason they say misery loves company.
Don’t aim for happy; aim for neutral, aim for peace, aim for not miserable. All of those are an infinite improvement.