I tried to plan a date with one person, she said that that weekend conflicted. after saying we'd have to do another time I just stopped because she never responded

for another girl I just txted about having a good time and she responded w/ something similar and I am waiting a day or two before proposing something

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3815858&forum_id=2#34823047)

How is this possible?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3815858&forum_id=2#34828065)

As for the immediate response, I think you need to go for a kiss the next time instead of a hug. Don't worry about being awkward--just do it. Awkward or not, it will break things up a bit.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3815858&forum_id=2#35033408)

Let's say there's a kiss goodbye. See if you can come in. If at your place, invite her in. Don't take too long about it--at 29 they are down for some dick pronto.

Have her in, offer her some wine, sit down with her, tell her you had a nice time, sit next to her, with arm around her, TELL HER YOU REALLY LIKE HER, tell her you have to tell her something--tell her you are still a virgin, and that it just never happened for you. She will be intrigued. You might get laid that very night! Alternatively, she will take you to a certain point, and she will undoubtedly want to close the deal. She will express some hesitation about being your first. You make it clear you don't care, this burden of Virginity has been hanging around your neck for years like an albatross, make a joke about how you want to keep unicorns away or something, and then Go For It. Let her do the work. You can do this, little incel bro! You MUST! Life is for the Living!

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3815858&forum_id=2#35033432)

engineer and school teacher?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3815858&forum_id=2#34823029)

i got married late 20s -can't imagine dating as an early 30s SHREW bitch

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3815858&forum_id=2#34823093)

your parents missed out on having fun, carefree 20s and will never get that back.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3815858&forum_id=2#34827153)

fuck the OP.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3815858&forum_id=2#34823006)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3815858&forum_id=2#34823037)

I really just want to have a nice dinner, get a little drunk, and get my dick wet with as little effort as possible.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3815858&forum_id=2#34828074)

However, i think the early 20s girl prefers a 30 some guy than someone her age

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3815858&forum_id=2#34829512)

One girl in particular, OH GOD OH. I almost posted about her in the "if your wife died would you remarry" thread.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3815858&forum_id=2#34853768)

having a 180 gf/wife>>>>>

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3815858&forum_id=2#34823478)

Then in the back corner, I saw two 40-something year olds on a first date. The man was balding and in a conservative business suit. The woman was a schoolteacher well past her prime. The entire scene immediately struck me as pathetic. I did not yet understand life, love, or fertility trends, but I instinctively knew in my gut that what I was seeing was sad.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3815858&forum_id=2#34825451)

but lol, just LOL @ trying to start a new relationship in your 30s. i mean seriously, what is the fucking point?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3815858&forum_id=2#34825990)

you should spend your 20s having fun and then get married and have kids when there's absolutely nothing left to do

you sound like you didn't have any fun in life

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3815858&forum_id=2#34827149)

FLR hates fucking everything and a bunch of incel XOers have completely sold themselves on the autistic internet lie that you're fucked if you aren't ward cleaver by 32. any other breaking news?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3815858&forum_id=2#34829111)

?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3815858&forum_id=2#34829264)

To house all these unmarried men, boarding houses were built. For a dollar or just a few cents a week, a young bachelor could have a bed to sleep in and (maybe) a place to bathe. Boarding houses varied in their amenities and comforts. Most boarding houses in the working class districts were dirty and provided no privacy. Men were forced to share a small room with five or sometimes ten other men. Sharing beds with complete strangers wasn’t uncommon, nor was choosing to share a bed with a friend to save money. Middle class bachelors could usually afford more refined boarding. For a few extra dollars a week, a man could get a room to himself that included a dresser, a rug (hot dog!), and daily hot water for shaving.

The atmosphere of these boarding houses in many ways resembled that of the modern day frat house. Young men living alone in the cities found companionship and camaraderie with their fellow residents. Jokes, ribbing, and social drinking were all part of the experience.

Despite the boarding house boom in post-Civil War America, most bachelors lived with their parents or a next of kin. In 1860, 60 percent of native born unmarried men between the ages of 15 and 30 lived with family. Chances were your great-grandpappy lived with his parents well into adulthood (the idea that living at home past age 18 is an unprecedented modern problem and represents a failure on the part of contemporary young people is a myth based on comparisons to the unique circumstances in post-WWII America…but we’ll save that discussion for another day).

Socioeconomic factors played a significant role in whether a bachelor lived with family or by himself. Working class bachelors were more likely to live with their families than their middle-class counterparts, simply because their blue collar brethren couldn’t afford to pay for boarding elsewhere.

Bachelor Hangouts

Like the 17th century bachelors at Harvard who founded “The Friday Association of Bachelors,” bachelors in post-Civil War America began forming groups to cater specifically to their unique needs. Enterprising businessmen also saw an opportunity to make a buck off this growing demographic and so created businesses to accommodate the burgeoning bachelor population.

As mentioned above, middle-class bachelors were more likely than their working class peers to break away from the constraints of family life and try to live on their own. But in the absence of mom, dad, and six siblings, these men still craved company and companionship, and middle class urban bachelors would often recreate family life with other single men in private men’s clubs. Most major cities at the turn of the 20th century had one of these clubs, places where a young bachelor could share the expenses of rent, meals, and a housekeeper. The clubs were somewhat like working class boarding houses, only a whole lot nicer.

Private men’s clubs were often built in elite parts of towns and were decorated with dark wood walls and banisters, red carpets, and masculine art. The clubs usually had a study or sitting room where a young bachelor could sit, read, and take part in stimulating conversation over cigars and drinks. A billiards table was a common piece of furniture. Married men would even join a private men’s club just so they could have a place to retreat to when they wanted to get away from the family. Some of these clubs included the Olympic Club in San Francisco, Boston’s Somerest Club, and New York’s Knickerbocker Club.

Private men’s clubs weren’t without their critics. Many saw them as a direct threat to the future of the American family. Why would a young man want to get married when he had all the benefits of family in his club? New York journalist Junius Henri Browne said this of the clubs: “Every club is a blow against marriage… offering as it does, the surrounding of a home without women or the ties of a family.”

In addition to private clubs, other bachelor hangouts included fraternal lodges like Freemasons and the Odd Fellows. From 1870 to 1920, growth in fraternal organizations boomed. According to Understanding Manhood in America, by 1920 thirty million men were members of a fraternal organization. The lodge often served as a second home for men, both single and married. This mixture of married men and bachelors allowed for some symbiotic relationships. The older, married men often provided mentoring and advice to the younger, single men on transitioning into manhood, while the bachelors provided an atmosphere where married men could loosen their collars and enjoy some freewheeling and virile camaraderie.

The golden age of the bachelor was also the golden age of the saloon. By 1895, American cities had, on average, one saloon for every 317 residents and the primary customer was single men (women, who were not prostitutes, were typically banned outright). For many bachelors living in cities, the saloon wasn’t just a place where they could grab a pint of beer and play cards with friends after work. Saloons also provided other services that bachelors needed, including banking services (like check cashing and credit extension) and mail services.

The most important service saloons offered bachelors was providing food. Back in the late 19th century, many cities required bars and saloons to provide free food to patrons. For just the cost of a pint of beer, a young and hungry bachelor could fill himself with some hearty victuals. For many urban bachelors, saloon food was their only source of sustenance. Immigrant Oscar Ameringer described the kind of free food you could get in an 1880s Cincinnati bar: “By investing five cents in a schooner of beer and holding on to the evidence of purchase, one could eat one’s fill of such delicacies as rye bread, cheese, hams, sausage, pickled and smoked herring, sardines, onions, radishes, and pumpernickel.”

Billiard halls sprung up like weeds in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as well, and bachelors were their primary clientele. Popularly referred to as a “young man’s game,” pool was a way for bachelors to blow off some steam after work and maybe even make a little money gambling. The pool hall became a place that ushered working class boys into the world of adult male society. Legendary pool champion Wimpy Lassiter looked back nostalgically at his youth in the early 20th century and said this about pool halls:

“A long time ago I used to stand there and peek over the lattice work into that cool-looking darkness of the City Billiards in Elizabeth, North Carolina… And it seemed as though the place had a special sort of smell to it that you could breathe. Like old green felt tables and brass spittoons and those dark polished woods. Then a bluish haze of smoke and sweet pool chalk, and strongest of all, a kind of manliness.”

Last, but not least, the barbershop was another important hangout for bachelors between 1860 and 1920. In Chicago, the number of barbershops shot up from 308 in 1880 to nearly 2,000 by 1896.

It’s no coincidence that the golden age of the barbershop occurred simultaneously with the golden age of the bachelor. Before men moved from the farm to work in factories and offices in the cities, they usually got their hair cut by another family member. Living alone in the city, a bachelor needed somebody else to do it for him. Also, because single men typically lived in a room that lacked the basin and hot water needed for a comfortable shave, they would often head to the barber once a week to get their scruff removed.

Barbers also provided other essential services for bachelors, specifically medical and dental care. Old barbering books from the late 19th and early 20th centuries often provided recipes for creams and tonics to cure ringworm and other skin diseases. There were even recipes for barber-made cough drops.

Barbershops also served as news centers and civic forums for men. Men would frequently drop by the barbershop just to see what was going on and chew the fat with other men. Barbers kept their shops well-stocked with magazines and newspapers for their clients to read while they waited for a shave. The most popular magazine among single men in the late 19th century was The National Police Gazette, a weekly periodical where a man could get the latest updates about boxing matches and read tawdry crime stories. Due to the popularity of The National Police Gazette among barbers, the magazine had a weekly feature called “Tonsorial Artist of the Week” where they highlighted the work of a singular barber. The National Police Gazette laid the foundation for the versatile men’s lifestyle magazines we enjoy today (including, the Art of Manliness!).

Like private men’s clubs, bachelor hangouts were criticized by moralists and newspaper editors. Saloons and pool halls received the brunt of the criticism. The Georgia Anti-Poolroom League (yes, there were organizations that quaintly fought poolrooms) argued that poolrooms “diverted man power” and encouraged “idleness…dissipation…intoxicants…profanity…lascivious stories…and the love of chance.” In New York City, moralists denounced the Henry Hill saloon as the “most dangerous and demoralizing place in New York.”

Not only did saloons and pool halls encourage the obvious vices like drunkenness and gambling, critics argued, they distracted young men from taking on the responsibilities of adult life as well. Echoing Benjamin Franklin’s criticisms of bachelors in Revolutionary America, 19th and early 20th century critics believed that the illicit activities engaged in in these establishments sapped young men of their vim and vigor. Bachelor hangouts were a threat to American manhood and America herself.

Many young men living at the turn of the century had a bit of anxiety about their masculinity in comparison with their ancestors. With no more frontier to settle or wars to fight, how would they prove their mettle? Would their virility ebb away as they sat at desks or worked in factories instead of tilling the land or hammering at a forge?

The sports arena became a substitute “frontier” and “battlefield” where young men could display their masculine strength and competitive drive. It was during the late 19th century that many of the popular sports we enjoy today got their start. Bachelors had a major influence on the rapid rise of sports in American culture. Many of the first organized baseball, basketball, and football teams were formed among bachelors attending college. Christian churches embraced the country’s new love of sports in the hopes of making church more attractive to men, particularly young, single men during the Muscular Christianity movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Of all athletics, boxing was seen as the most virile sport a man could take part in. Even if a man didn’t actually step in the ring to fight, he’d spend his weekends watching two other fighters duke it out in matches that lasted hours and sometimes days. During the golden age of the bachelor, boxing was the most popular spectator sport.

Boxing also gave birth to America’s first national sport’s hero, John L. Sullivan. In many ways, Sullivan was the paragon of this period’s ideal of virile bachelorhood. Though he was married, John L. lived the life of a bachelor for most of his life: drinking, fighting, and carousing with other women. He spent more time at the saloon with other bachelors than he did with his family.

In addition to athletics and competition, men, especially working class bachelors, began to define their manliness by their patronage of “illicit” pastimes and vices like drinking, pool games, horse racing, pugilism, card games, cigar smoking, and cock/dog fighting. This “sporting male” identity is still with us today in many ways from the benign weekly poker nights to the more depraved binge drinking rituals in college fraternities.

Thus the golden age of the bachelor was a time where young, single men, free from the responsibilities of family life and laws that targeted their demographic, enjoyed an unprecedented amount of freedom and male camaraderie. And yet this kind of freedom still created a tension in society–what if men enjoyed bachelorhood so much that they never wanted to settle down? This tension between the enjoyment of bachelor culture by some, and the worry that it was too enjoyable by others, continued into the 20th century.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3815858&forum_id=2#34829481)

you have more resources and a better dating pool.

there are an insane amount of 30 year old women that still have the body of a 20 year old but with better sex and they are lobbying for your time

you still can get the occasional 20 year old for a quick tryst of timing is right

and there are tons of 40 year old divorcees in great shape just looking for a fling

LJL @ melvins complaining about dating after 30

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3815858&forum_id=2#34853084)

“Marriage is a healthy estate,” British physician William Farr wrote in 1858, in one of the first studies to conclude that married people were better off than their single counterparts. “The single individual is more likely to be wrecked on his voyage than the lives joined in matrimony.”

The ensuing decades have done little to dissuade social scientists of their certainty that single people were doing themselves a disservice. Until now. In 2017, it was that conviction that got wrecked.

As a psychologist, I study single people – their lives, their happiness, the stigma they face – and I can say that this has been a banner year for the publication of massive studies challenging what we thought we knew about their supposedly inferior life voyages. New insights just kept coming: on sex and dating, on self-esteem, on what it means to be an adult. And they came just in time: In recent history, there have never been as many unmarried adults as there are right now. Here are a half dozen of the coolest discoveries about single people from the year 2017.

Demographically, single people are more powerful than ever before.

In 2017, the Census Bureau reported that a record number of adults in the U.S. were not married. More than 110 million residents were divorced or widowed or had always been single; that’s more than 45 percent of all Americans aged 18 or older. And people who did marry were taking longer than ever to get there. The median age of first marriage rose to 29.5 for men; for women, it reached 27.4. (These trends are likely to continue: A report from the Pew Research Center a few years ago predicted that by the time today’s young adults reach the age of 50, about one in four of them will have been single all their life.)

Living alone is also becoming more popular. This summer, the Canadian press was abuzz with the news that for the first time in the nation’s history, more people were living in one-person households than in any other arrangement. In the U.S., the number of people living without a spouse or partner rose to 42 percent this year, up from 39 percent a decade ago.

Individualistic practices like living alone aren’t just Western phenomena — they’ve gone global. In analyses of a half-century of data (1960–2011) from 78 nations around the world, psychology researcher Henri C. Santos and his colleagues found that the popularity of such practices grew significantly for 83 percent of the countries with relevant data. Individualistic beliefs, like valuing friends more than family, have also been on the rise, increasing significantly for 79 percent of the nations across the five decades.

Marriage is no longer considered a key part of adulthood.

A half-century ago, Americans who had not yet married wouldn’t be considered real adults. That’s no longer the case. According to a 2017 Census Bureau report, more than half of the participants in a nationally representative sample (55 percent) said that getting married was not an important criterion for becoming an adult. The same percentage also said that having a child was not an important milestone of adulthood. More important now is completing formal schooling and having full-time employment; 95 percent said that each of those criteria was at least somewhat important.

High-schoolers aren’t as into dating — or sex.

In a study published this fall, psychologists Jean M. Twenge and Heejung Park analyzed four decades’ worth of data (1976–2016) on the sex and dating experiences of more than 8 million students in the ninth through twelfth grades. The percentage of teens who had ever been on a date was lowest in the most recent years of the study. And along the same lines, the percentage who had had sex was at an all-time low in recent years.

Single people are having more sex than married people.

Moving past the teens and on to people 18 and older, the same holds true: Adults are having less sex than they used to. Analyzing survey data collected from more than 26,000 people between 1989 and 2014, researchers found that the average person now has sex around nine fewer times per year than the average person in the early ’90s.

But not all groups followed the same sexual trajectory — the drop was especially pronounced for the people who were married or divorced, compared to people who had always been single. In fact, according to one of several ways of looking at the data, singles are now having sex more often than married people are.

And then there are people that aren’t having sex at all. The idea that there are some people who just do not experience sexual attraction has a more prominent place in our cultural consciousness today, something for which the the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), founded in 2001, gets much of the credit. By 2017, there was enough research on asexuality, including large-scale studies, to justify a review article in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. Defying the early skepticism on the topic, authors Lori A. Brotto and Morag Yule concluded that asexuality is a unique sexual orientation, one that applies to up to 3 percent of adults, and not a sexual dysfunction or psychiatric disorder.

A relationship doesn’t mean higher self-esteem …

As teens shrug at the idea of dating and adults put off or skip marriage altogether, skeptics might wonder, aren’t they all missing out on that boost of self-esteem that comes from “having someone”?

Not really. In a landmark study on the link between romantic relationships and self-esteem, researchers Eva C. Luciano and Ulrich Orth studied more than 9,000 adults in Germany as they entered or ended romantic relationships or stayed single. Their conclusion: “Beginning a relationship improves self-esteem if and only if the relationship is well-functioning, stable, and holds at least for a certain period (in the present research … one year or longer).” People who started new romantic relationships that failed to last a year ended up with lower self-esteem than the people who stayed single. There was nothing magical about marriage, either; people who married enjoyed no better self-esteem than those who stayed in romantic relationships without tying the knot.

… and marriage doesn’t mean better health.

Part of the mythology of marriage, long bolstered by the writings of social scientists, is that people who marry become healthier than they were when they were single. After all, the logic goes, married couples get all that loving support from each other, and they make sure their spouses are taking care of themselves. But three big methodologically sophisticated studies published in 2017 shook our faith in that idea.

In one of the studies, researchers followed more than 79,000 U.S. women between the ages of 50 and 79 over a three-year period, tracking whether they got married (or started a serious relationship), stayed married, got divorced or separated, or stayed single. Author Randa Kutob and her colleagues also took repeated physical measurements of the women’s waist size, body-mass index, and blood pressure, and asked them about their smoking, drinking, exercise, and eating habits.

With just one exception, every significant finding favored the women who either stayed single instead of marrying, or who got divorced instead of staying married. For example, the women who married gained more weight and drank more than those who stayed single. The women who divorced ate healthier, exercised more, and had smaller waists than the women who stayed married. (The one exception was that the women who divorced were more likely to start smoking than the women who stayed married.)

In the second study, a 16-year survey of more than 11,000 Swiss men and women, the people who married reported slightly worse overall health than they had when they were single, even taking into account changes in health that often occur with age. And in the third study, sociologist Dmitry Tumin surveyed more than 12,000 adults in the U.S. who got married for the first time to see if they described their general health as better after they married or better when they were single. He broke down the data several ways: He examined men’s marriages separately from women’s; he conducted separate analyses of the marriages of people born in different decades; he evaluated marriages that lasted for different lengths of time. In all the scenarios he looked at, with one exception, the people who got married never reported being healthier. The exception was for the oldest women (born between 1955 and 1964) whose marriages lasted at least ten years, who considered themselves slightly healthier.

It’s a powerful blow — one of many — against the notion that marriage is the ideal way to live. For a long time, we’ve accepted the idea that unless they hurry up and marry, single adults will stay sexless and unhappy until they die (and sooner, at that). But it seems single people don’t scare so easily anymore — in unprecedented numbers, they are going ahead and living their single lives, which are often healthier and more fulfilling than those of their coupled counterparts. In 2017, finally, the weight of the scientific evidence from the most sophisticated studies was on their side.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3815858&forum_id=2#35033253)

BMI? Yeah, of course married women let themselves get fat. That doesn't tell me if they are less depressed or die more frequently, too.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3815858&forum_id=2#35033289)