yes

In my experience none of this is true.

All I meet is people who are already coupled, who I have nothing in common with to form a real friendship. At best we are acquaintances, and they are always married and only interact with other married or coupled people.

I think it was true, 10-20 years ago you could do this. But the social environment has changed a lot, and people are WAY more insular than they were a generation ago. I have been going out for 20+ years, and it’s way way harder to meet people, of any age, then it was in say 2008 or 2012. For me things really started to become difficult around 2018. There was also a way broader common culture back then than there is today. Like back then I could say I saw a movie and people knew what it was, now I say I saw a movie and they are confused that I watch movies at all because they are ‘boring’ or a ‘waste of time.’

And when I go out to a public space now by myself, EVERYONE is on their phones. They are buried in a phone or a laptop, at a bar, on 9pm on a Friday night, especially anyone who is either alone, or in a large group. Only small intimate groups or couples seem to be off their phones and interacting with each other.

The world has changed, and it’s genuinely more difficult to make social and romantic connections due for the average person. Even my younger nephews who are teenagers, are WAY more insular than I was at their age 25 years ago. They want nothing to do with anyone who isn’t already an existing friend, and they have no interest in dating, and they are afraid of college rather than excited by it, and their interests in life are incredibly specialized in a way I can’t understand.

No. I have dated people who used matchmaking services.

They were horrible people.

I’ve also dated some Indian women who made it very clear they’d never take me seriously because their parents would disapprove, but they’d fuck me casually in the meantime. I declined.

The issue with modern romance is that there is less and less of shared common culture and everyone is living in their social media silos. I used to have things in common with women I met, but now I have absolutely have nothing in common with them because they are living in a totally different universe and we have no common beliefs, interests, or traditions by which we can form any social bond. Like, every fact of my life and my lifestyle offends and upsets them because they are only looking for people who are the mirror image of themselves and their lifestyle. Literally was on a date two weeks ago and everything i said she made a stinkface because in her universe all that mattered was her job and vacation travel destinations, and she thought I was weird for having a life outside of my job and didn’t care much about destination travel.

Being single helps a lot. I don’t have anyone draining my energy and money and blaming me for their problems. Biggest positive shift in my life was no longer letting life-draining vampire people into my life.

I have a great job, I eat right, and I exercise a lot and have engaging hobbies and volunteer work outside of my job. Engagement is really what makes me happy.

I do struggle with sleep but that’s something that has been true my entire life, but it’s just random, not chronic.

I have a lot of blahj users blocked, across various different blahj instances. some of whom i notice have the same username across multiple instances where they spam rage bait content and tons of hostile commentary. most of them were from my /all feed where i saw them spamming this stuff.

agreed. i have a ton of furry porn and other cartoon porn communities blocked, they seem to pop up in my /all frequently.

what is db0? i’m not familiar but i noticed i have tons of people from that instance on my block list.

right, we should also throw anyone under 18 who has sex with anyone else, no matter their age, in jail.

I want to agree with you.

But there are people who are this stupid and paranoid… i have met them in real life and they talk/think/ask questions just like this.

they are typically deeply insecure and have a tenuous grasp of reality, often due to having an extremely sheltered upbringing

Some lesbians only want to be with other lesbians, and they would feel betrayed/lied to by her calling herself a lesbian.

Just like women I date would feel betrayed if i called myself straight, but they found out I had a sexual relationship with a man.

We can make up our own definitions of these things, but other people may not agree with us.

I mean I think I’m a straight, but plenty of people in my life past and present tell me that I am gay. Including bisexual women I have dated.

colloquially, no there is no distinction. you are straight, bi, or gay.

if you want to get technical/academic about it, there is -sexual and -romantic distinctions, and like totally separate pride flags for all this. and they have it for like every possible combination… including pride flags and identities for being attracted to fiction characters or non-humans. but that isn’t how normal folks talk, that stuff was all created on Tumblr by angst teens who wanted to have infinite categories of gender and sexuality to make themselves feel distinct and special.

defined experimented. because it’s one thing if it’s making out, it’s another if it was a prolonged sexual relationship.

OP is objectively pursuing sex with both men and women. she’s bi. claiming she is a lesbian while engaging in sex with men and enjoying it is simply just silly. she is not claiming she was forced to have sex with men.

rape has nothing to do with any of this.

Gold star lesbianism is this weird thing, and even people who aren’t lesbians seem drawn to the notion of sapphic purity and identity.

I don’t get it. But then again I don’t worship lesbianism as some higher form of existence the way some people do. It seems to derive from the notion of female Chasity having spiritual significance/superiority and that maleness is ‘tainted’ or demeaning if you are touched by it. Shit’s wild.

TERFs and all that also seem to believe in magic sacred vagina energies too, because they need them to harvest moon energy or something.

yeah that’s true. I date and I am always shocked at how people mislead themselves and are misled, by the labels they put on things, and a lot of it is basically just lying, either to others or to yourself. folks love to throw around meaningless and vague words in this weird game of social comparison and ranking and nobody is more invested in it than mediocre types of folks who are desperate to feel superior to others and usually have fragile egos.

regardless of labels, there are things that we do in the real world and words that describe those actions.

For some reason in modern life, increasingly, people are allergic to those real world actions being acknowledged as definitive of themselves, and seem to prefer defining themselves by elaborate distinctions and stories they create in their heads, that often bear no relevance or resemblance to the real world things they do. And one’s internal identity struggles… often have little to do with the identity we bring out into the real world.

yeah, that’s so true.

gender/sexual fluidity is only allowed for women.

yeah, you’re right! I’m secretly gay, even though I have no attraction or sexual desire towards men.

And also not straight, even though I have only had sex with women and only pursue women sexually.

if you have sex with people of both sexes, you are bisexual.

it’s really that simple. it’s not hyperbole, you can call yourself whatever you want. but you real world behavior is what you actually are. you can make up whatever elaborate fictions you want in your own head, and argue with people about them, fine.

I have met plenty of people who claimed they were x, but they were not x in the real world. their claim was a fiction in their head they convinced themselves of, and they ignored the evidence of their own real world behaviors.

there are also a million ‘sexualities’ now that all basically mean the same friggin’ thing.

I could call myself straight, or call myself a allosexual graysexual demisexual allromantic automongamous semifictionsexual cisdemigender individual…

sounds like you’re just a typically upper middle professional who fantasizes about homesteading.

but you aren’t upper enough to buy a 200K van and tour around the country with your family.

sounds like Audi mom vs Subaru mom

it means they think you are a granola loving hippie.

it’s outdated term, it’s really from the 70s/80s where like, the first wave of organic grocery stores was all about selling bulk products like granola and other healthy food, which were all stereotyped as being owned and patronized by hippies. Ben and Jerries is a classic crunchy hippie brand, founded in 1978.

I remember growing up and when Farmer’s Circus opened up a few towns over, we called it ‘horse food for hippies’.