I feel hopeless

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Thanks. One of my problems now is not overdo-ing it.
No... it doesn't have to be a gym, but it's extra hard trying to motivate yourself if you exercise at home.
Going for a good walk is excellent exercise... I started out doing that, but just when you get into the groove it rains... and rains... and rains. Now I do all my walking when I'm in Spain... where it doesn't rain (not much anyway).
Exercising just to attract women is setting yourself up to fail... you have to do it for yourself imo, but being fitter and more confident will help you in all kinds of ways.
And... never too late to get going... I sat in a chair for 25 years and didn't go out much... now I do.

And this, too. You had a good friend.

What are you willing to do to make yourself more appealing to women? If the answer's nothing then you should feel hopeless about your relationship situation. Women are attracted to competency, and you're not demonstrating much of that at all, certainly less than what the typical woman is capable of getting from a prospective partner.

You're not too disabled to eat well and exercise, which would improve your physical appeal a great deal, but it seems that you aren't willing to do the work necessary to change anything about yourself or your life that will make you a more attractive prospective partner, so what can you expect?

Having areas where you fall short is okay if you have redeeming qualities. The very physically attractive man doesn't need a good job to get a woman, and the millionaire doesn't need good looks. The slightly unattractive man with a low-paying full-time job might be able to find someone if he has good social skills. But when you're lacking in all of these areas, you'll have great difficulty getting people interested in you.

If you're not willing to make changes and sacrifices in the pursuit of making yourself more attractive to women then you'd be smarter coming to terms with the fact that women probably aren't going to want you as you are now and accept that it is unlikely you'll get a relationship when you lack any sort of initial appeal (looks, social status, money, job).

In fact, if you're unwilling to even compromise anything in the pursuit of a partner before you're even in a relationship then are you really going to be able to compromise when you're in a relationship?

There's no point complaining if you're not going to change anything anyway.

Oh, yeah.. credit where credit is due: TGI has been posting the same advice for at least a few years now, too.

Health & fitness = diet & exercise. I disagree with others that a gym or weights are required. I’m pretty fit but haven’t set foot in a gym for ~17 years.

At the OP’s self described fitness level, all he needs to do for exercise at the moment is as much walking as he can manage every day followed up by healthy food, water, and proper sleep.

There’s a pedometer app he might consider called “carrot,” that tracks your steps daily and if you meet the calculated goals (based on your walking habits) then you get the rewards of your choice. One of my bosses uses it for Scene points for free movie tickets, but there are other reward options to choose from.

In notice such advice isn’t given to female posts of similar nature. Nor have I seed gold respond to female threads.

Sly, what kind of advice are you looking for? Like, what are you trying to address, just your hopelessness and loneliness in general? Anything else? Yes this thread reads for the most part like it's written by a bunch of male jocks who don't frankly sound Autistic and are telling you to stop bitching and get on w/self-improvement or you'll just be alone complaining and moping by yourself for the rest of your life, but what do I know? But not knowing you and being fairly new to WP myself, it does seem that if you spelled out/clarified the kind of advice or issue(s) re: dating that you're looking for might help people give you something closer to the type of feedback you want.

On a related note, what do you mean by this advice isn't the sort of advice that's given to women on threads they post? I know I could go look for some, but at least briefly what sort of advice do you see them getting instead?

I dont know but not go hit the gym and it’ll solve everything you fat loser advice .

They give them body positivity, tell them their wonderful and will find someone do,e guy would be lucky to be with them etc.
never see any woman here told to hit the gym, stop eating as much, get thin so yo can attract men, and if they did they’d be slammed so hard for being sexist. But saying it to men is fine.

I see. I think alot of women are given that same sort of advice (maybe not on WP, I wouldn't know) and they get pressure from society all the time to "lose weight, work out, etc". Women are in general under more pressure about their physical appearance in every society (since this is a multinational website) than men are, even though things have indeed changed and gotten somewhat more balanced than say 30 or 40 years ago. I'm not saying men have it easy at all, but we still live in a patriarchal world unfortunately.

What you say about the advice women are given instead is interesting (at least to me). Maybe what you should do is start a new thread and ask for advice just from non-males (Queer and other genders people can also be more supportive than men are, sometimes). I mean that's just occurring to me, but it couldn't hurt to try. I say this b/c this thread as I've said above yes reads like what (in my experience) you might expect (especially American) men to say in giving advice about dating and working out. That's precisely why I will only do therapy and psychiatric treatment w/women, b/c (whether it's fair or not), they're just better at it, 9 times out of 10. This is also reflecting a bit of my own patriarchal biases, but b/c women (fortunately or not) are raised and socialized to be more emotionally sensitive, listening and all that other crap, they are (usually) more likely to be supportive in the ways you describe than men are. Again, things have definitely changed from several decades ago, but I think this is still generally true.

The double standard involved in this both toward women and the kind of culture it subjects men to are both quite unfair, I agree w/you on that. I think I had more to say, but I'm blanking right now. Anyway somewhere in what I said, I'm giving you a different type of advice. I would, however, also urge you to think about it (and if possible talk to someone) to clarify what kind of issues you're wrestling with. It'll help you in the long run w/getting the "right kind" of feedback, etc.

Another point, Sly. It's also still true that women are still (at least more often than men) expected to be the pursued, rather than the pursuer. I know it is a bit better in this regard outside the US than here and that (again) things have changed in recent decades, but most often this is what happens. It's hard for women b/c they often are therefore expected to wait until someone gives them attention, they may have to wait around and that's not easy. It also objectifies many of them, which is flat out sexist, it's true. But it's also hard, as other posters on this thread have said, if you're male and aren't wealthy, really smart, a jock, really funny, etc. to get women interested in you. I wish I had some kind of advice as to what to do about that for you, but I really don't. But their general point about self-improvement I guess can't hurt. Maybe you just want not to hear that from dudes, I don't know.

Exactly! You’re getting it, sly.

Maybe it’s due to your autism that you don’t recognize that this is the social norm of our species, but, it is & that's that. Period.

In many animal species, it’s quite often that the male is the more ornate one who has to do things to impress and attract the females. Mating dances, singing songs, looking beautiful, being big, strong, and dominant, winning fights, hunting prey (although hunting is women’s work for lions) etc. The same holds true for humans; males have to work hard at becoming attractive in order to attract a mate.

As for advice given to women, well, it depends.. in general they’re the sought after ones and don’t have to do the things guys do in order to attract anyone at all. But if they post here that they only seem to be attracting out of shape low income guys that they’re not interested in dating and want to know what they can do to attract a fit high earning alpha male, then I’ll be the first to suggest that they’d better hit the gym themselves & become the type of woman those guys are attracted to and earn it. Work hard, get attention.

On a personal note: I don’t have difficulty attracting people at the moment. That wasn’t so true when I was 242lbs with a 38” waist. But I’ve done well in excess of 300,000 push-ups and run/hiked hundreds of miles since then. I’ve earned it.


Financially, I’m not high income AT ALL - the only time I’ve made above average money was from cash tips while bar tending, otherwise I’ve made poverty level to well below average money. (I only have money because I don’t spend any, not because I make much.) In my (gay) situation money matters less when it’s purely physical, But there are still plenty of girls who are attracted to me and not one of them has ever given a flying f**k how much money I make. MAYBE they would if we were dating/in a relationship, but in terms of them expressing interest, never ever once has any girl said word one about what I do or how much I earn.. because it doesn’t matter! Get fitter and healthier and happier and people are like “Oooh, I’d do him..” Fact.

AND, all of this despite the fact that my skin has been disfigured by a medical misdiagnosis. It’ll still heal and improve some, but I’m no model. I disclose this to further make my point that physical health & fitness helps overcome a L O T of other defects when it comes to attractiveness. Physical fitness, health & happiness > Broke, low status job, low income, and even being disfigured.

Please do not take this the wrong way, but sometimes the chances of a situation getting worse is much high than the chances of getting better

For example, my health could easily, rapidly, permanently, drastically get much worse

Disabled, disease

My health could not get better


False hope


Graceful degradation



Realistic versus idealistic

Feel better you fox. My advice would be find the tiniest easiest thing you can control and change for the better. Work on that, get some confidence that you actually can make changes in your life and move on to the second tiniest easiest thing you can control in your life.

As for exercise, it truly can make you feel better but you don't have to work out hard to start feeling better. Just moving around and walking has many of the same benefits.

This is because nobody believes we can possibly find dating difficult. All we need to do is stop running away, apparently.



Making big changes in lifestyle takes effort, and so in order to make that effort you need to believe you are worth it.

You are worth that time and effort.

I couldn't get on with the gym even though I tried for over a year. I suspect this was because the people running

it showed me how to use the equipment that they thought I should use rather than going by what I said (and had

paid for). I'm trying to get back into my running though because it gives me a huge adrenaline/optimism/

awesome rush that lasts several hours . This becomes apparent after about four or five weeks. It might be there

before that but I'm concentrating to much on not having a heart attack to notice it . It can be a bit self conscious

at first I get over that after the first few stupid idiots big their car horns at me. I'm slow but I'm going faster than

everyone sat on their sofas.

You might hate running and the gym, that's fine, find something that you can like because you are worth that effort.

walking is where I started and I go back to it when I can't run.

Please do not take it the wrong way, but

Sometimes the amount of hope is negligible

You can't measure hope

Many wrong planet members claim unemployment. Me too

The longer unemployed, the harder it is to get a job



Not having friends is a pattern

Sometimes some Meetups are good in some ways


But meetups only go so far

I have actually advised at least one female on here to lose weight to be more attractive. Not many women post this same grievance of not being able to get a relationship here, and of those who do, not very many seem to be living with parents, working part-time min wage and are overweight. Even if that was the case, men and women tend to want different things in their relationship partners because we're different biogically. To a woman in your situation, losing weight would be something I'd advise, and I'd recommend moving out and getting a better job, but if she wants kids and wants to be a stay at home mum than her job doesn't matter as much as the job a future partner has. Living at home at 30 isn't really becoming to anyone but I think it's fair to say it tends to matter less to men whether or not their partner is independent and has a good job than it does to women, for fairly obvious reasons. These aren't my standards, Im only incorporating what I've observed into my advice and perspective. If you have a problem with it, don't accuse me of being inconsistent, accuse the architect of this world of being inconsistent.

And anyway, any double standards we have here don't only apply negatively to men. A man not having a job or not making much money with no chance of doing so in the future, or who'll never move out of his mother's basement, is comparable to a woman who can't or who's not willing to have any form of sexual intercourse in that it's really going to limit their ability to find a partner if they can't make up for it. Obviously not being good-looking or even average is going to make things even worse in either case.