Speed dating event in my area

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I know you had good intentions, Isabella. I don’t blame you for the event being unproductive. It’s the sick nature of online matching and dating across the board. I understand why it appears helpful on the surface but the actual practice is honestly torturous for people in my situation.

I'm glad you tried it even though it sounds disappointing.

How does it work? I assume everyone gets a few minutes to chat with each other person? Or is there still a lot of selection / choice involved? I have no idea. I don't even know what "swiping" is. I've never done a dating site.

I had to make a profile on the app, wait for the actual event to start, and click ‘Match’ to join in. It told me it would seek a date for me and while 6-7 people RSVP’ed, the number of people stated to be online kept fluctuating from 1 to 3 and occasionally 4 but quite often through the hour, it only said 1 and that was most likely myself. I couldn’t see anyone else’s profiles or even message them. If I were to get a match, I would’ve been able to talk to someone through a video chat for 2 minutes and if we decided to continue talking, it would be through text but I never did get a match or at least a full one. Briefly, the screen had the name April appear on it with a countdown under it and a potential question to ask was offered but I didn’t see any ‘buttons’ to accept or deny the match and the name as well as the countdown disappeared even without the latter reaching zero. The creators of the app emailed me asking what I thought of the app and I replied that I was disappointed as well as discouraged.

The fact the number of people kept fluctuating shows that the app has issues. I actually got an email from the creator of the app and he wanted to know how I felt about it. I told him I was disappointed and he responded with this:


Hey Mark,

I feel you. The app is new and we’re working hard to get every event bigger than the last.
The good news is you can also use the app between events, and we’re going to introduce offline matching in a week or two so you can just let the app you’re free for a video call and it’ll notify you when someone is ready to chat.
Even in the events, if you don’t meet someone’s criteria you won’t match with them. So even if they were close enough for you, if their distance filters filtered you there’s nothing we can do.
But we’ll have more people on soon, hopefully closer to you.
Last week we only had one match. This week we had 7 so the app is really, really small but growing fast.
Bear with us and hopefully we’ll get you a match soon.

-Joe

That sounds potentially promising. Hang in there.

I am putting more hopes in the big event that was supposed to happen before it got postponed for the second time, though.

I used the app again and waited another hour. Still no nibbles. I am just glad I actually did some things while waiting so I didn’t waste the hour. It’s still frustrating, though.

These people don't have the best interests for you to find a match. The app isn't the best for free content, it's quite bad compared to many I had, and the amount of people on it are quite small. They are trying hard to keep people but there's no hope for it because even with a real event there are very few people.

I would advise keeping it as a last resort and looking for Free apps, not Freemium, there is a difference of content allowance from one app to the other. A suggestion would be OkCupid, if you're fine with them potentially modifying answers to match you and performing studies on you which they are known for. The upside is that you don't have to download the site because you can access the app from a mobile browser.

I tried the app for a third time while visiting with my younger brother and his family after my crying spell at work. Big surprise, nothing happened.

I had an experience with OkCupid. I’ll just post a link to the topic: viewtopic.php?t=392157&hilit=+Thought+I+was+going+to+get+a+date

I tried using Facebook Dating and it dragged me through the mud. One person who was a friend of my younger brother and his wife (She was also a server at their wedding) told me she was only using it for hook ups but had stopped and simply didn’t bother taking it down. She also didn’t even want to be friends because she basically said she already had plenty of friends and didn’t want anymore. That was instrumental in making me stop using social media. I tried Meet Me and a woman who listed herself as single really wasn’t and asked me if I could do a drug trade with her. She was married and only listed herself as single to lure potential fellow drug users. She did tell me I wasn’t unattractive and that if I made a lady laugh, I would be “halfway there”. One woman was interested in meeting but kept dragging her feet by saying she had to “sleep at the hospital” which I found odd because even my parents who are full time doctors (Not for noble reasons) don’t do that. She also got angry when I tried to bring up something interesting to talk about (Guilty Gear, IIRC) instead of just about her sleeping at the hospital. Either just tell me you want to meet up or don’t at all.

Well, Marknis, you give up too easily. And I think this is true in multiple domains. Not long ago, you applied for a different job. You didn't get it, so you gave up. Almost everybody reading this knows that for a single job application, it would be extremely rare to get the job. You gotta keep looking and keep trying.

And it's the same with dating, whether it's using dating sites or just striking up a conversation in public. Only a small percentage of your efforts will end up moving to the next stage (a phone call or direct messaging or whatever). You didn't like OKCupid, so you put all your hopes on this small speed-dating site. I'd say you need to cast a wide net and keep an open mind, and meanwhile, focus on other things.

So if there's a single lesson to be learned here, it is: "Don't give up so easily."

Can you really blame me, though? I am from a family that didn’t encourage me to follow my passions and expand my knowledge. The outlook that was drilled into my head was both “You need to work yourself to death or you aren’t really working.” while simultaneously being told “God has a plan for you.” I also struggled with college because it was disappointing. I was denied a lot of things such as using a calculator for math (Something I need because I have dyscalculis) despite qualifying for disability, tutoring was only available when I was at work, I couldn’t get a club started because the head of the clubs didn’t like me from the get go, people were too busy looking on their cellphones to socialize or already had company with them, and the people who said I would find a girlfriend in college were wrong.

Do you know what my parents would do if they thought I embarrassed them in front of the people they wanted to impress? They would tell me to stop talking to or “bugging” those people even if they had no problem with me talking to them. What did they do if I got a bad grade? They would strike me with a belt or 2x4. My mother even kicked me for forgetting an assignment. She also once grabbed my face and slapped it while showing her teeth to me. I was also threatened with burning in Hell if I disobeyed my parents by the church elders and private school teachers.
I’ve also had a swim teacher snarl my name and hit me with a plastic ring. I tried talking to a boy at a water park (Schlitterbahn in the most heavily German area in Texas) and he decided to punch me in the eyes. I remember my eyes burning and I cried.

A lot of the dating sites I used I actually were on for months. The first time I used them, I was on four for a whole summer. Facebook Dating I tried for a few months last year and I’ve already went over what I had to deal with on there in my last post. The speed dating event is not a website, it’s supposed to be an actual physical event. I tried one twice in Austin before. I actually drove to a parking garage and paid it the two times I did it. My therapist thinks this new event should it finally happen will work better for me since it will be local rather than having to travel for it. I have also asked women out in public before but I was told things like “My boyfriend wouldn’t like that.” or “I am too busy.” which was discouraging to hear. Women in my area, regardless of race or culture or religious beliefs and what have you (I say this because I have been told to look for women in “minority communities” instead of the majority (Which is technically Hispanic if you go by the whole state) but in my experience, women of all walks of life in Texas are “Texified” if you will), tend to date and marry as well as have children early.

I think my emotions are legitimate.

Oh, they sure are legitimate! I wasn't denying that.

I can't believe you are still living with parents like that. What you are describing is child abuse. And what you have is more than depression, it might be CPTSD. I think it might be useful to discuss that with your therapist. Make sure you tell her about both the past (childhood) and present (barging in, etc.) abuse.

I'm actually feeling more optimistic about your future as I see the changes in your mood and determination over the past several months. Other people here have noticed the same thing.

I only live with my biological mother and my latest stepfather. My mother is on her fourth marriage and my biological father is on his third marriage but that doesn’t stop him from seeing other women, including one who was my age then (early 20’s) or maybe younger. I was at his home and she waltzed in without my father informing me then sat on his couch with him. I got up and left because it was rude of him to not tell me he had a date when he claimed he wanted to see me.

They fortunately don’t physically harm me anymore and I would protect myself if they did, especially since my friend is training me in self-defense. I also made it clear to my mother I don’t want her barging into my room, especially if I am asleep or using the restroom. Even if the door is open for my cat to leave the room after he’s done sleeping on my bed, she still needs to knock instead of just stomping in and rummaging through everything.

I did talk to my mother about my social security and she told me she uses it to keep my medicaid because it apparently terrifies her to think about me not having any. She also thinks I could only afford a ghetto apartment and she’s scared I would get robbed or worse. She did concede that if I had a girlfriend to live with she would be willing to let me go. I do tend to think she is worried about others frowning on her if I lived in a ghetto apartment even though it’s clear the fact I live with her gets me more negative reactions. I will say I don’t want to live in a ghetto apartment. I have to go through those areas on my way to work and they are abysmal places. Roadkill pets litter the streets (A dead cat with a smashed skull was stuffed in my friend’s comic book store’s mailbox and his business is right next to a shady apartment complex), fights and shootings are common in them, the smell of drugs, alcohol, vomit, and urine are in the air, and aggressive figures have approached me. One acted friendly at first and asked for a small amount of change which I gave but then she started demanding more and snarled at me until I did and rode off with a friend laughing at my misfortune. Since then, unless it’s a family in need of help, I don’t give strangers any money. A woman I work with who has three kids but their fathers don’t help to raise them lives in a slum and she hates it but she can’t get out since even combing her paychecks with government assistance isn’t enough.

I still have the bulk of the money required to pay for the event on my bed stand. I had to use part of it ($5 out of $25) to pay for some comics but I won’t use the $20 for anything else.

Well here we are circling back to living-with-mother which was a topic for you several years ago. You can keep your Medicaid if you don't live with your mother. Also, you can get into housing which isn't "ghetto." If you can manage to get a Section 8 housing voucher, you can use that just about anywhere (the government pays the landlord the bulk of your rent and you pay only a small portion). There are also buildings that are restricted to elderly and disabled (you qualify as disabled), but in my experience, in two different metropolitan areas, those are clean and safe.

But it's a big jump. Maybe setting limits with your mother is a good start. Think about slowly attaining more and more independence. You can do this - and you should. Good luck.

Actually section 8 only let you choose places depending on the amount of rent you have to pay and the place you choose has to be certified by housing so you can only choose certain places. If I remember correctly housing helps with paying up to about $1000-1500 rent, Anything higher and housing won't help pay for that. Also many of said places that are available through housing is pretty much the "ghetto", if you are on housing it's pretty much safe to assume you will be living in the ghetto.

Most single apartments are at least $600. He could get his own place but what his mother is worried about is a very real thing especially for people on the autism spectrum. I myself have held off with getting a job and moving out my parents house for being on the spectrum and the dangers of living by yourself while disabled and definitely having to live in a poor neighborhood!