singles events
07 Dec 2011, 1:35 pm
I think it depends on your age, your appearance, how comfortable you are in talking to strangers, what the "tone" of the event is, etc. Mostly it depends on your expectations. I've been to events where it's very clearly a meat market, and each woman is being assessed and ranked. I've been to others where everyone is friendly, and it's about the event activity and not hooking up.
Sorry, this probably wasn't that helpful...
I can be a bon vivant, but most of these things are too shallow for my sensibilities, so I always feel like I wasted my time (especially since I don't make any lasting contacts).
07 Dec 2011, 3:25 pm
That is a tough question for me, as I'm not too successful. When I was younger, it was really easy. Friends of friends, parties, fix-ups, work, things like that. Everyone was single. As we've all gotten older and more entrenched in our lives (I'm 44 and a single mom to 2 kids), those venues have just plain dried up. I look around every single day and there is just *no one* single in my appropriate age group. I cannot tell you the last time I met someone single and dateable. Everywhere I go I see couples, single women, and kids (people in their 20's). It could just be a regional phenomenon for me (I live in a giant college town with conservative industry (everyone's married)). I have tried online dating, and that's a good way to meet a ton of people, but I really worked it and I still found no one to my liking. If you're less grotesquely-picky than me (I know, it's a problem I have), online might be the way to go for you. I'm acutely uncomfortable with people, way past the time period that other people are, so it's pretty futile for me. Plus, the last person I felt really comfortable with is my sociopathic now-ex-husband, so that's skewed my trust in myself and my selection criteria.
Sorry I can't be more encouraging. Singles events are fantastic, if you can be comfortable with strangers and if you don't care what happens (or that nothing happens afterwards).
Oooo! Just thought of somewhere else: Adult Education at local colleges. We have a lot of this in my town and you can take any kind of class your heart desires: learning Poker, cooking classes, wine tastings, you name it. I did all these and I found: couples, single women, kids in their 20's. Maybe I should pick more obviously-masculine interests, but these courses don't really seem like that.
I also took both electrical wiring and woodworking as courses in my local community college, when I was younger. Both of those were all male, but the electrical class was all kids trying to get into the trade (late teens, early 20s, I was in my early 30's), and the woodworking class was all married dads. Fun to meet people, and you never know who might have single friends, but I found the whole thing exhausting, especially when no hot prospects came of it. And married guys don't really hook chicks up with their single guy friends, it just doesn't work that way, I've found. If they find you attractive, they want to keep you as a flirt-y friend, not consider your dating prospects. If they don't find you attractive, they wouldn't be in a rush to hook you up with a friend, because you're unattractive.
07 Dec 2011, 3:49 pm
yeah, Im in a similar position to you, single parent to 3 kids and in my mid 30s so most people at things are married or not in the right age group etc.
Like you, I always chose too 'feminine' classes which only had women, thats naff that the 'manly' classes have men which are young or married.
I definitely would not do online dating as I found it very stressful and I think I tend to bond too quickly with the person before I know their 'real life' character.
Theres no rush anyway, Im ok being on my own, Ive got my kids so Im not lonely, and Im too tired for dating mostly anyway.
