dating with very clear goals but staying patient & hopeful

February 18, 2025 9:42 PM

I know pretty clearly what I’m looking for. I have no interest in settling. I’m happy being single. I’m feeling hopeless about ever finding what I’m looking for, though.

I’m mid 20s, female. I’ve been single for about 3 years now, after my first long term relationship ended. At first it was so hard (as my post history will reveal) but it got a lot better and my confidence has improved immensely over the past few years and generally I am extremely happy.

Over the past few months, I’ve started dating again and this has been a clarifying experience. I know very clearly what I am looking for. I have no interest in settling and getting into any old relationship. My time and my emotional energy is very valuable to me. I’ve made deeply emotionally close friendships over the past few years which have helped me develop standards for who I really want to form close relationships with. Basically I’m no longer in a position where someone being interested in me is basically the only criteria I am looking for. What I want is a nice, cute, sensitive, socialist boy with a lot of curiosity and a good sense of humor.

Personally, I feel I’m doing all I can to make myself available to a person like this. I am a very active organizer in my grad student union. (Just noting to clarify that I did not join my union and organize because I want to find a nice socialist boy; I joined it because I am a socialist and I think it’s been one of the most personally meaningful things I’ve ever done. And I will keep doing it regardless of if I make friends or meet potential partners - though that’s a nice benefit). I’m on online dating apps where I’ve spelled out explicitly what I’m looking for. I tend to be a bit picky about who I go out with because my time is limited (see: organizing and being in grad school). But if someone indicates they share the above criteria, then I prioritize meeting up with them in person. (I will say I find online dating frustrating because it lends itself to forcing intimacy; I really prefer to get to know someone as friends before dating. I’ve shifted my approach to online dating to keeping dates as low pressure as possible, trying to not even really see them as dates and more just getting to know the guy. But I find that guys don’t necessarily see it the same way and even still it’s just a bit weird to meet someone from an app designed for dating). I am generally friendly and open. I have had no problems with asking men out and have asked out several men in the past year who met the criteria I listed above.

I’m starting to feel pretty unlucky though. There are a few specific experiences I’ve had recently that I think are contributing to this feeling.

After a really fun night out with a very cute sensitive socialist boy in my department who I’d had a latent crush on for a while, I asked him out on a date and he agreed. We went out and had a really nice time, talked for hours, made out for a while, he walked me home. I asked him out again, we watched one of my favorite movies, and again we had a lovely time. A few weeks later, while I was away seeing family, he texted me saying he’d prefer to be just friends. This was several months ago now, and I felt very dejected. I’ve gotten over it to some extent now but I think it still lingers in the back of my mind.

I also have had a few string of recent experiences where I noted to a friend someone I saw at a union meeting who I thought was extremely attractive. In all of those cases, they told me that unfortunately those people were all already in relationships. These experiences have started to sting a bit, honestly - like I’ve already missed all the opportunities.

It also doesn’t help that many of my friends and both of my siblings, who I am close to, are in long term serious relationships.

So basically, what I’m trying to sus out is: am I just extremely unlucky? I feel like I am doing everything that is often suggested here in terms of meeting people, and it seems like nothing has really panned out yet. But is there something I should be doing differently?

And if I AM just unlucky, how….do I deal with that? One of my friends recently suggested that she thinks I might just not be able to find who I’m looking for in the college town I live in. Her words were that I’m simply too cool for this place - which I know was kind and well-intentioned but made me feel worse because she found a partner here and many other people I know have found partners here. It doesn’t seem impossible so I resent the idea that it’s impossible FOR ME. But also she’s correct; maybe it just won’t work out for me here? I just feel very frustrated by that.

To be clear though, I’m not unhappy being single. I’m very happy! I’ve just finally figured out what I want and I feel ready for partnership and feeling kind of impatient, I guess. And afraid that I will not find what I’m looking for. Have you felt this way before?

Final note: I have an amazing therapist who I talk about this with frequently. We even developed a treatment plan together to help me develop better coping skills to deal with the anxiety that the uncertainty around dating raises for me and strengthen my self-esteem and self-love. Actually she’s been telling me a lot recently that I’ve grown so much in the past year we’ve been working together, which I generally agree with. I plan to raise this topic again in our next session.

Thanks in advance

posted by cruel summer to Human Relations (12 answers total)

I remember your earlier questions and I am so excited to hear how well you are doing! And I think you are doing everything right. Sometimes it just takes a while. Some of those folks in relationships will break up, and there are cute single socialist boys you haven’t met, either in your town or elsewhere.

Do you want to stay in your current college town long term? If not, and if you have plans to move elsewhere, it might be okay that you’re not meeting anyone there.

While there’s no guarantee you’ll meet someone when you want, I think you will meet someone. My only suggestion, based on the story of the boy you went out with twice, is that reciprocity is important. It’s great to ask someone out for a first date. It’s also great to check their interest and ability to be proactive by seeing if they’ll initiate a second date. I don’t think you want a relationship where you put all the effort in and they coast along.

There’s no wisdom here except to say, yes, it can take a while. It can be tough.
posted by bluedaisy at 11:07 PM on February 18 [5 favorites]

You sound focused and intense, which is fantastic! But that also classically scares away men in their 20s. Even the sensitive socialist ones. I don’t think you are especially unlucky or even like you are striking out a whole lot. I think you are an entirely normal woman in her mid 20s, juggling real life and passions with societal expectations and normal FOMO compared to your peers and family.

I do think that you might adjust your dating expectations a bit, in that, it does not have to be forced intimacy if you reframe dates as a form of entertainment, with the possibility of it becoming more intimate later. Being busy with your life doesn’t preclude leisure time, and casually dating can be that just as much as time with friends. It does not have to be ultra serious courting and sharing deep moments unless you want it to be. You just have to be good about clearly communicating this intention to your dates, early and often, and to speak up if or when that changes for you. None of it is time wasted, if you are enjoying each other’s company, even if it doesn’t lead to more.
posted by Mizu at 12:01 AM on February 19 [9 favorites]

My grandmother used to say that I will find someone when I stop looking. I think she was saying that I was trying too hard or I would be more relaxed and not worry about what I was saying or doing.

Stay the course. As Mizu aptly put above, and I think it is consistent with grandma Gunn's advice, enjoy yourself and communicate.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 3:25 AM on February 19 [2 favorites]

In my opinion, a few months of actively-seeking dating, with a couple fun dates with one person that unfortunately didn't pan out and turn into a relationship, isn't enough time to indicate that you are doing something wrong or that you are unusually unlucky.

A few considerations that might be helpful:

Are you in the US? Because a LOT of socialists and similarly minded folks in the US have been grieving, worried, or otherwise out of sorts the last few months and sometimes that makes them less emotionally available for investing in romantic relationships, such as saying yes when someone asks them out, even someone they really would be interested in if the political situation weren't so stressful.

How significant is the COVID caution level among the people you may be trying to date, and are you pretty much on that same page or willing to match it? When I think of the cute, curious, funny, single socialist guys I know, all of them are more cautious about COVID than is currently common in their areas. (I also recognize that in some situations it is the other way around, in that if you're significantly more cautious about COVID than someone you'd like to date, it's possible to negotiate a workable way forward but it does take work and willingness from both people. )

And: I have heard from at least one pal that there really is a seasonal component to some of this. Like, if you are in the Northern Hemisphere, you haven't yet been dating, with your current mindset, in the spring; it's been autumn/winter. And spring makes a difference! More people are receptive to new dates, basically.
posted by brainwane at 3:39 AM on February 19 [4 favorites]

I'm sorry - I just reread what you wrote and remembered that your fun dates that didn't pan out were several months ago, not during your recent dating in the last few months. I do still think my assessment largely stands.
posted by brainwane at 3:45 AM on February 19

One thing that strikes me is that your narrative keeps swinging from a vibe of "this is totally achievable: I can do this!" to "this'll never work, possibly because of me." Whereas actually you're playing an odds game, and aren't particularly in control of most of the factors (i.e. these other people and where they go, what they do, etc.). If you're being picky, which I fully support, you can't measure success on the same scales as non-picky dating.

Folks like you describe aren't so vanishingly rare that they might literally all already be "taken," but ones whom you can ID across the room as potential candidates are also potential candidates to other picky as well as non-picky people, and it's not super surprising that at any point in time any given one might be in an exclusive relationship with someone else. This is especially true if they're relatively rare in your overall community, and/or if you're talking about people around your own age who may well be non-picky daters at this point. Same with online dating, actually: it doesn't sound like a perfect fit for you, and maybe it's not a great fit for the people you're into either, which is going to mess with your odds and extend the timeline. I know many people from that general scene who are very concerned about online privacy, for example, and it's hard to imagine them engaging with a website/app that by definition needs so much personal data. I also know plenty of people who didn't really blossom into sensitive socialists until a bit older, and who are but are off at more radical meetings than the average student union one (or who work too much to ever attend, etc.).

None of that means this is impossible though, it means it's taking more time and patience than you've already given it. Try to be okay not just with singledom or (appropriate) coupledom, but also this in-between space you sometimes inhabit of "looking." And if you find that that "looking" itself is taking too much time and/or emotional energy, it's fine to dial your focus back until it's not agitating. There's no deadline to be met here. Although a year-ish(?) is a long time in many ways, the hypothesis here is that your time will be worth it one way or another, in that either you eventually find an excellent partner, or you get to be single and fabulous without all the strife of dating unsuitable people.
posted by teremala at 4:15 AM on February 19 [1 favorite]

This sounds like a very normal dating experience to me, especially when you have a particular set of standards.

You're fine. Give it time.
posted by wormtales at 4:34 AM on February 19 [16 favorites]

It sounds to me like you're doing great and just need to keep going and play the numbers game. When I was around your age, I was really similar: picky, clearly defined goals, happy to stay single until I met the right person. I used the dating apps like it was a part time job for around two years and went on dates with I think 12ish people - usually just one date that made it clear this wasn't the right person. The last person I dated, we hit it off immediately, and we've been happily married for 10 years now. You got this, keep going!
posted by omnie at 6:45 AM on February 19

Read about the Busted Haystack Method, which I learned about here. Be open to unexpected people. You're pretty young, you have time to connect with wonderful people as friends, partners, lovers. Be your best self, for you, and for friendships.
posted by theora55 at 7:05 AM on February 19 [7 favorites]

I echo bluedaisy in being happy to hear that you're generally doing well and happy with your choice.

As another woman who found the dating scene of Ann Arbor lacking while doing a grad program there (a topic which was a common one of complaint among friends) I would say that your experience sounds pretty typical. I'd say it's a combination of:

1. The grad student population of Ann Arbor is fairly transient, with little free time. This leads to flakiness or resistance to anything that might get serious.
2. Town-gown tensions (the city has really gentrified in the last 20 years, in large part due to the expanding university) and some assumptions that PhD students don't want to date "regular" people, even if that's certainly not always true.
3. It's a small city, and when you minus out all of the undergrads and retirees (two major demographics), the population gets even smaller. Which is to say, the number of potentially matches is not that big. I eventually got to the "bottom" of Tinder and started to re-see profiles I'd already swiped "no" on.

And yet, it's not impossible. I know some grad students who formed bowling leagues that were a mixture of grad students, townies, and other locals. Others did something similar with a community soccer league. Some relationships came out of those. I know people who found dates from attending religious institutions. I know others who eventually had luck with online dating. And others who successfully met people at parties. I guess this is to say, while GEO is great, I'd try to add one more activity that you both enjoy and that might result in meeting someone. It can be something casual - I know of one group of friends who started an informal cooking-party that rotated hosts.

But to reiterate, pretty much everyone agreed that the dating scene was hard. A lot of people had multi-year streaks of being single. So it's definitely not just you.
posted by coffeecat at 7:16 AM on February 19 [2 favorites]

To be clear though, I’m not unhappy being single. I’m very happy! I’ve just finally figured out what I want and I feel ready for partnership and feeling kind of impatient, I guess. And afraid that I will not find what I’m looking for. Have you felt this way before?

I don't have specific advice but I just wanted to reinforce that it's great that you are happy and to encourage you to keep viewing dating in a low stakes way, especially at this stage of your life. As someone who got into a much-too-serious-seeming relationship when I was a student, I'm kind of envious of you, actually, because I feel like I would have been better served socially, academically, and professionally if that relationship had not been the way that it was.
posted by AndrewInDC at 8:55 AM on February 19 [2 favorites]

I've realized after decades of being single that it's not going to happen for me. I know what I want in a relationship and frankly, that just doesn't seem to be out there in existence for me in my area unless a miracle occurs. You'd think with all the actors I meet every year, one single one who I find attractive and vice versa would exist, but so far, nope. Why is something that seems like it should be easier than this so impossible to find? And yet, it is.

You specifically know what you want and are putting yourself out there in the ways that one should, both by forcing yourself to do dating apps and by doing activities where you should theoretically meet like-minded people. It is true that there aren't a whole lot of good single people out there that haven't already been snapped up, unless they have a surprise breakup. And all the avoidants are always hopping back into the dating pool, so the goods on the dating websites may not be suitable.

After a really fun night out with a very cute sensitive socialist boy in my department who I’d had a latent crush on for a while, I asked him out on a date and he agreed. We went out and had a really nice time, talked for hours, made out for a while, he walked me home. I asked him out again, we watched one of my favorite movies, and again we had a lovely time. A few weeks later, while I was away seeing family, he texted me saying he’d prefer to be just friends. This was several months ago now, and I felt very dejected. I’ve gotten over it to some extent now but I think it still lingers in the back of my mind.

I get it, it's exactly how you'd want to meet someone (not dragging yourself through dating apps as a demisexual sort), and yet it fizzled out of nowhere. So close and yet so far :( Been there.

It could be bad luck or just statistics, wanting to date a socialist in a small pool in a college town. You may be playing the numbers game, but if there's only, I dunno, a few potentials in the area in the first place and you've already gone through them on the dating apps or been turned down, it might be a short numbers game. You're in your 20's but in grad school, which has its own complications that I probably can't speak to enough, so I won't try. I can't address the hope aspect of it, so I'm going to address the "what if it never happens" since I'm equipped for that.

My goal this year is radical acceptance. I want dreams that are just not doable for me with what I've got to work with, and I'm tired of wanting the same shit that I never get. I just threw out a bunch of journals from the 2010's in which I was still whining and trying to make things happen that still haven't happened to this day! It's not working for me to keep wanting what I want and looking around for it (though I can't stomach online dating, so not doing that one) and trying to make things happen in ways that I personally am comfortable with trying. I'm tired of yearning and wanting for what doesn't seem to exist for me, and I want to be free of that. Accept that some things I want to have happen in life that require a partner are not going to happen for me, and I need to find some compromise dreams I don't want as badly to go after instead.

Now, I've been single for so long I feel like that's been proven for me, and maybe that's not the case for you. But the irritating thing is that you are sitting in limbo for-EV-er and it may never end or never get better, but you always have to live with people spouting off at you to never give up hope! And maybe someday! If you just stop caring and looking, THEN you can have it! and shit like that. My therapist keeps begging me to not totally give up and still have some hope in my heart, but I'm tired of hoping and I'm tired of the limbo and at this point I'm just ready to get myself to emotionally move on from my impossible dreams.

Accept that this is your reality and unless a miracle happens, this may always be your reality. You get lucky or you don't. Some do and some don't. Try to enjoy what you can of life, which it sounds like you're doing. Get used to that empty hole in your heart just being empty. Accept that this is what you've got and rebelling against it, raging against the light, yearning, bargaining, denial, all that shit has done nothing. Fast forward to acceptance and learn to live with what you got.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:20 AM on February 19 [1 favorite]