I am a guy who moved to a western country a few years ago. I am a vegan, atheist, antinatalist on top of already being an introvert, a privacy enthusiast, and a person from the other end of the world.
I find it extremely hard to find anyone. I literally haven't been on any dates in, like, 6 years now. I have zero success on dating sites because:
- Most of my values are so extreme to people that they would not want to swipe right on me
- This seems to reinforce the algorithms on the sites, and they score me further lower. When requested data from Bumble, I found out that I swipe right on ~3% on the profiles, Bumble only shows my profile to what amounts to 30% of that 3%, and I am swiped right by only ~1.5% of that.
- I have been blocked a few times before because of stupid stuff like absence of Google Play Services, phone numbers from a different country, etc., which I believe further lowers my score. Also, I do not verify myself, so yay.
(In my opinion, I am an average looking guy, and my photos are okay, so I do not think the photos are the problem)
Between work, a couple of hobbies, gym and recovering from work, I get no time to meet with people in person. Even if I wanted to, there aren't many common places to meet with new people. I miss when we were young, and could casually make friends in school without even trying.
Some days, I just want to remove all those "filters", but then I cannot explain the removal logically/philosophically. I wish I could have lived my life in blissful ignorance of everything.
May be I am doing adulting and everything related horribly wrong. But regardless, I just wanted to vent and get it out.
Note: I know that there are people who do not agree with my values. I would be happy to discuss them (not sure if this thread is appropriate for that though), but I would appreciate if you would not outright dismiss them.
Well ... make time?
If you actually do get a match, they're going to want to go on dates with you and spend time with you, and if you don't make time for them, they're not going to feel like they're important to you, and they'll eventually leave you. Being in a relationship will take time -- if you don't have time to look for a relationship, then you don't have time to have a relationship.
I know 'making time' isn't always easy, but maybe there are ways.
'couple of hobbies' -- what hobbies? Maybe you can cut back on them a little to free up some time, just once a week or something? Depending on the hobby and its demographics, you might be able to combine things by meeting people in your hobby -- join some groups for the hobby, do it with others, maybe meet someone there. If your hobbies don't tend to attract people of the gender you're interested in, are there maybe alternate versions of those hobbies that do?
Work -- Are you working lots of long hours? Can you maybe make ends meet while working fewer hours? Can you maybe find a different job that's less demanding, or maybe closer so you don't lose as much time commuting?
Recovering from work -- again, a different, less demanding job might be something to look into ... something you don't feel you have to recover from as much.
Gym -- This is another way you might combine things to meet people in person. Not that you should be chatting people up at the gym very much -- most won't like that. But maybe you could replace some gym days with alternative exercise routines -- ones in a bit more of a social setting? Occasionally replacing a gym day with instead going to a bicycling group or running group or yoga class or dance class or something ... that could give you possible opportunities to meet people while still getting your exercise in.
And look other places for free time -- I don't know about you, but a lot of people I know spend a lot of time on things like gaming, watching TV, or doomscrolling social media ... even if they don't admit it to themselves. Take a hard look at how you actually spend your time, and see if maybe you have something like that you could cut back on to make time.
Again, if you can't make time to meet people, then you won't be able to make time to actually date and be with the people you meet anyway. If you've got no time for meeting, you've got no time for a relationship either. You might need to look at your priorities and think about steering your life in a direction that gives you more time for this (even if that's detrimental to other things), if being in a relationship is important to you.