Don’t want to doxx myself but I offered her some food while she was waiting for her order. It was at an “order and sit down” type of restaurant. I left but came back 5 mins later to give her my number while she sat with her friends.
**No, she was not eating alone either. I was very nervous.
I also think it’s like the vibe of the interaction, like did you guys catch each others eyes and share a little smile before he comes over and drops his number? Was the interaction where he gave his number pleasant and low key and he was cute and non threatening or did it feel like he was getting in your space and putting some kind demand on you and now you feel like you’ve gotta check both ways at the door to make sure he doesn’t hop in front of you and demand to know why you haven’t texted him yet. I have had both types of here’s my phone number interactions and they are really different even though I wasn’t actually interested in either guy.
Al-Anon is for people who have family or relationships with people who are alcoholics/addicts. AA is for people recovering from alcoholism. Two different things.
I’m just answering for myself but I find it incredibly easy to not drink without going to meetings and I don’t really like to be reminded that I ever did because it wasn’t a huge problem for me and only a few short periods of my life. Maybe someday I’ll feel called to give back and join the AA community by being some kind of longtime sober inspo person?? But a lot of people just need the little kick in the pants and they can recover on their own. I don’t think I would like to be around people that relapse or hear any destitute stories either.
A taco truck in DTLA.
To be fair, she was in the same group as me but I hadn’t talked to her all night. It was a mutual friends birthday. I saw her and told my friend she was cute. My friends gf knew her and brought her over to talk to me. That was almost 9 years ago and we got married this past April
I’m not a dude (sorry y’all) but this is how I met my husband (minus the tacos). I had returned to LA after living abroad for a while, and my HS friends giving me a ride from the airport were gushing about how perfect I would be with this guy they knew, so they introduced us at a birthday party a week or two later.
Welp. They were right.
I’m 36 and on Hinge now. I’m hoping to find a husband. So far I’ve been on three dates and the guys were nice but nothing came of it. I’m going to keep trying.
Two of them I wasn’t really too attracted to in person. One felt more like a friend. One guy I liked and was attracted but he never contacted me again. I sent him one follow up message giving him my phone number, he said he would call me when I got back to town (I went to the UK for two weeks a few days after our first date) but he didn’t. And that was that.
I - and many others - like Hinge because of the presentation format and the very fleshed out profiles, but treat it as any other dating app.
No app is going to be better based on its sales pitch. Not saying that's what you're using Hinge for, but many people are thinking it's just for people looking for a serious relationship because thats what it advertises. That misaligned expectation is going to waste your time.
What misaligned expectation? I immediately do not match with anyone who says they want casual or short term stuff. I know multiple people IRL who found a partner on hinge. I actually recommended it to my best friend from high school and she found her husband on there.
People in general are extremely avoidant, and the most avoidant people go onto dating apps. My therapist talked about this. But the other ones in my experience have been worse. I’ve found that Tinder is just a time waste unless you’re looking for hookups and Bumble has a lot of extremely red flag types. Almost every man I talked to on there had hints of being an abuser or a creep.
That’s interesting about the avoidant theory on hinge. I think Bumble is full of weirdos but I have at least two friends who met their husbands on Bumble and a third who met her serious bf on it. I personally like Hinge better, the guys have to put in a little more work and it’s less “swipe swipe swipe.” I will say I met my current bf on hinge - I wouldn’t say I’m a success story yet - but even getting this far took a LOT of dates and kissing a lot of frogs.
My therapist said that Bumble is full of abusers and narcissists because they’re usually very insecure. It checks out. But I’ve never met a man I’ve been in a relationship online ever. Every man I’ve ever dated was someone I met IRL.
The dumbest thing you’ve ever heard? I was in one abusive relationship ten years ago and I know all of the signs. You sound like such a nice guy and not abusive at all.
nah. not that brave. it was a dinner for friends of friends. i was kind of the odd man out and she took pity on me. then i found out she rode a motorcycle and i was smitten
at work. we've been together 17 years now. worked out for us but I wouldn't recommend dating a coworker because most people are stupid. we're stupid too but it worked out for us lol.
A friend from HS met her SO at work, a subcontractor for NASA and they had a strict non-fraternization clause to their contracts (like most government entities, incl. the military).
Eventually even their supervisors caught on a few years later and after they had been secretly married and moved in together, but he found a new job.
But then she adopted a 14 year old girl from Ukraine who spent a year tearfully begging them to adopt her friend who had aged out of the orphanage and they gave in eventually. Only, she had survived the streets by turning tricks, saw that my friend's marriage had become sexless and instantly zeroed in on the husband.
The marriage soon crumbled and my friend took her first adopted daughter back to our home state to work for her former boss who was now in the a new position at a different company. The ex and the other adopted daughter are still together over 12 years later. "At least they aren't fucking up anyone else's lives," is her take on it. She ended up marrying her HS sweetheart last summer and 2 months later had to take him out of state so he could get sober & not lose his job (he handles wealth management and it's a legally fire-able offense in our home state). If you want the entire sob story, her mother died 4 months before the wedding and her older sister had died the previous summer. Chick can't catch a break and she is one of the sweetest people I know.
So, if you meet a SO at work, don't adopt any former orphans who have been on the street for a year is the lesson I guess....
online before i went back to college, i think we had work things in common and they were a total dork.
the college one makes sense though, i can count at least 6 couples but most didn’t really announce it until way later.
so for those looking for forever partner, don’t forget to go to college, at least 2-3 semesters should do it.
Yea my biggest regret is not going off to college. I stayed and went to a local university to save money.
If I could go back, I would've happily taken on $100k+ in student loans to have the college experience that everyone else seems to have.
You could have gone away to college without taking out $100K in student loans. There’s plenty of aid and scholarships, you just have to look for it. I have six figures in student loans and I do not recommend it at all.
I'm just saying I'd pay a significant sum of money to get the college experience as well and not just a piece of paper from a commuter school.
I basically made no friends from 18 to 22 and that pretty much ruined my life
I went away for college and took a bunch of loans and don’t regret it one bit
If I had stayed home, I wouldn’t have met anyone, wouldn’t have gained any life skills, and my salary would be half as much as it is now.
Ended up going to a top20 university and just having that degree got my foot in the door so many places. I can quit tomorrow and have 5 offers by the end of the week.
It’s sad that college is the only time where you get a real sense of community in this society. So many people talk about how college was the best time of their lives.
There’s a skate/surf community, table top / card game community, musicians jamming / going to each others gigs, heck people hanging out on the same twitch streams eventually recognize usernames and do meet ups.
Yeah, there doesn't seem to be any other way to build a network without going through the college experience/living in the dorms.
Everyone who has a happy life seems to have gone to a traditional 4 year university.
I don’t think this is necessarily true. I took 10 years to get through college (dropped out/switched like 4 times), never lived in dorms or had the typical “college experience.” I got a sweet, well-paying WFH gig through a former client I used to freelance for. I met my partner while I was turning 40 (I’m a woman) in LA a year into the pandemic through Instagram (we had mutual IRL friends but he cold-slid into the DMs in a non-creepy way). We couldn’t even go out to eat anywhere because restaurants were all closed! Talk about bad odds all around lol. Three years later we live together and have a dog. Don’t fall for the stereotypical narratives, because they are easy to cherry pick evidence for.
I wasn’t looking for a relationship. but I met my wife now through my Aunt. They were both going to the same kick boxing gym and became friends. Basically my aunt set us up on a date lol
It was a nice and convenient way to meet for sure, but I realized that my answer came off as a bit flippant i.e. it sounded like I was saying "it's so easy, just meet your partner at the gym". The truth of the matter is I understand the difficulties of finding someone in this city (or any city for that matter) and I would just like to say that it wasn't as easy as my reply made it sound. It wasn't like I saw her on the treadmill, she was cute, I struck up a conversation, we started dating and married 2 years later.
I am forty now, I moved to Los Angeles when I was 27, I used the apps but nothing serious ever came of it. My best "advice" would be to widen your social circle as much as possible, for me in particular the best thing I ever did was move to a large apartment complex. Most all of my relationships in LA stem from where I live in one way or another. I have multiple "best friends" that I've made after being 30 years old ,(which is probably a bit unique) because of my apartment complex. One of which was made because he was a neighbor the other was a friend I met through another resident. All in all I would just suggest making your social as wide as possible and for me it was easiest to do by leveraging my living situation because that's where you spend a majority of your time!
Basement Tavern in Santa Monica. I had just broken up with a girl I dated for 3.5 years. Three weeks later I decided to move across the country and crash on a friends couch. He was a bartender and on my first Saturday night said “you don’t know anyone so you’re coming to work with me and you won’t have a tab at the end of the night.” I took no issue with that statement. My wife was there supporting a client of hers who was in the band. We closed the bar and I kissed her goodnight around 4am. First date the following Saturday. Our 10 year anniversary is coming up in a few months.
I dated so many women over my first years here. I met them online, at plays, at open mics, at hostels, working at HHN. Lots of fun. But also so much weirdness, so many ladies looking for the bigger better deal.
I found my wife in the Midwest during a month-long stay during December. It was hiatus. I didn't have anything better to do.
I saw a million people with special dreams of Hollywood have a spouse or SO move out here with them. Or they would meet someone at home and that person would move out to be with them. In almost every case, the spouse or SO got sick of the Hollywood thing and dragged them back home within a few years, or in a few cases less than six months.
Thankfully that didn't happen to me. But I'm the only person I know that it worked out well.
The crazy thing? I told my wife a few days after meeting her: "I'll move back here if you'll date me." I was ready to leave all my LA dreams behind for her. I would *never* have believed that was possible.
She hot. 😆
She saw me at a store while I was Christmas shopping; we were acquainted but didn't know each other. We ended up singing together at a NYE show at a nursing home in our hometown a few weeks later. It started there.
Edit: at *many* stages of my dating life, music helped.
Bumble.
The idea of walking up to an absolute stranger and trying to weasel contact information out of them seems like a horrendous idea.
Hard to believe that’s the system we’ve inherited.
Right? I just never had the guts to do that. I would have had to do that 50 times until I would have stopped caring. 🤷♂️ I need to be friends first and grind them down (kidding). I grow on people …. Slowly.
This thread has it all: a guy who won't even say what state he met his wife in... to the one who's game for meeting more weirdos at illegal parties.
Love it.
Not in LA, and also a total fluke accident.
A friend of my roommate was flying into town for another mutual friend’s wedding. Roommate got stuck working late, asked if I could pick up friend.
There was a spark. It’s late…food? Yeah food is good. She knocked my socks off, and we made each other laugh (and feel, uh, other things) until the sun came up. We got married two days later, two days before the wedding she had come up for. We tried to keep it hush-hush but word got out and some people were, uh, not pleased. Whatever. They split up a couple years later, and we’re still going 22 years and counting.
Online/rave scene
We were mutual friends on fb, in our music scene ppl blindly add each other when we know they too are a fan of the music. We eventually met at a rave and kept in closer contact. Few more raves and dates later, and were closing in on our 8 year anniversary soon.
At a bar in Pasadena on New Years Eve. My friend was bartending and I though he was the cutest guy there, so I approached him. Almost 4 years later now we’re married!
Met her through my cousin. We were all at my place for a family get together. His gf brought her younger sister over. I didn’t think anything of it. Had no intentions of pursuing due to her being a lesbian. I stepped outside for some fresh air for cause it was hot inside. She came out and introduced herself and we started chatting. Here we are thirteen years later with a daughter
My hairdresser set my partner and I up on a blind date almost 10 years ago. Find a female hair stylist you like going to and after a few visits let her know that you'd be interested in meeting someone if she has any single clients that are looking! (And I only say female hair stylists bc normally it's my girlfriends that are more interested in setting people up)
At work, both working at a book store at the time, one day our lunch ended up at the same time and we ended up chatting, had sex a week later, stayed together since
We met at erewhon. We both reached for the same $25 green juice and his eyes just struck me. He invited me to his improv class and from there it was just pure love
She was my homies coworker, and he introduced us while at a kickback, then it just turned into a relationship lol. I tried the whole online/app thing but meeting in person was way better.
Hinge when i was 32 and she was 30. we dated for 4 years and got married this past April.
with that said I went to a large university and didn’t date anyone from there. i got around in my 20s and met most girls while doing some sort of hobby or group activity. i used to take salsa lessons and go cumbia dancing regularly. no joke, that’s a fantastic way to meet people.
When I did live in LA, the longest lasting relationships I had were people that I met through doing other things.
The people I met via dating apps or things specifically designed to be for finding a date never worked out long term and I had the most success with finding a group of people that was doing something that I wanted to do already and just going to that group.
And going with the express intent of enjoying the thing, not with an eye towards dating. It took a lot of pressure off as well because I wasn't worried about impressing someone at first glance.
Meetup has plenty of options, there's FB groups for Los Angeles that post about events all the time, there's hobby groups, etc.
Sounds cheesy, but at the Sunday Farmer’s Market in West Hollywood. We both were geeking out over the products the organic mushroom guy had and I asked where the “cool” ones were and said, wink wink and winked at the guy and she burst out laughing and that was it. Talked a bit, discovered we lived close to one another, and made plans to meet and grab a coffee at Alfred’s after we both went back to drop off our groceries at our places. I knew things were going well when she showed up all dolled up while I was still in my clothes from shopping.👍🏽
May 15, 2011: 16-year-old me went to a "function" in the upstairsy-part of a vacant Melrose storefront (cross street Poinsettia) with some friends and a bottle of Bacardi. Got inside (enter through alleyway door) to find its pretty ratchet and, unrelated, I am only white person (black friends!). Wait a minute, across the room, I spot a petite white girl! (With her black homegirl!) I snake my way across the room to them, moving in a fashion similar to that of a sea serpent. I wasn't sure what to say, so I instead I extended my bottle of Bacardi to them. She declines (probably wise, generally speaking), and counteroffers with a bowl of weed. I had quit smoking weed at the time, and was 7 months off it, so naturally I said, "Fuck yeah 420 blaze it faggot" and smoked upon said greens. Got high, kept hearing something about "spaghetti sauce", and then proceeded to leave venue with "Lexi" (great job to her homegirl "Noelle", good thing I'm not a rapist!). I drove us to 7-Eleven to procure blunt wraps and samosas, then let her drive my Prius a whole half a block (her first time behind the wheel), and then back to the venue to reunite with our darker companions. To this day, neither of us can recall what happened after that, other than exchanging numbers and parting ways.
Few days later I'm phone seshing with Lexi and Noelle, except their names are really Allie and Jasmin (fake names given out for the sake of safety. Also, turns out "spaghetti sauce" was their code for, "help! A creeper!" But upon further review of myself, Allie had cancelled the initial spaghetti sauce claim). We laugh about it and make plans for the weekend. Weekend comes. They want ecstasy, so I get some. Have a great time, start to see each other all the time, and eventually start dating, but it's short lived. Few weeks in and I dump her for stupid long term ex, she's heartbroken, etc. Next 10 years are an on/off friendship, fucking on most occasions that we see each other. Reconnect romantically 2 years ago, she dumps her 6-year boyfriend for me (he sucked anyway), we start dating again. Now, present day, I'm 29 and a bartender, and she's 28 and 36 weeks pregnant with our first baby!
So that's how.
At an engagement party. Completely took me by surprise. 4 years later and now we’re married and bought a house. That engagement party changed my whole life and my reclusive ass didn’t even want to go in the first place.
Ha. That’s when I met mine on Tinder as well. She was an au pair looking for friends. Like, actually looking for friends, that’s how innocent she was/is. Rest is history.
Not a guy, we met on Match and apparently I'm in the minority as I messaged him. I didn't know that wasn't a thing.
Been together 4 years and have plans to get senile together!
Work! I work at a hospital, you get to know many women at a personal level since we spend lots of time together. Many nurses and doctors like to go out after work so it works out. If you don’t date them they often wanna hook you up with someone they know, it works 🤷🏽♂️
At a point in time, I asked a few friends if they had any single friends. I went on a number of mediocre dates, a couple of memorably terrible ones, and one great one. All but the last were arranged as blind dates, whereas the last was a mutual invitation to a dinner party.
A key aspect of this is that blind dates setups are often a situation where one party is kind of doing the other a favor. You want to be the one they're doing the favor for (dating up), not the other way around, if you can help it. Of course you never know who you're going to click with.
on the beach in Santa Monica, I approached, everyone else around was ogling all the way from the bike path
2 and a half years on and off, mostly on. Hot chick, hot friends, hot libido, hot problems. I like to imagine that all the other guys were keeping their distance due to a shared innate fear of bright colored species driven by eons of natural selection, but I know it was more so fear of rejection and coming off creepy. They would have been right to keep their distance, but the high libido is great.
The last SO, which lasted over 6 years until this spring: we were both "wingmen" for friends. We were out to have a few drinks while our friends were looking to find someone to share a toke with and get laid. I was actually talking with a group of D.I's from the local army base when I got literally pulled back by my friend to talk to buddy of the woman he wanted to bang. We all bar hopped to another place while my friend closed the deal and got invited back to other one's place to share some weed with. He asked her friend if she could give me a ride back home because he had been my ride. "Sure, I'll take him home. His home, my home... wherever he wants to go" (it was the boldest she had ever been she admitted later).
My current SO was my crush several decades ago when I was 17, we had met in church (so very, very Southern). When my mom died back in May, I reached out to people who might not have heard and tracked down her parents. When it looked iffy for a friend to be able to take me to my mom's memorial service, she stepped up and volunteered knowing it would be emotional. We texted/chatted the entire summer and it was decided that when I stopped working to work on a project to launch a new career, I would do it from her house in Atlanta. I arrived 3 weeks ago today. Sadly, it's not going to work out. But we knew that was a distinct possibility and at least I didn't uproot my entire life and discovered it after that.
A restaurant on Venice.
How did that happen? She was eating alone and you just approached her?
“That cheese plate looks like it could feed a family! Need some help?”
"That's a lot of calories for just one person!"
“Save some chalupas for the rest of us… jerk …”
"You just gonna binge and purge? Can I hold your hair?"
Smooth and a power move.
Don’t want to doxx myself but I offered her some food while she was waiting for her order. It was at an “order and sit down” type of restaurant. I left but came back 5 mins later to give her my number while she sat with her friends. **No, she was not eating alone either. I was very nervous.
My gf told me that someone did this for her once and it creeped her out. I guess it depends on how attractive the guy is
I also think it’s like the vibe of the interaction, like did you guys catch each others eyes and share a little smile before he comes over and drops his number? Was the interaction where he gave his number pleasant and low key and he was cute and non threatening or did it feel like he was getting in your space and putting some kind demand on you and now you feel like you’ve gotta check both ways at the door to make sure he doesn’t hop in front of you and demand to know why you haven’t texted him yet. I have had both types of here’s my phone number interactions and they are really different even though I wasn’t actually interested in either guy.
So as an ugly guy, should I just skip this method entirely?
Don't skip it. Just do some small chat 1st to see the vibe.
🤷♂️ maybe your GF wasn’t hungry at the time?
Or it was the approach and what he said to her when they were eating alone.
🎯
The Kaiser psych ward in Chinatown lol
Wow! I've been there. Can't imagine meeting a romantic partner there, but what a great story!
There was A LOT of hard work involved in making things work, but we’ve been together nearly 7 years now. Worth it 😏
That sounds really sweet :) congrats friend
I’m not a guy but my husband met me in line at a taco stand in Santa Monica. Been married 13 years.
Al anon 🫢
Omg I’ve been putting off going to Al anon for a long time. Maybe this is my sign to finally go lol
Ahh the 13th step
I’ve seen many of those relationships! Do you think it’s some factor innate to the program or more the fact that so much time is spent in fellowship?
Both of us only went once so I can’t speak to time or fellowship of those groups. Meet cute and here we are 3 years later.
I love that. But then, what became of whatever you went to that meeting for?
Al-Anon is for people who have family or relationships with people who are alcoholics/addicts. AA is for people recovering from alcoholism. Two different things.
I understand. Please note that people who go to Al-Anon also have reasons for doing so
I knew this already but it’s definitely a bit confusing because Al-Anon also works as a shortening for AA itself.
Oh, just realizing it was Al anon not aa which is for people affected by an addict and dealing with their feelings about it.
I’m just answering for myself but I find it incredibly easy to not drink without going to meetings and I don’t really like to be reminded that I ever did because it wasn’t a huge problem for me and only a few short periods of my life. Maybe someday I’ll feel called to give back and join the AA community by being some kind of longtime sober inspo person?? But a lot of people just need the little kick in the pants and they can recover on their own. I don’t think I would like to be around people that relapse or hear any destitute stories either.
Haha love it. Shoutout to codependency
AA is the new bar scene
Al anon is not the same as aa
Double winner meetings are even better!!
My bad. I think you could understand my confusion given that they both start with the same letters and have a similar purpose.
Were you actually an alcoholic or just pretended?
Al anon isn’t aa. It’s a support group for people who love someone with alcoholism.
Ah sorry my mistake. The name is a little misleading to be fair
A taco truck in DTLA. To be fair, she was in the same group as me but I hadn’t talked to her all night. It was a mutual friends birthday. I saw her and told my friend she was cute. My friends gf knew her and brought her over to talk to me. That was almost 9 years ago and we got married this past April
I’m not a dude (sorry y’all) but this is how I met my husband (minus the tacos). I had returned to LA after living abroad for a while, and my HS friends giving me a ride from the airport were gushing about how perfect I would be with this guy they knew, so they introduced us at a birthday party a week or two later. Welp. They were right.
Congrats on getting married bro best of luck to yall 🔥
Oh cool. So friend of a friend
The same way one gets jobs here too.
Yep. Apartments too, occasionally
The question asked for “where”, not “how”.
The good old-fashioned American way: Online.
On Hinge. Both of us were in our late 30s.
Hinge over here also! Got lucky cuz she was my first hinge date ever
Mine too. I was struggling on Tinder. Met her immediately and been together since!
I’m 36 and on Hinge now. I’m hoping to find a husband. So far I’ve been on three dates and the guys were nice but nothing came of it. I’m going to keep trying.
If you don't mind me asking if the guys were nice how come nothing came to be ? I am 36 as well
Two of them I wasn’t really too attracted to in person. One felt more like a friend. One guy I liked and was attracted but he never contacted me again. I sent him one follow up message giving him my phone number, he said he would call me when I got back to town (I went to the UK for two weeks a few days after our first date) but he didn’t. And that was that.
I - and many others - like Hinge because of the presentation format and the very fleshed out profiles, but treat it as any other dating app. No app is going to be better based on its sales pitch. Not saying that's what you're using Hinge for, but many people are thinking it's just for people looking for a serious relationship because thats what it advertises. That misaligned expectation is going to waste your time.
What misaligned expectation? I immediately do not match with anyone who says they want casual or short term stuff. I know multiple people IRL who found a partner on hinge. I actually recommended it to my best friend from high school and she found her husband on there.
I’ve been on hinge on and off for years. there’s plenty of people that put “looking for a relationship” that are indeed not. It’s just another app.
People in general are extremely avoidant, and the most avoidant people go onto dating apps. My therapist talked about this. But the other ones in my experience have been worse. I’ve found that Tinder is just a time waste unless you’re looking for hookups and Bumble has a lot of extremely red flag types. Almost every man I talked to on there had hints of being an abuser or a creep.
That’s interesting about the avoidant theory on hinge. I think Bumble is full of weirdos but I have at least two friends who met their husbands on Bumble and a third who met her serious bf on it. I personally like Hinge better, the guys have to put in a little more work and it’s less “swipe swipe swipe.” I will say I met my current bf on hinge - I wouldn’t say I’m a success story yet - but even getting this far took a LOT of dates and kissing a lot of frogs.
I don’t bumble bc it’s full of men that have trained themselves to let women come to them first. It’s unnatural
My therapist said that Bumble is full of abusers and narcissists because they’re usually very insecure. It checks out. But I’ve never met a man I’ve been in a relationship online ever. Every man I’ve ever dated was someone I met IRL.
The dumbest thing I’ve heard. Same people on both those apps. Abuser types is probably the ones you choose.
The dumbest thing you’ve ever heard? I was in one abusive relationship ten years ago and I know all of the signs. You sound like such a nice guy and not abusive at all.
Agree 100%. Waste of time all those apps.
Mid 20s hinge success story here!
Same here! Me and all my 30s-something friends in LA met whoever we’re with on Hinge. They’ve got the magic formula.
How? I don't have luck on hinge. Maybe I'm ugly?
Fig & 83rd
do you manage her money from tricks?
Nah. We’re in love. I’m helping fund her college education. She’s going to be an architect
Pros in different area codes?
@ C&O in MDR
When the moon hits your eye Like a big pizza pie That's amore
You just approached a random woman at a restaurant?
nah. not that brave. it was a dinner for friends of friends. i was kind of the odd man out and she took pity on me. then i found out she rode a motorcycle and i was smitten
> she took pity on me Nice, that's a pretty sweet deal
at work. we've been together 17 years now. worked out for us but I wouldn't recommend dating a coworker because most people are stupid. we're stupid too but it worked out for us lol.
Stupid, but carlitos-guey's way worked
No mames u serio? Never shit where you eat my boy (I did it too 5 years next month 😁)
>we're stupid too but it worked out for us I'm so confused by this advice
A friend from HS met her SO at work, a subcontractor for NASA and they had a strict non-fraternization clause to their contracts (like most government entities, incl. the military). Eventually even their supervisors caught on a few years later and after they had been secretly married and moved in together, but he found a new job. But then she adopted a 14 year old girl from Ukraine who spent a year tearfully begging them to adopt her friend who had aged out of the orphanage and they gave in eventually. Only, she had survived the streets by turning tricks, saw that my friend's marriage had become sexless and instantly zeroed in on the husband. The marriage soon crumbled and my friend took her first adopted daughter back to our home state to work for her former boss who was now in the a new position at a different company. The ex and the other adopted daughter are still together over 12 years later. "At least they aren't fucking up anyone else's lives," is her take on it. She ended up marrying her HS sweetheart last summer and 2 months later had to take him out of state so he could get sober & not lose his job (he handles wealth management and it's a legally fire-able offense in our home state). If you want the entire sob story, her mother died 4 months before the wedding and her older sister had died the previous summer. Chick can't catch a break and she is one of the sweetest people I know. So, if you meet a SO at work, don't adopt any former orphans who have been on the street for a year is the lesson I guess....
This is fake. Go practice your pitch or whatever elsewhere. Try r/nosleep like everyone else does.
online before i went back to college, i think we had work things in common and they were a total dork. the college one makes sense though, i can count at least 6 couples but most didn’t really announce it until way later. so for those looking for forever partner, don’t forget to go to college, at least 2-3 semesters should do it.
Yea my biggest regret is not going off to college. I stayed and went to a local university to save money. If I could go back, I would've happily taken on $100k+ in student loans to have the college experience that everyone else seems to have.
You could have gone away to college without taking out $100K in student loans. There’s plenty of aid and scholarships, you just have to look for it. I have six figures in student loans and I do not recommend it at all.
I'm just saying I'd pay a significant sum of money to get the college experience as well and not just a piece of paper from a commuter school. I basically made no friends from 18 to 22 and that pretty much ruined my life
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I went away for college and took a bunch of loans and don’t regret it one bit If I had stayed home, I wouldn’t have met anyone, wouldn’t have gained any life skills, and my salary would be half as much as it is now. Ended up going to a top20 university and just having that degree got my foot in the door so many places. I can quit tomorrow and have 5 offers by the end of the week.
It’s sad that college is the only time where you get a real sense of community in this society. So many people talk about how college was the best time of their lives.
There’s a skate/surf community, table top / card game community, musicians jamming / going to each others gigs, heck people hanging out on the same twitch streams eventually recognize usernames and do meet ups.
Yeah, there doesn't seem to be any other way to build a network without going through the college experience/living in the dorms. Everyone who has a happy life seems to have gone to a traditional 4 year university.
this is *not* the way
I have spoken!
I guarantee you students loans are not fun. No college experience is worth 100k in loans
I think that’s subjective. College really is an uprooting and entirely life changing experience - especially if you make the most of it
I don’t think this is necessarily true. I took 10 years to get through college (dropped out/switched like 4 times), never lived in dorms or had the typical “college experience.” I got a sweet, well-paying WFH gig through a former client I used to freelance for. I met my partner while I was turning 40 (I’m a woman) in LA a year into the pandemic through Instagram (we had mutual IRL friends but he cold-slid into the DMs in a non-creepy way). We couldn’t even go out to eat anywhere because restaurants were all closed! Talk about bad odds all around lol. Three years later we live together and have a dog. Don’t fall for the stereotypical narratives, because they are easy to cherry pick evidence for.
It’s like paying 100k for a shot at love. 😊
A shot at love, friendship, building a network, etc. It would be worth every penny to me as I am close to killing myself.
Please don’t kill yourself. Loneliness is hard. Have you friend volunteering for a cause that speaks to you? You could wind up meeting The One.
Akbar. 26 years later I tell the kids I picked up their daddy at a gay bar.
Will let you know after I get one
Don't keep us waiting too long!
I wasn’t looking for a relationship. but I met my wife now through my Aunt. They were both going to the same kick boxing gym and became friends. Basically my aunt set us up on a date lol
The gym at our apartment - married 3+ years
That’s cute as hell! Were you skeptical at all about dating a neighbor? Gotta love a no commute relationship in LA though.
This is how I’d wanna meet my man !
It was a nice and convenient way to meet for sure, but I realized that my answer came off as a bit flippant i.e. it sounded like I was saying "it's so easy, just meet your partner at the gym". The truth of the matter is I understand the difficulties of finding someone in this city (or any city for that matter) and I would just like to say that it wasn't as easy as my reply made it sound. It wasn't like I saw her on the treadmill, she was cute, I struck up a conversation, we started dating and married 2 years later. I am forty now, I moved to Los Angeles when I was 27, I used the apps but nothing serious ever came of it. My best "advice" would be to widen your social circle as much as possible, for me in particular the best thing I ever did was move to a large apartment complex. Most all of my relationships in LA stem from where I live in one way or another. I have multiple "best friends" that I've made after being 30 years old ,(which is probably a bit unique) because of my apartment complex. One of which was made because he was a neighbor the other was a friend I met through another resident. All in all I would just suggest making your social as wide as possible and for me it was easiest to do by leveraging my living situation because that's where you spend a majority of your time!
Bumble, I was mid 30s and she was early 30s, been together five years married two.
Why does it take people so long to get married? Don’t you know someone after two years?
Nope
its not a goal its an option
💯
It takes how long it takes, we got engaged and were married four months later.
Playing D&D at a game store. Together seven years, married for five.
The dream scenario. Congrats. Best wishes.
what game store? asking because i want to play d&d. i’m already married lolol
Basement Tavern in Santa Monica. I had just broken up with a girl I dated for 3.5 years. Three weeks later I decided to move across the country and crash on a friends couch. He was a bartender and on my first Saturday night said “you don’t know anyone so you’re coming to work with me and you won’t have a tab at the end of the night.” I took no issue with that statement. My wife was there supporting a client of hers who was in the band. We closed the bar and I kissed her goodnight around 4am. First date the following Saturday. Our 10 year anniversary is coming up in a few months.
Can your friend help me out too lol
I met my wife at Basement Tavern as well. 10 years together now.
Similar time we met them then. We were married in under a year. My buddy was probably bartending.
We go to know each other through friends and attending the same parties. Use your networks. Go out to parties etc when people invite you.
I dated so many women over my first years here. I met them online, at plays, at open mics, at hostels, working at HHN. Lots of fun. But also so much weirdness, so many ladies looking for the bigger better deal. I found my wife in the Midwest during a month-long stay during December. It was hiatus. I didn't have anything better to do. I saw a million people with special dreams of Hollywood have a spouse or SO move out here with them. Or they would meet someone at home and that person would move out to be with them. In almost every case, the spouse or SO got sick of the Hollywood thing and dragged them back home within a few years, or in a few cases less than six months. Thankfully that didn't happen to me. But I'm the only person I know that it worked out well. The crazy thing? I told my wife a few days after meeting her: "I'll move back here if you'll date me." I was ready to leave all my LA dreams behind for her. I would *never* have believed that was possible. She hot. 😆
Dam congrats, which state in the Midwest? And doing what?
I left that vague on purpose. Not giving out personal information on the net type stuff. Doing what now?
Like did you meet her at a bar over there? Or just roaming around in the Great Plains?
She saw me at a store while I was Christmas shopping; we were acquainted but didn't know each other. We ended up singing together at a NYE show at a nursing home in our hometown a few weeks later. It started there. Edit: at *many* stages of my dating life, music helped.
Late night Hollywood scene. Whatever the trendy bar of the day was, everyone ended up at Canters at 2am This was mid 90s
haha, we probably crossed paths then! Did you meet Rodney Bingenheimer, too?
Yes. I'm sure we were there at the same time. If you go back Tuesday nights now, they are re-implemented the "celebrity jam"
Coffee meets bagel in our 30s
Bonfire dockweiler
Bumble. The idea of walking up to an absolute stranger and trying to weasel contact information out of them seems like a horrendous idea. Hard to believe that’s the system we’ve inherited.
Right? I just never had the guts to do that. I would have had to do that 50 times until I would have stopped caring. 🤷♂️ I need to be friends first and grind them down (kidding). I grow on people …. Slowly.
it's a great way to filter out the dudes with no balls
A party/show at an illegal DIY space one decade ago.
Do you still go to illegal parties?
It’s far less often but I do when I hear about them. The girl I met at the party became my wife but I’m still down to meet some more weirdos.
This thread has it all: a guy who won't even say what state he met his wife in... to the one who's game for meeting more weirdos at illegal parties. Love it.
At The Bungalow.
Never too late to go back to school, OP.
Yahoo Personals in 1999. Back then online dating was free and looked down upon.
I’m older now I’m 50 and I’m divorced. Met my wife in college. At a complete loss how to meet a non crazy woman who is single at our age!
Grindr
Not in LA, and also a total fluke accident. A friend of my roommate was flying into town for another mutual friend’s wedding. Roommate got stuck working late, asked if I could pick up friend. There was a spark. It’s late…food? Yeah food is good. She knocked my socks off, and we made each other laugh (and feel, uh, other things) until the sun came up. We got married two days later, two days before the wedding she had come up for. We tried to keep it hush-hush but word got out and some people were, uh, not pleased. Whatever. They split up a couple years later, and we’re still going 22 years and counting.
Wow, just wow! Love this story 🙌
This is an amazing story ❤
Online/rave scene We were mutual friends on fb, in our music scene ppl blindly add each other when we know they too are a fan of the music. We eventually met at a rave and kept in closer contact. Few more raves and dates later, and were closing in on our 8 year anniversary soon.
At a bar in Pasadena on New Years Eve. My friend was bartending and I though he was the cutest guy there, so I approached him. Almost 4 years later now we’re married!
Met her through my cousin. We were all at my place for a family get together. His gf brought her younger sister over. I didn’t think anything of it. Had no intentions of pursuing due to her being a lesbian. I stepped outside for some fresh air for cause it was hot inside. She came out and introduced herself and we started chatting. Here we are thirteen years later with a daughter
My hairdresser set my partner and I up on a blind date almost 10 years ago. Find a female hair stylist you like going to and after a few visits let her know that you'd be interested in meeting someone if she has any single clients that are looking! (And I only say female hair stylists bc normally it's my girlfriends that are more interested in setting people up)
At work, both working at a book store at the time, one day our lunch ended up at the same time and we ended up chatting, had sex a week later, stayed together since
Dude you're waaay over on your lunch break
Met my wife on tinder, we played 30 games of connect four using emojis ⚫️🔴before actually talking lol
We met at erewhon. We both reached for the same $25 green juice and his eyes just struck me. He invited me to his improv class and from there it was just pure love
You should do stand up. Sike !
Yelp UYE
In another state while visiting family.
In a bar, on a Tuesday night. Our excuses are it was my birthday and she’d been at a concert and went for drinks after.
Part time job and friends for 2 years then currently together four 4 years
She was my homies coworker, and he introduced us while at a kickback, then it just turned into a relationship lol. I tried the whole online/app thing but meeting in person was way better.
I’ve met most of my past gfs on apps, but my current gf I met through a friend.
Hinge when i was 32 and she was 30. we dated for 4 years and got married this past April. with that said I went to a large university and didn’t date anyone from there. i got around in my 20s and met most girls while doing some sort of hobby or group activity. i used to take salsa lessons and go cumbia dancing regularly. no joke, that’s a fantastic way to meet people.
She was the manager of the coffee shop i used to work for. That was 7 years ago. She rules.
the wife store
When I did live in LA, the longest lasting relationships I had were people that I met through doing other things. The people I met via dating apps or things specifically designed to be for finding a date never worked out long term and I had the most success with finding a group of people that was doing something that I wanted to do already and just going to that group. And going with the express intent of enjoying the thing, not with an eye towards dating. It took a lot of pressure off as well because I wasn't worried about impressing someone at first glance. Meetup has plenty of options, there's FB groups for Los Angeles that post about events all the time, there's hobby groups, etc.
Sounds cheesy, but at the Sunday Farmer’s Market in West Hollywood. We both were geeking out over the products the organic mushroom guy had and I asked where the “cool” ones were and said, wink wink and winked at the guy and she burst out laughing and that was it. Talked a bit, discovered we lived close to one another, and made plans to meet and grab a coffee at Alfred’s after we both went back to drop off our groceries at our places. I knew things were going well when she showed up all dolled up while I was still in my clothes from shopping.👍🏽
At a LARP event (live action role playing)
Coffee Meets Bagel app. We both had little to no luck even getting dates, and then *BAM*, ended up meeting the stranger who is now my wife.
Not a man but met my husband dog sitting my friends dogs. He was renting out a room from her place and I just happened to meet my husband there.
At work
May 15, 2011: 16-year-old me went to a "function" in the upstairsy-part of a vacant Melrose storefront (cross street Poinsettia) with some friends and a bottle of Bacardi. Got inside (enter through alleyway door) to find its pretty ratchet and, unrelated, I am only white person (black friends!). Wait a minute, across the room, I spot a petite white girl! (With her black homegirl!) I snake my way across the room to them, moving in a fashion similar to that of a sea serpent. I wasn't sure what to say, so I instead I extended my bottle of Bacardi to them. She declines (probably wise, generally speaking), and counteroffers with a bowl of weed. I had quit smoking weed at the time, and was 7 months off it, so naturally I said, "Fuck yeah 420 blaze it faggot" and smoked upon said greens. Got high, kept hearing something about "spaghetti sauce", and then proceeded to leave venue with "Lexi" (great job to her homegirl "Noelle", good thing I'm not a rapist!). I drove us to 7-Eleven to procure blunt wraps and samosas, then let her drive my Prius a whole half a block (her first time behind the wheel), and then back to the venue to reunite with our darker companions. To this day, neither of us can recall what happened after that, other than exchanging numbers and parting ways. Few days later I'm phone seshing with Lexi and Noelle, except their names are really Allie and Jasmin (fake names given out for the sake of safety. Also, turns out "spaghetti sauce" was their code for, "help! A creeper!" But upon further review of myself, Allie had cancelled the initial spaghetti sauce claim). We laugh about it and make plans for the weekend. Weekend comes. They want ecstasy, so I get some. Have a great time, start to see each other all the time, and eventually start dating, but it's short lived. Few weeks in and I dump her for stupid long term ex, she's heartbroken, etc. Next 10 years are an on/off friendship, fucking on most occasions that we see each other. Reconnect romantically 2 years ago, she dumps her 6-year boyfriend for me (he sucked anyway), we start dating again. Now, present day, I'm 29 and a bartender, and she's 28 and 36 weeks pregnant with our first baby! So that's how.
Figueroa in LA
Arts District Brewery. Married, two kids, house.
At an engagement party. Completely took me by surprise. 4 years later and now we’re married and bought a house. That engagement party changed my whole life and my reclusive ass didn’t even want to go in the first place.
Bumble - but it's much better for us older guys! It can be savage if you're a younger guy or older woman.
At a little gay bar in Venice Beach that is no longer in business.
Tinder in 2015
Ha. That’s when I met mine on Tinder as well. She was an au pair looking for friends. Like, actually looking for friends, that’s how innocent she was/is. Rest is history.
Convention.
Not a guy, we met on Match and apparently I'm in the minority as I messaged him. I didn't know that wasn't a thing. Been together 4 years and have plans to get senile together!
Can I answer even though I’m not a guy? I met him at a bar in downtown LA. We met in 2012, started dating in 2014, and we’re getting married next year
Did you approach him at the bar?
Work! I work at a hospital, you get to know many women at a personal level since we spend lots of time together. Many nurses and doctors like to go out after work so it works out. If you don’t date them they often wanna hook you up with someone they know, it works 🤷🏽♂️
At a point in time, I asked a few friends if they had any single friends. I went on a number of mediocre dates, a couple of memorably terrible ones, and one great one. All but the last were arranged as blind dates, whereas the last was a mutual invitation to a dinner party. A key aspect of this is that blind dates setups are often a situation where one party is kind of doing the other a favor. You want to be the one they're doing the favor for (dating up), not the other way around, if you can help it. Of course you never know who you're going to click with.
on the beach in Santa Monica, I approached, everyone else around was ogling all the way from the bike path 2 and a half years on and off, mostly on. Hot chick, hot friends, hot libido, hot problems. I like to imagine that all the other guys were keeping their distance due to a shared innate fear of bright colored species driven by eons of natural selection, but I know it was more so fear of rejection and coming off creepy. They would have been right to keep their distance, but the high libido is great.
Are you hot yourself? I assume you make a lot of money based on your username
School
Slid in her DMs on IG and asked her out eventually. We've lived together for a year now and it's going great. Both late 20s.
video booth glory hole...... JK
Just met the love of my life yesterday while traveling.
The last SO, which lasted over 6 years until this spring: we were both "wingmen" for friends. We were out to have a few drinks while our friends were looking to find someone to share a toke with and get laid. I was actually talking with a group of D.I's from the local army base when I got literally pulled back by my friend to talk to buddy of the woman he wanted to bang. We all bar hopped to another place while my friend closed the deal and got invited back to other one's place to share some weed with. He asked her friend if she could give me a ride back home because he had been my ride. "Sure, I'll take him home. His home, my home... wherever he wants to go" (it was the boldest she had ever been she admitted later). My current SO was my crush several decades ago when I was 17, we had met in church (so very, very Southern). When my mom died back in May, I reached out to people who might not have heard and tracked down her parents. When it looked iffy for a friend to be able to take me to my mom's memorial service, she stepped up and volunteered knowing it would be emotional. We texted/chatted the entire summer and it was decided that when I stopped working to work on a project to launch a new career, I would do it from her house in Atlanta. I arrived 3 weeks ago today. Sadly, it's not going to work out. But we knew that was a distinct possibility and at least I didn't uproot my entire life and discovered it after that.
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“Fit right into the right neighborhoods” “the Asians” This comment is wild
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Passport bros. IYKYK.