Where do you meet people you’ve gone on dates with and/or been in relationships with?
Apparently I really need the internet for my dating life; all my dates and relationships have come from Okcupid and other dating sites, World of Warcraft, and Myspace. I’ve never approached someone offline that seems sort of cute because… well I don’t know anything about them! What if they’re rude about my gender or my sexual orientation? Maybe there’s a sense of intimacy and pseudo knowing someone that comes from online mediums that appeals to the demiromantic in me. Somehow friends in queer friendly spaces never develops into an interest for anything more.
Both of my relationships were with people who were my coworkers who I saw a lot outside of work paddling. I’ve gone on a couple dates with people I’ve met on Tinder and one I met through a friend, but those were all pretty much disasters and a sign that I should only go on dates with people I know fairly well and actually have romantic attraction towards BEFORE the date instead of hoping it’ll just show up.
Plus like, I really only want to date other boaters. Whitewater is a huge part of my life, and I like to spend all my free time paddling, and having an SO that doesn’t do whitewater would put a dent in that (though the counterpoint of “automatic shuttle bunny” for road trips is a convincing argument, provided a prospective SO would be cool with that).
Ha! Even though I didn’t date anyone at all until after high school, my first few relationships were all with people I’d known since high school. In general these days, I meet new datemates online, but my most recently starting current relationship was a connection made through a mutual friend (who wing-personed us both really hard :P)
All of my dates and kinky play have been with people I met in the bdsm scene. And for various (not always good enough) reasons I’ve only spent 5 of my 40 years actually involved in that scene. Never achieved a stable romantic relationship.
And by ‘met’ I mean I first met them in person, not online.