An ERE dating site

[ertyu]

Lmao

[neenqqqr]

Since moving to NYC in 2013, I've been on-and-off dating apps (Tinder, Hinge and Bumble since OKCupid went downhill ~4 years ago RIP) and I have seen a few (less than a handful) profiles mention "FIRE". Of the ONE person I matched with that mentioned it, I asked her about it, and she was more a Mr Mustache gal than ERE; in fact she never heard of ERE. The connection fizzled for unrelated reasons. I thought my current GF would have loved Jacob's book, as she has a math background and works in law, but she hasn't caught the bug yet. Oh well, at least she keeps a budget (although only a passive one via the Mint app :/).

[Crusader]

since OKCupid went downhill ~4 years ago RIP

Why did it go downhill? I still use it and really like the match algorithm and the questions.

[Alphaville]

the questions.

i'm glad i got married pre-internet

because the #1 question no app can answer is: "what do you smell like?"

until that is solved, all results will be faulty.

life is chemical, and the nose knows.

https://www.gq.com/story/body-odor-attraction

[Crusader]

Absolutely, but physical attraction (part of which is odor) is only one component of what makes a relationship work long term. With the questions, you at least know whose odor you don't even need to investigate.

[Alphaville]

i think smell is a lot more important than people give credit for. really make or break. so i'd smell first, then ask questions later.

like, you'd get a number of paper swatches in the mail, you sniff the one you like, and then agree to exchange details if interested.

it's hard during covid, but i think expanding one's live social circle is bound to be a lot less frustrating than nerdy algorithms. make a lot of friends/acquaintances without the pressure of "dating."

[Crusader]

I think both factors are important (smell and brains, let's say), and you can initially filter based on either. So, during online dating, you first filter based on brains, and find out about smell later. IRL, you first filter based on smell, and find out about brains later.

[Alphaville]

yeah but the "date" setup increases the stakes too much. it's a lot easier to meet people as mere acquaintances, then friends, the n decide later if you're willing to pounce.

eg with my wife i met her as a part of a particular social scene (friend of a friend), then hanged out in groups, only later i separated her from the herd and blam!

if i had appeared to her as "hello i'm a stranger from the interwebs here are my test scores have dinner with me alone" we would not have stood a chance. too many preconceptions upfront equals disaster.

i mean this problem is not new. before online dating there was speed dating, before speed dating there were the personal ads. the personal ads were for the desperate, now desperation seems the default, but why?

maybe i'm too skeptical but i believe such schemes are doomed to fail by definition, as they commoditize people in a high-stakes scenario before you can even get to know them. sure there's maybe 1 in 10,000 matches that work but... that's a grueling regime.

imo it's more effective to meet people in a compatible social scene. a lot of the sorting is pre-done for you, but it's not sorted down to an individual level where it's either "match or disappointment" that is a bit like playing russian roulette.

a good mating dance needs space, like all dances. approach/retreat/circle around/tease/feint/attack/etc. more play, more laughs. people need time to relax to get to know each other better.

i guess to put it in terms i've been using lately, the problem with dating by categorization is that it platonizes and destroys the human element.

[Crusader]

I get what you are saying, but I think that if one is aware of these dangers you describe, online dating can still used as a useful tool, even if it doesn't lead to the ultimate goal. Some of my closest friends are dates that didn't lead anywhere romantically... why? Well because based on the questions, we definitely knew we would get along.

[Alphaville]

ah yeah, if you can hack the system for your own purposes (eg expanding your real flesh and bones social network) then it can be great!

[7Wannabe5]

In my experience, the smell factor, although critical, is not necessarily to be relied on either. I recently hit it with a man whose smell I used to love, but now he smells wrong to me, and I don't know why. Maybe it's because I smell-bonded to another man in the interim? Obviously, a person can smell better or worse at first meeting, but I think the smell-bond develops more slowly over time along with domestic-type affection. Also, most any guy with poor laundry/shower practice is likely to smell like the old carpeting in an ice hockey rink. Also, the real perfume (as opposed to cheap cologne)for men does seem to work.

Anyways, I have had a lot of fun with internet dating. I greatly prefer it to the hang out until something happens protocol of my pre-first marriage years. Even within friend of friend type socialization circles, waiting for something to happen usually involved going to a party and drinking, so it wasn't like great judgment was always used. Meeting somebody for a coffee date after exchanging a few messages isn't very stressful after you've done it a few times. Also, it becomes almost impossible to meet people casually once you reach the age where it's more likely than not that the cute guy in line in front of you in the grocery store is already married or otherwise coupled up. There are also enough different sites/apps that you can kind of narrow down the crowd in much the same way you could by choosing a venue (seedy bar vs. church picnic) in the olden days. Of course, that does lead to some other problems like trying to figure out if you are chubby enough for the chubby people app or old enough for the old people app or kinky enough for the kinky people app. etc. etc. etc.

[Alphaville]

im super burned out on dating tbh so i guess that's part and parcel of my outlook. i was a serial monogamist (and momentary bigamist on occasion lol--apologies for my errors) till i got fed up of the repetitiveness of it all. so i got serious, worked on things, and broke on through to the other side. hopefully i never have to date again. no more strangers! lol. it's just too much work to develop this level of intimacy. so, fingers crossed.

[ertyu]

ha

have had the smell thing happen. date was perfect on paper but then just... smelled wrong . And I can't even point out what it was; it's not like there were clouds of perfume I couldn't stand, just... didn't click. Thought it was just me. Hasn't happened with another person since, which is why i put it away as some sort of aberration.

[7Wannabe5]

@Alphaville:

Yeah, there's definitely some repetitiveness to dating, but there's also repetitiveness to long-term domesticity once you've been round that block more than once or twice. Human beings live long enough now that we could all have 3 marriages that last 20 years! One noticeable difference between never married middle-aged men and divorced middle-aged men is how quickly you will find yourself shopping in the grocery store with a divorced man. Obviously, any guy over 50 who has never been married has some level of intimacy issues, but when you're both previously long-term married, it's almost shocking how easily "Do we have any pickles?" level intimacy is achieved.

[Alphaville]

@7w5

pickles? oh no, im talking bout deeper stuff, not domesticity, but the kind of thing that you develop from knowing someone very deeply over many years. which if lived with the wrong person can breed into resentment i guess, but with the right one, sure there are difficulties, but also a huge payoff. wheaton 99 or something.

at the dating level, the discovery is the fun, once all is uncovered i 'd get restless and go looking for new territories to discover because that was all there was to know. novelty wearing off. but then the novelty seeking itself wore off. and i mean, even when i was shacking up with someone, we were still "dating," we were still strangers, not really what i got going now.

so sticking to one person that was a good match i realized there are levels and levels below the surface that's something else completely, and never boring. i don't know how to explain but something happened hahaha. we became "a family" i guess. complicity to the death! not the temporary romantic illusion of infatuations, but something a lot deeper. and it took a hell of a lot of work to get here. it's like the pyramids. or rome.

funny that we lack the language for these things because the usual romantic poetry usually has to do with the early part of things, which wears out, not with the late one, which endures.

[7Wannabe5]

@Alphaville:

I didn’t mean to imply that domesticity equals deep or complex intimacy. It just strikes me funny how easily I can look like half of an old married couple just because I am paired with another old person.

complicity to the death!

Yeah, but what does she get out of it?

[Alphaville]

Yeah, but what does she get out of it?

complicity to the death!

this sort of thing has to go both ways or it goes nowhere

[7Wannabe5]

Hmmm...yeah, I don’t do that. One time I thought my second husband was going to back his truck over the side of an icy road into a gorge, so I bailed out the passenger door. He later had some unkind things to say about my “instinct for survival.” -lol

[Alphaville]

I thought my second husband was going to back his truck over the side of an icy road into a gorge

there's an implied lack of mutual respect or consideration or trust there somewhere, so i'm glad you fled.

eta: this is not to say that we haven't had our shit moments, but we keep working them out, learning, evolving, etc. lots of hard labor/sweat equity to overcome failures. we're literally invested in this.

[7Wannabe5]

@Alphaville:

Yeah, he got smashed up pretty bad in a motorcycle wreck a few years after we broke up, and I might have been on the back of the bike if we didn't break up. So, that was a good call for more reasons than one.

I don't know about "literally", seems more applicable to a character played by Charlie Sheen , but with very few blatantly immature exceptions everybody who is or ever was married considers themselves to be very invested in their relationship. That's why it's also almost always the realm in which "sunk cost fallacy" is most relevant for most people. Resentment doesn't grow directly from incompatibility, no two people are perfectly compatible; it grows out of covert contracts. Hoping the other will change. Assuming the other is or believes the same. Expecting that the other won't change. Not recognizing that relationship is often is the catalyst for conflict towards the growth; sexual tension only exists with an "other", so compromise often results in short term wins which add up to long term fail, etc. etc. etc.

Drifting way off topic here, but I've been searching around for cheap housing options and happened upon an advertisement for a room in an intentional community which is based on anti-monogamy beliefs. I'm not anti-monogamy any more than I am militantly atheist, but I have become somewhat agnostic. For those who are anti-monogamy, probably their primary objection centers around the concept of the "relationship ladder" which everybody is supposed to climb, much like the conventional "career ladder." Not everybody is made to be happy within scope of significant investment in dyad. For instance, just me and a male partner never feels like a family to me, because I don't like always being the littlest person, but I do think just having a wife is enough for most men to feel like they have a family. That's what I meant by "Yeah, but what does she get out of it?"