At the Legal Endgame!

[BluWave]

Maika!

I love your update. I have always been impressed by your positive attitude towards life and the way you work to improve yourself. We all have a lot to learn from your success story. We all need to look inward, grow from the inside out, and believe in a better future (with or without our S). That is the way it's done, brother. The only way IMO. I hope you will keep posting updates and giving advice to others. I think your advice is solid. ... and I know you are going to be killing it in the dating world ;-)

Blu

[TBSakaJ9]

Yo M keep trucking!!

[neffer]

Oh yeah, M for Master!

[Maika]

Blu - your words brought tears to my eyes. I'm amazed that my positive attitude and mindset is coming through with my words. If you had known me for the past few years, you would've immediately known that I was Mr. Doom and Gloom. My depression had really hollowed me out and I didn't even know it. Everything I viewed was through a lens of negativity and withdrawal. That is probably the biggest 180 I have done is to work on the roots of my depression and get a new level of gratitude towards life. I just had so much internal work to do to get here and I won't take it for granted EVER. At this point, I genuinely feel grateful and optimistic about everything for my life, and I am coming to appreciate the struggles of my past as defining factors that have allowed me to chisel myself to who I am. Thanks so much for your kind words. It meant a lot to me. I feel like I have rediscovered my self again - hence I use that DBing is about 'reclaiming' yourself. I really feel that I was able to connect to my self and bring him out through this ordeal and arduous process. By no means I am done, but I try to share what I can where my perspective and experience would make the most impact. Hope you're doing well.

J - you're a brother to me and we have gone through thick and thin here as we came here around the same time. It's so awesome to see you flourishing and living life to the fullest. You my soul brother for sure!

Nef - what can I say? you are always around with love, hope, and optimism that is unparalleled on this board. Thanks so much for always being in my corner and you know I am in yours in a heart beat. Keep spreading the love and positive vibes!

[SoTorn]

SoTorn, AS, and Davide:

Thanks for the perspective on dating and what your experiences have been. I am also wondering if the dating scene is better in larger cities. I was on a couple of dating apps and it was a bit absurd. However, I need to up my game and I also want to meet women in natural settings. 2018 was more of a hermit stage for me as my main GAL activities took a hit. But with me ramping those up this year, I know that I will have more opportunities.

Sex is abundant if you just want to get laid and you relax your standards - men and women. I know I can get that if I want, but I think I'd rather have a date along with it than just being strictly between the sheets business. I am looking for some connection. I am excited to explore all of this and I'll keep y'all posted on my trysts with dating.

I had a dating app set up. Tried it both on friend mode and date mode. I met five women through that. Before I even started talking I had advised of my sitch and that I wasnt trying to hookup or marry someone. All were ok and met for a very casual meet for coffee or food. Very casual talks about life experiences. Never had any interest in furthering even a friendship with all five. Two of them tried to pursue me very quickly, one for love and one for sex. Blocked both.

Depends on where you live. Meeting women where I live is easy, meeting one that you even mildly like is difficult.

That being said I met a sixth woman without trying to even do so as a date or anything. I had been talking about a FB group subject with this woman. Not even a hint of any sort of pursuit or relationship type talk, just benign chatter about a topic.

We ended up eventually talking about my sitch. This woman is 13 years younger. I got invited to meet in person as she lives out of state and I was attending an event, one of many, in said state. I met this woman and yes i can say i more than mildly like her and i am very attracted to her.

I have talked with her about me being interested and her being interested, but that i need to get out of my MR and live alone aka do me and heal before i would even consider anything serious. This woman is very nice and agrees. Plus she lives in a different state so there is zero chance she can or will move to my state and legally impossible for me to move to hers.

So that being said we will re-evaluate in about a year and if we are still talking and meeting up once in a while we can decide to further develop our relationship. Both of us are in full GAL mode in our respective states.

This woman is hugely anti codependent, anti NPD and anti nice guy syndrome because of her past experiences. So that works for me.

And yes, I have zero desire or hope for my MR. I'm not putting myself through years more of emotional abuse. I am going to enjoy my new female friends company when possible and be happy about it.

[Maika]

Thanks for sharing ST. Curious - how did you meet this sixth woman? it wasn't through a dating app? I'm sure meeting women is not hard, but someone interesting is probably hard to find. However, you can't know until you put yourself out there and get outside your comfort zones. For me, it's time investment right now. Dating apps just time intensive and I haven't had much luck on them. So, I'd rather just try and meet and talk to women naturally. That's going outside my comfort zone for sure, but just striking up conversations without coming off as creepy lol. It's a brave new world.

[Davide]

Maika,

I hear you about the time investment on apps, it isn't insignificant. What I do like about them though is the transparency of them. It is clear that you and whomever you are talking to are there to meet other potential partners. Not that it has be transactional, but there is no doubt that the other person is "available" and not just looking for a friend. There is a certain honesty and vulnerability in being very upfront about looking for a potential partner.

I would be interested to hear where people are meeting potential dates in real life. It certainly used to be at a bar, or nowadays at a brewery or something of that ilk. But, honestly, I'd rather meet someone who doesn't spend much time at bars or breweries, someone more active. Also, for me it is difficult to be set up by friends because most of my friends in this city are common friends of my W, and so we don't speak of the situation or anything involving my romantic life. There are plenty of attractive women at my yoga classes, but no one wants to be the creepy dude hitting on women there! I find that there are few single women who frequent the climbing gym, and most of them are well over a decade younger. So, I have yet to find many appropriate contexts to meet someone IRL. However, I would love to hear what others, including you, are doing.

[TBSakaJ9]

IMO you don't go out with the intentions of meeting people you just live your life, get out of the house and opportunities present themselves. For example, I was in the checkout line yesterday at the grocery store and this attractive girl had her food on the belt waiting for it to be scanned. There was not one of those sticks separating her food from what I was going to buy so I asked her if she wanted to buy my groceries. So she came back and said everything but my beer. I then came back and said "you don't like beer?" and then the convo continued. After I started talking to her I realized she had a ring on but that was not the point. The point was I approached and initiated a conversation with a random stranger and who knows next time she might be single. Women whether they are married or not love to flirt and love the attention, the validation. Funny thing was when I was walking out her and her husband drove by me and she smiled at me. I could tell she enjoyed it.

Just live your life, change up your route, linger in public, and opportunities should present themselves to approach.

[dusty70]

M, great to hear a little update from you. Just wanted to let you know that you are the one that helped me through my sitch, whenever I had some issue I didn't know how to deal with I read through all your posts. I have attempted to model what I do with what you have accomplished! You've been very helpful, especially with the kids and the GAL stuff. If there has been any silver lining to my divorce it has been the relationship with my kids, not that it was bad at any point but it is so much better now! Thanks again!!

[SoTorn]

Thanks for sharing ST. Curious - how did you meet this sixth woman? it wasn't through a dating app? I'm sure meeting women is not hard, but someone interesting is probably hard to find. However, you can't know until you put yourself out there and get outside your comfort zones. For me, it's time investment right now. Dating apps just time intensive and I haven't had much luck on them. So, I'd rather just try and meet and talk to women naturally. That's going outside my comfort zone for sure, but just striking up conversations without coming off as creepy lol. It's a brave new world.

I met her through Facebook. I was a member of the same group as she is and we both posted a lot to the group. I ended up messaging her about the same subject of the group and we just ended up talking. That was a chance meeting and that is the one that ended up bearing fruit.

I have a buddy at work who is a woman magnet. He is alpha through and through. I took some tips from him. You can talk to ANY woman. Just be confident. All it takes is confidence. I mean it helps to look great too. I have completely changed how I look and dress. I lost 87lbs. I bought an entire new wardrobe of all very nice clothes.

So I went from being fat to being fit and went from wearing jeans and T-Shirts to wearing the following brands.

Perry Ellis
Denim and Flower
Calvin Klein
Guess
Aldo
Timberland
Van Heusen
Ralph Lauren
Tommy Hilfiger
Michael Kors

etc etc. I started dressing super sharp. I used to wear baggy clothes, now all of my clothes is fitted. I wear medium slim fit button down shirts and 34in waist skinny pants/jeans/slacks. I bought several "dress" outfits as well (slacks/shirt/jacket/tie) and wear a suit and tie about once per week. I bought several pairs of shoes/boots etc. So I wear something different every day. I also accessorize nicely. I have a few nice watches that I rotate, Rolex, Omega, Citizen, Movado etc.

That being said I get an unbelievable amount of attention from women now. I am still not used to it. I have women approach me now, both because of my appearance and because I actually feel confident in myself now and I guess it shows.

This is a whole new world and there are TONS of women out there that would love to meet you believe me. My drastic physical changes along with me always looking sharp seems to really piss off my WW lol. I mean you can see what she says to me. Instead of "wow you look great" I get "you are so vain dressing like that" or "you look sickly because of the weight loss".

I will not bother with the dating apps again. I like meeting people randomly and I am confident that I would go introduce myself if I saw someone that I liked.