In years of writing and talking to people about dating the biggest mystery to me has been that most single people seem to spend so little effort on their dating lives. They’d tell me that finding a partner is as important as their career or their hobbies, then they’d spend 40 hours a week working, 20 hours watching Netflix, and half an hour swiping on Tinder half-hoping no one would actually match them and expect a message to be written.
People put more thought into their brunch order than into composing their online dating profiles. They don’t seek out places where members of the opposite sex socialize, and if they end up in one by accident they find excuses not to flirt. They complain to their friends about dating but would never ask them for matchmaking. They mock anyone who is explicit and proactive about looking for dates as they’re literally dying from loneliness.
Laziness begets cynicism and laziness. Scrolling through low-effort profiles and thoughtless spam messages on apps doesn’t inspire anyone to put the time in to write well. It’s a lot easier to ghost someone who themselves isn’t diligent about texting back on time, easy to flake on someone who put no effort into setting up a pleasant dates. After a couple years of this, many people just give up and blame the entirety of the opposite sex: if they all can’t be bothered, why should I be?
Of course, it should be the exact opposite. In a landscape of negligence and apathy it’s not hard to stand out with even moderate effort. I’ve gotten delighted responses for simple things like reading the entire three paragraphs of a woman’s Hinge profile, asking about a woman’s commute convenience before picking a spot for a date, or remembering someone’s favorite wine after she mentioned it three times.
I had a theory of why the bar for effort is so low for such an important pursuit, but as I started writing about it I came up with some alternative explanations that seemed relevant. I asked my friends and they came up with even more theories, all both plausible and flawed. Once I wrote them all down I realized there are many traps one can fall into. I also realized that in spite of my convictions, this post was always destined to become a clickbaity listicle.
Without further ado, here are 10 reasons why you’re fucking lazy instead of fucking.
1. Dating is pain
Being alone sucks, but trying not to be alone can suck even worse. Awkwardness, rejection, creepy people, dating someone for two months when you suddenly find out they put mayo on french fries. In many cases, the pain of being alone is the devil you know while the ways dating can lead to suffering are varied and unpredictable. People may be putting little effort into dating because they’re internally conflicted about the pursuit itself. A big part of them just wants to avoid the trouble, and they won’t put their whole heart into dating until that conflict is resolved.
2. Inconsistent reward
On the other hand, the rewards of working hard on your romantic life are both unpredictable and often delayed from the work itself which can really sap one’s motivation. This is especially true of the longer-term ways of boosting your romantic potential, like establishing friendships in new communities and letting your new friends know you’re on the lookout. This is the stuff that actually leads to romantic success, but it could be months until it pays any dividend and even when it does you’re never exactly sure what you did to make it happen.
An attractive and busy female friend told me that she occasionally logs on to a dating app just to get quick validation, with several men willing to chat and give her compliments. This gives her some of the immediate benefits of a relationship without having to do much or take any risks. This makes it harder for her internally to justify the hassle of actually setting up a date with anyone or investing in kindling a relationship.
3. Waiting for a soulmate
60% of American adults believe in “the idea of soulmates” (although only 49% of singles do). We get this idea from fairy tales and rom-coms, and from people in existing relationship who are trying to signal (mostly to themselves) how unique and irreplaceable their partner is. If you believe that you are destined to meet someone and immediately fall in love no matter what, there’s not much point in pursuing other people or expanding your dating circles.
The main point against this theory is the fact that “soulmate” is semi-coherent magical thinking that’s contradicted by almost everyone’s lived experience. I think for many single people its a rationalization for their lack of dating effort as opposed to a cause of it. But perhaps many of you are still waiting to get stuck in an elevator with a beautiful stranger and that’s your entire dating strategy.
4. Trying isn’t hot
It’s simple logic: if you were a real romantic catch you wouldn’t have to work hard to find dates. Ergo, if you’re visibly trying you must not be that attractive. Of course, this should cause people to downplay or hide the effort they’re making as opposed to simply not making it. A lot of the effort isn’t publicly visible (e.g. on dating apps), and a lot of it is simply part of having a vibrant social life. Plus, few people will actually say that they’re a perfect catch entitled to romantic attention with no effort on their side.
When I tell people that I have always put a lot of work into dating they don’t say that it reflect poorly on my attractiveness. On the contrary, they accuse me of humblebragging and say that I probably didn’t have to work hard as all that because I’m a top 20% guy.
5. Doomerism
I discussed this in the “Top 20%” post, but a lot of guys in particular love to scour the internet for reasons why they (and most men along with them) are simply doomed by women’s capricious hypergamy and cruel modernity to be alone forever because they aren’t rich, jacked, blonde, charismatic, or tall.
Here’s an example of a research paper I see quoted a lot to prove that dating is hopeless for short men. People often pull the screenshot that says a 5’6″ man has to earn almost $200,000 more than a 6’0″ man to generate the same level of interest. That sounds totally hopeless, until you look at the actual numbers for both height and income:
A 6’0″ man is about 50% likelier to get a message or response than one who is 5’5″. That’s roughly the same difference in contact rates as for men seeking long-term relationships vs casual ones, men with a BMI of 35 (obese) vs 25 (high end of normal), an income of $80,000 vs $40,000, or having a college degree vs only completing high school. Yes, women prefer men who are tall, committed, fit, rich, and educated. But none of these preferences are overwhelming or insurmountable, each one can be compensated by other attributes. And this doesn’t even consider the fact the women’s preferences are wildly heterogenous — some women genuinely prefer shorter men!
You’d also think that this research should motivate short (or whatever) guys to work harder rather than less. If tall guys are getting 50% more responses than you, you can simply send 50% more messages. But guys usually bring up heightism not because they want to find dating success but because they want to whine and blame someone else for their failures. And the one insurmountable obstacle in dating is not height or income, but being a whiny little bitch .
6. Narcissism
This is roughly the mirror image of doomerism, and one I wrote about at length before. Many, especially the young, educated, and female, are stuck in a loop of maximizing externally measurable relationship-worthiness, or “fuckability“, at the expense of actually pursuing relationships or even just sex. They’re endlessly self-improving in all the ways that boost their ego and none of the ways that actually matter to a romantic partner. They’re always frustrated that the mere elevated status their fancy degrees and yoga skills may confer by association isn’t enough to secure them a relationship. The longer they spend alone the less they actually try to flirt and connect, locked behind the wall of their entitlement.
7. The app promise
Dating apps promise in every ad and screen that they will make finding dates entirely easy and frictionless. Dating apps are also designed to keep the relationship you seek just out of reach to keep you on longer as a paying customer. They dangle a seemingly endless list of potential matches, whispering in your ear that if a relationship didn’t pan out it’s not because you failed to make it work but simply because you didn’t swipe on the right person yet. More and more people are expressing their frustrations with the experience and outcomes of dating apps, but this doesn’t necessarily inspire them to shift their efforts elsewhere.
8. Evolved psychology
Geoffrey Miller points out that we evolved in small tribes where any potential mate would be familiar to you since childhood and know all your traits and relative status. We didn’t evolve to systematically search for compatible partners in huge mating markets or impress strangers in brief one-time interactions. Even though there’s plenty of upside in doing those things, we don’t intuitively recognize this.
9. Far from grandma
The vast majority of people until quite recently dated in the communities where they grew up in and where their families lived. The effort of setting a young person up on a date was distributed among their parents, aunts, grandmas, teachers, the old ladies at church, and the guy at corner store. And your grandma certainly wasn’t bashful in talking up your best qualities in ways you couldn’t yourself! In a community like this, advertising yourself too loudly on the dating market was actually counterproductive — a signal of lack of trust with your family.
When a young person leaves their community for college or the big city the effort required is equally high, but now it all falls on one person with no real experience matchmaking themselves or anyone else. They also have to overcome the awkwardness and insecurity of talking themselves up. One can probably find better matches in a big city full of single young people, but they’d have to be willing to do the work of several grandmas and people aren’t ready for that.
10. People are just lazy
People don’t like to work hard, study hard, think hard, to invest unusual effort in their health or wellbeing or the people around them. Everyone has plenty of external demands on their time and energy that give them an excuse not to put effort into anything voluntary, and no one is threatening to fire you if you don’t find a date by next Monday.
That’s true of me as well! I’m a lazy bastard. But I always found dating fun (or at least funny) even when it didn’t go great, I didn’t feel entitled or believe in soulmates, I didn’t fall into spirals of fatalism or narcissism, I treated the apps as tools to be hacked rather than genies who would do the work for me, and I had my grandma asking me every time I called her if I found a nice girl already.
You may not have those advantages, but at least you have this blog post. If your dating life isn’t going like you wanted it to, maybe you fell into one of the 10 traps outlined above. Or maybe you just need to get off your lazy ass and earn the romantic life you want.
PUTANUMONIT 
My personal experience, already doing everything you recommend, is that I still don’t get much in the way of dates. I do invest a pretty sizeable amount of time trying, and while I haven’t had outright 0 romantic success, it’s been pretty low. If I was to send a single message to me from one year ago about what to do in seeking romance for the next year, it’d be “don’t bother for the next year, spend your time on other stuff”, because as far as I can tell I didn’t make any mistakes, it’s just that all the women in my social circles and on dating apps in my area are not interested in me.
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Did you spend time maximizing your looks at all? Because in 2021, if you are a average or below-average male in terms of looks, that’s the highest ROI on your time.
I speak from experience on this one, having gone from below average to above average and gotten exponential growth in results because of it.
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What did you do for looksmaxxing? I’m currently losing weight, but I’m 30. I started losing my hair a few months ago so I started finasteride, which seems to be giving me sexual side effects. I think I’m running out of time.
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Body fat loss, muscle gain, stylemaxxing, eyebrow grooming, scalp micropigmentation, skincare routine, growing stubble
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One point it’s missing is that people might just now know how to do it.
Even if you employ big-brain strategies like creating a second account as a woman to check on your competition (which already requires above average planning and effort) you’ll almost by definition only see the less successful attempts since the good ones leave the market. Maybe you can still glean something from them, but it would have to incorporate an indirect “the bullet holes you’re not seeing” thinking. Not trivial.
Similarly, (online) dating advice web site are obviously swamped with SEO filler-nonsense and people regurgitating their half-digested shower thoughts that are as likely to harm as they are to help.
So people might just be stumped and fall back to the default strategy – to inconspicuously sneak a look around and see what everyone else is doing, then follow the yellow line on the ground. Better not to stand out, better not to attract attention, better not to make a fool of yourself. A great strategy at the airport. Not so great when you’re trying to find a date.
If you don’t know what it is you’re supposed to to it’s hard to get started.
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Here’s a great post on the topic, focusing on the less quantifiable but more useful work of going outside and making friends in person. Your dating life should be an extension of your social life (not that this makes it much easier to get started).
And you’re willing to put in more time, this is still by far the best book of dating advice for men.
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Alternative theory: a substantial % of men correctly predict that their efforts are unlikely to result in dating success due to the systemic reasons in the increasingly unfavorable conditions, and therefore they don’t want to waste much time on verifying that “it’s over for them”. I’m sure I have done a lot of avoid these traps, and it didn’t help much. I know it’s socially undesirable to admit it, but the locus of control for ~50% of guys is external.
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These are very good tips for women and highly attractive guys with high risk tolerance, but not for the remaining 30-40% of the society suffering the most from severe isolation, ostracism, and hopelessness. Peacefully opting out of the fundamentally rigged and humiliating game (the game of dating in 2021 as a sub-6 guy, or as almost any guy with basic standards who’s both romantically oriented and risk-averse) is the act of courage and self-respect. It signals that you’re brave enough to accept the lifetime pain of unmet fundamental needs in order to preserve a dignified attitude in the light of harsh, suppressed truth.
Somewhat controversial in tone, but in line with the data:
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where are socially acceptable places to talk to the opposite sex
also my dick hurts when I cum after I started taking finasteride. do you think I can date if I don’t want to orgasm during sex?
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A man’s grammar, whether in the profile, the private messages/emails, or in conversation, is the “tell.”
Even if you’re not athletic or ripped, you must optimize what you have, and actually care about how you look and comport yourself.
UNDER-SELL (just a little). You will lose some first dates, but there’s nothing like the look of a woman who sees you for the first time and is obviously pleasantly surprised.
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Very good list, one thing I noticed is that many men tend to get anxiety when starting to use dating apps, since it’s very much outside their comfort zone. One of my physicist friends literally threw his phone across the table when his first match notification appeared on the screen. For many guys from science and programming cultures anything regarding dating is a terra incognita, they tend to be intimidated by not having a script or an algorithm to follow.
Another reason I often hear is that men don’t initiate any intimacy for the fear of being labeled creepy, cancelled on #metoo etc. For most of my single friends the only women they meet is through work, and hitting on a coworker is a cultural faux pas. My typical piece of advice for such guys is to use dating apps, since matching on dating app is an explicit expression of interest and a permission from a girl to hit on her.
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8 and 9 are the same thing, so I propose another entry in the list:
Getting a partner has the same hardship as getting out of poverty, and it’s taking out resources from sustenance and investing them in the outcomes you want.
Single ppl who live alone spend higher fraction of their income and time in housekeeping – buying groceries, cooking, cleaning, caring for pets/kids/elderly, etc. Whereas dating is expensive both in money (single-income household has less money to begin with + spend higher fraction of income on rent/mortgage + budgeting for eating outside) and time/energy (spending an evening on a date means household duties get shifted to other evenings). Thats why its hard to consistently commit to get to know someone on top of the other reasons listed.
40h/week life is not designed for single ppl. Being partnered scales so well – I have time and energy for dating just because I’m poly and I already have a primary partner. Ofc having the money helps offset this, but not every single person has it, and its harder to save as single ppl have higher living expenses.
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To men in the comments: single women do exist, and some are as frustrated about being single as you are, believe it or not. Also being a spinster has worse vibes than being a bachelor, and men are allowed to be perceived as having fulfilling lifes without romantic partner in a way most women are not. Also men die earlier so if you wait long enough, the men:women ratio will shift in your favor.
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All single women I know claim to be single because they can’t secure a long-term commitment from the men a league or two above theirs. You can fool the institutions and media, you can’t fool the math.
Slightly more women report being fine with being single compared to men. I have learned on multiple occasions that for women, claiming to be single usually does not exclude rich social life, regular dating, and short-term flings, while for men, it’s often full social isolation for years. Also, should I really quote a list of slurs used against low-status single men? Even Jacob, who once claimed to have some compassion for unlucky guys, started ostracizing them after the “redpiIl sad bois” politely documented inconsistencies and cherry-picking in his reasoning.
Even if you’re a very unattractive woman, you just need to set up a near-empty Tinder profile and you’ll have 100s of matches after one day, so not a single reasonable person will take your concerns (trolling?) seriously in these circumstances.
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that’s all single women you know, not all single women on Earth. and wait a sec, being single is not incompatible with having rich social life. what stops single men from doing whatever single women who have rich social life do and at least partly offseting loneliness and social isolation?
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Sorry, it’s going to be particularly difficult for women to hijack the dating struggles for the professional victimhood purposes.
Almost all lonely women are lonely due to their voluntary choice and high standards. Very unattractive women (bottom 20%) receive a lot of attention on dating apps and IRL from hundreds of men above their league. There is even some weak evidence (Kanazawa et al, 2018) suggesting that very unattractive women have higher chances of being partnered and having rich partners. Look up the Juggernaut’s law, or at least the “pig woman experiment”.
What stops single men from doing whatever single women who have rich social life do? Well, probably the same set of factors that make unattractive women have hundreds of proactive matches and average men a few disheartened ones.
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Great post and great points! Especially great ones about community
I’ll add one more – pointlessness of it. Dating to have relationships and sex is like doing heroin to feel good
Point of a relationship with female is to raise kids. That’s a deep truth modern society avoids.
Raising your chick notch count gets old fast, especially when you are mature and secure enough to not judge your self worth on it
So yeah… Today it’s hard work to find good enough women to make mother of your children. But as they say “modernity selects for those who resist it”
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Your whole analysis is bollocks, because there is one crucial fact that you are missing:
For those who are socially awkward (which may be 20% to 50% of the population), getting to know strangers is somewhere between extremely (!!!) painful and impossible.
You treat it as a task, when it really is a problem.
See this LW post for reference: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/AhHhm63zdZSDLmb76/let-them-eat-cake-interpersonal-problems-vs-tasks
Quote: Society in general resists the notion that socializing (dating and mating in particular) is a problem. Rather, society treats it as a solved task, yet the procedures it advocates are incomplete, dependent on unacknowledged contextual factors, big hairy problems of their own, or just plain wrong.
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A common problem with dating content:
“You may not have those advantages, but at least you have this blog post. If your dating life isn’t going like you wanted it to, maybe you fell into one of the 10 traps outlined above. ”
Necessary advice to follow but not sufficient. The recipe for your 10,000 word list article is to slowly toy with a single person’s desperation by hinting that the ambiguously defined threshold that they need to surpass is actually just within reach. I recommend not using this formula so that you avoid creating the impression that you are just cranking out content for clicks and ego-stroking.
The meta-problem is that you are putting up walls. There is no possibility that someone will feel connected to you or feel their suffering is heard by this type of article, which in turn precludes the possibility of efficacious advice. It is low status to relate yourself to losers. You don’t owe anyone anything, which is also why you don’t earn credit for maintaining social distance from them.
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