The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
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One. It's pretty great, but does have downsides. Dry eyes, worse best-corrected-possible acuity, earlier nearsightedness with age.
Two. Wow that sucks. I'd be genuinely very sad if Hinge banned me (not that it's stopped me from thinking I'll work on my AI more when the ADHD monkey in my brain decides it's time for that again). I think trying to circumvent, or just contacting them, is worth considering.
Check out Jswipe (Jewish Tinder) or Lox Club (Jewish the League). There are probably also other ethnic apps, but those are the one's I've tried. Not a lot of tall people in any of the above, so that helps, and it's a pool that probably likes smarts and money more than tinder.
Three. If they can't produce results in 3 months, 6 if you're feeling generous, fire them. Let's say you paid them for two half days per week, at $100/hr. That's 10k/3 months, which is not much if I understand your preference model at all. Even if it takes trying four people before someone does anything useful, you're out 40k, and I struggle to imagine you can't find someone useful given that much effort. I imagine you're somewhat blocked psychologically on doing whatever you should do maximize your dating game, but when you make it someone's job, they don't have that guilt/etc, and you've selected them for being at least maybe good at it, so results really are plausible.
Raising the question: how do you find this person? The internet. I've hired a dozen housekeepers over as many years by just posting on craigslist. Sure, you get mostly weirdos, but there are great people out there if you're willing to do some phone screening. Stuff your pride down, write a post about what you want help with, and refresh that inbox. You could almost just use your original motte post.
Four. Nope, not legal. Easily twice as not legal as torrent sites, maybe twice and a half. Seeking Arrangement is the famous one. I don't know much about this, but poke around reddit to see people's experiences.
Five. If you're dedicated enough to lifting that you're doing it reliably/hard enough (e.g. Stronglifts 5x5 worth of effort/three days x 1-1.5 hours/week, with progressive overload) and seeing your numbers go up, trainer can probably be skipped at least until you're past noob gains. If you get to benching your body weight, you're solidly into "you may hurt yourself and/or stop progressing" territory without a trainer, unless you have great proprioception and hit youtube/etc pretty hard.
How do you find this person? So many trainers on the internet. See #3, but easier and less awkward. Any gym has trainers. Unless you are very advanced or have a medical problem, a mediocre trainer is going to be drastically better than no trainer. Try a few until you like someone.
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The trainer should ask you what your goals are and come up with a training and nutrition plan. If your goal is putting on more muscle the first plan should be 99% straightforward exercises and the second plan should not really include supplements beyond vitamins, extra protein and some creatin. If the trainer isn't willing to drop bullshit exercises or supplements, find a different one. If the trainer isn't willing to constructively listen to your feedback ("upright rows make my shoulder hurt" - "fine, let's stick to shoulder flies"), find a different one. His goal is not to share secret knowledge with you. It's to watch and correct your form, track your progress and challenge you every session.
Ohh, it just occurred to me that “trainer” was referring to “physical trainer”; I understood it to mean “dating/social interaction trainer”.
Yes, I already have a personal trainer who has, in the past 6 months, helped me put on a decent amount of muscle, reduce body fat percentage, improve my posture, and appear to have somewhat less belly fat (not that I had a whole lot to begin with; I’ve always been at a normal BMI, 22-24 depending on how much I’m working out and whether I’m keto-ing. Sadly, if I didn’t have any discipline about my diet and exercise habits, my body type would be the typical South Asian male skinnyfat. Even at the same BMI, I struggle with more belly fat than my white and, especially, East Asian male friends)
Definitely agreed that gimmicky exercises, supplements, etc. are to be avoided at all costs. I specifically chose this trainer because of his zero-bullshit, laser focus on the basics: a lightly modified version of the Greyskull LP, 1g protein per lb. of lean body weight, creatine, and sufficient rest.
Kinda curious, if you know that
is what you want, why bother with a personal trainer?
Accountability, plus critiquing my form/suggesting ways to get past a stubborn plateau. I’ve always had terrible “body sense” so it’s hard for me to tell by myself if I’m, say, not bringing all my leg muscles to bear during squats because my stance is slightly off.
Now that I’ve got the basics and the routine down, I see my trainer once a month at most.
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Am doctor but not eye doctor. Not a fan of LASIK especially in your age range. Carefully research the risks first, you won't get a good objective assessment from an ophthalmologist because if at all possible they'll recommend the procedure (because surgeons want to cut).
Does your ban extend to Coffee Meets Bagel? It's very popular in the Northeast and Asians are over represented. Recommend Asian adjacent real life activities if that's your mojo. Ex: EDC (or whatever local concerts there are).
Find a place to meet residents (physicians), easy way to pick up intelligent professional women.
Don't know how to find a dating coach but do recommend that.
I think Raya has gone out of fashion now but you might be able to find its replacement or try signing up for its corpse.
With your salary a good personal trainer is super affordable and is good for your overall health and mood and also for making you more superficially attractive.
If you have good insight- figure out why you aren't successful. If you are moderately attractive you should be drowning in women at that wealth level. Are you fatter than you want to admit? Fashion style not making it obvious you are bringing in money? No rizz?
Figure out what it is and then you can address. This ties back to matchmaking - if the issue is your profile was shit they'll fix it. Don't want to pay someone? Run it by women in your life if you don't want to pay. (assuming you can get on CMB)
I’m not banned from CMB and fully intend to use it if/when I get back to dating apps.
I’ve used CMB in the past, and in fact met my first serious girlfriend on it back in the mid-2010s, but was having significantly greater success with Hinge prior to the ban.
In my experience, CMB is more popular among fobs (of whom there are lots, especially Chinese and Indians) but I’m more interested in women who were born and raised in the West, or at least moved here at a young-ish age (high school, perhaps college at the latest)
Not fat, but not especially good looking either. Like I said, pretty average bespectacled brown dude.
I don’t have that many opportunities to meet single women IRL: my hobbies and social circles are pretty male-dominated and the attractive women in them are already taken; plus work keeps me pretty busy.
I don’t have flashy, expensive tastes, nor does my fashion sense immediately indicate that I have lots of money, although I definitely don’t dress like a slob.
I do think my day game/night game “rizz” has taken a hit over the past few years, as dating has increasingly moved online; it’s honestly quite rare now to find a girl by herself, without AirPods, in a public place where it would be appropriate to cold-approach. But my rizz is definitely not terrible: I really was having decent success on Hinge (multiple dates per week, getting to sex with a new girl about once every 1-2 months) before I got banned. And that was before I started lifting!
In short, my lack of success is due to being banned from Hinge (the best dating app I have ever used), plus online dating having largely taken over all of dating, to the exclusion of meeting women IRL through activities or mutual friends. This, I think, is especially true when it comes to women who are my type (well-educated Asian-Americans), as they tend not to just hang out in bars or whatever waiting for guys to approach them; if they’re in the dating scene at all, it’s through apps.
I'm going to write taking the rest of what you said at face value (by which I mean that you are a very well educated, successful and therefore likely hardworking and intelligent individual).
The above quote is a loser attitude. I don't mean you are a loser, far from it. You are demoralized because you aren't getting lucky and luck is required because that's what you need with the way you aren't embracing every opportunity.
If someone was trying to break into your field (7 figs in early thirties???) would you tell them to just passively apply to jobs or take low end jobs and not excel? Fuck no.
You gotta hustle. And we have reason to believe you can hustle in other domains in your life - you gotta apply those lessons here. Dating is going to involve a lot of discomfort, it's easy to justify avoiding discomfort but that is what it is and what you gotta overcome. Some of the other posters here complaining about dating have bigger concerns - but you, your fundamentals are extremely "attractive" and you are living in a place with a shit ton of women meeting your needs.
That means you are probably doing something wrong or you aren't doing enough. That is good news! It means you can do something different, and/or do more. It's going to be uncomfortable but dealing with that is a core skill in dating and in business.
Okay an example - you got banned from match apps. Why? Someone probably reported you or something, likely multiple someones (does that mean you did anything wrong? no, women on the apps be crazy). Is there a way to appeal this ban normally? No. Do you likely know someone on LinkedIn who knows someone who works there? Given your background very possible. You can cold message someone and be like "hey I work in NYC and I'm interested in whaling on this shit but I'm banned for no apparent reason..." Is this likely to work? Maybe not. Could it work? Yes absolutely. I was having a serious redacted issued with major tech company and I contacted person I knew for redacted reason and they got someone to fix it. If you have the professional network you can use it. Even if you don't have a connection you can leverage if you have a built up LI you can probably just cold message a few people. If you don't have a built up LinkedIn you are probably not networking enough, that will help you at work but those networking skills can also be leveraged to pick up women, especially if you are looking for a specific type (meet a guy who hangs out with ABGs? ....become friends with him and you'll meet ABGs IRL).
Likewise make a CMB. Now. Do not stall, if you stall that stall will last a long time. Make it and start using it now, maybe you don't find anyone with the qualities you want but dating is a skill and like any skill it has to be practiced, it is also a numbers game so you gotta get on it if you want it to work.
More discomfort - pick up some new hobbies that have women. Depending on how male-dominated your current hobbies are that could end up being great for you for reasons other than dating, but if what you are doing right now isn't working (and it clearly isn't) you gotta start doing something else!
I think you also have to be careful with how dialed into your type you are. That's instantly going to make things more challenging for you, but if that's still the only thing you want I think you are missing out on some of the stereotypes - FOBs might be not hanging out in bars, but ABGs are big into the clubbing and rave scene, are all over certain kinds of bars, you can approach while they are doing some dumbass trendy thing in K-town etc.
Just wanted to note I really enjoyed your contribution on this occasion.
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