Who does the approaching?

What do you think about that experiment? Rather interesting isn't it? I showed it to my now 16 yr old daughter. She responded " it's okay for the girl to ask a guy out, and show interest in him. My girl friends do it all the time.  I asked my boyfriend out the first time. A relationship, is a relationship, it doesn't matter who does the asking. my gay/lesbian friends have to ask their date out".

To answer your fine question ( even if it is off topic) I want a relationship that also provides hooking up. I don't want a hookup that doesn't provide a relationship. ( Those are the woman I am attempting to reach out to)

I needed to get out there and go through the fire (so to speak) personally, to discover myself again. Being a secluded virgin for 25 yrs leaves you with little knowledge of what will help you, and what will hurt you. Reading books, helps, talking with others who have been through it helps, but experience and action is/was the best teacher for me.

When a woman want's you to stop talking and start kissing, or when I would rather be kissing her and not listening to her, all that reading and advice takes a far back seat.

There is still the stage of how to get it, and how to do it.  A little more empathy and support, would go a lot further than being labeled. Just sayin' 

It was an interesting experiment. To see who was interested in  getting to know more about the person, compared to who did the approaching. I've been on both sides, and will continue to be.

Know matter what the setting, online, at church, in the grocery store, or sitting on my own front porch, where  just moments ago, i just met a  nice single neighbor named Marilyn, who approached me first. Marilyn wanted to know how the elderly woman who used to own my house was doing, and if i was enjoying my new home.  I do feel a bit more confident when someone speaks to me first. I worry less about "offending" someone.

I will consider eharmony in the future. The most recent news/reviews on eharmony are not good ones.  ( I'll have better luck sitting on my front porch!)

You are mistaken if you think I am soliciting my 16 yr old daughter for dating advice. Instead I was relating it to the article and proving that "the times they are a changin'" by polling and questioning someone from today's generation. What is surprising is how these things can and do affect people who are older, mine and your generation. That's all.

“To answer your fine question ( even if it is off topic) I want a relationship that also provides hooking up. I don't want a hookup that doesn't provide a relationship. ( Those are the woman I am attempting to reach out to)”

“Hooking up” to me means very casual sex. Indeed, I don’t think it’s a term used by people 40 and older and using it may give prospective partners the wrong idea.

To me, having a real FWB means having a friend- someone whom one knows reasonably well and can share some emotional intimacies with -. Whom one also shares sexual intimacies with.

By contrast, to me, “hooking up” means just getting laid. An example would be meeting a stranger at a bar, having superficial conversation and then fucking them that night. One would have gotten off but had no emotional connection. I have never wanted that kind of sex nor have had it. Everything you have written, GC, indicates that’s not what you want either.

So, my suggestion is to remove the cold term , “hooking up” from your vocabulary when it comes to saying what you want.

I suspect that what you want to find is a monogamous emotionally and sexually intimate relationship with a person whom you consider at the least to be a friend. You like the woman. You have things in common. You know her well enough to trust her. You’ve seen how she is when stressed and she’s still a person whom you are comfortable being with. For instance, when stressed, she may cry or need more alone time but she doesn’t emotionally, verbally or physically abuse you or project blame on you. You sexually desire her. She sexually desires you. You enjoy each other’s company and enjoy lovemaking. Your lives fit well together including when it comes to your children.

Finding such a person and establishing such a relationship will take time. You can help things along by saying in your profile and on your first date that what you are looking for is an emotionally and physically intimate relationship with a person whom you’ve gotten to know well enough to consider them to be a friend. This will immediately tell sexually averse women and the women who want to get immediately laid that you are not for them.

What do you think?

shamwow, as a bystander to these threads, my sense is that greatcoastal is taking a “sex first” approach to his search, and that’s why he’s on the sites he is.

So, he’ll find women that are sex-positive, who he then hopes to filter for those who are interested in a long-term relationship, compatible in other ways, etc.

The alternative being to flip that around and focus on finding women with those other qualities, then hope to filter the ones who are sex-positive. He seems to have less faith in this approach.

I’m not sure I’d have a lot of confidence in the long-term prospects of candidates on Tinder (since it’s targeting casual sex, and the first filter there is based on appearances), but then I know someone who met and married a Tinder match.

However... there is the “supply side” of the equation to consider. Each site has a different pool of candidates, pre-filtered by the site’s reputation. There are a lot of sex-positive women who would never be found on Tinder because they only want a long-term relationship.

Too funny! Fixed my psyche...