I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, where rent is so expensive that even wealthy people in tech typically live in large houses with many other adults before marriage and often after marriage too. With so many friends of friends always visiting and so many extra hands and space to throw parties, the group houses go a long way to solving the lack of 3rd spaces that is making warm approaches so difficult today.

Our world is a world of warm approach opportunities abundance. There are house parties several times a week where single people mingle and welcome warm approaches, and the extended social group is hundreds of people so there is always someone new to meet. In a group house that big there are typically a couple extroverts who love to throw parties, so the introverts are able to help out in low cost ways. My community has high rates of autism, and the group houses are ideal for bringing us out of our shell in a way that also doesn’t pressure us to socialize more than we can handle (social practice is always available without you having to make it happen, but you can stay in your room when your social battery dies).

The apps can be so unhealthy. Most women filter by shallow characteristics that they never would in person because they have to filter by something and deeper characteristics are hard to discern. This is in nobody’s best interest, so when warm approaches are easy people often ditch the apps.

My particular community has other factors that make this warm approaches abundance occur too, but my well traveled friend says a lot of it is just the group houses, so it’s something that could be replicated elsewhere.