https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/08/PSDT_08.19.20_dating.relationships-010.png

If we take a look at this chart, you will see that most people in the 18-29 year old bracket find their partner either online, through friends and family, work or school.

Here's where I am with these:

  1. Dating apps are a complete waste of time and I've tried them
  2. The last party I went to was at my friend's house (who ironically also struggles with dating) last weekend. Of the 15 people there, there were 3 or 4 couples, a bunch of guys and two girls who I knew as friends only (with no desire to date). At the moment this is really my only friend group in the area.
  3. The work one is hard because I don't have a job right now, but I will say that when I worked at a FedEx warehouse in college as a package handler, that was a total sausage festival.
  4. When I was in college, I lived at home. I worked in the evenings. I was on a coed sports team but the girls were again either in a relationship or were not interested in dating. The one date I had with a teammate at Denny's didn't go anywhere.

What is interesting about this table is that the "somewhere else" column is only 4% and the bars column is 2%. This would represent the cold approaches and hobby clubs that are always talked about on this sub. In my opinion, that's the best way to meet people because of the serendipity involved.

Overall, this chart makes me more depressed when it comes to finding my first relationship because I'm not in school (or grad school) right now, I have mostly guys for friends, I hate online dating because the rate of return is atrocious and the intentions of many women are malicious, and I don't know if my next job will be male-dominated or not. I studied engineering technology.

Here is the full study for those interested https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/08/20/a-profile-of-single-americans/