u/Lillietta

43F, apps, looking for a real relationship… depth, partnership, long term. Not casual.

Context: I was off the apps for about two months because I was seeing someone. That ended, I came back in, and the drop in conversation quality is wild. One-word answers. Nobody asking a single question back. I’ll carry a thread for eight messages and realize I’ve learned nothing about them because they’ve volunteered nothing.

My theories, and I’d love to know which one is right:

• It’s seasonal and everyone’s checked out until September

• The intentional people paired off in spring, and August is what’s left

• I turned 43 while I was away and the pool shifted on me

What I’m actually asking:

1. Anyone else experiencing this August shift and does it bounce back in the fall?
2. If you’re 40+ and looking for something serious, what’s actually working right now? Different apps? Fewer matches but longer conversations? Getting off apps entirely and doing events/hobbies/matchmaking?
3. How long do you give a low-effort conversation before you cut it? I’d rather adjust my approach than sit here feeling confused. Open to blunt answers.

Im bright and neurodivergent so this surface level boring texting with men is excruciating. Gahhh.

I love libraries- I have some work to do this weekend and would like to cozy up with my laptop in a nice spot. Where do you guys reco?

It could also be non-Brampton lib.

I don’t get it. I’m 43F and I keep meeting men online who after I ask, confess they aren’t fully divorced. They say they don’t bother because it’s a lot of work/money, both ppl live separate lives and thus they only plan to divorce formally once one of them wants to get remarried.

As a never married woman, this is a turn off. It seems like a red flag but am I reading this wrong?

It's a uniquely sad spot. A lot of guys don't know it's very hard to conceive at this age. They hear I do and are so happy. I always worry, will they research, see the odds and then quietly find an excuse to leave?

One just left a couple weeks ago. Divorced with 3 full custody kids. Told me he had a reversible vasectomy asked how many I wanted. Said 5 but that obviously that might not be realistic. He said great, you can pop one out per year and that yes, he wants to have more. Finally told his kids he was dating again after the divorce and when they freaked out, he ended things with me, citing that as the reason. Was it that really, he started researching and realized chances were too low with me?

I will never know. All I know is that I am grieving him AND the persistent state of watching my fertility slip away.

I worry when I pass over profiles of men who don't want kids that I am passing over wonderful men for a hope that I have single digit chances left of ever having. A burden really few people understand. Such heartbreak.

I heard they do but only from one broker. I’m renewing in a little over 2 weeks. If I tell them I want to switch to a 6m open at 9 percent because I’m leaving, is there a chance they will try to stop me last min? Best I have been able to get from them is 4.2ish

It looks like renewal transfers we taking a long time now so savings Id get from switching will be half eaten up by the 9 percent interest over the month.

I’m talking to a broker who is offering me the best raate through SBI. State Bank India.

I’ve never heard of them. Not a banking industry expert by any means.

Does anyone have any experience with them or any insight to share?

I 42F have always had a car, no matter if I lived in the burbs or in DT Toronto. I know practically speaking, it’s possible to live downtown and not have a car but it just feels strange to me. I also know it better for thr enviro and saves money both things that matter to me but still, it feels disempowering to not have one.

When it comes to gender dynamics in relationship, I veer traditional.

I struggle when it comes to dating because so many guys don’t have a car. If we date, either our dating lives revolve around transit lines (feels so limiting) or we use my car (makes me feel like the man and I start to resent the guy because I end up subsidizing his life in a big way).

I wish I could get over this. Have any women succeeded or should I just not waste my time?

EDIT: please remain kind. There are many right ways to be. I’m expressing what feels right for me in relationship but it doesn’t mean I think choosing to use transit/bicycle is inferior. It’s admirable decision, so long as you don’t expect those around you with cars to adapt to your mobility limitations. Using the money you save for retirement or a home etc is a wonderful, wise decision.

Single fathers, please help me understand how to proceed.

I (42F)fell for him (45M wt 3 kids) after meeting on a dating app. Strong emotion was developing between us after dozens of hours of intense and intentional getting to know eachother on a deep level. When we finally met for our first date, it lasted 8h, half dinner and half sweet and passionate making out in his car (very PG at my pace). He and I both have touch as our primary love languages.

There were moments of passionate touch (hormonally driven) but absolutely also moments of the sweetest most tender emotional touch. It was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before, especially not on a first date.

He confessed that he was extremely worried his eldest, a teenage girl, would freak out if he started looking for love again. They’ve been divorced for 3.5years. He has sole custody and adores his kids. He is their everything as their mother is estranged. He was worried she woke freak out as she’s grown clingy/needy the past couple years post divorce.

He’s a very loving guy towards everyone in his life and he has a deep desire to find love again.

I fell for him hard, not from a place of limerence. It was based on my admiration towards who he is and also our shared, nearly mirror image, preferences for the physical aspects of a relationship, from PDA, to non-s*xual touch to XXX touch.

He talked to his daughter. She became very upset. He told me he knows it’s not fair to himself but that he feels he cannot continue pursuing a relationship because his daughter begged him not to, that she needs more time. So he ended it out courtship.

I knew I’d been falling for him and thought I’d mentally prepared for this outcome but upon Hearing the news, I broke down sobbing (it was over the phone so he didn’t know) and have struggled to stop for the past 2 days. He admitted that he’d broken not only my heart but his own too and that he’d been falling for me and so this was an incredible loss.

He and I are both huge romantics. The kind of people who still believe in love, even in our forties.

I know how hard it is to find someone I like half this much, let alone this much.

I’ve always wanted to be a mother and thought I’d not be the mother of his kids, I’d be more than happy to step in to support him in loving and caring for them, as much as they want from me.

Should just let him go or should I gently push back?

While I’d never want him to desert his kids, I feel like there is an area he’s not able to see, one where he pursues a relationship all the while continuing to support his kids into this new eventual stage of their family life. Both of our goal is marriage, not just a long term serious dating relationship.

The romantic in me says to push back. The logic in me says not to.

Im heart broken. I don’t ever pursue men but feel like maybe I should this time. What do you think?

Hinge used to be excellent 10 years ago when it was new. Now it just has a ton of people on it. Should I try a different app instead or is it still the best?

I’m looking for a serious relationship that leads to marriage and kids, if that matters.

Please share your recos.

I’m 42F.

Edit:
Because I’m getting a lot of DMs from single guys, I thought I’d add a bit about me:

I’m professional, tall and think and feel deeply so am looking for a tall man with emotional and intellectual depth himself, so we can meet each other there and experience a richer, more fulfilling life together.

Thank you. 💕

EDIT: the amount of ppl in these comments reinforcing all the bad Btown stereotypes has pissed me off even more and given me lots of ideas to shame all the losers who are trespassing and damaging my property. Thank you to the haters.

I put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into my house. I was a 2021 FTHB, who bought after 15 years of extreme frugality and no parent financial support. Downtown adjacent old house area (but not the beautiful old houses).

I’ve done lots of landscaping and my property looks much better than when I bought it.

I live across the street from a park.

Dog walkers always choose to walk on my side of the street and they always let their dogs pee on my hydrangeas and lawn plus on the boulevard side of the sidewalk, on my tree and an electrical box.

I clearly take care of my property. My lawn is one of the nicer on the street. I am endlessly shocked how people let their dogs pee in my yard or any yard for that matter. They have a literal wide open park with sidewalk on the other side of the street.

I call them out on it whenever I see them and most just stare at me. It’s always white people and I’m white too so I have started talking to them very sternly and even swearing sometimes.

I know I could put cayenne pepper down etc but I don’t want the poor dogs to get burnt eyes or noses. It’s not their fault.

Can I start spraying the repeat offender dog walkers with my hose? I’m in perimenopause and the rage has started. I feel so angry that I could do something crazy (not illegal) but crazy nonetheless if these losers don’t stop.

What else can I do?

Been dating for many years now between relationships and one thing that has never changed for me is that my lunch/day time first dates have never ever led to a relationship.

Is it the bright sun, constricting pupils?

The harsh reality of the daytime vs the dreaminess of the evening?

The distraction of seeing everything around us as opposed to a more dimly lit dinner restaurant where our focus is on each other?

The lack of relaxation that happens mid day as opposed to evening?

The time constraints of a midday meal vs evening?

Perhaps because my eyes are strained and closed rather than open wide?

I’m a deep feeling person and tend to end up in relationships with the same and somehow a first in person meeting midday ALWAYS bombs with both of us walking away confused about the lack of ✨.

Anybody else like this? Anyway to change this?

Edit: romantic meaning sparks (the precursor to love kind, not the sex kind).

Is this a waste of my time? I want to have kids. He wants to have them too. Due to our ages, we need to start asap. He said the divorce is dragging. Kids don’t want to be with her. He makes a lot more money than her but she has a solid professional career.

How long could his divorce drag out? I don’t want to try to conceive with him if we aren’t married for practical and propriety reasons. In Canada, if that’s relevant.

Ex is basically being rejected by her kids and is in perimenopause so she probably feels horrible and that’s making her fight for assets over getting on with life (my understanding is that he offered 50-50 but she wants more).

Divorced and separated ppl: Pls help me decide if I should invest any more into this than I already have. The clock is striking midnight on my fertility. 😭

My family dr wants me to try propranolol before we move to the new gen preventatives since Sumatriptan just isn’t adequate. I’m feeling worries about it:

Clinical profile:
-43 female, with adhd and perimenopausal symptoms
-Current meds: Vyvanse and Zepbound (I was rapidly gaining weight since Covid and Zep has helped tremendously)

BP naturally low 90/60 and sometimes 115/80 depending on how the adhd stimulants are hitting

Headaches eventually turned to migraines since teenage years. Neck, shoulders and jaw muscles clench and 3 day migraine ensues.

Sumatriptan + strong anti inflammatory (extra strength Advil for example) aborts some migraines but I feel exhausted and brain fogged for 24h post.

Currently my adhd and migraines feel extra out of control, to the point of potentially causing a job loss (particularly the migraines). I work in sales and have to travel a lot so changing beds, pillows, and being exposed to air freshener/perfume in airports/cabs etc wrecks me. Im also exhausted all the time despite my iron blood panel coming back fine.

I’m not what I’d describe as an anxious person but I do have a highly active brain and tend to see the bad before others so it causes a bit of anxiety but I don’t have GAD.

I’m also single and need to start dating again so afraid of the potential sexual side effects of propranolol.

Sorry for the length of this. My dr said to try propranolol for a few weeks and check back with him. Now seeing that ppl have withdrawal symptoms, that seems terrifying.

I have ALL the symptoms again that I had for a couple years before I got an infusion a couple years ago. It was down to 14 then.

I just got my ferritin checked and it was 124.

Now I’m entirely confused about the result but also due to the brain fog lol. Heck I even look pale with no color in my cheeks. Could this be a lab error?

It was LifeLabs in Ontario, Canada for reference

TLDR:
As a woman who wants to get married, potentially to a single father of teenage girls, how do I manage the shame and humiliation of having my ADHD/peri entirely exposed to teenage step daughters. Right now, I hide most of it within the privacy of my own home. I’m okay with my partner knowing but I don’t want his kids witnessing and judging and telling their grandparents (ie my MIL and FIL) etc. I have been brutally judged by ex bf’s parents and now that I’m in peri, my emotional resilience is much much lower and my ADHD is much worse.

Should I just avoid the situation?

It feels like marrying a man with kids means losing a lot of privacy.

Edit:
Writing a TLDR helped me make a previously very long post much shorter so I just deleted the excessively wordy original post.

I get ppl think it’s more efficient or helps them flirt but some (or all) of us receiving these messages know they’re AI so it feels like an even more artificial experience than an app already is. You can lie, fake pics and before all we had to go by was what the person composed in a text and now, they aren’t even composing their own texts.

It makes me feel unsettled like I don’t know who I am really talking to.

I live in Toronto- perhaps one of the most multicultural cities in the world. It’s wonderful.

Unfortunately, after having dated across what feels like the entirety of the United Nations over the past 20 years, I now know there are guys from some cultural backgrounds who might like me and I find attractive but with whom marriage will never work/happen.

If I look at their profiles out of curiosity or like even one of them back and start chatting, it only takes one for Hinge to start sending me almost exclusively men from one of those backgrounds. Even if I was chatting with 10 guys from my own ethnic background, just one of these other guys will throw it all off. It’s happened again and I just want to burn my profile. I unsubscribed from premium an hour ago I was that frustrated.

Why can’t we filter for ppl from our own ethnic background? Drives me nuts. I wasted decades of my life being open minded to other cultures and now I just want to focus on my own or at least exclude the ones with recurring mismatching values.

Edited for clarity-

I’m not photogenic and hate the idea of editing to fake my pics so the kind of guys who check me out IRL or that try to talk to me in professional or social settings are swiping left on my profile… so Hinge has deemed me very unattractive and now, almost no guys “like” my profile that I could even conceive of going out with (and I’m not hyper focused on looks).

I used to intentionally undersell and over deliver by putting up just okay pics of me. This was in the early days of online dating, before it was possible to edit pics. Guys would feel so excited when they met me because I looked better than they expected. I don’t do that anymore.

Because I think most guys expect girls to look worse than their pics, they assume I’m less attractive than my already unphotogenic pics show me as.

I hate the idea of faking/ overly editing my pics.

What to do?!

I paid a stupid, debilitating amount for my house. 2-3x what most of my neighbors paid. An amount that should have me living in a “nice area” in theory but of course nice areas are out of reach for FTHB.

3/4 of my neighbors take good care of their landscaping. Nobody is rich and nobody hires out their landscaping but they have self respect and mow and have small amounts of flowers.

The rest of the street and unfortunately most houses near me don’t mow at all, or mow max once a month. It makes my end of the street look so trashy. Our lawns are so all small. None of these ppl are elderly. It takes 10-15 mins to mow our front lawns. They all have multiple adults living in their homes.

Now with ticks out of control, they’re also putting everyone’s health at risk.

I work soooooo hard to own this house and to be around people who bought when it was cheap or who rent and neither they nor their landlord mow is just such a letdown. I’m a woman, doing it all solo and if I can manage what is their excuse? Honestly, it makes me feel sad every time I drive up my street. I also don’t want to have to be that person who calls bylaw. Sigh.