Can a guy who hasn’t had much luck with women until his 30s find love by then or is it already too late for him?
Not if you say things like “luck with women”. No one is going to see value in you until you see value in yourself. It sounds like a bullshit platitude but it’s actually true.
No one is going to see value in you until you see value in yourself.
My parents did and still do. They are not ideal role models, but like many parents, they value me without me needing to value myself first. If I lived in a socialist state, I would expect community there to be much the same. We here are about valuing human life intrinsically, are we not?
Those are your parents, though. I was talking about OP’s use of language. “Having luck with women” implies one has to be lucky to find a woman to want them, when in fact women (like all people) want that in which they see value. If OP thinks they have to be lucky rather than someone who is actually desirable and people want, i.e. why aren’t women the ones who need luck to be with him, then that tells me that OP might be having self-esteem issues that won’t be fixed with a girlfriend or sex (talking from personal experience). They will only be solved by OP working on himself until he finds himself or thinks about himself as desirable.
So, there are a few things that come to mind for me on this.
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If we are talking about capitalist society where people are raised to view relationships as transactional, then sure, we have to be grounded in what we’re dealing with there, that expecting people to value others intrinsically when they may not is probably not going to get what we want in life.
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Luck does factor into it some. I don’t see how not. Romantic feelings can just sort of happen and people aren’t always into the ones who are going to be the best to have around. Cause it’s feelings. Plenty of romantic relationships are a thing in spite of having aspects to them that are unhealthy. So I think it’s safe to say some people are finding love just fine, in spite of what ails them, even if it’s sometimes a bit of a mess.
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I struggle to see the connection between viewing yourself as desirable and being desirable to others. As a mental health issue, I definitely want people to value themselves, don’t get me wrong, and I’d be right there with you saying it’s important for a healthy relationship. I have a post in this thread of my own that touches on that. But where my mind goes is to confidence and how people say confidence is attractive. Supposing that is generally true, what if you do value yourself, but you don’t actually project that outwardly? Maybe you have internalized certain ideas about humility and so you downplay yourself in presentation in order to feel more morally upright. Now compare this to a narcissist, who can be extremely insecure, yet still project confidence and greatly impress upon others what their value is. Unless the person experiencing this from the outside is able to get deeper info behind the scenes, will being more attracted in relation to how much a person values themself cause them to go for the person who values themself or the person who projects value of themself? I would think they’d go for the 2nd. This is not to say everyone who projects value of themself is secretly “bad” - far from it. It’s just an example to illustrate outward vs. inward. That working on yourself is important, getting the support you need is important, but I don’t think people should be expecting that it will translate to being more attractive to others.
If people are attracted to specific things, they have to be able to perceive those things to feel attraction towards them. This can go very poorly, granted, when people take this line of thought to a shallow and marketing-obsessed level and lose sight of authentic connection (I think of the movie Hitch for a fictional example of this). I just don’t want people thinking that others have mind-reading to be turned off toward them because they secretly have some insecurities and the only way others will ever love them is if they first resolve those insecurities. Even openly stated insecurities can at times be endearing, depending on how it is said, who is doing the listening. We are all human, after all.
People are getting it on in nursing homes, I don’t think it can ever be too late.
Yes, but I would be wary of placing too much individualist importance on it. For example, I used to spend some time around an online dating forum and it was common for people to have the same issues with the same apps (there are a bunch that are all owned by MatchGroup and so have much of the same freemium practices that revolve around extracting money from you rather than finding you love). And it was common to see the sentiment that it was easier to find a date on them even as recently as before the pandemic.
At the same time, it’s important when evaluating it as a system that you don’t blame the victim. Some people in those same spaces will say it isn’t their fault, but it is “women’s fault” (in one way or another). Or they will insist that women have some kind of privileged position, while ignoring the violence and objectification that women regularly grow up with and continue to deal with pretty much their whole lives.
So there is an important difference in systemic evaluation between understanding when some things are out of your control (ex: dating apps being rigged against you) vs. scapegoating (ex: blaming women).
There is also a certain amount of luck to consider in it, especially as it relates to what standards and expectations you have. The more specific it is what you want, the harder it will be to find. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad thing to want something specific, but if your pool of people you are willing to date is 1000 people, there’s much better chance of one of them liking you back than if your pool is 10 people. And then there is also just doing things that get you in front of people, meeting them, spending time with them, etc. Some of us tend to spend a lot of time indoors, some doing it more so after pandemic, work from home, all that kind of thing. You can find people through online, it’s not impossible, but the point here is just you can’t date someone you never meet or never spend time around.
These are things to consider before even thinking too hard about what you are as a person. If there are repeat themes in how you’ve struggled that involve what you are as a person, then that is certainly an area of importance to examine. But there is a lot you can look at before you even get to the point of the individualist “change yourself from within” stuff. I think it is important to genuinely love yourself and nurture that, but I also think it’s BS when people say you need to do that first like it’s some requirement. Nobody says to a baby, “You’ll get my love once you start loving yourself.” That’s just not how human beings function. We can’t do something if we have no idea what it looks and feels like in the first place. But that doesn’t mean you necessarily need romance to value yourself healthily, when that is an issue; friendships that are generous with support and nurturing can also help; the right kind of supportive therapist can help.
I’ve had far, far more meaningful relationships in my 30s than in my 20s. You just need to be a decent person worth dating and you’ll do fine. A lack of experience or lasting relationships doesn’t mean you’re incapable or broken or anything.
