Copa

If you dedicated as much time to being in therapy as you do to “working on getting into therapy,” you’d have made progress by now.

Also, please stop asking women you have a business relationship with to speculate why you don’t get second dates. It’s bad enough that you keep asking your dates.

So without actually going on dates with you, it’s hard to say what’s going on. If you’ve had multiple dates bolt quickly, something is likely off with you. I only did that on one date (I thought the guy was obnoxious and immature so I drank my drink quickly knowing the place we were at was about to close and declined his offer to take the date to another spot). Some additional thoughts:

Why would you even assume that you’re “repulsive” because you’re 29? That’s not that old. At 29, you probably don’t look much different than you did at 26. I certainly didn’t. So while I agree that the dating pool changes as you get older, if I had to guess based off what you’ve written here and how you’ve chosen to write it, you’re going on dates and giving off “I’m running out of time” vibes.

Prior to my current relationship, I became single again after an LTR when I was just shy of 28. I got back into the online dating scene later that year and during that time went from a suburb of a fairly big city to living downtown on a major city. Dating felt very different here — there are way more options so yes, it did feel like people treated it like their dates were disposable because there will always be more people to swipe through — and took some getting used to. I also only went on a handful of dates before realizing that I wasn’t able to keep an open mind on dates, I was still kinda messed up from my previous relationship but hadn’t really noticed until I’d jumped back into dating. I definitely giving my dates bad vibes and needed to work on myself, so I mostly didn’t date for about a year. So yes, maybe you just need to get used to dating in a big city, but hopefully you can be honest about how you are behaving on dates that may turn people off.

I noticed improvements in my dating life after I’d spent some time in therapy dealing with my baggage. During that time, I got settled in my new city and created a life I really liked. My dating outcomes improved when I was able to put less pressure on it. At some point around this time I also took advice from this site and upped my age range to include men up to about 40, which had honestly seemed a bit old to me, but the reality turned out to not be weird at all. I met some nice guys and the age gap was never the reason those didn’t work out. Still took a couple years of effort and there were definitely periods I felt frustrated and down on dating (I’d take breaks when I did), but I met my boyfriend of 3+ years that way in my early 30s.

Sorry to hear your dad was ill. I hope he is doing better.

I was going to write something similar to @ktfran. The reason I said you need to be willing to acknowledge that there is work to be done is because therapy is inner work that you do for yourself. You don’t go to a therapist to have them definitively tell you (or even speculate) why women don’t want a second date with you, then you go out on dates and not do that thing. Therapists don’t tell you what to do. You’re the one who will be doing the self-reflection and challenging your own beliefs. It takes time and progress can be slow. It took me a year of weekly sessions to feel like I could scale back in frequency, and I was someone who acknowledged that I had some baggage to sort through and work to do on myself. I was ready for it. Truthfully, I don’t know that you are; you still want your dates/the dating scene to bend to how you are no matter how many times the commenters here — many of whom met their partners online and understand what the process is like — tell you it won’t happen. This is why I don’t even know if therapy is worth your time, because your responses make me think you don’t want to do the work.

The Good American jeans arrived. Not bad, but I’m on the fence. I’ve never worn this brand before so I grabbed what I consider my usual size in most brands and a size up. Very comfortable and maybe even run a little big, though with women’s sizes I feel like that means nothing. My usual size is the best fit, but I still have a waist gap. I’m not sure if a size down would have worked better. I kind of wish the distressing hit in different spots. For a different price point I might say these are fine and keep ’em, but since they weren’t cheap, I want to really like them.

I just ordered some Good American jeans to try on, a brand I’ve never tried before. They have petite “girlfriend” jeans with just the right amount of distressing and offered $50 off. Will report back on fit.

I’m quietly hoping to not have to go back to the office until fall/when it gets a little cooler out so that I won’t have to deal with my summer work wardrobe, which I had planned to overhaul last year but for obvious reasons did not. And with any luck won’t really have to deal with it this summer. I have way more fall/winter work clothes that I like and that I assume still fit.

I didn’t shop a ton during COVID, but last summer did buy some deeply discounted tops from LOFT, which isn’t my favorite store, but the prices were great and I have a few items from there that I do really like. Anyway, just about everything I bought has lost it’s shape even though I follow the care instructions. Like a normal t-shirt now looks like a crop top.