If things aren’t moving, then the people you’re around just aren’t interested.

You can’t strategize your way into someone being into you without it being fake. And if it’s fake, then you’ve not only lied, but you’ve wasted their time and yours because it’s dead in the water.

Not saying you can’t change yourself, you absolutely can. But if you’re changing into someone that’s fake and trying to bullshit you way into something, well, you’ll eventually get what you deserve.

How old are you? It matters. If you’re fifty and thinking like that, then there’s only so many ways to go. If you’re thirty, you have more options because you have more time if you’re under thirty, you haven’t been at it long enough to be worrying about “never” finding anyone.

For real, until and unless you stop thinking about it as some kind of challenge you have to chase after and plan out a strategy, you’re going to fail more often than not. That whole mentality loses because the outcome of success is eventually realizing that you’re in a dead marriage, or your wife realizing you aren’t who she thought you were. Neither of which is a good place.

I’ve seen that shit so many times over the years. Friends, family, trying so hard to win the prize that they forget to make sure they want what they’re chasing.

If you just want your dick wet, that’s easy enough. Nobody, including the people you’d be fucking, actually care if you lie outright, much less if you just fake things a little. But if you want the kind of relationship where you look into each other’s eyes when you’re 70 and still feel that love, you gotta be real. You gotta be willing to strip away your preconceptions of what you’re supposed to want, and figure out what really matters to you

My ass? I didn’t find what I was really looking for until I was forty. Had plenty of girlfriends along the way, some long term. None of them worked. But you know what was great about that? Because I knew what I was really after, and I was open and honest along the way (barring some youthful stupidity getting laid just to get laid), when those relationships weren’t going to work, we could end them before they got ugly, and stay friends mostly. Me and my wife hang out with some of my exes here and there.

If being you isn’t working, then the answer isn’t to play games, it’s to start figuring out why it isn’t working and work on that. It could be as simple as you being in the wrong place. If the place you’re in has a culture, and that culture is such that who you are isn’t seen as a positive, it isn’t necessarily a thing that’s wrong with it, it just doesn’t fit.

Or it could be you, I don’t know. Maybe you’re an asshole. Maybe you’re great, but horrible at telling when someone is into you, so you hit on the wrong ones. Maybe you have impossible standards. But I promise you, nobody ever gets happiness because they strategized their way into a relationship