Perhaps this is your problem? I've seen this with folks at work. They're middle aged, successful, extremely bright and they want to find a mate. The problems as I see it:

1. They insist on living in "Man Jose" aka SiValley. There is a serious lack of demographic diversity here.

2. They want to find a bright, attractive woman with an amazing career, 10/10 body who is wowed by their lack of life balance, an obsession with career and status, and lack of fun/joy in their lives.

If these guys would live practically anywhere but the valley and accept that, even though they make a lot of money and are great at their tech jobs, they are just average in terms of what a woman looks for in a mate, well, they might get somewhere.

Lonely nerds: you've got to accept that in all likelihood your mate will disappoint you in some way and vice-versa. Don't just marry the first girl you find, but consider lowering your standards to match with reality.

> I had plenty of attractive sexual partners.

This sentence is a serious red flag. If you think your ability to bang hot women who hang out in bars bears any relation to your fitness as a mate then you need to check your beliefs about what women want in a relationship. I'd like to hope this is just an insensitive way of you telling us that you're not a hideous monster and hopefully that's all it is. If not, I don't know, maybe stop trying to date, take a break from the tech world, and just work on your social skills for a while.

> tell Women painfully stupid stuff they want to hear

Jesus... so many red flags. Really man, you have a condescending attitude towards women and you wonder why you can't find a mate?

If you are looking for a reason for your travails, here it is. If you started out with this level of contempt, it’s no wonder you’ve been unsuccessful. If you became embittered due to your challenges, then I’m sorry. That is a hard path. But if you want it to change, I think you have some work to do. And I wish you luck with it.

> tell Women painfully stupid stuff they want to hear about their quantum vibrations matching and other new age nonsense.

Do you think "quantum vibrations matching" and "other new age nonsense" are not painfully stupid? Or do you just want to attack the parent comment?

And no high-earning, rational male in a STEM career would ever want to be with a partner that values that sort of conversation.

I suggest you take your own advice and work on your issues that make you respond in a knee-jerk manner, blaming them like that, instead of assuming that OP may be correct in their assessment about the dating scene.

My god I hope you aren't talking about tinder are you? You are totally clueless about women and dating if that is what you are talking about.

Go out to bars, talk to people, do activities and meet lots of people. stop doing 'online' dating (of any kind)

Seriously, myself and everyone I know found that upon reaching 33 the interest from women in their 20s sky rockets. You are definitely doing something wrong, not society.

"go out to bars" is advise that's about 20 years out of date, mate. However, being successful at online dating is non-intuitive and takes skill.

Of course, if you're in your mid 30's and you want to bang college chicks half your age with daddy issues, maybe "going to bars" is the way to go...

I've met people online and dated them. I've also met girls in other ways and dated them, now marrying one. Once or twice, well, we didn't quite want to tell other people how we met. So we didn't. We just said we met online. It's the perfect blow-off justification when you don't want to get into a perhaps complicated and messy story.

People meet in all sorts of ways. I used online dating for years but it was never the most successful strategy. What did work - meeting girls at events, in bars, ideally at events in bars, one or two less conventional ways, and never giving up.

It's pretty easy to strike up conversations with people at bars and events. I know people who met their long term partners on overseas tours, at work and at music festivals. Not everyone uses dating apps, not every person at a bar is ancient or has daddy issues.

You missed the rest of the sentence.

Huge YMMV. A lot of us are physically similar to what we were in our 20s but I definitely peaked when I was around 25. It’s been a steady downhill trend since then and the interest from women has gone completely downhill. Mind you - I’m not exactly surrounded by many women I’m interested in but at least in the past I might’ve had someone I wasn’t into express some mild interest in me.

In my 30s though? Nope. Definitely not. Haven’t even lost hair or gained a bunch of fat. Yet - from the results one would think I have.

So, I’d say… grain of salt as far as your experience and your friends goes. I know many men who have basically given up in their 30s because they feel completely undesired and have managed to keep up their physicality.

No surprise that women in their 40's are more responsive. There are less men alive at their age and less men interested in dating their peer age. Many men in their 40s want to date someone in their 30s. Men in their 50s want a 40s, etc. It's uncommon for men to want to date someone in the same age bracket as they get older.

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2020/02/06/the-virtues-...

of those with a partner, 21% said they met them online (gets lower with age too)

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/08/20/nearly-...

And note that this says "online dating" not specifically tinder. Statistics show that 80% of women sleep with 20% of men on Tinder. Tinder is a place women go when they are interested in having sex with men based on nothing other than their looks. That is fine, if you are in the top 20%, if you aren't, it is a real fools errand.

39% in 2017. I'd be very curious to know the numbers over the past two years as in 2017 bars/restaurants were at 27%, school/college at 9%, and work at 11%.

I know it sounds a bit stupidly obvious, but do the stuff that works!

Depends on the bar. Certainly when I was young there where certain bars that where known as places you go to be social and meet girls and certain bars that where known as places where you sat and drank with your mates and got left alone. By selecting which bar you went to you could greatly influence how your evening went.

Is it instead that some of these folks who have an "easy" time actually don't care that much about the process? Not ignorance, but not spending much time over-analyzing everything. Instead, they're out and they're drawing people to them because they're not thinking about having a good time, but just doing it?

It really is that simple in some ways. Focus on enjoying yourself throughout your day to day and especially in social situations and perhaps someone will find their way to you instead.

PS: those crystal sellers don't sound to me (generalizing) like good long-term matches for most people. So, stop comparing yourself to them.

These sound like the kind of partners you're trying to avoid anyway. Although I may be projecting.

Also, are you wanting an easy time dating, or are you wanting a long-term relationship with kids on the horizon? They're two wildly different desires.

Put those monetary resources your brain has afforded you to work.

If you were able to get laid at bars in the past, you are good looking enough. Your profile is just likely bad / has poor photos. And I know that sucks but its the real world.

The way you are killing it in your career, I suspect that your female companionship objectives are a tad bit too demanding. At the least, you should try to find a women you can trust and enjoy in small moments of life. Start there.

What changed for you?

You might feel like your achievements and positive qualities are not being valued by women and you've worked so hard to improve yourself for nothing. Trust me, this is not true. There are other factors at play that make online dating unreasonably unfair for you.

1. If you are in the Bay Area, you are at a distinct disadvantage. The male-female-ratio, homogeneity of interests and credentials make stand out far less than you would in the general population. It is also natural for women to form negative stereotypes about men in tech if they've been on bad dates. There's no way to tell that you won't be the same from your profile. I've experienced this first-hand where every woman I managed to go on a date with responded positively and complained to me that the guys they meet are immature, entitled or lack social skills.

2. If you are not white and live in the USA, your odds are slimmer even among your racial group. There are studies to confirm this and you can compare yourself to your peers.

3. Physical attributes like height, fitness and facial attractiveness matter but to a way lesser extent than people think. I've been skinny as a rail and ripped with a substantial amount of muscle and the number of matches were still about the same and women I met in person didn't seem to care either way though I would rate myself as considerably closer to the generally accepted male standards of attractiveness when jacked.

4. By far the quickest hack to get more matches on dating apps is to improve your pictures. Bite the bullet and do it, the bar is pitifully low.

5. No matter how many matches you get, the vast majority of them will act the same way. They'll not respond, stand you up and ghost. Most people are incapable of dealing with the pressures of interacting with other and will choose to do what's easiest for them instead of what's right. However, the more matches you get, the less you'll care about this.

6. Your point about appealing to the lowest common denominator sounds attractive when you feel like you have no prospects but you'll realize it is a sheer waste of time once you learn to value yourself appropriately and stop degrading yourself because of the feedback you're getting from the apps. This is difficult to do unless you really deeply understand the dynamics of these apps so the typical suggestion is to get off them and just date in person.

7. You were pretty much sold a lie growing up that everyone is entitled to love and the average guy will have an easy time finding a partner. When you understand the evolutionary pressures placed on women to select the best partner and today's world where women feel like there are many more high value men due to social media, it is easy to understand why they find it repulsive to settle for someone who's average. Most women grow out of this kind of thinking and seek real connection at some point though.

TLDR; You're probably undervaluing yourself but its not really your fault. Move out of the Bay Area. Get better pictures for your dating apps. Don't expect to have an easy time dating if there is nothing extraordinarily exceptional about you.

> If you are in the Bay Area, you are at a distinct disadvantage. The male-female-ratio

This is just true in the entire USA under age 35. If you're a man - you have a distinct disadvantage. More men (107:100) are born than women. This evens out around age 40 because men killed themselves at a much higher rate than women have. (Think about that - women kill themselves too but 7% of men have to off themselves to just even it out if all the women lived)

And regardless, even if it was somewhere between slightly favorable and slightly unfavorable in NYC, it is strongly unfavorable in SF, which accords with my subjective experience dating in the two places.

First Google search result. Census data contains all the info you desire. It’s not highly publicized because no one likes to admit that men might be struggling with something - lol. It doesn’t sell well in the media.

I will agree that the gender ratio of SF and SV are wildly worse for men than NYC. Just saying that it isn’t some holy grail that people like to sell it as. Men outnumber women in this world from birth. It’s only because men kill themselves that we have less men than women by age ~40.