Ask HN: How to find a wife?

Why did the relationships wind up being short term?

Do you live in a big city? If so, the key is to get out of the crowd/competition. I'd recommend you search at a 50-100 mile radius from where you live. Drive away, make friends outside of town and go hang out with them. Girls are so much better outside of the cities, less buddy-like, less self-centric. More family oriented and also they won't play any game. Plenty of pretty chicks in the middle of nowhere you'll be surprised. Also, you'll be the outsider in the group. The guy who comes once in a while which will make you more attractive and more desirable. Put your self in the right spot, it's that simple.

Almost 7 years ago, I had just gotten back from teaching English in Israel and moved back home for a few months because I had no money and needed a job. Literally $0 in my bank account. While I had a degree in psychology, desperation set in, and I applied across the boards of Craigslist for ANYTHING. Psychology-related jobs. Any job that required a Bachelors Degree, I had applied for. It was a programming job for an autobody shop that answered.

I went in and got through my interview. They tested me on my math knowledge, which I failed miserably, but they also tested me on my logic and my knowledge of the programming language, which I aced. They ended up hiring me.

I had no car and before I left, I walked over to the saleswoman, touched her hand, and said, "Hey, can I use your phone? I have to call my ride."

About 3 months later, and all the while, this woman had basically been flirting with me and I was flirting with her, but I had no idea she was even interested and I thought it was just casual office flirtation to deal with the boredom. Anyways, on my birthday, she had gotten me a cake and asked me what I was doing that night. I told her I was going to hang out with all the friends I didn't have... and asked her if she'd like to come along. She agreed and since I had no friends, she was the one who was there.

We ended up talking, flirting, buying drinks, and eventually making out. She admitted ever since that day I had touched her hand that she wanted me. She had been trying to get my attention ever since and trying to get me to ask her out, even almost giving up at one point. I also feared that she was setting me up to knock me down (sexual harassment), but that really wasn't the case because she really did like me. Our job had a policy of no fraternizing with co-workers and so we kept it a secret. Eventually, we ended up getting another job because that boss was... well lets just not get into it. Fortunately, we got the same job together doing the same thing, in web design. At this job, our dating remained a secret for years.. before we finally let out the truth.

She's not technically my wife today, as we are experiencing financial issues right now and getting married isn't the first thing on my mind to solve such situations, but she has been my girlfriend for 5 years and then we got engaged. I know this might be a rare situation, but it somehow worked out. I think the workplace or college is a great place to meet people, but you also risk it: We did have one stint in which we separated for a month due to differences, but we casually dated again and realized how much we loved each other. During that month, we still had to work together and it was miserable.

Before her, I really had no interest in dating at all. Going on dates was just awful.. like setting up an interview and hoping for the best. Asking girls out or even trying to recognize they were interested in me... yeah.. maybe I was just stupid. There were girls I'd meet where I knew they could be "the one" .. or they weren't. It was few and far in between... I think maybe only three girls or so before meeting my current lady were like that. One I met in college.. and I was so in love with her, and no matter what I did to let her know, the love just wasn't reciprocated. Years later, once she found out I was engaged, she took an interest in me, texted me, called me, wanted to hang out... but before that... I was lucky to get any time of day with her. But its too late for her.. and I wasn't going to lose what I have with my special one. Definitely not worth the games at all. Our chance was in college... and it never happened. Live, love, and learn. And then move on if you must.

My advice is this:

Don't look for love, but learn how to be observant. A girl who pays attention to you may be interested in you. If she's playing with her hair, she really likes you. She wants to know you and wants you to know her and be in her life and in your life. Don't fear asking her out. Just ask her out. You have absolutely nothing to lose. Really. Nothing to lose. If she rejects you, she is just helping you find the right girl for you. If she gives you a chance, don't try to be anyone but yourself. Don't be too weird. You can be weird later when she is comfortable with you. Just be yourself. Learn how to have a sense of humor in which you can make others and her laugh.

> But the median outcome is going to be worse than with other, more enlightened dating strategies.

Anecdata seems to suggest that dating websites work relatively well, especially as they become more socially acceptable. I know several couples now married who met through one. Also, [smallish] parties/social gatherings often have friends of friends which tends to be a decent form of curation.

> And the ones most willing to engage have their own reasons for seeking out a lonely programmer. ... > What dating advice/strategies do you have for software engineers aiming to establish a family?

You are not your profession. If your identity is overly intertwined with your profession, this could potentially be part of the problem.

At the end of the day you have to be an attractive human being (not just a programmer!) that other people enjoy being around, including potential partners. It may be time for some serious self-reflection to figure out what is root cause of your loneliness, and what can be done to improve oneself to fix this, to build relationships with both men and women, and not just a spouse.

The obvious place to find a spouse [1] is at work, or at meetings and gatherings related to your profession (e.g., technology conferences if you are a programmer). There you will find people who are likely of similar educational background and share at least some of your major interests.

Unfortunately that is also a minefield. There are too many people who consider any admission that you would like to consider more than a professional relationship to be harassment.

Church used to be a place that facilitated finding spouses. People would regularly attend church, and make friends with a variety of people including many married couples who shared the same basic values they did, and those people would play matchmaker, providing introductions to their outside friends and coworkers. Older couples from your church would set you up with nieces and nephews, and so on.

I'd guess most software engineers here are not very religious and rarely, if ever, attend church.

Getting fixed up by relatives also used to be a major way people found their spouses, but I'd guess that most software engineers here are not living anywhere near their relatives, so that avenue is closed.

I think that covers what used to be among the top ways people used to find spouses. With these not working anymore for software engineers, I think we're pretty much screwed in the mate department.

[1] I say "spouse" rather than "wife" because this also applies to women seeking husbands.

Can I ask when you've devoted yourself to dancing classes/parties? Is it because you really enjoy it, apart from meeting women? Or is that a strategy?

Don't look for someone looking for you. Look for someone who wants the same things in life as you, then ask them if they want to join you.

How are you supposed to find someone not looking for you but someone who wants the same things in life as you? make friends and get to know them and preferably in group settings. Your intention shouldn't be to make friends to find a wife, but to truly just be friends. Naturally, one of them might become your best friend.

After that, If they want the same things in life as you, it comes down to convincing them that it's a great idea to marry you. This problem can probably be its own Ask HN. Silver lining is if you fail to convince them, you probably still keep them as a good friend because reality might hit you that you may never establish a family, so the next best thing would be to fill your life with people you love and build a "family" that way.

IMO, overcoming the friend zone with your best friend is a better problem to have than just finding someone who will marry you and living the rest of your life with them because if you solve the former, you have a better chance of a happy life as opposed to your chances after solving the latter.

"What dating advice/strategies do you have for software engineers aiming to establish a family?"

This is such a weird question to ask. Why do male software engineers as a profession need a special dating strategy? Because there aren't many women at work to meet? That implies that work is a better place to meet partners than bars/concerts/large parties. Maybe it sounds intuitively true, but in my experience that is quite the opposite.

This is really not an advise or anything. I'm not an expert on relationships although I had quite a few and met quite a few women who wanted a relationship with me over the years. Of course many of them were driven by social stereotypes that would make me an overall good draft pick.

You can't really engineer a relationship. Approaching them with an engineering mindset is wrong and misleading in my view. That's why usually we let feelings decide what should happen and take risks.

If you're not a-sexual[1] then you must be attracted to a certain type of woman. Usually men are attracted to sweat, good looking, smart, responsible women. At least that's what works for me. But that's only the tip of the iceberg. Relationships are marathons.

When you live with someone, the relationship goes on another level. You start noticing things that you like and things you don't like. Your partner does the same. There are also external factors that will affect in ways you can't tell: Will your friends and family like her? What about her family? etc.

Believe me, a posteriori, every relationship seems like a poor choice. We usually focus on what we give to our partner but rarely contemplate what we take back.

IMHO the bond between a couple must grow organically and only then been taken care of. You need to fall in love with someone, respect him, etc. To the very least you need to have strong feelings towards your partner. Otherwise, there is no way in hell that I see a 37-year old male going through a relationship with the solid foundations that are needed to get through the relationship happily. As most married people will say, it's not always sunshine and rainbows. I dare to say, it rarely is past the first 2 years.

Of course if you want a relationship that will end up in a divorce after 3 years, then I guess, things are a lot easier.

Relationships are not simple, nor static. Indeed IIRC Einstein or Tolstoy said that relationships are the most complicated thing I've came across. There are too many variables. This means that there's no perfect deal when picking up a partner. I dare to say that it's very hard thing to predict how an individual, male or female, will change and adapt to a relationship. People seemingly different, get fine, while others who seem perfect for one another do not.

Of course there are very poor deals, e.g. You shouldn't pick a drug addict or alcoholic partner. On other what if your partner had a predisposition in alcohol that you never knew about and suddenly ends up being an alcoholic. You give up, or keep on hanging? What do you do? A movie[2]!

I don't know. I can't stand being with someone who wouldn't give everything to me. I need to take everything and give back everything.

ps. To the brave who reached the end os this comment: hopefully I didn't sound like an idiot in this post. If I did though let me know, for future reference, I'll try to change my wording or keep quiet :-)

[11: AFAIK about 1% of the population is a-sexual meaning that it doesn't feel any kind of strong attraction to either sex.

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6oxB257a7Q

If you live in SF women probably assume you are gay. If you take salsa classes but don't look like a Spanish model women probably assume you are gay. Or autistic.

Hit the gym until you don't have to look for women. They will find you.

Or if you don't like working out then try the renaissance fair. Or goth/industrial clubs.

Those aren't the wrong places, as they work well for some folks. They've simply not quite worked out for you yet. The truth is that everything is a lottery, though.

I'd fully suggest doing social things that you are interested in. A fairly genuine interest - things you would do without expecting a date. Or find some new activities to try - especially things with a mixed group. This puts you in touch with folks that have a common interest upfront. Sometimes the most random places will find a lucky hit :)

I'll also say this: You don't necessarily need someone with a similar education or habits of mind, merely one that compliments you or that you can accept. Values are more important, but you won't really know some of those upfront, only over time. The easiest way to solve this is to talk about some of the things important to you early on, with some tact.

FWIW, my spouse and I met online .... playing a text-based RPG. We lived in different countries, and have now been married nearly 4 years and together 9. We talked about much of this stuff fairly early on. No children happened to be important to both of us, for example.

The place is not the filter, you are the filter.

You can meet someone anywhere, but you have to converse with them to see if you are a fit (both single, similar education etc).

At most, you could wear a t-shirt to signal what kinds of things you like. (Avoid Big Bang Theory).

I fail to understand how online dating or social events might be wrong places where to find a person you love.

The "trick" is to use a bruteforce attack method: try meeting as many potential candidates as possible, wnile reducing your resources shortcomings (work out, learn skills, read books and watch movies, travel).

Learn to chit chat and be sociable, helps with engagement and retention of potential candidates

Ask your close friends, colleagues and relatives to introduce you to single eligible women. You'll be surprised how effective this can be.

Ironically, my own experience and observations from salsa dancing have been biased towards long-term relationships. There are so many happily-married, engaged, or otherwise long-term couples in the London salsa scene.

Obviously there's plenty of short-term stuff too. But you kind of get out what you put in. Other than the initial motivation to take classes in the first place, I do salsa because I like salsa.

Surely the more important question you should be asking is why are you only having short-term relationships when you want a long-term one? What's stopping these relationships developing?

Willie Nelson--who must be an expert marriage because he's done it so many times (at least four times)--once said that rather than get married again, he would just save himself a lot of time and heartache by searching for the most unpleasant woman he could find and then give her half of everything he owned. YMMV

A brute force algorithm will do it:

  while True:
    speak_your_mind_as_much_as_possible_to(every_woman_you_meet)
    if empathy >= acceptable:
        break

You discuss mostly about places, strategies but it is about emotions and human beings, not business. If she is a women and you a man, she will take much more risks than you. Forget strategies, try to be nice and perhaps more than anything, be predictable: You must be trusted by her. That said, find an equilibrium between what you drop and what you consider to be part of yourself, learn to say "Yes" and learn to say "No".

Friends and social events, like people have been doing for centuries. There's nothing special or different about programmers with regards to dating. It might not be easy to find a partner, but it happens.

Note that I know a handful of happy marriages that began with online dating, and there are some interesting apps like Bumble that try to shake up the online dating paradigm.

Also you might wanna consider moving to NYC. Lots of single women here apparently!

I don't know. Why not try single moms or mail order?

People have given you a lot of advice.

Here something more generic: First of all you have to improve yourself until you know yourself enough to act like an adult.

What does this actually mean to be grown up? In my theory almost every people in the world have some "spiritual/mental" illnesses. These illnesses are actually origin from lot of places, like school time, patterns/traumas/injuries taken over from parents and so on... It has also a lot of to do with our ego.

But this is not terrible, because if you know yourself enough you will able control these stuff and they won't poison your personality and the way how you are interacting with other people. So this is what I mean under being grown up and self-ware.

If you will be already on this level you will be able to find the right person for you, more correctly it won't be an effort from your side, it will just happen some time. At this level you will be able to see other people illnesses and decide on your own wether you want a relationship with them or not.

The path to this level has lot of loss of illusions and pain at the beginning, but it pays off.

I could write tons of pages about this topic since it's a separate science. But I neither have the time nor the language skills to do it... :D

Instead of that I could advice you start with some psychology and some zen/buddhism teachings. There are also plenty of TED talks about this topic. And these are all belonging together! "Unfortunately" you can't just shrink them down to the relationship/partnership topic.

You have to be also able to answer those question... like: - Who am I? - What are my illusions? - What does mean to be grown up? - What are my illnesses and where they are coming from? - What does it mean to be alone? Is it bad? - What does in mean to me being happy? - Why do I need a parter at all?

And so on... Many many questions at the beginning.

So as you can see it's a complex topic and hard to answer your question. But to summit up, first you have to focus on yourself and get known with your true inner personality and stop focusing on finding somebody, because you have to be able to be happy alone as well, the right partner is just a plus in your life. You should not let depend your happiness on somebody (or something) else, because the somebody else is not constant, so you can loose your happiness extremely fast.

It's like depending your software on an npm repo which can be deleted anytime and can broke your whole software. (Does it ring a bell? :D)

Here are some videos to start with:

https://www.ted.com/talks/helen_fisher_tells_us_why_we_love_... https://www.ted.com/talks/helen_fisher_studies_the_brain_in_... https://www.ted.com/talks/julian_baggini_is_there_a_real_you https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_asks_are_we_in_control_... https://www.ted.com/talks/matthieu_ricard_on_the_habits_of_h... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnLoToJVQH4

And a book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_People_Play_(book)

Very tough topics... And most of the people does not even consider to think about these questions. But don't be thrilled if you get the taste of it you won't stop with it. ;)

In my opinion without these stuffs you may find a girl for a short or a midterm relationship, maybe you can even marry her, but most probably it won't work for the longterm.

One important thing: Everything what I advised does not necessarily has to anything with religion (it can, but not necessarily) it's more like philosophy and knowledge of human nature.

I hope I could gave you some helpful advice regarding your problem and you will find the most fitting path to you. :)

There seems to be an expectation prevalent that we will each meet our partner via a serendipitous encounter with our soul mate, and the fact that it's inevitable that a relationship waxes and wanes over time is often little commented on. I would say firstly perhaps you need to adjust your expectations which might help you refrain from terminating a relationship that could over time develop into something lasting, and secondly why not look abroad? Ignore the stigma. I suspect this originates from women that feel threatened by beautiful foreign women, and men that are envious.