Any observations on how the game changes? I read the posts and it seems that many of the DJ's benefit from being an undergrad at a college with many HB's, Where most of the people don't work 45 hours a week in an office populated by over 50 married co-workers who haven't partied since Grand Funk Railroad split up.
As it has been said on this site, "Finding a good woman in her 30's is like finding a parking space... All the good ones are taken and the remaining ones are handicapped."
My past responses haven't hit the original post as directly I would want. So, at 37, I'm going to take this opportunity to breeze through my mating history since age 18, and illustrate some changes that have occurred over the years. This comes from the perspective of a 5'10", 165 lb man. My weight has been in a constant range of near 160-165 since age 25. I'm reasonably athletic and I watch what I eat. About 4-5 years ago, I cut out soy/soy derivative ingredients and most processed ingredients from my diet. It's been good. I also eliminated porn and mbate around the same time.
I've never married and I've had no children. I've been exceptional at using condoms. The majority of the women I've had sex with were using birth control. I've not had any significant pregnancy scares. I had a couple of STD scares. Npne of my relationships have surpassed 3 years.
The most important thing to be an over 30 DJ is to be secure is one's self. That's also applicable in one's 20s as well, but it becomes more essential in one's 30s in my experience. Also, know what you want and how to pursue it.
There are 3 distinct eras I've noticed based on my life experiences.
Ages 18-22 (This phase would look different for men who don't pursue a BA/BS degree. It would exist, but be more similar to the 23-29 year old phase I experienced.)
Ages 23-29
Ages 30-present
Ages 18-22 mostly comprised of my undergrad degree (I later received a master's degree). My undergrad degree is from a large public university with a solid reputation for partying and milder winter weather. The undergrad era has a lot of value. It can be played a number of different ways. I probably didn't play it the best way. The way I played it and the way I think a lot of men play it (beta, alpha or in between) is that they focus upon night pickup. From ages 18-20, this is mostly done at parties at private residence off campus apartments if you are not a member of a fraternity. If you are a member of a fraternity, you have parties at your own fraternity house. I was not a member of a fraternity. If you do day game, it is mostly done in your classes, though some will do it in extracirricular activity clubs.
I was too focused on meeting women at night and not focused enough on meeting women during the day. That's a valuable lesson for all of the life stages. If you meet women during the day in any of the life stages, you'll reap better rewards. You'll deal with less drama, less bad behavior, and have higher quality relationships of longer durations. Relationship duration is a good indicator of quality of relationship during the first 5 years of a relationships. For relationships that last longer than 5 years, the length of the relationship becomes less of an indicator of its quality.
The women you would meet during the day on a university campus are ones that would give you the best opportunity for building a strong, longer term relationship. However, realize that even if you do this, by your 35th birthday, you're likely with a different woman. That day might even come by 30. I've observed many of my undergrad classmates of both sexes from my era via their social media pages. Now, they are now mostly between 35-39, and most of their college relationships didn't stick. The ones that do stick even for 3-5 years are worthwhile because you're getting a woman with no kids and in her physical peak. If you start an LTR in college, don't expect it to surpass 5 years. If it does, it's much better than starting a LTR with a woman at later phases in life. Two 18-22 year olds starting around the same time and growing together is way better than 2 post 25 year olds meeting, and having years of baggage, some of it potentially substantial.
If you're an undergrad, you're not missing much if you're not involved in meeting women at night. At most schools, including the one I attended, you can meet enough women from some combination of your classes, your extracirriculars, the on campus gym, and cold approaches on campus, including at the gym.
Ages 23-29: This is an interesting era. It is a shock to the system at 22/23 upon graduation when you get your first post college job and you go from everything who you spend your daytime hours looking similar to you in age and lifestyle to fewer people resembling you. In college, you can meet women in your classes at semester. Next semester, the classes change and the classmates change. At work, especially in white collar, office environments, that's not going to happen. It's the same people for a much longer than a semester. Also, interviewing for new jobs is a royal pain. I did ages 23-29 before #MeToo got big, but even dating within one's workplace was not advisable in the 2000s/early 2010s when I was in this phase. Romantic relationships forming at work has been on the decline since the early to mid 1990s.
In this era, with less free time, you'll need to put together a robust outside of work life. Most guys in this age bracket do it with going to bars to try to meet women, using swipe apps (or in the 2000s/early 2010s it was websites), and joining co-ed sports leagues. Of those 3 things, the most valuable one is the co-ed sports leagues. It's most advisable to avoid random nights out in bars, which are actually worse than the private residence parties in college I described. The best way to meet women for any sort of relationship is in person through your interests. Sure, you'll meet fewer women by doing as compared to swiping, but you'll have less bad experiences. I'd recommend playing in co-ed sports leagues, doing cold approaches at the grocery store or other retail outlets in singles dense areas of your home city, doing approaches in the gym or fitness classes, and getting involved in activities you like and meeting people through those activities. In much of this age group, fewer people are in 3+ year or 5+ year relationships, so you'll be able to meet people outside of work who resemble you, which becomes more difficult in the 30+ era.
Two special notes about this era.
Weddings: Around ages 26-30, you will start to see a flurry of weddings in your social circle, if your friends are about the same age as you are. At the latest, this ends by 32-33. If you find yourself single during this flurry of weddings, you may begin to doubt yourself and your lifestyle. Don't do that. If you find yourself in some LTR during this flurry, don't let others' timelines dictate the pace at which you propose marriage or even if you want to have a marriage. You have to be secure in yourself for this.
There used to be a notion that weddings were a good place to meet single people. The movie "Wedding Crashers", which came out in 2005, played on this. That might have been true when the Boomers and Gen X were getting married for the first time, but it wasn't true for the Millennials and it won't be true for Gen Z. If you've watched "Wedding Crashers" in the last 7 years, you'll realize how outdated it is. Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson's characters are Gen X aged. I could even argue that "Wedding Crashers" was becoming outdated on the day it was released. At weddings, if the couple are two people ages 26+, most of their social circle will be established couples of the same age and few singles will attend. Almost no single women will be there. The best example from my social circle was a wedding of a 28m and 29f that occurred. There were over 100 attendees and no single women. There were maybe 2-3 incel/socially inept men that attended. I didn't attend. That's a wedding that is a waste of time for a player/Don Juan. You don't generally meet women at weddings. If you're friends with the couple and they happen to know single people, you'll meet the singles long before a wedding. You have a better chance of meeting women at wedding if the marrying couple has two members younger than 26.
Graduate school: I attended graduate school during this range (I have an MBA). Graduate school, in all programs, is a way different experience than undergrad. Generally speaking, in graduate school, you shouldn't date anyone else in grad school. Women in grad programs tend to be more feminist and more of a pain to deal with than women who do not pursue graduate degrees. The worst example of this are JD pursuing women, but the MBA pursuing women aren't great either. With that said, meeting a female grad student is better than meeting a woman with a completed graduate degree in the real world. If you're a male graduate student, look to date the undergrads at your school, though you'll typically have less contact with the undergrads than other undergrads.
