Five years on the community side has given me eleven genuine friends, two of whom I would call at three in the morning, and not one single date. That is not a failure of the platform. It is what that model is actually good at, and nobody advertises it that way because friendship is not what people arrive looking for. I got the better half of the bargain and I would still like the other half.
Forty three, Brooklyn, switch. No arrangement of my own, ever, which is an odd thing to admit after five years of being thoroughly inside this.
Part of the reason is obvious: I am useful and reliable and I became the person everybody talks to about their own arrangements. That role is hard to step out of. People do not see you as a candidate once they have seen you as an ear.
So I am writing somewhere else, where I am not anybody's confidant, and where I can say plainly that I want something for myself. Ongoing, either direction with a lean towards leading, structured, weekly.
Not looking to be told I would find somebody if I asked, because I have asked. Not looking for advice, of which I have plenty. And not looking to lose eleven friendships over one attempt, which is precisely why this advert is not on the platform where they all live.