HamBeesly:
Oops, I forgot to add a point (sorry, I know we’re burned out on long, rambling posts): when people tell me they want friends, I take them at their word. Lots of people approach friend-making and date-finding completely differently. I know some really prefer to have friendships that gradually become relationships, but that sort of thing really can’t be engineered unless both parties are onboard, in which case, they’re making a date-finding deal, not a friend-making one. A lot of folks make friends and see those friends as only friends. What they look for in partners may be wildly different. So if someone makes friends with them hoping it’ll ultimately become more, they may be really setting themselves up for a bad time, especially if the other person feels a sense of deceit that they entered the friendship with ulterior motives.
You make a lot of great points. That's the other side of the coin I failed to mention in my initial post. The bad behavior of men (and some women) are directly responsible for this by trying to turn everything into kink chat.
I mentioned this in another forum that its a toxic cycle that men are just in it to get off, especially on fetish sites and women retaliated by making conversations "pay to play".
Because of that, you get women scared to death of sociopathic dudes going "ehehehe how mush do u weighhhh??" and you get normal guys scared to death they'll message a girl they think is cute and get "buy my content if you want to chat!"
You're absolutely right that Covid wiped out potential meetings, gatherings, etc and you're right that struggling for income goes both ways. Just wish both struggles didn't contribute to the toxic cycle.
In your opinion, what can be done to fix this?
