Having reached my 40s, I’ve kind of given up on this sadly. With my work schedule and what it takes out of me, I’ve realized that I’m not that great of a friend anyhow. I can be flaky honestly. But there’s a hole inside of me that I’ve always wanted to fill with a friend, a real connection beyond typical friendship. I’m leaving that hole open but I’ve learned to avoid looking at it. Hope you find your friend.

You have to be kinda attractive, I found my wife that way, she messaged me, that’s how we met

I don’t know much about how to enter into a relationship online; I know people who have done it, but it’s never been something that I’ve been interested in. However, many of my strongest friendships were made online.

The trick to making friends online is to not set out with the intention of making friends. It’s paradoxical, I know. What you should do is just find something that you’re interested in, find places online you can talk about them, and try talking about them. Personally I like math, so I met some friends on internet math chatrooms and forums. I like Star Wars, and I made some good friends through talking about Star Wars online.

Many such places also have a casual conversation place attached. In niche communities where you (a) are already engaging with people with a common interest and (b) there’s few enough people that you will see names and faces regularly, but enough people that the conversation never dies down, eventually you’ll become a known quantity and make friends.

You can confirm none of them work? They can work. Sometimes you have to give it time. I met my wife on tinder. The thing is it takes a while. I didn’t meet the love of my life on there after a single day or week. I was on the app for a couple years. It’s hit or miss and takes learning.

I can confirm that apps work. Half of my relationships as an adult are from online dating.

I’m in the divorce process and in many ways I’m terrified of reaching the point where I am past the grief and feeling a need to fill that void.

We met over ten years ago because I posted a personals ad on a local r4r titled “Creepy guy seeks woman way out of his league”. Everything seems 5000x more gamified now.

I’m somewhat awkward, so I’m a lot more comfortable putting off phone or video for a few days. With that said, I really want to avoid the shame and frustration that comes with taking a full hour to realize I’ve been treating a chatbot like a real human being.

Kink dating apps seem to work well for me. Also rather than swiping on repeats and ladies that aren’t my type I block, sounds heartless but its good to have a boundary and stops mainstream dating apps from repeating the same people. personal I avoid woman who in every photo are at a club, wear brands, plastic surgery, essentially they have life styles at odds from mine. Outdoorsy, intelligent seems my type so basically don’t shy from setting boundary.

And like most other comments have mentioned, pursue your passion, if thats video game, science fiction or sports, post about it, have discussions and genuinely seek positive interactions.

MMOs maybe. I’ve met some cool people this way

Engage in spaces and areas where there will be other people with similar interests. That may be a fan club for a hobby you love, a game with multiplayer elements, etc.

Lots of my long-term friendships started with open-source projects. If that’s your kind of thing, it’s worth looking into. Either way it usually all boils down to a common hobby.

Shared experiences help with longer term relationships. I regret I’m not focusing on the finding part but more of identifying how to hold onto it. I think the shared experiences matter more than how you find the people.

I’ve done this specifically by playing a video game, joining a clan, and joining the discord. I focused on who I clicked with most and spent time with them. I also think making some effort to meet IRL helps after a while. Having a game or a hobby in common isn’t really enough because it can be very thin. If you don’t care about any IRL things then force other shared experiences that are tangential to what brought you together. That helps me too.

You can meet a partner in league of legends. Your match history and most played champions are like a free personality test that both of you and the rest of the world have access to.

You’ll be sleeping with one eye open for the rest of your life though.

My wife and I met on Craigslist of all things. I read something she wrote, popped her a note, she wrote back, one thing led to another and here we are married for 14 years now…

Facebook Dating has ironically been miles beyond other sites imo. It’s completely free and the algorithm works very well. There’s also a section for finding friends if dates aren’t your thing.

How do you find people who are interested in long-term relationships online?

In my experience, this is rare. Most people who meet others online started as friends with some common interest. I met my wife like this. It was never with the intention of a long term relationship, we were just friends online. We knew each other as friends for 2 years before getting together.

I would recommend DnD (or other games) as others have suggested too.

Also this is kind of random and I have no idea if it is a good idea, but maybe try https://duolicious.app/ - I saw it randomly the other day and your post reminded me of it.