Woman here. I met my husband on IRC, on a channel about BeOS, 24 years ago. So don't knock the internet or the bar as potential ways to find someone. If you're meant to be together, it can happen anywhere.

Dating apps are garbage these days but I am an indoor person. Tinder can be viable for real relationships. I met my girlfriend on there and we're a perfect match. I had in my profile that I was a gamer and played Overwatch and within 10 minutes of chatting we were playing online and in voice chat. She messaged me first. Now we're spending most nights and weekends together. Unfortunately what I did was pay the stupid troll toll that Tinder takes to have unlimited swipes and then just swipe right on literally everyone. Women tend to be more choosy on online dating than men, and having both parties have to choose each other is just another layer of shit to get through before having a conversation. It's shitty but that's how modern dating apps operate. The apps of 10 years ago were so much better than this shitty instagram picture first RNG powered gacha game bullshit we have today but you can still find truly amazing relationships with them.

The bar and Tinder are not the exclusive domain of hookups. I met my partner of 5 years on bumble, my friend met his wife on Tinder.

I think the advice others are giving is true to some extent, work on yourself and good things will come, but for most people you also have to go the extra mile and put yourself out there.

Put yourself on the apps. Go to clubs, leagues, meetups, socials, events, parties etc. In general, say yes instead of no and talk to people instead of not. If something starts to develop you can give out those vibes that you’re looking for something more serious, and people will self-select.

You might ask a good friend, who is married or has a GF, if his partner might have a friend who might be interested. That's how I met my wife. Bonus is we were able to talk at a bbq at the friend's place.

Well, Tinder doesn’t has the best reputation. Not to shit on the users. Everyone I met through Tinder was super nice and I had a great time during those dates. But the App itself tries to drive you crazy and throw money at it. I don’t know where you’re from, but I’m sure there is a better alternative.

The best advice I can give is: Focus on yourself. Treat yourself good. Learn to love yourself. Then put yourself out there (maybe in one of those pesky bars?) and voilà! You start meeting new people. I cannot stress enough how attractive contentment can be. No one wants a sad lump.

May I ask how old you are? And what do you mean by a real relationship?

It is harder for guys especially when young. Most of my girl kids found guys on Tinder/Hinge, the boys met their girlfriends and wives more organically, out in the world.

But as an older person, I think that it's better not to have a relationship goal, certainly not at first. If you have friends who are girls, they have friends who are girls. Hang out and see where it goes without expectations or goals. Maybe you hit it off with one of them but in any event you talk with girls, and get more comfortable.

Like others said, focus on living your life and be social. It is likely to happen organically. Focus on social things where you are bound to meet people either way. Do not pressure yourself or it will take away from the fun aspects of the hobby/sport/events.

And for god's sake, do not use online dating sites/apps. They are bad in so many different ways. The endless dating is tiring and can twist your perception of dating and people in general, especially if you run into bad luck. Albeit this did not happen to me, I had friends from both sexes that hated how people got turned into commodities, and treated others like things to be discarded. A couple to girls I knew were on dates on a weekly or biweekly basis and it really warped their perception of men in general because they tended to picked incorrectly or got tired of the repetitive cycle akin to job interviews for all parties they ended up pausing all dating for ages. As it took the fun out of it. Online dating these days is more for hooking up and bad experiences. Despite that I am sure that many people have met significant others online, dating online is not like 10 years ago.

Do you like dogs (Or cats, I guess)? The animal rescue I volunteer with skews heavily towards women. Help some animals, make some friends.

Of course, don't just do it to meet women. If current me had some relationship advice for younger me, it would be to be patient and just make sure you're out there doing things you actually like doing. And be interesting, which, comes from getting out into the world and doing things you like.

I met my partner on hinge. Dating apps can be hit or miss, but I found it decent.

Dating apps are useless for any man who isn’t stupidly handsome or parasitically wealthy. The bottom 90% of men on dating apps are routinely completely ignored. For every swipe an average woman makes that gets a response from a man, the average man has to swipe right somewhere between 500 and 1,000 times to get an equivalent response from a woman, depending on how he presents himself on that platform.

Your best bet is social events IRL, and networking through friends. Aim for connections and friendships over relationships, with at least ⅔ of all new connections being other male friends, as you cannot be seen as “thirsty” under any circumstances. If you come across as desperate, you will be either ignored or manipulated and taken advantage of as a “useful idiot” with nothing to show for it.

Another good tactic is to become intrinsically motivated. When you focus on yourself, cultivate your own personality to benefit only yourself, and adopt a stoic mindset, companionship of any kind shifts from a requirement to a value-added proposition. You need to be completely happy and satisfied with your own solitude and existence apart from others in order to be a good judge of how others are best suited for you.

And many men are abandoning relationships altogether because the juice is just no longer worth the squeeze. After all, why be with someone who hates you for the gender you are? Down that path lies pain and suffering, and it is better for your mental, physical, and financial health to go your own way.

Dating apps are at best a crapshoot. They’re more interested in prying money out of you than anything else.

Like others have said, doing things you enjoy is a good way to meet people who enjoy the same things. Maybe you won’t meet your next bf/gf/etc directly, but perhaps someone you’ll meet has a cute single friend.

Being in a positive and healthy relationship is better than being single, but single-hood is better than being in an unhealthy and dysfunctional relationship.

Dating seems a bit like working on your mental health, in that both imply working on self-improvement (which ultimately should be done for intrinsic reasons, not just because it may get you laid).

Like the quote from the Bojack season 2 finale: “It gets easier. Every day it gets a little easier. But you gotta do it every day. That’s the hard part. But it does get easier.”

Shared hobbies are often the best way to get your foot in the door. Book clubs, local events, concerts, charities, and religious locations are a good start.

Dating apps if you can mentally survive them.

If not, then something like meetup app, find stuff you already like to do and go to events with like minded people. Make friends and maybe something more will come along.

Either way be patient. You can't rush something like that.

This seems pretty sound advice - https://youtube.com/shorts/JhQI06_V6NQ Source: Single/dating for ten years, now married for ten years.