Crazy - I feel the same way. In fact when I read this it felt like I was the one who wrote it.

I would just say be careful with what you ask for. Grass always seems greener and its probably not. Making money, working your way up, getting paid, it takes time and we need to be patient. Read a great article somewhere that part of the problem with our generation is that we live in a world of instant gratification (internet, TV, fast food, online dating, smart phones etc) but that our career/jobs do not work in the same way.

One of my biggest mistakes in life so far was getting impatient at work, and pushing for a promotion. At the time I was living in Switzerland and completely happy but just felt that I was to complacent at work. Well, I pushed and they gave me a promotion (not such a bad thing) but I had to relocate back to NYC. And now while I am a bit happier at work cause its a new role, I am pretty much miserable outside of work.

I am working very hard on my patience.

avoid comparison

This needs to get some more love.

I am 25, and I am already really struggling to find mates. I got lucky in that I moved to Switzerland at 24 and found 2 other single 25 year olds, one from south africa and one from england. We immediately hit it off and became very close. We all lived in Switzerland and went through living in a foreign country together. Traveling around, working together, etc.

It was my first very close friendship not through a forced situation (sports, high school, fraternity etc). We were all into the same things (drinking, traveling) - we were all single, and we all were making six figures.

My company has relocated me to USA, and my mate from England was relocated to Luxembourg so now all three of us are separated.

Anyway moral of the story is I am having a real hard time finding mates back in NYC because people are already established with freinships, and its easy for me to call up my college mates who are living in NYC. However they are not interested in the same things as me and I dont think they are making the same amount of money as I am.

I would say just like above work hard to keep your relationships in tact with your best mates. I would then go one step further and say work even harder to find people in your immediate life that you gel with. None of my close friends live in NYC and I am struggling a bit. I can't give up my job so I need to do something about it rather than complain.

Apparently I have to go shoe shopping next week.

Here is my advice to 20-25 year olds.

Be persistent
- This is pretty broad advice but it should be applied in all aspects of your life. Mainly job searching, moving up, girls, and gym. I came out of a state school in the midwest with the 3.5 GPA and landed on Wall Street through persistence. That same persistence help me land a job at one of the world's top commodities trading firms and relocated to Switzerland. I emailed the HR there every Friday until they interviewed me. And then naturally killed the interview. I am now (at 26) trading for said firm out of NYC through being persistent to my managers in Switzerland letting them know I wanted more and worked my ass off. If there is a girl you like - be persistent. Make the gym your number 1 hobby.

Stay Flexible
- I wanted to write this as "stay single" - but its more than that. At 20-25 girls can actually hold you back, I've seen it happen with friends. Buying a condo/house is probably not the best thing either. You need to stay flexible for that opportunity that may pop up where you may need to relocate or take a gamble on a job.

Spend time out of your comfort zone
- spend time away from where you grew up/went to college. Take a job in some random city where you don't know anyone. You will be amazed at the things you learn about yourself and the world in general and how it operates. And if you are a semi normal person the amount of interesting people you will come across outside of your comfort zone and not just your fraternity brothers can lead to life long friendships.

Even if you like your job - keep looking for others
- Jobs are just like any market. There is a value for them and its important to know if you are overpaid or underpaid for various reasons. The only way to do this is to speak with others in the industry, return recruiters phone calls, and make casual friends in your industry.

All you need is ONE good mate
- In highschool in college I spread my net out far and had many friends for many different things. As you get older, as time becomes more valuable, and as your interests/beliefs become more refined - bust your a$$ to find 1 or 2 good mates who you can do everything with. This is extremely challenging. Find a mate who is into the same things as you, both of you have the same marital status, and most importantly you make roughly the same amount of money. This sounds shallow but I've found it to be very important. Have this person be your wingman on big nights out, the guy you can go for a run with, the guy you can sit at the bar for a few beers, and the guy you go to vegas with.

Live Abroad
- very challenging to actually make happen, but if you are persistent there are opportunities.
- I won't get into to many details but living abroad for 2 years will prove to be the single most important thing I've done in my life and I can't even put a value on the friends I made, the things I saw, and the things I learned about myself being put in such a challenging situation.

Always wear a condom - its not worth the headaches.

Out of curiosity, what shoes do you wear? To work, for example?

fwiw, I think the number of women who really know men's shoes well enough to make any real judgment based upon a quick glance is probably about 1-2%. If you live in NYC or DC, then the number is much higher, obv. I think it's more the impression your shoes make upon quick glance. I think it's largely an impressionistic continuum something like:

A: You're wearing very nice (leather sole) dress shoes and look sharp.
B: You're wearing run of the mill (cheap department store) dress shoes
C+: You're wearing run of the mill dress shoes that aren't particularly nice
and are scuffed up, cracked, etc
C-: You're wearing dark sneakers hybrids that you think are nice shoes
D: You're wearing nasty beat up shoes of whatever variety that have
been run through the mud
F: Sandals

It sounds horrible to the young, but you will make new friends as your life changes. It is nearly impossible if you have kids to maintain a close relationship with your friends who don't. Converse is obviously true as well. Same goes for being married and having single friends. This does not mean that you care even the slightest bit less about your old friends, just that you have less in common to chat about and no ability to really spend time on them.

It is nice to stay in touch with old friends (and highly recommended), but you need people (one is sufficient, as you mention, Burko) who are going through the same portion of life. If you are personable, you will make friends. When you are the new kid on the block in a portion of life, so to speak, it takes some time. It should take some time - the people who are highly available as friends when you enter a new portion of life don't already have friends for a reason. Usually it is because they aren't decent enough to have already made friends.

Thanks Naj.

I may send you a PM pertaining to this in the next year or so as I become more serious about a career move. Right now, I am just trying to brainstorm what exit opps I may have.

Even though I am still (barely) younger than the age posted, I'll offer a few things:

- It is better to be "process oriented" than "results oriented." In life, you will not get what you deserve 100% of the time. Focus on improving your process, which will improve your expected results. This mindset along with probabilistic thinking are probably the two most helpful things I learned from gambling and this forum.

- Be content with what you have, while striving for more. There are two ways to meet a want. Either get what you want or no longer want it. I think that people can easily set themselves up for misery by not considering the second part of that statement.

- Try to put yourself in situations with positive optionality. It is best to avoid things with negative optionality (example: audit/tick and tie work, where you can only mess up. No one really commends you for having the lost error rate either). Seek out situations where it's hard to mess up and possible to a very good job that will be recognized by others. Advice to myself is to try and extend this outside of work and investing.

- Other advice to myself is network better. I will probably be looking for a new job within the next 1 - 4 years. It seems like the best way to get a new job is to have someone at the company helping you.

And she gets the totality of your personality, intelligence, and style of humor in the 0.25 seconds they take to immediately assess you upon first glance?

Gotcha. I'm sure your experience is correct.

Cliffs: Take care of your appearance if you want to attract women who take care of their appearance.

It's absolutely not a 'NY thing.' It's a woman thing. Just because women in NYC do it, doesn't make it a 'NY thing' anymore than drinking a G+T in the summer makes you British.

I think this is more of a middle-class suburban sociability thing and not necessarily true for all socio-cultural categories.

Have you ever lived in Mississippi? I have.

There are places where being ironic in your attention to your appearance works.

The big issue is that having shoes that are beyond your means (or that you won't care to take care of) wins the battle but guarantees losing the war. First impressions matter, but if they don't reflect who you are you are heading for a train wreck.

No different than being a fat girl on a short-term diet.

My condolences.

When I was 25, I read a lot of books, probably more than most 25 year-olds. I'd tell him to read even more books. Hopefully at a 1:1 ratio of time spending on 2p2.

Most people on 2p2 don't know wtf they're talking about. But when you're 25, these people sound pretty smart.

If you want to achieve more success (whatever success means to you), spend more time doing things and less time talking how you're going to do it. 2p2 has a lot of people who spend a lot of time talking. Don't be like that or 5 years from now you'll look back at this post and be like, damn, SlowHabit was right.

Lastly, spend more time seeking advice from 30-35 year-olds who have accomplished things you considered cool in life and spend less than seeking advice from 30-35 year-olds who HAVE NOT accomplished things you considered cool in life. Level of activity is the difference between men and boys.

It is true for all friendships.

If you lose what you had in common, there just isn't much to talk about. Reminiscing only goes so far to keep a conversation going.

It's true that friendships change and you make new friends, but I certainly haven't found it to be the case that having kids means you lose touch with friends who don't have kids and vice versa. I think that is probably true of a certain cultural subset, which albeit is rather large, but definitely not true across the board. I suspect you're projecting your own experience here.

Edit: I was referring to the having kids thing.

You will lose a ton of friends who get married early and pump out 3 kids.

1 kid they will make some time for you, maybe even work out a trip for 3+ days to vegas.

2 kids it becomes 10x harder. After that it becomes impossible if you don't live in same neighborhood and don't have kids. We all still see each other, but now only on truly special occasions.

Make new friends. My old friends are still my closest. But we rarely hang.

Again, couldn't agree more. Well said. You should still have the best pair of shoes that represents 'you.'

I wasn't really disagreeing. In cases where extended families and lack of upward or downward mobility are the norm what I said doesn't apply. In the general case, it doesn't mean that you lose touch; only that you just don't have the time or sufficient things of mutual interest to discuss to hang out on a frequent basis.

A person who has wife and kids has different obligations and interests than someone who has neither. You'd be a pretty crappy husband/father if you are still carousing with your friends. You'd be a pretty crappy single adult if you aren't doing so. You'd be a pretty crappy friend AND a crappy husband/father if you spent your time talking about the joys/difficulties of being married with children to your friends who aren't in the same boat.

I wear Cole Haans almost exclusively. They are comfortable and look good. Three are shoes I like more, but they kill my feet. I almost never wear anything but black/brown dress shoes unless I'm doing yard work. No sandals or sneakers or even shorts ever in public.

This is dependent on how you define "meeting a woman". I've only had a few experiences where I've had a woman actually come up to me out of the blue or super aggressively to place in the small window you have described. It's happened maybe 5-10 times in my life and mostly when I was younger and in different social situations. I'm unsure how you can compare the two circumstances, as they are completely different.

For example, looking at a girl for 5 seconds or less and assessing if you want to nail her or not is something men do about 15 times a day, and 5 seconds is on the longer side. However, actually talking to a girl the assessment can change dramatically and very quickly. Usually this is in the negative for women in my case, since the vast majority of them turn out to be idiots or just dull, so it lowers my interest level. (I'm mostly in bars at this point in my life. That may change in the future, but the dive bars I hang in mostly attracts girls who drink too much or restaurant/industry people, and both of them simply bore me).

Many men don't feel that way and their personalities don't matter that much for initial interest, the physical qualities matter much more for most men. I have a feeling the reverse is true for women.

Like I said, this is in my experience so everyone's perception will be different.

Every woman who has ever seen you has judged you, even if in incomplete fashion subject to revision, in less than 3.1415 seconds.

Read Cialdini. Or anyone who has studied this for a living.

Hmmmm. I can't imagine why things aren't going quite the way you had hoped. Maybe try a different dive bar?