Hi LostGurl, welcome to Psych Central!

I'm not a dating enthusiast, myself. Very little of what I've done has been for the purpose first of meeting people. Almost all the people I've met, I've met while just doing whatever I was doing: working, volunteering, recreating... even participating online.

I like the idea of getting to know someone in their own element, as it were, when they're focusing more on whatever they're doing there than on how they might appear to me. I also feel much more at home just doing whatever I'm doing in collaboration with others than, for instance, calculating what kind of image I want to project and how well I'm projecting it.

I'm thinking that the more you want to find a mate (and the more obvious you make it that that's what you're doing), the more your prospective mates are going to make allowances for what you might be doing (or avoiding doing) just to impress them. I'd recommend doing stuff that you want to be doing anyhow, letting your prospective mates find you, and letting them think it was their idea.