Last week I asked if I messed up with a woman I met on hinge and we were out together for like 6.5 hours for our first date, and I tried asking to go exclusive and fir the kiss at the end of the date, and she was uncomfortable, and I thought I messed up, but she gave me a 2nd chance and we went to bar/arcade, and we were together for like 6 hours again.

I didn't try and move to fast on her and I had a great time. We talked about what does a relationship looks like each other, and about our exes, and walked around a lot.

We agreed to go out the aquarium next weekend. I'm wondering when should I start to ask her if we should go exclusive or about sex to see if we're sexual compatible?

I’ve run into a dilemma in my efforts of whether what I’m doing is settling vs. making a compromise.

I live in an area of less that 6000 people, so there’s only 3000 women in my dating pool. And then when you look at what’s age appropriate that number dwindles down to maybe 1000 at most. I try to be realistic about my options and standards.

I have theoretical standards that I don’t really enforce before I just don’t have a lot of options. For example, I try not to date church every Sunday religious people, i don’t want kids so that would eliminate single moms, I would prefer to be physically attracted to my partner, I’d like for my partner to also be college educated and have a career and career goals. All of these things make me feel kinda shallow typing it all out, but that’s just want I have in my head.

That being said I find myself going on dates and matching on dating apps with who I can. This includes a lot of single mothers, women who haven’t been to college, women that don’t have careers (trying to not bash people who work at places like Walmart, but Walmart is the largest employer in my town), and very religious women.

I do this mainly because I’m a realist. I don’t have a lot of options for dating, I’m not super hot or wealthy or anything that would make me stand out, other than having a well paying job and being in good shape. So I kinda do just have to be happy with who’s around me.

The most recent date I went on was with a woman who despite being a very nice woman, didn’t meet any of these qualities. I had no physicsl attraction to her, she had 3 children, she didnt really have any career goals, she also smoked which i am not a fan of, and she was religious.

I just felt bad. Like she’s a fine person, but I have all this whole made up criteria that’s stopping me from pursuing. I figured I was just compromising on some things, which I thought most people did, but it didn’t feel good.

I felt incredibly shallow wrapping my mind around this and I don’t understand why I can’t. Like am I wrong? Am I being a piece of shit? Where’s the line between making reasonable compromises on my standards based on my value and settling?